Administration and Economic Planning in Eastern Africa: A Ford Foundation Program Evaluation    1977                                                                p. 2 of 8    

B. 3. Economic Planning in Kenya

          As the East African countries approached independence their second major concern, after that of finding the means to take effective control of government, was the development of their societies. World Bank missions to each of the three major East African territories, in their extensive and influential reports, made a strong case for establishing economic planning systems and project development units. 

In the summer of 1962, Professor Ben Lewis of Oberlin College visited East Africa as a Foundation consultant and received inquiries from all three governments about the possibility of the Foundation’s supplying economic advisory assistance. The only firm request, however, was from Kenya. The government was by no means convinced that it wished to establish a planning process at the time, as was indicated by the initial response to the submission of Edgar Edwards’ curriculum vitae: Treasury replied that Edwards was a bit more senior a man than would be needed for what they had in mind. Edwards accepted the post nevertheless and arrived in Nairobi in August 1963. 

At the time the Foundation agreed to supply this advisor, it felt that first attention should be given to the work of the East African Common Services Organization (EACSO), to which a grant of $45, 000 for economic consultants had been made in November 1962. Supplementary to this regional focus, the Foundation anticipated that it should be prepared to offer limited high-level assistance to the planning agencies of the three countries. 

Within six months of his arrival, Edwards had convinced both the Kenya Government and the Foundation that a substantially greater effort than either had anticipated was necessary, or at least desirable. A rather rudimentary 6-year plan was produced in early 1964 by Edwards, Oliver Knowles, a Treasury official, and Michael Roemer, an M.I.T. Fellow in Africa. It was anticipated when this plan was adopted that it would be superseded by a revised plan once more economic planning competence was available and following greater elaboration of the policy objectives of the Government. Work on the revision had already begun before the 6-year plan was published. The first plan proved useful in negotiations with potential donors, which was the original government impetus for the exercise, but it also provided a framework for ministers and permanent secretaries to define their work and coordinate their efforts with other ministries. Most importantly, a Development Committee of the Cabinet, established before independence, became an active forum in which major economic issues could be discussed by the effective decision-makers. 

In July 1964, a new Directorate of Planning within the Treasury was officially established with Edwards at its head, an arrangement that made the Foundation’s representative distinctly uneasy. It was one thing to provide advice on economic planning issues, but for a Foundation employee to be responsible for the planning mechanism was outside the boundaries of its own definition of its assistance. There is also some question about the legality of supplying foreign countries with a person in a position like this under the American tax law governing philanthropic assistance. This potential difficulty was overcome when Kenya became a republic on the anniversary of its independence, and a Ministry of Economic Planning and Development (MEPD) was created. Edwards became senior advisor to the Permanent Secretary of MEPD and, in mid-1965, he left Kenya to return to Rice University. 

The creation of a separate planning ministry was typical of many newly independent African governments. Resentment of the Ministry of Finance, or the Treasury as it was commonly known, was widespread among the new leaders because it was seen as an obstacle to development. The creation of a new ministry, with a degree of autonomy from the purse-string mentality of Treasury officials, was thought to be progressive; besides, it was popular with the Bank and other donors. This mood lasted less than a decade, however, and most countries have now recombined planning with finance. 

 By the time the Ministry was created, a staff of five Foundation advisors was working on planning in Kenya: three Americans, one Dutch and one Swedish. The first Minister was Torn Mboya, whose remarkable intellectual capacity and leadership skills added greatly to the impact of planning in the country. Philip Ndegwa joined government as a planning officer at about the same time. 

In 1965, the Kenya government proposed and Parliament adopted a far-reaching policy document entitled Sessional Paper No. 10, African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya. Much of the first draft of this paper was written by Edwards, a fact that has since aroused critical comment in some foreign publications. Before it reached Parliament, however, it was intensively reviewed and revised, first by an informal group chaired by Mboya with Mwai Kibaki, Ndegwa, Knowles and Edwards as members, and then by the Ministers sitting in the Development Committee. Sessional Paper No. 10 summarizes Kenya’s objectives as follows: 

1. Political equality.

2. Social justice.

3. Human dignity, including freedom of conscience.

4. Freedom from want, disease and exploitation.

5. Equal opportunities.

6. High and growing per capita incomes, equitably distributed. 

To some extent, the document represents the Government’s answer to the insistent voices in Parliament, led by Oginga Odinga and Pia Pinto, demanding more radical social change. The Sessional Paper sought to elucidate its philosophy that dignity, justice and equity need a firm basis of economic growth. 

