A The Transitional Phase, 1961–1966

The civil service in the early years of post-independence was charged with a role in policymaking and execution. The inherited model of policymaking was based on the traditional dichotomy of politics and administration. It assumed that civil servants would generate ideas and draft policy proposals, which would then be presented to politicians for deliberation and approval. Immediately after independence, external consultants took a centre stage in policy drafting. The first planning document for independent Tanganyika – the Three-Year Plan, 1961/2–1963/4 – was drawn up by the World Bank mission. Regarding agriculture, for example, the government emphasised that

Civil servants were charged with plan execution. The first Five Year Plan, 1964/5–1968/9, was drawn up by French consultants. Sidelining the civil service from policymaking prevented it from bringing important inputs into consideration, before final decisions were made by politicians. As a result, some of the policy decisions were context insensitive and therefore difficult to implement. In the early 1960s, for example, the ‘Ministry of agriculture tried to resist the transformation approach which they regarded as foreign inspired, ill-conceived and ill-advised’ (Mukandala, Reference Moner-Girona, Ghanadan, Solano-Peralta, Kougias, Bódis, Huld and Szabó1992, p. 67). The transformation approach was abandoned by 1966 (Coulson, Reference Cooksey2015). In the same vein, the first Five Year Plan proved difficult to implement because its forecasts were based on statistical assumptions that were weak, population growth was seriously underestimated, and outside advice from the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Bank regarding crop prices proved to be wrong. In any case, there was a serious manpower shortage to implement the plan, as already noted. Van De Laar (1973, p. 72) estimates that only about one-third of targets regarding government investments were realised.

B The Socialist Phase, 1967–1985

The Arusha Declaration, published on 5 February 1967, marked a major watershed in Tanzania’s history in general and in her development efforts in particular. Several decisions and actions had a direct impact on the civil service role in economic development. First, it was declared that ‘The policy of TANU is to build a socialist state, the state must have effective control over the principal means of production and it is the responsibility of the state to intervene actively in the economic life of the nation’ (Nyerere, Reference North, Wallis and Weingast1968, pp. 230–2). As a result, the government formulated and implemented interventionist policies, including nationalisation of the means of production and provision of free social services. The state formally became the major engine of economic development. Consequently, many private companies were nationalised and transformed into public corporations. In the meantime, new corporations were created in other economic activities. Together with the decision that the state must control the commanding heights of the economy, it was also evident that the preferred state instrument would be the public corporation (also called parastatal or state enterprise). Thus, a lot of economic development activities and initiatives were implemented through the public enterprise sector. The number of such enterprises exploded from nine in 1966 to around 420 in 1980. The Second Five Year Plan (1969–74) projected ‘a fast rate of expansion in productive capacity through the agency of the parastatal organisations’ (Second Five Year Plan (1969), vol. 1, p. 223). The civil service was thus sidelined from direct operations of these critical economic development activities.

The civil service, however, retained the role of control and supervision over this budding sector. The exercise of that role, though, proved difficult to say the least. Parastatals proved to be too many, some of them too big and sensitive, and too complex to control. The control structure itself was a complex spaghetti maze involving the president and Ikulu, central ministries led by finance and development planning; parent ministries of particular parastatals; holding corporations, for example the National Development Corporation and Tanzania Textile Company; regulatory parastatals, for example the National Price Commission or the Tanzania Bureau of Standards; various committees, for example the Committee on Parastatal Management Agreements; the party branch at the workplace and the political commissar (beginning 1975); the party, trade unions, workers’ councils, and so on. In addition to size and complexity, many parastatals had vague objectives, areas of responsibilities were largely undefined, and there were no specialised control units in ministries. A government official concluded that ‘both the parastatal […] and the systems of the controls are beset by some of the least desirable features of bureaucratic inefficiency’ (Coulson, Reference Cliffe, Cunningham, Cliffe and Saul1978). In the meantime, state scope and functions continued to expand, further overextending the civil service.

Secondly, it was decreed that: ‘it is the party which guides the government by providing directives which shall be implemented by government during a definite period’ (Nyerere, Reference North1967). From then onwards, the civil service role was limited to supposed policy implementation under the watchful eye of the party. All major subsequent basic policies were initiated by the party. Even in implementation, according to Pratt (Reference Peters and Sievert1979, p. 226):

This practice continued until the beginning of the 1980s, when the civil service took part in preparing the National Economic Survival Programme (1982) and the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) (1983). Their implementation stalled because of lack of resources and support from donors. In 1984, changes were initiated to make the civil service more relevant in policy initiation. Prime Minister Edward Sokoine issued ‘The Ministerial Circular No. 1 of 1984’. This decreed that, in addition to the party, the government could also initiate basic policy. The civil service thus played a role in all subsequent policy initiatives, although they had heavy donor influences.

Thirdly, in the 1970s, the government undertook several other grand decisions that had a serious impact on the civil service. For instance, in 1972, following a consultancy report by McKinsey and Co., there was a massive reorganisation of regional administration. This included the abolition of local authorities and their replacement by state structures all the way to village level, through a policy that was formally called decentralisation but was in fact deconcentration. This policy move entailed extension of civil service responsibilities from the centre through the regions, districts, and divisions all the way to the grassroots. There was a consequent absorption of all local government employees into the civil service. During the 1973–4 intensification of villagisation, civil servants were appointed as village managers throughout the country. This resulted in a massive recruitment of new functionaries into the civil service. Civil service numbers increased by 28.31 per cent in 1973 and a further 29.13 per cent the following year. This move also involved the transfer of senior and experienced administrators and professionals from the centre to the regions and districts. During 1971–2, cooperative unions, which had been the pillars of agriculture production, were supplemented by newly created Crop Authorities. Finally, in 1976, cooperative unions were abolished. All these decisions and others resulted in the expansion of state scope and functions without proper planning and sequencing. They spread the civil service and its resources too thinly for effective performance.

The civil service also did not fare very well in economic development activities under its direct supervision. Hasty policymaking without professional technical information, poor implementation mechanisms, and a poorly motivated staff all led to very poor performance. In agriculture, for example, between 1967 and 1977 there were several major policy initiatives, all of which were failures. The Socialism and Rural Development policy (1967), which called for villagisation and communal agriculture, entailed moving the rural population into Ujamaa villages, where they were to engage in communal farming and other economic activities including transportation and trading. It would also be easy for people to access social services. The implementation of the policy contributed to famine in the early 1970s, destruction of people’s housing as they were forced to move, and even deaths in some cases. The policy was eventually abandoned. The ‘Politics is Agriculture’ policy (1972) was aimed at achieving national food self-sufficiency. People were to be encouraged to abandon traditional farming methods and practices, and to use modern farming equipment, methods, and management systems. Implementation proved very difficult. Following massive food shortages, large quantities of maize (600,000 metric tons), wheat (170,000 metric tons), and rice (130,000 metric tons) were imported (Lofchie, Reference Lawson and Rakner1989, p. 110).

