The Mo Ibrahim Foundation has recently released its 2020 Index Report of African Good Governance (IIAG), which provides comparable data on the whole spectrum of African governance in 54 African countries over the ten-year period 2010-2019.
The report is published every two years. In this latest report, Tanzania was given an overall score of 53.0/100 and ranked 19th.
However, in the previous IIAG report of 2018, covering the period 2008-2017, Tanzania was given an overall score of 58.5/100 and ranked 14th.
The African average score worsened too, from 49.9 in 2017 to 48.8 in 2019.
In fact, the Foundation indicates the new data delivers a clear warning: governance progress in Africa has slowed since 2015, and declines for the first time in 2019.
Deterioration in participation, rights, rule of law and security threaten improvements achieved in economic opportunities and human development.
This is particularly concerning with the COVID-19 pandemic set to increase existing challenges and reduce hard-won gains.
According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), improving governance in Tanzania is constrained by an increasingly powerful executive branch, closing civic space, violations of human rights, lack of political competition, a still-emerging civil society, limited government capacity, low public accountability, and barriers to accessing information. Women and youth are particularly disadvantaged in these areas.
Challenges include low-quality public services, limited government accountability, widespread corruption, public sector inefficiencies, and imbalance of power between branches of government, with civil servants and elected officials tied to central government patronage rather than citizen constituents.
In its speech during the official opening of the 12th Parliament of Tanzania on 13th November 2020, President-elect John Magufuli announced that over the next five years, his govenrment will continue strengthening good governance, especially through discipline in the public service and intensifying the fight against corruption in the public sector.