At the same time an extensive revision of the original 6-year plan was underway, examining a number of important policy issues, including such key social policies as family planning, primary education and anticipated employment problems. 

By this time the Foundation’s interest in planning had obviously deepened. Economic decision-making was recognized to be a critical task for new governments staffed by leaders who had had little opportunity to gain training and experience in the field. The Foundation’s advisors were clearly making important contributions by helping establish sound procedures for the consideration of development projects, and by advising on economic policy. The planning process was seen to be a continuing activity that would require competence unavailable locally for several additional years. The need for additional attention to plan implementation procedures, provincial and district planning, and ministry-level planning was also recognized.  

Also at this time, the demand for Foundation assistance in planning was spreading in other countries; in early 1966, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia requested senior economic advisors. Although the Foundation began recruitment for all these positions, the program in fact spread only to Tanzania at that time. In Uganda, the Chief Planning Officer decided he required an economist from a socialist country, and in Zambia a senior economist supplied by the U.N. was unenthusiastic about another senior person arriving under different auspices. (Curiously, the Ugandans recruited a Polish economist, Lissovski, who had been a Ford Fellow in the United States. He was a very able planner but, unfortunately, he died in the middle of his assignment.) 

In Kenya, the combination of Mboya’s dynamic and effective leadership and the concentration of economic competence in his Ministry made planning a force in Government that commanded the respect but sometimes also the envy and resentment of other ministers and civil servants. Their response to this imbalance took several forms. Perhaps the healthiest, from a developmental point of view, was to seek to develop planning competence in their own ministries, a process strongly encouraged by Mboya and his advisors. The Ministry of Agriculture sought to build up a strong internal planning unit with advisors from a variety of donors, one of whom was supplied by the Foundation. The effort enjoyed only limited success at the time and a new attempt, which will be discussed later, is currently underway. 

In another case, the Minister of Education requested the assistance of MEPD in drafting an educational policy paper without the concurrence of his own permanent secretary. This led to a struggle that went all the way to the President of the Republic before it was resolved and the draft policy paper was scrapped. 

In late 1967, the Development Committee of the Cabinet was abolished. One can only assume that this move was made in order to curb the power of Mboya and the MEPD. Thereafter, although chapters of subsequent development plans were discussed with appropriate ministerial staffs, and plans were approved by Cabinet, there was little serious discussion of critical economic issues in the plans by economic ministers as a group. 

Perhaps the key ministry that successfully resisted genuine participa­tion in planning was the Ministry of Commerce and Industry; to this day, there is no effective professional planning and project evaluation unit in this Ministry. Major industrial investment decisions have, however, had to receive approval of MEPD and the Treasury, so cost benefit analysis has not been wholly omitted from the industrialization effort. 

Another serious disappointment to the planners was the failure of an attempt to institute cooperation between the private sector and the government through the Planning and Development Advisory Committee (PADAC). PADAC met occasionally in early years but its meetings were generally unproductive. 

There is no question but that the meaningful planning activities of the Government in the first few years after independence were essentially conducted by expatriate staff and advisors. Several excellent young Kenyan economists, notably Philip Ndegwa, Harris Mule, the late Serjit Heyer, and Parmeet Singh, participated in the work and rapidly gained competence in the process. But the systematic professionalization of the planning process and the development of Kenyans to staff it could be said to have started only in October 1968, when a scheme of service for economists was inaugurated. This established a governmental career ladder for economists, statisticians, and planners that paralleled the path of advancement of other career civil servants. In 1971 there were 51 established posts in the Economic Service, apart from economists employed by parastatal corporations, but MEPD estimated that the actual requirement for government economists was 73. Only 25 qualified local officers were available for these posts. 

