SYSTEM DESIGNED?
5
What is included in the Poverty Monitoring Master Plan?
How is the Poverty Monitoring System managed?
What are Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPAs)?
HOW CAN THE SYSTEM BE USED?
8
Is there a role for regional administrations and local governments?
How can civil society organisations contribute to the system?
How can I feed information into the system?
HOW MUCH DOES THE POVERTY MONITORING SYSTEM COST?
10
Who pays for this?
How will poor people benefit from this system?
WHERE CAN I GET MORE INFORMATION ABOUT
POVERTY REDUCTION INITIATIVES IN TANZANIA?
11
Where can I get a copy of the Master Plan?
What are the key outputs from the National Poverty Monitoring System?
APPENDICES
The key elements of the National Poverty Monitoring System
14
Organisational structure of the National Poverty Monitoring System
15
Membership of the four Technical Working Groups
16
List of useful websites
17
Poverty Monitoring Indicators
19
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Tanzania Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) provides a medium-term strategy to
reduce poverty and is part of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC). This
strategy means that the Government has to cut back on spending, but it allows for various
poverty-focused activities, and promotes a range of non-financial measures that should make
an impact on poverty.
Many people were involved in developing the PRSP, and many more will be involved in making
it work. The plan lists the reasons for people being poor, and suggests ways to overcome
them. The PRSP is different from other plans because it sets very clear targets, and asks the
people of the country to be involved.
There is an urgent need to build the capacity of a wide range of people to monitor the
activities that have begun with the PRSP. People also need to help to analyse the information
that is gathered, and to figure out what it means for policy.
In order for the Government of Tanzania and other stakeholders to know if the various poverty
reduction strategies are having an impact, a Poverty Monitoring Master Plan was developed in
December 2001. This laid out a number of initiatives that would be undertaken over the next
3 years that would allow the poverty to be measured.
Following the development of the Poverty Monitoring Master Plan, the Poverty Eradication
Division in the Vice-Presidents Office received a number of enquiries regarding the poverty
monitoring system. In an effort to respond to these queries, this guide has been created.
Over 20,000 copies (English & Kiswahili) of it will be distributed across Tanzania.
We hope that this will answer those questions asked most frequently of us, and that interested
parties will contact us for further information. This booklet is not, by any means, a
comprehensive summary of the Poverty Monitoring Master Plan. The intention of the booklet
is to present a basic understanding of how the poverty monitoring system works, and to create
a demand for information amongst those who would like to participate, in some way, in the
poverty monitoring efforts of the country.
_____________________________________
R. Mollel
Permanent Secretary
Poverty Eradication Division
Vice Presidents Office
August 2002 It is not easy to say what poverty is because
different people understand it in different ways.
It includes amongst other things
not having a secure source of food and
medicine;
not being able to afford decent clothes and
housing;
not getting a fair share of good quality
education and health services and other
thin gs like saf e wa te r, goo d ro ads and
reliable public transport;
not being treated fairly by businessmen and
officials (locally, regionally, nationally and
internationally);
not having any influence over what happens in
your life (locally, regionally, nationally and
internationally);
be in g at h igh risk o f b ecoming p oor by
belonging to a vulnerable group (eg disabled,
orp han ed, sin gle par en t, elde rly, HIV/AIDS
victim)
With so many diffe re nt way of lookin g a t
poverty, there are many different ways of trying
to reduce it. These include, amongst other
things:
making good use of our natural resources
and talents to create wealth and jobs;
e nco ur aging
an d
su p po rting
th e
development of effective businesses (small,
medium and large);
making sure that people have access to good
quality social services and infrastructure;
arranging for people to feel secure in their
homes and to trust the authorities;
pr o vid in g
saf ety
n e t
pr ogr ammes to pr ote ct
vulnerable people.
3 Why do we need a poverty monitoring
system?
It is not easy to reduce poverty. It involves many
different people at different levels in society
wor king on d if fe re nt pr ob le ms in d if fe re nt
places. We need to work together so that we do
not waste time, effort and money through lack
of communication and getting in each others
way. This means that we need an agreed set of
structures and procedures. This means that we
need a SYSTEM.
Many people are already gathering valuable
inf ormation abo ut po ve rty bu t th ey d o not
always use this information as well as they
could. A lot of the work is informal and does not
cover national priorities. It is not always based
on a good understanding between the people
who gather the information, and the people who
will eventually use it. This means that there is
plenty of room for improvement in how we
gath er infor mation and h ow we use it for
systematic and evidence-based planning.
No single method of measuring poverty can cope
with all these different problems and solutions.
We will have to use a range of different methods
and somehow pull the results together so that
syste matic
an d
evide nce -b ase d
p la nn in g
becomes possible.
We need a poverty monitoring SYSTEM so that
we can plan for and pull together information
from a wide range of sources, and analyse it to
guid e ou r p olicie s a nd plan s for p over ty
reduction. Many of these policies and plans will
be made at the national level. Through the
Local Government Reform Programme (LGRP),
more power and responsibility is being given to
the regional and local levels to make their own
policies and plans for poverty reduction.
The poverty monitoring system will pull together
information from three main sources:

Routine data
will be collected by local,
r e gio nal
a nd
n atio na l
gove rn men t
departments (e.g. the drop out rate from
primary schools from Education authorities,
the inf ant mo rtality rate f ro m he alth
authorities; etc);

Official investigations
will be carried out by
the National Bureau of Statistics (e.g. the
National census, Household Budget Surveys,
Demographic and Health Surveys, Labour
Force Surveys, and Agricultural Surveys );

Special studies
will be carried out by a wide
r an ge
of
f or mal
an d
ind ep en d en t
r e sear che r s. The se stud ie s will
i n v o l v e
people rather than just use them as sources
of information. The results will help to
explain the reasons behind changes in the
data from the other two sources.
The poverty monitoring system will gather this
information and will encourage and assist people
and officials at all geographical levels to analyse
and distribute it. It will also encourage all the
involved individuals to use the information for
e vid en ce- b ased
p olicy
mak in g,
p lann in g,
monitoring and evaluation.
4 What is evidence based planning and why is
it useful?
Peo ple make p la ns ba se d o n ho w the y
understand the world. How they understand the
world depends on what they know i.e. on what
evidence they have. If people dont know much
and if what they know is wrong, then their
understanding and their plans will not be very
good.
Gathering evidence in an uncoordinated and
unplanned way is better than not gathering it at
all, but things will improve when we have a well-
de sign ed syste m an d u se a n inte gra ted
approach. Then we can make better decisions,
design better policies and use our resources in
ways that target the most urgent problems.
Evid en ce- b ased p olicy makin g e nco ur age s
Government, and other data users to:
co lle ct an d an alyze d ata, p ub lish the
results, and act on them;
convince people that evidence is useful, and
that we should use it when advocating for
different and better public policies;
encourage policy makers and statisticians to
work more closely together. It is good when
policy makers get involved in designing data
colle ction systems an d in ana lyzin g the
data, so that information that is collected is
useful.
Many stakeholders were involved in designing
th e po ver ty mo nito rin g system. We can
therefore be sure that different kinds of useful
information will be gathered and analysed in a
co- ord in ate d and eff icien t way. Sur ve y an d
research reports will be easy to get a hold of,
and they will be presented in ways that all
people can understand.
(See Appendix 1 for the key elements of the
Poverty Monitoring System).
What is included in the Poverty Monitoring
Master Plan?
The Poverty Monitoring Master Plan sets out the
work that has to be done over the next three
years. It is a rolling plan because each year it
draws up a revised three-year plan. The various
parts of the plan have been costed, and its
o ve ra ll a ctivities have b ee n bu ilt into th e
governm