After the failure of the ‘Politics is Agriculture’ policy of 1972, and the subsequent food shortages, the party attributed the problem to drought. Irrigation was deemed to be the answer. A new policy, ‘Agriculture: Life or Death’, was adopted by a hastily conveyed party National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in 1974. It was aimed at mobilising people to complement rain-fed agriculture with irrigation. According to Sokoine (Reference Shelton1984), the decision was taken hurriedly by the party without professional and technical advice from civil servants. No organisational arrangements for implementation were made. According to Sokoine (Reference Shelton1984, p. 53), ‘The running and management of irrigation schemes in most cases had been practically no one’s responsibility.’ Sidhu (Reference Rweyemamu1981, p. 8) adds that there was no reliable information on the irrigation potential of the country and on prior irrigation projects. While the Ministry of Agriculture statistics indicated that there were 55,792 hectares under irrigation in 1975, the party headquarters indicated that there were 133,245 hectares. According to the Ministry of Agriculture (Reference Mbowe1980), there were, for example, no proper surveys and investigations, no serious studies on soil and topography, no economic appraisals, nor hydrological studies, no studies on cropping patterns and other agroeconomic considerations.

Throughout the socialist phase, the civil service was heavily involved in several ways in the country’s economic development. Its support role in policymaking was minimal. The party was supreme and all major policy decisions of the time were made by the party’s NEC, which had a powerful secretariat. The civil service was charged with policy implementation. Here, too, the party had its fingers in the pot. According to Prime Minister Sokoine (Reference Shelton1984, p. 4), after 1977, the party also ‘acquired the power and role of supervision of the implementation process’. With the exception of social service provision, especially education and health, as well as law and order, most state initiatives in production and distribution had very low success rates. Agricultural productivity and output either stagnated or declined, industrial productivity declined, and most parastatal enterprises registered losses and required massive state subsidies to stay afloat (Moshi, 1995; Mukandala, Reference Moshi1998). Since the civil service was not a lone or even the key player in economic development, it can only assume limited responsibility.

Tanzania experienced rapid economic growth in the years after 1966, but this was short lived. The economy started experiencing difficulties in the early 1970s, which grew into a crisis by the late 1970s. The official position attributes this problem to falling crop prices in the world market, the 1978–9 oil crisis, the war with Uganda, and the 1973–4 drought (Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania, 2011). The explanations contain elements of truth as these tragedies wiped out national foreign reserves and thus weakened the capacity of the state to deliver services, let alone undertake investment projects. However, the official position underplays the fact that economic difficulties were also nourished by economic and administrative policies the government had engaged in. In time, such grand policy decisions as nationalisation of the commanding heights of economy, pan-territorial pricing, abolition of local governments, and disbanding of cooperative unions proved to be unfavourable to economic growth. Under President Nyerere’s leadership, the country underwent serious extensive administrative reorganisations. The civil service lurched from one reform initiative to another, including Africanisation, localisation, increase in scope and functions, decentralisation, retrenchment, salary squeeze, and so on. Implementation was the main problem, partly because of the nature of the initiatives: many were ideologically driven policies, poorly thought out, and lacking full information. Knowledge and expertise were subordinated to ideology and politics. Most of the policies that were aimed at consolidating the political base of workers and peasants, broadly defined, also generated opposition from a broad range of actors at times, including civil servants. Most of these policies were beyond the control of parliament, let alone the civil service, since the NEC of TANU had self-appointed itself as a supreme decision-making organ in the country. According to Shivji et al. (Reference Root2020, p. 220) for example, ‘NEC adopted the Arusha Declaration, bypassing all the organs of the state, the national assembly included’.

C The Liberalisation Phase, 1986 to Date

The cumulative failures discussed here led the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to conclude that there was a structural failure of the Tanzanian economy. The recommended solution was a small government and an increased role for market forces. By the mid-1980s, the economic situation forced the government to accept the IMF’s SAPs to meet the conditions for accessing international lending from international financial institutions and bilateral aid agencies. SAPs were accompanied by stringent measures for reforming the public sector. These policies called for cutbacks in state scope through such mechanisms as retrenchment, employment freeze, and withdrawal of the state from production and business sectors, as well as reducing the level of state intervention in key social sectors. As far as the civil service was concerned, the Civil Service Reform Programme (CSRP) was launched in the early 1990s to give effect to the structural adjustment endeavour. Available evidence indicates that the SAPs were successful in terms of reducing state scope and controlling budget deficits, but unsuccessful in driving economic growth, which stagnated at 1.8 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) between 1991 and 1995 (IMF, Reference Hunt2016). For instance, public service employment was reduced from 355,000 in 1992 to about 270,000 in 1999 (Ntukamazina, Reference Ng’eni and Chalam2000). While many public enterprises were privatised, a good number of these were abandoned, cannibalised for parts and spares, or converted into something else. There were cutbacks in investment in social services, especially education, health, and water. Cost sharing in education was introduced in 1986. User fees were introduced in health in 1993.

President Mwinyi, however, given the serious economic problems when he assumed power, and under tremendous pressure from donors, was forced to govern effectively. Hard choices could not be avoided, as the harsh economic realities demanded implementation of economic and social policies, which entailed hardships for the population in the short term. He dismantled many pillars of the Arusha Declaration, imposed a pay and employment freeze, removed subsidies, and imposed cost sharing. President Mwinyi relented on the eve of presidential and parliamentary elections in 1990. He reinstated the annual salary increases and introduced a new salary structure, increasing the minimum salary by 26.14 per cent and the top salary by 38.53 per cent (Kiragu and Mukandala, Reference Kaufmann and Kraay2005b, p. 240).

Several allowances were also reintroduced. In July 1991, the CSRP was launched. Following the reintroduction of competitive multiparty politics in 1992, with reinvigorated trade unions going on strike in 1993 and 1994, and elections looming in 1995, President Mwinyi wavered. The party was worried. In 1994, the civil service average nominal wage was raised by 74 per cent. A year later, in July 1995, it was raised by a further 75 per cent. In the meantime, several agreed reformed benchmarks were missed and a stand-off with donors ensured.

The civil service was very involved in the preparation of various economic recovery policies and programmes together with the IMF and World Bank. These included the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP I and II), the Priority Social Action Programme, and later on the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The civil service also managed the privatisation of hundreds of parastatal enterprises, and the divestiture from ownership of other business concerns. It also oversaw the re-establishment of local government authorities (LGAs) in January 1984, as well as cooperative unions, liberalisation of imports and export trade, and devaluation of the currency.

The enactment in 1990 of the National Investment Promotion and Protection Act, which was reviewed in 1997, underlined the recognition of the private sector as the engine of growth. Various private sector institutions, including the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation and the Tanzania Business Council, chaired by the president, were established to give voice to private sector concerns and challenges.

President Mkapa came into power vowing to clean up the mess of corruption and the allowances mania. Assured of an overwhelming control of parliament, though he supported a consolidation of allowances into salary, which led to a pay increase, and supported the Selective Accelerated Salary Enhancement Scheme (SASE), he abandoned the planned pay increase for the year 2001 (elections were over). He also abandoned plans to raise the wage bill ratios. Under his leadership, many reform measures were initiated and partly implemented.

