CBMS. Replication of CBMS in Dodoma Municipality: Towards Scaling Up and Institutionalization of the System in Tanzania

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1 CBMS 6th PEP Research Network General Meeting Sheraton Lima Hotel, Paseo dela Republica 170 Lima, Peru June 14-16, 2007 Replication of CBMS in Dodoma Municipality: Towards Scaling Up and Institutionalization of the System in Tanzania Susan Bidya Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas For more information about the 6th PEP Research Network General Meeting, please visit: ww.pep-net.org

2 REPLICATION OF CBMS IN DODOMA MUNICIPALITY: TOWARDS SCALING UP AND INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE SYSTEM IN TANZANIA. (By: Ms Susan Bidya Municipal Director, Dodoma) Introduction Dodoma Municipality covers an area of 2,669 square kilometers of which 625 square kilometers is urbanized. Based on the 2002 National Population and Housing Census, the population of Dodoma was 324,347 people of whom 157,469 or 48.5 percent are male and 166,878, or 51.5 per cent are female. The estimated total number of households is 74,914 with an average household size of 4.3 people. The municipality of Dodoma is subdivided in 4 Divisions which in turn are divided into 30 wards and 42 villages as shown in the table below. Division no. of wards no. of villages Urban (Mjini) Division 17 7 Hombolo Division 5 16 Kikombo Division 3 7 Zuzu Division 5 12 Total The 17 wards of the Urban Division, having a total area of 426 km 2, has a total population of 183,650 inhabitants. 1

3 Dodoma Municipality is situated in an economically depressed area. Although it has rich agricultural land, it is affected by harsh semi-arid climatic conditions, and rather traditional agricultural methods are still predominating. In the urban areas the main activities of the residents are commerce, urban farming and civil service employment while in the rural areas, crop farming and livestock keeping are the prime means of existence. The Municipal Council of Dodoma has adopted the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS), presently being executed in two pilot areas namely Nala village and K/Ndege ward under the auspices of PEP Network. The project started in May 2006 and is expected to be completed by this year The fact that there has been no enough capacity in terms of human resources and appropriate tools for implementing the system, the completion of the project may delay. However, the stages that have been pursued so far have registered a promising future as the involved communities are giving a commendable cooperation and the council has made reliable commitment in adopting the system. This paper presents the need of replicating the CBMS in other areas in the municipality. The paper proposes a piece-meal approach of which a number of villages and wards will be incorporated in the process incrementally. 2

4 An overview of the established CBMS in Dodoma Municipal Council The Municipal Council of Dodoma appreciates the implementation of Community- Based Monitoring System (CBMS) under the auspices of PEP Network. Apparently, as the application of the system continues in the pilot areas, it has been clear to the council and other development actors that, good planning and decision making requires a comprehensive municipal information system, which captures pertinent data and produces useful reports. This can also be seen in the Council s Strategic Plan whereby the development of an evident statistical database for planning and monitoring purposes was identified as a priority item. In this light, the CBMS becomes a useful tool for all wards in Dodoma and Tanzania at large. The proposed CBMS has captured poverty related data at the village, ward and municipal level. The system has been test-piloted in one urban ward of K/Ndege, which has approximately 2,400 households, and one Village (rural setting) of Nala, which has approximately 2,500 households. It is worth noting that the villages and wards have autonomy in terms of planning and implementation; meaning that the CBMS can fairly be adopted in their specific administration units. The selection of pilot areas is based on the fact that Dodoma Municipality has both urban and rural settings (30 wards and 42 villages respectively) of which the 3

5 latter is spontaneously urbanizing. The results will therefore serve to show the scenario of both urban and rural areas. Achievements Village Data Book One of the quick wins achieved by the established system is the updated village data book. The household listing exercise was found useful in the verification of the number of households in the village, in accordance with the definition adopted for the CBMS system. Based on this exercise, an actual counting of the entire households in the study village and ward was made so as to obtain an exact figure. A copy of the up to date list of household for each geopolitical level was obtained, giving the household ID number to be used in the village office, ward office and the council for other development monitoring purposes. Vulnerable Areas The system has clearly identified the most pressing problems in the study areas, showing the magnitude of vulnerability such that it is now easier and logical to target the resources with respect to the needs. For instance, while trachoma is problematic in Nala village, malaria appears most outstanding disease in the urban area. The same case applies to the existing disparities in terms of distribution of public services or the way women and children are affected by development policies. 4

