As evidence of the failure of policy-based aid mounted in the early 1990s, a ‘new aid agenda’ developed. The agenda emphasised among other things, the importance of dialogue and partnership in order to help build ownership of more complex second-generation reforms. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) has developed as the key instrument for implementing this partnership in much of sub-Saharan Africa. However, this is not the only objective of the PRSP. Tanzania, at the forefront of attempts to restructure government–donor relations and one of the first countries to prepare a PRSP, illustrates the tensions created by the PRSP's complex genealogy and how these are being worked out in practice.