President Kikwete took power after a fractious election within the ruling party, and his majority shrank further after the 2000 elections. His rule was marred by frequent crisis following revelations of corruption and embezzlement deals by politicians and civil servants. He thus pursued populist policies to shore up the base, which allowed reform doubters to intensify their efforts to neutralise and reverse technocratic reform initiatives. His bold reform initiative ‘Big Results Now’ (BRN) was expensive, unpopular outside the six select areas, attempted to short-circuit the formal civil service, and was abandoned by his successor.

All the measures taken to spur economic growth, including introduction of VAT in 1995, rated at 50 per cent, promotion of exports (especially non-traditional), exploitation of minerals, especially after enactment of the Tanzania Investment Act in 1997, and the ensuing foreign exchange availability after the mid-1990s, led to clear signs of improvements. Real GDP improved – after a dismal 3.3 per cent growth in 1997, it averaged 4.8 per cent for the period 1996–2003. Inflation reduced from 21.0 per cent in 1996 to 4.4 per cent in 2003, and there was an increase in foreign direct investment flows, from USD 148.5 million in 1996 to USD 247.8 million in 2003. This positive growth has continued. Average growth of real GDP averaged 6.5 per cent during the ten-year period 2006–15.

The IMF data show that, although Tanzania recorded increases in average growth (GDP) from 2.3 per cent (1981–5) to 5.8 per cent (1985–90), which was not really significant growth given that this was a post-crisis period, average growth for 1991–5 fell to 1.8 per cent (IMF, Reference Hunt2016). One of the reasons for the decline was that the 1980s/90s World Bank- and IMF-engineered reforms concentrated on cost containment and not on strengthening institutional capacity of the civil service. In short, the quantity and ultimately quality of the civil service was highly eroded. As Fukuyama correctly put it, ‘while the optimal reform path could have been to decrease scope while increasing strength […] many [sub-Saharan African] countries actually decreased both scope and strength’ (Fukuyama, Reference Fjeldstad, Ali and Goodfellow2005, pp. 21–2). Highlighting the impact of SAPs on Africa’s civil service, studies revealed that the capacity of the civil service to provide basic services declined (Adepoju, Reference Adepoju1993). African governments lost the capacity to hire, retain, and motivate the best talents. The migration of Africa’s best talents for greener pastures abroad resulted in a shortage of highly skilled human resources, while those who remained in the service resorted to all kinds of legal and illegal methods, including corruption, to survive.

A Civil Service Capacity

In this section, capacity refers to staffing levels, and their educational, professional, and technical skills and competence. Other capacity issues, for example, systems, tools, and resources, will be discussed in subsequent sections. The issue of staffing levels has varied from too few staff members at independence in 1961 and during the decade of the socialist project 1966–76, through a perception of having too many, leading to retrenchments in 1976 and after 1996, to a ‘truce’ situation of having fairly adequate numbers but with neither the right nor adequate mix of educational, technical, and professional competencies and skills in the period after the year 2000.

Bureaucratic expansionism in Tanzania is a historical phenomenon because, since independence, the civil service has been characterised by rapid expansion in its size. For instance, according to the Survey of Employment and Earnings (SEE), the number of civil service posts increased from 65,708 in 1966 to 191,046 in 1976, and 295,352 in 1980. By 1976, the annual growth rate was 16.2 per cent and the cumulative increase over the same period was almost fivefold. However, the overall increase in total employment was only 28.4 per cent. The reasons for the increases in earlier periods include recruitment of necessary human resources after independence, the expanded scope and functions of the civil service, decentralisation measures and villagisation campaigns that led to more employees being brought in, and, finally, patronage and corruption that took its toll in terms of bringing unwanted people into the service. However, the increase in numbers was not matched by an increase in production. The cumulative growth of GDP at 1966 constant prices over the same period was 38 per cent, with an average annual increase of 3.2 per cent. Clearly, this was a phenomenal growth in the size of the civil service, with a consequent increase in the size of the wage bill.

Efforts made to check the increase included retrenchments. It was concerns over the wage bill that fuelled the perception that the civil service was too large, leading to several bouts of retrenchments. A total number of 9,466 staff was retrenched in 1976, and 16,109 ghost workers were identified and purged from the payroll in 1980. A further 50,000 civil servants were retrenched in 1994. The size of the workforce was reduced by 25 per cent from 355 in 1992 to 270 in 1997. There was also a ten-year employment freeze as part of SAP conditionality throughout the 1990s.

Concerns over the size of the wage bill continued in the period after 2001 and are discussed fully in Appendix A.1. Up to the year 2010, the increase in size was probably roughly on a par with the growth in GDP. As shown in Appendix A.1, there was a notable increase between 2010 and 2015, largely because of massive recruitment of teachers and health workers. Yet efforts to keep the wage bill in check have continued, including a tight centralised control and monitoring of the payroll, a two-year freeze on employment, suspension on salary adjustments, and increments. All these have been aimed at holding the public service size in check; consequently, not only do many public needs remain unmet, but also even established posts remain unfilled in the civil service, as will be discussed in the next section.

Moreover, at least for the last fifteen years, growth in civil service size does not seem to have had negative implications for the economy. As shown in Figure 5.A.1 in Appendix A.1, the fast rate of growth in public sector employment (of which the civil service constitutes 89.7 per cent) expanded at an average annual rate of 8.1, slightly above formal private employment. This did not prevent GDP from growing at the rate of 6.3 per cent of GDP in the same period. Still, about 50 per cent of government revenue was spent on the civil service wage bill, a figure that has risen since 2012.

Figure 5.A.1 Evolution of public, private formal, and total employment and GDP, 1968–2015 (2010 = 100)

Source: Trading Economics/Transparency International (2016). (Accessed: 1 November 2017)

B Staffing Levels

The trend noted in civil service size has always been accompanied by high vacancy rates in middle and senior levels, and in professional, science, and technical fields. The vacancy rate was 10 per cent at independence in 1961, increasing to 29 per cent by 1972, and averaged 36 per cent throughout the 1970s (Wily, Reference Venugopal and Yilmaz1981; Mukandala, Reference Mmuya1983). The situation got worse during the difficult years of the 1980s and 1990s. The employment freeze did not help, as those who left for greener pastures could not be replaced. This shortage of critical skills has meant that the civil service has been unable to perform certain critical functions. In the education sector, while there is reportedly over employment, there is also a shortage of over 20,000 science and mathematics teachers, as this interviewee revealed:

In spite of these claims, a study by Twaweza (2015) reveals that the Secondary Education Development Plan target of 1:30 teacher–student ratio is far from being met. Twaweza reports that, on average, the teacher–student ratio in the schools studied was 1:88. Similarly, there is a worsening staff shortage in health, public administration, and other sectors. According to a recent employment and earnings survey:

Inadequate staffing is also a challenge in LGAs where real social-economic activities take place. A more recent and often cited reason has been the freezing of government employment pending the verification exercise of the qualifications of civil servants. For instance, in one of the districts that we visited in Mara region in June 2017, we found that only the Procurement Management Unit out of nineteen departments/units was staffed to the appropriate level (Table 5.2). The overall district staff requirement is 3,054, but presently there are only 1,952.