The minimum entry qualification for the Economic Service was an upper second-class honors degree in economics or statistics, or its equivalent. In order to enlarge the pool of qualified entrants, the Foundation supported the creation of a Bachelor of Philosophy (B. Phil.) program at the University College Nairobi in 1969 (690-0156). This was a one-year postgraduate program requiring at least a year of relevant government experience before admission. The content of the B. Phil. program was specifically geared to the development problems facing the Kenya Government. For several years the Economics Department at the University was cool to what they regarded as an excessively “applied” program, but it is now well integrated. This year (1977), for the first time, master’s degree students and B. Phil. students are taking the same course of instruction with the masters candidates remaining at the University for an additional year. 

More recently an agreement has been worked out with the Canadian government under which 6 to 8 members of the Economic Service are offered master's degree scholarships to York University in Toronto each year. By 1979 it is anticipated that between 30 and 40 Kenyans will have received York M.A.s. 

The assassination of Tom Mboya in the summer of 1969 was a tragedy of great national importance, which also set back the growth and development of the planning process in Kenya. Indeed, it is notable that after a period of shock and suspended progress, planning not only survived but has continued to play a leading role in affecting the course of Kenya’s development. 

          In 1970 Edwards, who by then had served as an advisor to the government for four years and was on the Foundation’s staff in New York, and Ben Lewis, who had also joined the Foundation on a full-time basis, undertook a comprehensive review of the planning process in Kenya. They described the Foundation’s basic objective as “to assist substantially in the establishment of a lasting, effective planning process, indigenously staffed, widely spread and used throughout government,” and found it to be an objective broadly shared by the Kenya government. The report noted that the Government’s initial objectives in seeking Foundation support were considerably more modest but implied that the Foundation had the grander design in mind from the beginning. In fact, as we have seen, the Foundation’s objectives also evolved from more modest aspirations, although Ben Lewis had had the larger picture in mind since his pre-independence visit. 

          Despite the importance planning had achieved in Kenya’s economic decision-making, Edwards and Lewis noted that enthusiasm for the process was still limited in a number of important ministries, and the extension of the influence of planning to the private sector and local levels of Government was disappointing. The attempt to create a provincial planning apparatus, although supported by advisory and financial assistance from a number of bilateral donors, was swimming upstream because of increasing centralization of financial responsibility for secondary roads, primary education and health centers. 

Manpower planning, in which four Foundation-supplied advisors had been involved, was also cited as a disappointment in terms of its influence in shaping university development, vocational training, in-service training, and plans for foreign educational opportunities. The development of parastatals (public statutory bodies) and municipalities was also occurring essentially outside of the planning process. 

          Despite these shortcomings, the team found much satisfaction in the evolution and acceptance of the planning process in the first six years of Kenya’s independence. The report made a clear recommendation for continued Foundation involvement with planning in Kenya through the decade of the 1970s. It suggested that at least six advisors would be needed through the then-current plan period, which would take them until 1974, and made the case for advisory assistance to many ministries and to provincial planning units. It identified several positions for priority Foundation attention. These included advisors to the Chief Planning Officer or Permanent Secretary; Economic Service staff development; project and program budgeting; economic policy in the Treasury; provincial, district and municipal planning; human resources; economic management in the Ministry of Public Works; and industrial development in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The report strongly recommended more intensive effort in providing in-service training to counterparts. These recommendations were discussed with key Government officials in draft and final form. 

Both the Government and the Foundation responded favorably to the recommenda­tions of the report, but in practice the Foundation later decided to curtail its supportive planning in Kenya more rapidly than was recommended. The number of advisors was reduced to three in mid-1973 and to one in late 1974. The final advisor, Edwards himself, who had returned for a third tour, left the Ministry in the summer of 1976. The accelerated withdrawal was motivated by a sharp decline in the Foundation’s overall budget and by a general decision to curtail advisory assistance around the world. The latter decision was of course largely but not exclusively prompted by the overall budget decline. 

A description of this program would not be complete without a word about the character of the relationships between the advisors and the Foundation, and the advisors and the Government. The Foundation has had a general policy that the professional loyalty of an advisor assigned to a government is to the government itself, and that no matters of a confidential nature are expected to be divulged to the Foundation’s representatives. Edwards and subsequent advisors adhered strictly to this policy, a fact that continues to be fully appreciated by the Kenya Government. In addition, the advisors supplied by the Foundation were not considered to be a team and, although there was often a recognized senior economist among them, there was no designated team leader Throughout the life of the program, no professional meetings were held in which only Foundation advisors were in attendance, and no attempt was made to coordinate the views or advice of the advisory staff. 

