Tanzania has recently seen fast economic growth, however living conditions, welfare, and access to quality social services have not significantly improved, and poverty reduction rates have not proportionately kept up. In terms of the education system, some progress has been made. Especially the introduction of fee-free education has led to increased enrolments, yet a considerable number of marginalised children, girls, and children with disabilities are still out of school. 

Marginalised children, including girls and children with disabilities, still face significant challenges, particularly in rural areas. Gender inequalities persist and result in women and girls having significantly less decision-making power than men and boys. Girls with disabilities are faced with a double exclusion as they encounter social and physical barriers to education and other opportunities for human development.  

The Sauti Zetu, or Our Voices, project is addressing marginalised groups disadvantaged access to education by addressing the lack of government accountability and transparency in implementing inclusive education policies in Tanzania. Through tripartite partnerships between CSOs, the government, and citizens the project aims to contribute to enhanced inclusive, equitable, and quality education for all children.  

The alliance partners of the Sauti Zetu project, has identified several challenges in citizen engagement, such as limited awareness, capacity, collaboration, power imbalances, and marginalisation. To address these challenges Sauti Zetu will work to:

• Empower citizens to hold the government accountable. 

• Create a culture of transparency, inclusivity, and responsiveness in the education system. 

• Emphasize collaborative learning for implementing partners and other CSO partners working to promote transparency and accountability for knowledge sharing to foster continuous learning.  

• Build local capacity, promote ownership and engagement, and integrate interventions into existing systems to ensure programmatic sustainability. 

Moreover, even though efforts have been made to promote citizen engagement in governance processes, transparency, and accountability in the Tanzanian context, challenges remain in effectively engaging citizens and ensuring their active participation in decision-making processes. Therefore, the project aims to critically analyse the state of government engagement of citizens in these areas, with a focus on identifying barriers and recommending strategies for improvement.  

The main activities of the project include: 

• Conducting community awareness campaigns on transparency and accountability and facilitate capacity-building sessions on monitoring social accountability. 

• Supporting CSOs to develop learning products and facilitate CSO partners to use these products for advocacy. 

• Facilitating CSOs to organise strategic engagements with Members of Parliament (MPs) to advocate for accountability on inclusive education and to organise strategic engagements with MPs to share evidence-based information of the status of National Strategy for Inclusive Education (NSIE). 

• Conducting capacity building for MPs on NSIE. 

• Facilitateing CSOs to collaborate with the government to generate data on service delivery in inclusive education. 

Before receiving a full grant, Haki Elimu participated in the Year Zero process of OC2. Year Zero is part of the Education Out Loud learning agenda and functions as a developmental pathway for the candidates. Read more about it here.