The shortage of staff in certain critical areas in the public service has been increased by the recent termination of staff with inappropriate educational qualifications or forged academic certificates. For instance, addressing the media, the permanent secretary of the PO-PSM reported that by May 2017, a total of 9,932 staff had been terminated on the grounds of forging academic certificates and 1,538 with questionable certificates were being investigated (IPP Media, 4 May 2017). Health and education were the sectors most affected by this exercise.

C Competences and Skills

The civil service capacity to administer effectively not only depends on the numbers, but also on the quality of the labour force employed by the civil service: does the labour force have the requisite skills and competencies to administer effectively? The answers to this question may not be affirmative and there may well be variations between sectors or job cadres. For example, using the health sector as a case study, and as indicated in Table 5.3, Service Delivery Indicators (SDIs) show that public service health providers could correctly diagnose 59.9 per cent of case conditions compared with 65.9 per cent of health providers in the private non-profit sector. However, they did better than the private for-profit sector. Thus, the problem may not be a public sector one, although the public sector is the main employer of health care professionals. Adherence to critical guidelines is low, at below 50 per cent, and this is also the case in both the profit and non-profit sectors. Clinicians’ ability to manage maternal and neonatal complications is extremely low, as public sector providers adhered to only 31.3 per cent of clinical guidelines in that area, while it was even lower for the two groups of private providers.

The same situation exists in the education sector. For instance, results from educational sector SDIs show that primary school teachers lack the necessary academic and pedagogical skills to teach. Teachers score extremely low in content knowledge. SDI tests show that only one out of five teachers scored more than 80 per cent (minimum knowledge cut-off point) on the combined mathematics and English test, while 1.1 per cent of teachers scored above the 80 per cent cut-off in English. Respectively, the average scores in English, mathematics, and pedagogy were 42 per cent, 63 per cent, and 36 per cent. The SDIs also reveal that, although teachers seem to have done better in mathematics, only 26 per cent were above the 80 per cent cut-off point (World Bank, 2015b). Evidence from these two critical sectors serves to reveal a broader picture with regard to the skills and competence levels of the civil service. As revealed elsewhere in this chapter, the poor abilities among school and college graduates indicate that the skills and levels of competencies of the civil servants in other sectors cannot be exceptional.

Apart from poor training, this low level of skills and competence in Tanzania’s civil service is partly a consequence of recruitment and promotion practices. Recruitment and the civil service career path into middle- and higher-level positions are critical factors in determining the quality of the civil service. Experience from other countries indicates that, if one is to hire the best candidates, recruitment into the civil service should involve competitive examinations. Similarly, promotions into middle cadre and higher levels should involve competitive training and performance evaluation (Bhatt and Kim, 2000). The quality of the civil service is also improved through rigorous evaluation of the performance of civil servants’ contribution to organisational goals.

Historically, recruitment into Tanzania’s civil service has been conditioned by varying factors. Recruitment into the colonial bureaucracy was not only based on education and professionalism but also on race and ethnicity. Soon after independence, there was a preference for indigenous Africans, in other words, Africanisation, and thereafter localisation. Clearly, given the shortage of qualified Tanzanians, there was a liberal interpretation of merit in order to get people into available positions. Up to the early 1980s, all graduates from the university and other tertiary institutions were recruited into public service. Interviews were for placement purposes only. Relatedly, a decision was made to hire many of the former members of the militia who fought in the war against Idi Amin.

There was also a notable hiring of friends and relatives by senior civil servants to compensate for low pay, higher taxes, high costs of living, and shortages, especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s. All these factors severely challenged the application of the principle of merit in recruitment. Following several reform initiatives, in 1999 the government launched a public service management and employment policy, subtitled ‘In Pursuit of Public Services through Merit and Result Oriented Management’. Informed by new public management theories, the policy attempted to adopt good practices from the private sector to improve the quality and process of recruitment. Some of these practices included open competitions for jobs, advertisements in the media, formal selection criteria including balancing academic and professional qualifications, non-discrimination, and so on. Three years later, a Public Service Employment Secretariat was established. Available data do not permit us to determine and compare the employment structure of the public sector with the rest of the formal sector.

The recent push for utilisation of explicit meritocratic criteria in recruitment has also been challenged by the nature of the available eligible pool of applicants. These are the products of an education system that has been in crisis for a long time. Extensive expansion and disorganisation, poor infrastructure, inadequate human resources, and low morale and motivation have affected all levels of education in Tanzania with few exceptions. As revealed previously, many graduates are therefore of low ability and poorly trained. Concerns for equality dictate that graduates from all institutions, no matter how unworthy, be treated equally. When some of these have found their way into the interview panels, the results have been disastrous.

Our findings reveal that the ability of the civil service in terms of hiring the best and brightest, and motivating, retaining, training, developing, and promoting them has declined in relative terms. One of the reasons for this is the absence of an incentive structure that attracts and retains the best minds. In most cases, however, declining civil service quality is closely related to the nature of recruitment and promotion. The practice has shown that recruitment into the civil service is still short of rigorous screening and vetting. Simply for illustration, until 2015 and after increasing public outcry, it was not uncommon to find that positions into prestigious public institutions were filled up with big ‘country surnames’. Whether that was/is an outcome of competitive screening is beyond the scope of this chapter to establish. Rather, it questions the level of coincidence. Similarly, although the government’s commitment to hire all university graduates was abandoned a long time ago, all trained teachers and health professionals continued to be hired until around 2010.

Promotion into middle- and senior-level positions depends on seniority/longevity in service and in certain cases one’s connections and partisan attachment, rather than performance. Although over the past few years the government has introduced the Open Performance Appraisal System (OPRAS) as a performance management tool to be used for guiding promotion decisions, its utility is highly questionable. The traditional three years’ automatic promotion system remains in force. Although there are schemes of service, complaints abound of their not being followed. Similarly, in recent years, recruitment into management positions has undermined a basic ethos of the civil service, its political neutrality. In demonstration of this, an interviewee revealed:

Traditionally, promotion into such positions would require not less than ten years of experience in the civil service as well as rigorous performance evaluation and vetting. The Public Service Commission, which stands to defend the autonomy of the civil service and at least insulate it from the mounting political surge, is rather indifferent. This lack of rigorous screening and vetting hinders the civil service from hiring the right personnel not only in terms of skills but also in terms of ethics. One of the interviewees shared his/her experience on how things used to be conducted, which deserves to be quoted at length:

Connected to recruitment is the question of employee training and development, as the interviewee quote here suggests. Tanzania has an array of instruments that provide guidelines on training of civil servants, including the Public Service Management and Employment policy of 2008; the Public Service Act No. 8 of 2002 (Cap. 298), the Public Service Standing Orders of 2009, and the 2013 training policy. However, these instruments have failed to translate into effective vehicles for guiding and coordinating training programmes for civil servants. This comes at a time when the skill levels of civil servants and potential recruits are under serious criticism.Footnote ² Coupled with coordination and resource constraints, civil service training is somewhat chaotic. Interviews were relatively illustrative of this:

Political appointments into management and top leadership civil service positions are at times presented as necessary in order to keep the bureaucracy under close political control and thus guarantee democratic accountability. However, this has weakened the civil service autonomy in fulfilling its obligations professionally. The ring of political patronage has operated at the expense of civil service professionalism, such that the art of administration is overshadowing the science. A recent study has revealed that it is safer for the civil servant to trade the law for a political directive (Pastory, 2017). These findings suggest a re-examination of the system of civil service recruitment, promotion, and appointments to higher-level positions.