B. 4. Public Administration in Kenya

          In July 1963, shortly after the Foundation opened its East Africa office in Nairobi, the Kenya Government requested advisory assistance on staff development and manpower planning. The formal request specifically alluded to Tanzanian experience and suggested that appropriate candidates for the staff development position might be found among former colonial civil servants from West Africa. The Director of Personnel suggested two such candidates by name. 

          Having examined the backgrounds of the two proposed candidates, the Foundation declined to offer them appointments because they appeared to bring little talent that was not already available among colonial officers who still controlled most of the senior posts of government. Finding an alternative who had the necessary understanding of the system was far from easy, however. It finally decided to ask the Tanzanian Government if it would strongly object to the transfer of David Anderson to fill the post. The Tanzanians were not pleased, but acceded to the suggestion with the proviso that a replacement be found for Anderson. 

The program Anderson initiated in Kenya had basically the same objectives as the one in Tanzania, but required somewhat different tactics due to a different political and constitutional situation. Essentially he sought to clarify policies concerning the civil service, to stimulate the development of institutions and traditions on which to build a viable national service, to focus training activities on priority needs, and to rationalize the use of available manpower. 

The program undertook a comprehensive staffing survey in all ministries, and clarified policies toward non-citizens and non-African citizens. It made a listing of key expatriates (a matter of some urgency for both the expatriates and the Government), and made efforts to ensure their retention. It established procedures for the allocation of secondary-school leavers. It appointed a committee to review the training program of the Kenya Institute of Administration. 

The Foundation recruited several additional advisors to assist in implementing this program. One, attached to the Ministry of Education, helped establish a central registry of students abroad; another helped computerize personnel records; and a third, the former Executive Director of the U.S. Civil Service Commission, worked on creating a management services unit in the Directorate of Personnel. 

Their positions were conceived by Anderson and requested by Government, but it is clear that not all the Kenyan officials responsible for the units to which the specialists were assigned were wholly convinced of the priority of these particular tasks. The central registry of students never became operable due largely to indifference to the project in the Ministry of Education, but fortunately the project specialist assigned to the task could be diverted to the more rewarding work of preparing for the Kericho Conference on Education, Employment and Rural Development, and editing its results for publication. 

          Similarly, Warren Irons felt deeply frustrated in his attempts to organize a management services unit. On his departure Irons expressed gratitude for congenial working relationships with the Kenya Government and with the Foundation’s staff and said he appreciated the quality of the weather in Kenya, but suggested that he should not have been invited to accept the assignment. He said the idea came from the Staff Development Advisor, and the Director of Personnel in office at the time of the assignment had no conception of what a Systems Analysis and Staff Utilization Unit should be or should do. He felt that such a unit should organizationally have been located in the President’s office, that it should not have had a non-African head, and that in general no Africans were at all interested in the idea. Having here revealed the depths of Irons’ disenchantment, one cannot defer mentioning until the section of this paper on program outcomes that the management services unit Irons labored diligently to create is in fact functioning, staffed by seven Kenyan officers, and in such demand by other departments of Government that consideration is being given to doubling its size. The current Director of Personnel, Mr. J. Gethenji, credits Irons fully for creation of the unit and regrets that qualified counterpart staff were not available to work with him when he was in Nairobi. 

Manpower planning also began in 1964 with the arrival of an analyst to do the initial survey. In all, four specialists worked seven man-years on manpower programs between 1964 and 1969. This activity never achieved as much prominence in Kenya as in Tanzania for a number of reasons. Because the Kenyan economy is much more complex and the private sector much larger, the problems of accurately forecasting high-level manpower needs were considerably greater than in Tanzania. Secondly, as Kenya had many more trained people at the time of independence, the urgency of manpower development was less pronounced. Certainly the rare personality of Bob Thomas had much to do with the success of the Tanzanian effort but, so far as I know, the quality of work in Kenya was also at a high professional level.  

