The government has been urged to strengthen monitoring and evaluation systems to ensure development projects deliver measurable improvements in people’s lives, shifting attention from paperwork to tangible results.
National Assembly Deputy Speaker Daniel Sillo said development performance should not be judged solely by reports produced, funds spent or activities completed, but by actual changes achieved in people’s lives.
‘When we talk about results, we do not mean the number of documents we have prepared or activities we have implemented. We mean changes in the actual lives of Tanzanians,’ he said on Wednesday, September 23, 2026.
Also ReadMr Sillo was speaking at the opening of the fifth Tanzania Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Week 2026, held in Arusha from September 22 to 26.
He said effective monitoring and evaluation were critical to implementing the National Development Vision 2050, stressing the need for reliable and timely information to identify challenges early and enable leaders to take corrective action.
He urged officials to use evaluation findings in daily decision-making instead of waiting until the end of the year to discover that development targets had not been achieved.
‘Monitoring and evaluation is not a system for waiting until failure occurs before taking action. It is an early-warning mechanism that enables challenges to be identified and addressed in time,’ he said.
Mr Sillo called on leaders to visit development projects, assess their implementation carefully on the ground.
He said assessments should examine improvements in education and healthcare, job creation, infrastructure and access to essential services.
According to him, assessments should go beyond statistics to capture people’s experiences, establish who has benefited from public services and identify those who remain unreached.
‘We want evidence that listens to the voices of citizens and takes into account the realities of their lives,’ he said.
Permanent Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office responsible for Policy, Parliament, Coordination and Persons with Disabilities, Dr Jim Yonazi, said the government needed evidence of the impact of its development programmes as it implements the Fourth Five-Year Development Plan (FYDP IV).
‘We are now in the implementation phase, not the planning phase. The government does not simply need reports showing how much money has been spent or how many projects have been constructed,’ he said.
‘It needs evidence showing how people’s lives have changed, at what cost and within what period,’ he added.
Dr Yonazi said the government was continuing to strengthen its electronic management and data collection system, which had reached 70 percent completion by June 2026.
Meanwhile, parliamentary monitoring and evaluation champion, Ms Mwanaisha Ngazi said legislators were ready to present recommendations from the conference to Parliament to accelerate implementation of development plans.
She said the proposals would particularly focus on initiatives aimed at helping Tanzania achieve the objectives of Development Vision 2050.