D Civil Service Motivation and Conduct

Motivation is a complex concept but can simply be defined as anything that influences employees’ commitment to and delivery of the job. This complexity arises from the fact that there is a complex web of factors that promote positive work behaviour, and a significant number of motivational theories exist to that effect (Kanfer, Reference Jamasb, Nepal and Timilsina1990; Clark, Reference Catterson and Lindahl1998). In short, motivation is explained as an intrinsic, extrinsic, cognitive, and environmental/contextual phenomenon. Because of this complexity and since, invariably, some of the issues have been discussed elsewhere in this chapter, this part concentrates on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, civil service compensation, and moral incentives in particular.

2 Moral Incentives and Ethics

In addition to these material incentives, in the period after independence and during the socialism phase, there was also a reliance on moral incentives. More specifically, appeals were made for people to be nationalistic, to love their country and make sacrifices for her independence and development. Everybody was urged to work hard. Combined with socialist slogans of equality and justice, these appeals were very effective and encouraging. This was more so when they were made by Mwalimu Nyerere, given his charisma and honesty. These appeals to people’s moral commitment to the country helped civil servants cope with emerging hardships in the 1970s. The climax of these moral appeals was during the Tanzania–Uganda war of 1978–9. The following economic hardships colluded to undermine these appeals. The liberalisation phase, with its emphasis on individualism and market forces, further undermined the effectiveness of moral incentives. Since then, civil servants have expected material returns for their labour. When they decline or stagnate, commitment and productivity is bound to suffer.

Civil service conduct plays a significant portion in economic development. Not only is an undisciplined civil service that is characterised by shirking, corruption, and misappropriation of public resources less productive, but it also diverts public resources to private gains. Lessons from Japan and other advanced economies have shown that a highly disciplined and committed civil service plays a crucial role in economic growth (Bhatt and Kim, 2000). An ethical civil service has a sense of duty, and it can serve as a deterrent to opportunistic behaviour from politicians. Generally, the findings indicate that, since the late years of Ujamaa, Tanzania’s civil service has been characterised by work misbehaviour such as shirking of responsibilities (absenteeism and negligence) and corruption and misappropriation of resources (e.g. through procurement and creation of ghost workers), and generally it has failed to regulate opportunistic politicians and even colluded with them, at the expense of the economy.

The civil service as an institution of service delivery is integrated in society. Thus, any analysis regarding how the civil service conducts itself has to be embedded within the values, culture, and norms that guide a particular society. The Tanzania public service ethics code emphasises equity, probity, integrity, moral conduct, and political neutrality. In theory, the values, culture, and norms that guide the conduct of the civil service encourages enhancing employee involvement, rewarding teamwork, recognising individual effort, and incorporating the needs of the clients, in this case delivering critical outputs to the citizens. However, our findings on this issue suggest that ethical values such as honesty, integrity, impartiality, and fairness, among others, have been in constant decline in the civil service. As a result, these declining values have encouraged inefficiencies and thus have likely affected the productivity of the civil service. Recounting the heyday of the Arusha Declaration and the leadership code of conduct of 1967, a respondent in the PO-PSM elucidated:

When I joined the civil service in 1978, there was a clear ethical strategy to shape the conduct of civil servants. Upon joining the service, one had to fill in the Arusha Declaration form, ethical form, and commitment to party ideals form. These forms had put massive restraints on civil servants from engaging in corrupt behaviour and other forms of pathologies. The next step was a two-year probation pending confirmation…

(Interview, PO-PSMIII, 12 October 2017)

Moreover, there is a growing decline in the spirit of volunteerism among civil servants in particular and the public in general. While in the past it was common for the civil servant to sacrifice for the common good, that heyday died with Ujamaa in 1985. As one of the interviews revealed, a majority of civil servants in middle- and higher-level positions are unlikely to commit their efforts without expecting individual returns. This lack of commitment to public duty is aggravated by an ethical crisis.

The civil service absenteeism rate is reportedly especially high in the education sector. Civil servants are reportedly either absent from their workstations or present but doing job-unrelated businesses. For instance, in the education sector alone, a study by Twaweza (2015) reveals that 31 per cent of teachers were absent from workstations during the period of study in 2015, while 34 per cent were present but not teaching, and only 35 were teaching. Respectively, the findings for 2016 were 27 per cent, 32 per cent, and 41 per cent. The 2016 report on Tanzania’s SDIs show students received roughly 39 per cent of the scheduled teaching time, which is equivalent two hours and forty-six minutes per day instead of the official five hours and fifty-six minutes (World Bank, 2015b). Twaweza estimated that a classroom absenteeism rate of 50 per cent costs the country TZS 862 billion per year through paying people who have not produced anything. This amount equals roughly 1 per cent of GDP, and is 63 per cent of the total budget for the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology in the financial year 2017/18. The absenteeism rate in the health sector was reported at 14 per cent, which is lower than African and Asian standards. Although no data on absenteeism for other sectors were available, anecdotal evidence suggests that the situation may not be very dissimilar, especially for civil servants who attend but work fewer than expected official hours. All these suggest that the productivity of civil servants is still low. Corruption is also one of the major ethical issues constraining efficiency in the civil service, slowing down the pace for social and economic development. Both grand and petty corruption increase the cost of public service delivery and cripple the effectiveness of the civil service.

Understanding this fact, the Tanzanian government has, over time, put institutional arrangements in place to curb corruption. Various anti-corruption campaign programmes have been waged to complement the institutional strengthening as well. However, the anti-corruption crusade efforts have not delivered significant results. Available data indicate that Tanzania is ranked 116th least corrupt nation out of 175 countries (Transparency International, 2016). The data also show that the corruption rank in Tanzania averaged 98.37 from 1998 until 2016, reaching an all-time high of 126 in 2009 and a record low of 71 in 2002, for reasons that are not clear (Trading Economics, 2003). Tanzania’s average rank for the past decade stood at 110, while it scored an average 30.6 out of 100 points in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) (Figure 5.1). CPI ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be.

Figure 5.1 Tanzania’s CPI and rank, 2007–16 Trading Economics/Transparency International (2016).

(Accessed: 1 November 2017)

Other reports also paint a gloomy picture regarding corruption in the Tanzanian civil service. For instance, The Global Competitiveness Report, 2015–2016, which assesses the competitiveness landscape of 140 economies, providing insight into the drivers of their productivity and prosperity, notes:

Indeed, gifts and other bribes are perceived to be widespread when applying for public utilities and permits. In fact, businesses (presumably multinationals, as national firms could not make the comparison) consider the prevalence of irregular payments and bribes within public utilities in Tanzania as one of the worst in the world. Likewise, more than a third of households’ report paying a bribe to obtain public utilities in Tanzania.

