“I don't think we need feel any shame that aid can have a promoting effect on Danish exports. It is provided without political intentions – but naturally with the purpose of stabilizing peace between nations, races and regions.”
Denmark’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jens Otto Krag, 1962
Tanzania has made a tremendous economic progress over the past decade. Maintaining a stabilized economy with an increasing Gross National Income at a considerable percentage from 0.4% in 1994 to 8.8% in 2013 for example makes the country’s face shine before foreign investors and development partners. And indeed, the country has been favored by development partners for a long time, whose struggles have been to fight poverty and its underlying causes, corruption being one of the causes. Assistance by General Budget Support has been a joint action towards aid effectiveness and ownership of the development programmes by the Tanzanian government. The focus has been to use the country’s own Poverty reduction and growth strategy but the positive outcomes has been difficult to attain. This is seen by the fact that Tanzania is still among the bottom billions with majority of its population facing severe income poverty. Tanzanians response to the changing economic and political atmosphere in the country is overwhelming. Failure of Ujamaa development policies and the continuing economic challenges gave birth to different corrupt activities under the ‘the economy of affection’ umbrella resulting in the persistence of not only petty corruption but also grand corruption in the country. Donors as advocates of good governance and supporters of different sectors of economy through GBS and other modes of transfer should carry responsibility too since misuse of public resources for private gains concerns their contributions too. Development partners, Denmark in particular has been concerned with the fight against corruption with a right based approach believing that engaging citizens in demanding accountability to the government can lead to proper allocation of resources and transparent service delivery. Denmark believes that corruption especially grand corruption is a challenge to development in Tanzania but is optimistic since all the right anti-corruption institutions such as PCCB (Prevention and Control of Corruption Bureau) and Laws are in place though weak in implementation. A lot needs to be done since the decision to fight corruption in Tanzania runs down to the foundation of the society itself- Family. If donors overlook this, then pro-poor growth in Tanzania is not easy to attain. Corruption will still hinder development and partly donors will bear responsibility for continuing with a blind support.