Foreign Aid, Grassroots Participation and Poverty Alleviation in Tanzania

The HESAWA Fiasco The study set out to examine foreign aid effectiveness in the poverty alleviation in rural Tanzania. More specifically, it sought to investigate the impact of the Health through Sanitation and Water (HESAWA) program among the rural population of Mwanza and Kagera Regions. Twelve villages were studied. HESAWA is an aid-supported program through SIDA and Sweden. The Government of Tanzania contributes marginally through annual budgetary allocations. Although the program’s core objectives did not directly target poverty alleviation, its very emphasis on economic growth and social development among the rural poor presupposes poverty alleviation as an indirect final objective. Moreover, from the early 1990s, the objectives of international development cooperation by various donors largely shifted in favour of the war on poverty reduction. Thanks are largely to the conclusion of the Cold War and the end of the double standards behaviour among Western donor governments. In a similar policy shift, HESAWA’s overall mandate was enlarged and focused more pointedly on the poverty reduction issues.  ]]>