(World Economic Forum, 2016)

Notably, anti-corruption initiatives in the past have not registered progress because there has not been a serious commitment by the government to punish ethical violators, especially those involved in big corruption scandals. Equally, the anti-corruption institutions are under-resourced in terms of finances and human resources, and lack the requisite autonomy and will to spearhead the fight. Parliament, which could exert pressure for intensified anti-corruption efforts, is reportedly toothless and worse still suffering from ethical problems brought about by some of its members (Pastory, 2017). In addition, the lack of impartiality and public support necessary to steer the process ahead has been another constraining hurdle. Corruption is likely to stall the efficient delivery of critical outputs, stalling the social and economic development of the country as it diverts public resources to private ends. For instance, available evidence indicates that in the last ten years more than TZS 813 billion is known to have been expropriated through the four famous corruption scandals alone: External Payment Arrears, Bank of Tanzania Twin Towers, Richmond, Tegeta Escrow, Tanzania (AfriMAp, Reference Adepoju2015; The Citizen, 24 June 2015). There are no reliable estimates of how much the country has lost through other corruption schemes.

The corruption and embezzlement phenomenon in Tanzania’s civil service dates back to the late years of Ujamaa and emerged as a response to a real fall in income. Initially, civil servants resorted to inventing all kinds of fringe benefits. These included bonuses, subsidised shops, canteens, and cafeterias at workplaces, transport, dispensary and/or private-practitioner medical services, housing, clothing, farming plots, transport services to ease access, and a host of recreational facilities. These were supplemented by extensive allowance claims (sometimes fraudulent and/or inflated) for travel, prolonged conferencing, and so on. As the economic situation got worse, the demand for fringe benefits blossomed into outright racketeering, or Ulanguzi, as it was commonly called. This was one of the most phenomenal haemorrhages of public resources in Tanzania. Corruption reigned supreme and everybody was a seller and a buyer. The undisputed climax of the phase was the burning of the Bank of Tanzania building in 1984, the precise cause of which has never been made clear. The prime minister launched a large military-style operation against racketeers in 1984. He died in a road accident on 12 April 1984.

This clampdown was followed by a phase of projects (Miradi). To survive, one simply had to have a project and dab in the informal sector. In July 1987, Party Chairman Nyerere advised Tanzanian experts to ‘involve themselves in gardening, poultry keeping and other activities which could enable them to augment their meagre incomes’. The assumption was that civil servants would maintain the separation between official and private activities and income. That was not the case. Official positions and resources were used for private gain as officials tried to make ends meet. The replacing of the leadership code by the Zanzibar Declaration in 1992, allowing leaders to accumulate wealth, legitimised what was already taking place. Various components in the economic reform programmes, including support to the private sector, created further opportunities for civil servants. Privatisation, the promotion of decentralisation, operational autonomy for various entities, and outsourcing and subcontracting of the supply of various goods and services have all created opportunities for civil servants to make ‘deals’ and make money. If President Mwinyi’s period was properly known as a time of Ruksa (everybody could do anything), Presidents Mkapa and Kikwete’s times are known as the years of deals, or Dili. The years 1995 to 2015 were a time when Tanzania fell into costly dubious contracts, some of which have already been mentioned. It was also the period when the country adopted legislation, such as mining laws, that turned out to be economically hazardous. Although the misappropriation was in part engineered by the politicians, a thoughtful analysis would not isolate the civil service from these ills.

E Policy Cycle and Environment

One of the main constraints to an effective and efficient role for civil servants has been the nature of policymaking and the consequent policy decisions. In May 1965, Tanzania become a de jure one-party state. Combined with the Arusha Declaration and the socialist project in 1967, the party assumed supreme policymaking powers. The role of civil servants as advisers and facilitators in policymaking was reduced. Their role remained policy implementation under the watchful eye of the party. This fact in the context of the ideological thrust of ‘state-led development’, as well as wanting to ‘run while others walked’ (Hyden, Reference Henstridge, Rweyemamu, Adam, Collier and Ndulu1975), changed the traditional mode of policymaking characterised by studies, policy drafts, deliberation, recommendations, and decisions. Many policies were made in haste without full consideration of all available alternatives and their consequences. The resulting policy decisions were poorly considered, including lack of consideration of the mechanisms of implementation and their possible consequences. Many policies were impossible to implement. Nationalisations, irrigation, decentralisation, politics in agriculture, pan-territorial pricing, and price controls are cases in point. This trend continued until the mid-1980s, when Tanzania succumbed to internal and international pressure, abandoned the socialist project, and adopted the SAP. More generally, the position and contribution of the civil service was also constrained and minimised by several factors. The whirlwind of the rapid policy changes, massive state and political reorganisations, transfer of personnel, and expansion of civil service functions while at the same time moving other functions to other entities created confusion in action and at times outright resistance on the part of the civil service.

From 1985 onwards, the country experienced the implementation of what Stiglitz (Reference Shivji2003, p. 34) has called a ‘one-size-fits all’ approach, anchored by economic management by fiscal austerity, privatisation, and market liberalisation. The state (civil service) role was to maintain law and order, to provide an enabling attractive environment for business and investments, to generate economic and social policies, and to provide important social and economic services. The civil service was caught in a pincer movement. The pendulum swung from one extreme, where the civil service and the state were expected to be the engine of growth, to the other extreme, where they were now expected to make room for market forces. Both extremes were fuelled by ideological fervour. The socialist ideology informed the Ujamaa project, while liberalisation was driven by a blind belief in the magic of market forces. According to Stiglitz (Reference Shivji2003, pp. xiii–xiv),

During this period, after 1980, according to Green (1995, p. 102),

Constrained by conditions and conditionality, the civil service once again had very little room for manoeuvre as the policy of adjustment took its toll, and growth stagnated.

Several changes were brought about by a general rethink of the World Bank approach to development after the World Bank’s Reference Wydick1999 annual meeting and the introduction of the PRSP approach to engaging with developing countries (Mallaby, Reference Leshabari, Muhondwa, Mwangu and Mbembati2004, p. 254). The IMF/World Bank and western donors made more commitment to consultations, participation, and empowerment. Coupled with the launch of the PSRP already alluded to, the civil service was strengthened and its role in policymaking appreciated. The policy cycle and environment has had an impact on civil service performance. Its policymaking advisory role within the context of political neutrality of the post-independence period was replaced by a restricted role in policymaking facilitation, resulting in hastily made and poorly considered policies that were difficult to implement. The resulting economic crises led to the liberalisation phase during which the state and civil service were confined to the so-called core functions carried out under conditionality. A workable equilibrium seems to have stuck since the year 2000, with a reformed civil service trying to facilitate market forces for economic development.

F Resources and Working Tools

In order to be efficient and effective, a civil service has to convert inputs (policies, plans, priorities, ideas, labour) into outputs (tangible outcomes such as service delivery in the form of water, health care, and education). Conversion of the inputs into outputs requires working tools that can facilitate the process. Working tools, in this case, may involve both hard and soft infrastructure. The hard infrastructure may include physical buildings, such as office building, vehicles, ICT, and so on. The soft infrastructure may involve computer software programmes for managing human or financial resources and filing systems, for example.

It is fair to note that a lack of resources, critical tools, and infrastructure has been a continuing challenge for the civil service. Lacking enough budgetary outlays to acquire the necessary tools, facilities, and equipment, it has had to improvise and/or abandon implementation plans. All the years that the government’s budget had serious deficits, for example 1976–2000, meant that there were limited resources for the civil service.

