Sector Wide Approach (SWAp) in the Health Sector of the Government of Tanzania:The Present and the Future

The Government of Tanzania has gropingly urged an enterprise of development partnership between the host government and funding donor agencies by promoting structural reformation and reinforcement of the government administrative functions. While Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper was accepted and implemented since November, 2000, the Government of Tanzania has spearheaded a challenge of uniformity of development modalities through sector reformations, funding integration and good governance by leading other neighboring countries. Hence, issue prioritization, budgetary integration, executive standardization were intensively discussed by the Government of Tanzania and stakeholders throughout an innovative process of development partnership. <br>Simultaneously, Tanzania has released consecutive development plans such as "Tanzania Development Vision 2025", "Tanzania Assistance Strategy", "Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper" accompanied by the financial arrangement of "Public Expenditure Review" and Mid-term Expenditure Framework". These strategic development dispositions created an attractive environment for development partners to promote integrated financial assistant scheme.<br>According to the Health Sector Reform in the Government of Tanzania since 1994, a practical application of development partnership has been initiated and implemented by the induction of "Health Sector Basket Fund", which was introduced by the accord of several donor partners and international agencies. This pooling fund mechanism aims to integrate current scattered budgetary systems and to promote transparency, accountability and ownership of the finance in the Health Sector. Indeed, the sector-specific Basket Fund forwarded the decentralization process of the Health Sector Reform in light of evidence-oriented health interventions at the district and community levels. <br>In this paper, the present condition of the development partnership in the Health Sector of the Government of Tanzania is examined according to the background, adaptation, application, current considerations and future orientation of the development partnership.