Plug data gap to meet goals on development, government told

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania needs to overcome huge data gaps to meet an ambitious set of global goals to conquer poverty, inequality and other international woes by a 2030 deadline, policy analysts have said.

At a breakfast debate in Dar es Salaam yesterday, analysts noted that progress is not moving fast enough to meet the UN-backed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs-2030).

The theme of the debate was ‘From Policy to Action Frameworks: How can Agenda 2030 for SDGs be Achieved in Tanzania?’

Analysts raised concerns over reports that the country was able to collect only 40 per cent of the data required to effectively monitor implementation of the goals.

This is revealed in the first publication of the civil society -supported Voluntary National Review (VNR) report for 2019.

The discrepancy is largely attributed to the existing challenges relating to the level of data disaggregation; frequency of data production; incomplete data sets and data quality - particularly regarding administrative statistics.

Other challenges - the report says - have something to do with unreliable routine data collection systems; lack of interoperable data management systems within national statistical platforms; policy incoherence, and inadequate resource mobilisation.

The director for Population Census and Social Statistics at the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Ms Ruth Minja, said there is a major problem regarding data availability at the national, regional, district and ward levels.

“Data availability remains as one of the main stumbling blocks in informing about the implementation, follow-ups and review of the global Sustainable Development Goals in the country,” she stressed.

She mentioned some of the goals that were severely affected by the exiting data gaps in tracking progress as including SDG Number Eight (Decent work and economic growth); Goal Number 13 (Climate action), and Goal Number 16 (Peace, Justice and strong institutions).

In stark contrast to that, she mentioned Goals Number Three (good health and general well-being) and Number Four quality education) as areas, whose data was readily available.

Apart from data gaps, other challenges that do arise, as a matter of course, are the absence of clear coordination mechanisms on sustainable development; policy incoherence, and unclear linkages among different sectors.

“Despite the prevailing challenges, our report was ranked among the best - whereby some African countries are already requesting to learn from us,” she said.

In the event, the NBS director named Malawi as one of the countries seeking to take a leaf out of Tanzania’s book on the SDGs development programme in general, and how to prepare ‘Voluntary National Review’ reports in particular.

As per Ms Minja, the NBS is improving its ways of collecting data at both the central and local government levels.

The ministry of Finance and Planning is also initiating a Coordination Framework that is designed to ensure that the government works closely with the private sector and civil society organizations.

Commenting on the matter, a policy analyst at the ministry, Mr Francis Shirima, said “currently, it is hard to meet with other development stakeholders and engage in implementing the SDGs. With the envisaged coordination framework - which is in the final stages of preparation - we will be able to more effectively communicate and organise with other non-governmental entities,” has stated.

Up-dates of the implementation of the SDGs will be included in the Annual Development Reports, Mr Shirima revealed.

For his part, a member of the Tanzania Sustainable Development Platform (TSDP), Mr Stephen Chacha, lamented that the pace of implementation of the SDGs is still low - and that, as a consequence, there is a real possibility of Tanzania failing to achieve them as targeted.

“Tanzania has mainly been focusing on the quantity aspect when implementing the goals. But, the SDGs are focused more on quality. For instance, in the quality education aspect, the government has phenomenally increased enrolments in schools. However, the quality of the education being provided remains pathetically low,” Mr Chacha pointed out.

He added that the mobilisation of funds to implement the SDGs is also a formidable challenge.