Recognising the importance of equipping the civil service with working tools, the CSRP, which spanned 1991–9, PSRP I, 2000–7, and PSRP II, 2008–12, had specific reform packages geared at strengthening the working tools within the civil service. For instance, ICT is one of the critical tools that had to be introduced in government to facilitate government processes under the rubric of e-government. Here, the focus was on building the capacity of government institutions to use ICT in running government operations. The interventions involved installation of ICT tools and facilities, training, development of management information systems, and steps to establish e-government infrastructure and e-government agency (Mutahaba et al., Reference Mramba2017).

While significant progress was achieved in equipping the civil service with relevant tools, it is mainly the central government institutions in urban settings that enjoy this progress. Some LGAs have also registered some progress, but generally institutions that are peripheral to the central government and the urban districts are trailing behind. The general working environment is not conducive: office buildings are dilapidated and poorly furnished. In some areas, private homes of government officials at grassroots level become public offices. ICT infrastructure is in short supply and, where it is available, there are problems with internet connectivity and power outages.

This general observation is supported by findings from the key social sectors. For instance, Table 5.4 shows that public health facilities are less equipped in terms of equipment, drugs, and infrastructure than both the profit and non-profit private sectors.

The education sector has its share of challenges as well, particularly in regard to student–textbook ratio. This ought to be 1:1, but in practice this target is very far from being realised. For instance, a recent survey by Twaweza (Reference Therklldsen and Bourgoin2016) indicates that the student–textbook ratio was 26:1 in Tabora region, and 3:1 in Mtwara, Kilimanjaro, Njombe Katavi, and Ruvuma. Similarly, reporting the situation in secondary schools, a baseline study report by a team of experts on a similar matter concluded: ‘For most students in the sample schoolbooks are not available or only available when shared with several other students’ (Barrett et al., Reference Baland, Bourguignon, Platteau and Verdier2014).

Generally, these findings show that the civil service is yet to be sufficiently equipped with the necessary tools required for performing the work. This has negative implications for the effectiveness of the civil service and its performance, thus precluding its ability to make an effective contribution to the country’s development.

A Reform Dynamics

A major study of the dynamics of public sector reform in eight African countries identified five major actors that have determined the success or failure of reforms, either by their actions or inaction (Kiragu and Mukandala Reference Kassa2005a). These are the executive, donors, market institutions, representative institutions, and civil society.

Civil servants, as part of the executive, have played a major role in implementing many of the reform initiatives, but have also resisted and reversed those that reduced their power, authority, status, and especially their incomes. Their constant battles with parastatal enterprises have been alluded to. Efforts to decentralise either by deconcentration (1972) or devolution (1984) have also been resisted. Measures to compress the salary structure and the continuous salary freezes have been neutralised by recourse to allowances and outright bribery and corruption. Their advice to political leadership has often self-serving, for example the introduction of SASE and the sale of the substantial public residential houses to themselves.

Donors (and consultants) have played a key role in the reforms, especially since the mid-1980s. They pressed for the introduction of SAP in the 1980s, made public service reforms one of the conditionalities that culminated in the CSRP in July 1991, and were also involved in PSRP-I and II. They have been equally involved in follow-up implementation and financing through either project or basket arrangements. Donors’ involvement has been limited by their being outsiders. Their frequent resort to conditionalities and threats has often led to resentment, reverse donor fatigue, and even resistance. In addition to consideration of issues of sovereignty and independence, politicians have followed their advice when their survival was not threatened. Civil servants have done the same when their incomes were not at risk.

Market institutions and the private sector in general have been relevant for a number of reasons. First, they have served as a reference point for levels of income and compensation in general. Thus, salary and allowance proposals have often made reference to what is earned in the private sector. Imitations of compensation levels in the private sector have contributed to the enormous disparities in pay in the public sector. Efforts have been made to reach comparable private sector pay levels either through salaries in the case of parastatal enterprises and executive agencies or through allowances for civil servants. The private sector has also served as a reference point in the search for appropriate management tools, processes, and systems. For example, permanent pensionable tenure has been abandoned for some posts in favour of contract employment, and appointment through internal evaluation has been supplemented by extensive advertisements of posts in an effort to attract outside applications in line with the tenets of new public management.

Secondly, the private sector has also been a competitor for the very highly qualified personnel and also at the very level of the civil service, thus applying pressure on the civil service to pay higher salaries. Thirdly, market dynamics, especially supply and demand, and the rise in prices have equally generated pressure on the civil service to raise salaries, and also served as an incentive for civil servants to engage in all kinds of legal and illegal activities to make ends meet. The large informal sector has provided an economic avenue for civil servants to augment their incomes. Finally, the private sector has been part of an unholy alliance involving politicians and civil servants in carrying out major corruption scams. These scams have bent or broken civil service rules and set back efforts to institutionalise an effective merit-based civil service.

Representative institutions including parliament and local government councils have played a limited role. This is for two main reasons. First, reform efforts have been initiated and designed by the executive or donors (and consultants) as technical issues outside the scope of parliament. Secondly, parliament has been weak, dominated by the dominant party and a dominant executive. Occasional enquiries into scandals and scams and their exposure, which have increased in recent years, have helped to improve governance in general. The strengthening of parliamentary committees has helped in this regard.

Civil society organisations including the media, non-governmental organisations, political parties, and trade unions have suffered a similar fate to representative institutions. A suffocating political climate, marked by bureaucratic laws, secrecy, and intimidation, has limited space for investigation and expression. In some cases where the media and civil society have been critical of government performance, the reaction by government has not been good, mostly labelling critics as seditious. Thus, the entire reform process has been top-down, and supply driven by the executive and donors. The demand, or popular, side has been absent or too weak to have a viable impact in sustaining reforms.

All reform initiatives in Tanzania since independence have been supply driven. Early reforms until 1984 were initiated by the executive. Subsequent reforms until the 1990s were initiated by donors as a conditionality. Later reforms, PSRP I and II, were formally initiated by both government and donors. BRN was an executive adventure. Financially wholly supported by donors, it was aimed at transforming Tanzania’s public service delivery systems in six key ministries (later increased to eight). Citizen (bottom-up) demands have targeted broader governance reforms, specifically constitutional reforms, but these have either been thwarted or frustrated in the process.

Early reforms including changes brought about by the Arusha Declaration were inspired by political objectives seeking to consolidate political power, strengthen the state and its institutions, and deliver fast equitable economic development. By 1980, it was obvious that they could not and did not work. Many of the civil service reforms during that period were poorly conceived, ill-informed, top-down, poorly funded, took on too much, and were poorly implemented. Post-1985 reforms were once again top-down based on doubtful assumptions, and sought to reduce state scope, functions, employees, and costs. The civil service emerged a weakened organisation. These reforms generated resistance and political opposition and had to be changed, as already noted. The 2001–11 period experienced the most successful reform efforts. The reasons behind the success of these reforms include strong political will and commitment made possible by a strong political organisation, strong presidents, a weak opposition, and the resultant political stability. These reforms had the shared involvement of donors, the executive, and civil servants. Their Achilles heel was their top-down character. Representative institutions and civil society were not involved.

