A Critical Study on Transparency Enhancement in Tanzania: A Focus on Local Government Administration in Mbeya District

Transparency is advocated as one of the key factors for enhancing good governance. It includes the
ability of the government, government machinery and private firms to observe laid procedures, and in
that regard without having undue influence. Transparency is pre-requisite for proper management of
both government and private entities. It includes ensuring that resources both material and financial
are set to accomplish the tasks intended. This chapter attempts to report the extent to which
transparency is executed in local government administration in Tanzania with concentration on Mbeya
region. The qualitative approach has been opted to accomplish the study. Observation,
documentation and experiential are the main sources of data for the study. The analysis of the study
is descriptive in nature, as narrations have been made on the factual trend analysis of the local
government in Mbeya. The issues given weight are transparency in awarding tenders for development
projects, which indeed consume huge amount of money. Secondly, is the narration of transparency in
decision-making from lower echelon to district level. Thirdly, is the presence or absence of corruption
in the undertaking of government business. The chapter provides problems and the suggestive
measures to curb the problems. It has been concluded that local government administration in
Tanzania faces challenges on the implementation of the programs and projects. However, there is
high level of transparency on the pursuance of local government activities, and specifically decision
making. It is worthy to notice that the current trend of the president of Tanzania, which emphasize on
the use of force account has made the entire government to be much in attaining the goals that were
not attained during the four regimes.