6 Integrated Municipal Data base The system is putting together data and information of various sectors. This will enable convenient sharing and more transparent relationship. For instance Health data and education data can be evaluated such that the impacts of the related interventions are fairly predicted. This can be evidenced by the inferences of births and deaths in determining the schools development. Expected Benefits Production of poverty maps for targeting the available scarce resources, more effective development plans and participatory budgeting. In general, a computerized package of the system will allow for the provision of high-level summary analysis in the preparation of Poverty Profiles and development plans during replication of the system. It will significantly simplify the storing and retrieving the data, improve the accuracy and integrity of the information by reducing the potential for clerical errors that currently exists at each level of aggregation. Compatibility of CBMS and O&OD implies an improvement of the current system of data capturing and use because: - it has more of a positive outlook on the community, where the community is encouraged to identify available resources to overcome obstacles, thereby fostering self-reliance. - it uses participatory tools, which assist with the bottom-up planning process; e.g. village registers, files, a village map, transect walk, historical 5

7 time lines, seasonal calendar, institutional analysis, daily activities calendar by gender, household wealth, focus groups and identification of sources of income and expenditure. - it enables the community to identify in logical framework specific objectives, opportunities, obstacles, steps for implementation, etc. The system will be linked to national socio-economic database (TSED) as a repository of NSGPR informationfor all local government authorities under the Reform Programme. Over time, policy-makers will be able to monitor the impacts of programs, and determine whether conditions are improving, getting worse, or staying the same. It can therefore be replicated to other councils. Improved Cost-effectiveness as evidenced by successes in other countries. Since it involves the participation of the communities in data collection and their primary use, CBMS will be a low-cost and easy-to-sustain system. In most cases, the system will use volunteers for monitoring and the enumerators from the community so as to get the evident information, that is, without the influence of the experts or technicians from the higher levels. This system has been quite successful in such countries as Philippines, Vietnam, Bangladesh and SriLanka in Asia as in Ghana, Benin and Bokinafaso in Africa. 6

8 Ways and Means for Scaling up of CBMS After the establishment of the CBMS process for the pilot areas, it will be replicated incrementally to other wards and villages and subsequently in the whole municipality of Dodoma. This piece-meal approach is thought relevant because a reasonable time is required to mobilize resources and commitment of in the local communities. It is expected that through the existing role of the Association of Local Authorities of Tanzania (ALAT) the CBMS process will be promoted at national level. Substantial capacity will be built for the community leaders regarding the importance of the CBMS process and the roles of the residents. This will be done through several seminars, production and distribution of fliers and basic training sessions on planning tools and procedures. In so doing, the gained capacity will facilitate the scaling up of the system to include other wards and villages in Dodoma, hence other councils in Tanzania subsequently Institutionalization of the System Local Level Every sector will be responsible for disseminating it s own data within the sector. Dissemination will include posting the information publicly on billboards, the notice-boards and will be made available to the appropriate groups and organizations in traditional print format. Frequent sharing of the data will assist in the ensuring that the information is continually updated and accurate. Ward and 7

9 village Development Committees will be responsible for disseminating the data to the wards and villages. National level The planned regional and district workshops are the important platforms on which the smooth link of the system along the national and local government tiers will be articulated. This stage will be reached in the up coming activities. Encountered Problems Lack of enough computers has made the exercise of data compilation and analysis continue very slowly although the council has trained a few statistic technicians. The council intends to buy more computers and assign specific staff members in CBMS activities. Low capacity in applying useful systems like NRDB, GIS and SPSS has made the council depend on hired consultants. To address this problem, the staff members in the Municipality will be supported to pursue some tailor made courses on these programmes. Low response of volunteers to be engaged in the CBMS activities. It is expected that as the system grows, more people at the local level will catch up with their roles especially when the present pilot areas yields the envisaged output. The resolutions which will be made by the council as the system becomes institutionalized will give more impetus in promoting local level cooperation. 8

10 Conclusion It can be concluded that, a thorough completion of the development of Community Based Poverty Monitoring System in Tanzania will address the following issues: Contribute in fulfilling the role of Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in generating data to feed into the National Poverty Monitoring System (PMS). The current work will build capacity of local government actors on what type of data are needed to feed into the PMS and how these data could be collected. One of the weaknesses in the Poverty Reduction Strategy monitoring system was lack of timely routine data. The CBMS, if implemented in other parts of the country will facilitate availability of timely routine data to feed into the National Strategy for Growth and Poverty Reduction (MKUKUTA). The Tanzania Social Economic Database (TSED) has been established as a depository for poverty related data/indicators. These data are organized by sector. As much as it is the wish of the TSED team to disaggregate data to the lowest possible level, this has not been possible below district level. This is because data are not available. Thus, there is a function in this pilot work in contributing towards capacity building on data collection at Ward level and even Village level. These data could be 9

11 deposited in TSED by Regions and lowest administrative units as these data could be used for comparative purposes, thus leading to informed targeting of development projects Capacity building for data collection and analysis for monitoring poverty at local level is imperative given the fact that it will reduce the need of conducting costly national surveys such as Household Budget Surveys (HBS), Integrated Labor Force Surveys etc. All in all, the use of volunteers at local level is among the important characteristics that make CBMS score high acceptability. 10