Executive watchdog institutions, especially the Prevention of Corruption Bureau and the Control and Auditor General, were relied upon to play the oversight role, which they did up to a point. But they were part of the system reporting to the executive and they could not replace the role of parliament, councils, civil society, trade unions, political parties, and the media.

There is little doubt that the reform initiatives undertaken during the 2000–12 period have positively impacted on the administrative capacity of the state in general and the civil service in particular. However, the reform initiatives have not all been successful since there are still various constraints that continue to preclude the civil service from making a more effective contribution to economic development. Recent initiatives by the World Bank to introduce PSRP-III are still at a nascent stage. Previous reform experiences and existing conditions suggest a need for new direction to focus the reforms and ensure their suitability. This is discussed next.

B Reform Areas and Directions

The foregoing analysis suggests that the future direction of the civil service rests in strengthening its institutional capacity, respecting its operational autonomy, rehabilitating its ethical conduct, and strengthening its morale. This would entail improving recruitment and selection systems, introducing rigorous competitive performance- and merit-based evaluation and promotion systems, and improving on-the-job training and development systems to sharpen civil servants’ skills. Recruitment into the civil service has gone through several stages, starting with taking in everybody who was educated in the early years of independence. This was initially necessitated by the absence of an available pool of qualified candidates. It was later reinforced by a commitment to full employment during the socialist phase. The years of hardships and an employment freeze resulted in the emergence of a pool of qualified people who were unemployed. The expansion of tertiary institutions in the country has resulted in adding thousands of unemployed Tanzanians to this pool. There is therefore every reason to recruit the best and brightest on the basis of merit. There is also a need to undertake a human resources audit in the civil service to determine posts that can be scrapped to open up space for critical positions. The civil service needs to be kept as lean as possible but without affecting its efficiency. Continuous checking on civil service size while observing its staffing needs is essential, as freezing recruitment without addressing staffing gaps is likely to lead to more harm. Current shortages may be addressed by undertaking job analysis and design, and taking stock of institutions and re-examining their mandate to identify those with diminished relevance or duplicate functions. Excess staff would have to be transferred to areas with extreme needs.

Performance evaluation was greatly compromised during the socialist phase. Management feared attracting the wrath of workers if they were strictly evaluated. Low pay for civil servants necessitated routine promotions for them to increase their take-home pay (Jamhuri ya Muungamo wa Tanzania, 1994). OPRAS, which was piloted more than ten years ago, has now been made mandatory throughout government. Its implementation has hit several snags, including unfamiliarity with its use, but these can be gradually sorted out to maximise its usefulness. Coupled with competitive appointments to middle and senior cadres, constitutional protection of civil service autonomy is essential in order to curtail the overbearing political influence and patronage networks.

The civil service incentive structure needs to be improved and attached to performance. Although, according to Mtei (Reference Mkumbo2009, p. 158), the Adu Salaries Commission of 1961 had prescribed lower salaries for Tanganyika than those obtained in Kenya and Uganda, all salary review commissions since then have called for a raise in civil service salaries, especially the minimum wage (Kiragu et al., Reference Kiragu and Mukandala2005, pp. 217–19). Surely, ‘if you pretend to pay people, they will also pretend to work’. A comprehensive pay review is important to establish realistic pay levels, establish relativism in the pay system by addressing extreme pay inequalities especially between various parts of the public service, devise attractive packages for rare professionals, and tie it all to verifiable individual performance. Therefore, the current PMSs and practices would need to be reviewed to make sure that a robust system is adopted and effectively implemented. Moreover, internal and external accountability mechanisms need to be strengthened and immediate and strenuous actions taken against misbehaviour.

Successful reform implementation requires proper time management. In this, the leaders are faced with the challenge of fostering a new work culture that gives value to time. There is need for close supervision and enforcement of civil service rules and procedures regarding punctuality, absenteeism, strict separation of private and official issues, and maximum attention to one’s duties during official hours. For civil servants, there must be real transformation away from the ‘business as usual’ attitude, which puts emphasis on inputs, to a results orientation, which focuses on measurable outputs, outcomes, and impacts.

In the recent past, the government has introduced cost-cutting measures in the civil service, including curbs on meetings, workshops, and conferences, suspension of travel except where it is absolutely necessary and beneficial to the country, prohibition of renting private facilities including offices and hotel services, and preferring use of the civil service’s own facilities and services. Other measures that have been undertaken include limits on office perks such as refreshments, lunch, or dinner except where necessary, and even then choosing the least expensive option. At a broader level, this has gone hand in hand with reduced recurrent spending. These cost-containment measures are important and need to be sustained, provided that an assessment is undertaken to evaluate their impact on private sector development.

Finally, ICT adoption and use has a greater role in the performance of the civil service now and in the future. Significant tractions are already being registered in the area of e-government, and e-decision-making in the civil service. However, future ICT endeavours will need to be oriented toward solving service delivery problems affecting citizens and facilitating business processes across all government institutions. Together with ICT adoption, there is an urgent need to retool civil servants, in terms of skills as well as the equipment and infrastructure needed to carry out work.

C Reform Sustainability

The sustainability of civil reforms requires that reform initiatives are accepted and supported by key stakeholders outlined in the previous section, particularly the ruling political elite. Since politicians wish to maximise their tenure in political office, reforms that are likely to end up in political power realignment or pose threats to the status quo are likely to be resisted. Such reforms are those that seek to erode patronage potential by introducing merit-based competitive recruitment and promotion to higher-level positions in the civil service, as well as reforms aimed at insulating civil servants from overbearing political influence. Similarly, reforms that aim to reduce the operational autonomy of central bureaucracy, such as transferring powers and resources to the private sector, executive agencies, or local governments, are likely to be resisted by central government bureaucracy at national level. Breaking the ring of vested interests is always a difficult task and reform reversal is something to be expected. The dangers of stagnation and reversals have often been anticipated by the government itself. In 2004, Prime Minister F. Sumaye (Reference Sidhu2004, p. 13) said:

Sumaye saw four levels of resistance: political leadership, bureaucrats and technocrats, the general population, and workers. It can be noticed that political leadership was placed at the top level of resistance. Education is very important for demonstrating the folly and impact of continued bad practices. It is also important to demonstrate the benefits of reforms to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of the civil service.

Conventional approaches to sustainability of reforms/changes, such as involvement of key actors in the reform process from the early stages of conceptualisation, are also recommended here. This is likely to increase a sense of ownership and commitment to reforms. In general, reform initiatives have tended to be a government-donor phenomenon, sidelining other key actors, such as representative institutions and civil society organisation. As a result, these institutions make little follow-up on reform implementation, while the government becomes insulated from those questioning aspects of the reforms.

Reforming the civil service has to be a continuous process. In this regard, every reform initiative has to be backed up with a robust system of monitoring to identify potential challenges and emerging trends that require government attention and action. For example, a continuous or periodic check of civil service size, performance, and productivity, a review of operational rules, procedures, and systems, and monitoring of behavioural patterns of civil servants must become institutionalised government processes.