It was unnecessary for the Foundation to establish a government training institution in Kenya because a number of such institutions already existed. The most important was the Kenya Institute of Administration (KIA), generously financed by British aid and AID. The Foundation did make three teaching staff appointments to KIA from 1965 to 1972, but perhaps the main program impact on the functioning of the Institution came from the Adu Committee review, to which Anderson contributed, and the subsequent establishment of an advisory committee to coordinate its offerings with the needs of Government. 

The Foundation also cooperated in minor ways with the new East African Staff College. This program, ably led by Guy Hunter in 1964-5, sought to train high-level government administrators and both public and private sector managers from all three countries. It became a peripatetic institution, holding courses in each country in rotation. The Foundation was asked to consider contributing to a permanent site for the College, and to finance a research arm, but both ideas ran into government or university resistance before they could be seriously entertained for funding. 

From time to time the Foundation supplied consultants or project specialists to facilitate the staff work of special investigatory commissions in Kenya. John Seal, for example, was the principal staff man for the Ndegwa Commission, which undertook the most far-reaching revision of public service rules that has occurred in independent Kenya. Consulting services were also provided to the Commission under a Foundation contract with API, a California-based consulting firm headed by Edward Rubin, erstwhile staff development advisor in Tanzania. 

A good example of the kind of service provided by consultants concerned the work of an educational salaries commission in 1967. Teachers were demanding substantial salary increases, and members of the commission, having toured the country taking evidence, were inclined to be sympathetic. A consultant specializing in labor economics was able to draw attention to such factors as wage earner/farmer income differentials, increases in recurrent educational expenditure that would occur as a result of expansion of the system before salary increases were taken into account, comparative income levels of Kenyan teachers with those of other African countries, and the mounting proportion of national income already scheduled for education in the succeeding five years. By marshalling the relevant data he showed that an enormously explosive educational expenditure potential was inherent in the sector. 

As the decade of the 1960s drew to a close, the Foundation’s support for public administration specialists diminished rapidly. The main task of the Africanization of the public service and the establishment of procedures and institutions for its maintenance had essentially been accomplished. No great satisfaction was felt in the level of performance of the public service but the machinery was in place for the Kenyans to make use of as they wished. 

Donald Kingsley and John Thurston returned to East Africa in early 1971 to review the public administration programs they had sired with their visit ten years earlier in Tanzania. Only Thurston was able to visit Kenya, and his visit was not well timed: the Ndegwa Commission had been appointed but had not yet issued its report. Thurston’s general impression was that the relatively easy task of Africanizing the public service had largely been accomplished but that the far harder task of improving performance had hardly begun. Although he recognized that changing the direction of Government with a civil service notable for its youth and inexperience was a formidable task, he felt a lack of determination and dedication to improving the civil service at the political level. Tribalism appeared to him to be a particularly strong and destructive force in Kenya. As a result of rapid Africanization, and the placement of relatively young people in senior positions, a block in promotions for those who joined the service only slightly later was already in evidence. The main impact of Thurston’s report, which was not shared with the Kenya Government, was to strengthen the belief already held by the Foundation staff that it was time to seek means of improving managerial effectiveness in the civil service and the public corporations, not only in Kenya but throughout the region. 

B. 5. Economic Planning in Tanzania 

          Tanzania came to independence with a per capita income only half that of Kenya, a fraction of the trained manpower, and a much less developed institutional framework. The common market and common services arrangements in the colonial era had generally favored Kenya in the location of industry and the siting of the headquarters of various services. On the other hand, tribalism was less significant as a political force because Tanzania’s tribes were smaller and more numerous than Kenya’s. 

Despite these differences, the problems faced by Tanzania and Kenya in the early 1960s had many similarities and until 1967, or even somewhat later, the governments went about dealing with their problems in rather similar ways: each issued a rudimentary economic plan shortly after independence, and then constructed a more professional plan with the aid of economic advisors. 

In Tanzania, the 1964 Five-Year Plan, replacing the initial three-year plan, was a good technical document. In less than a year, however, international economic forces had seriously distorted its projections, rendering it of little use as a guide to action. Sisal prices fell by 50%; smaller declines affected the prices of cotton and coffee; drought slowed the growth of government revenues, and international diplomatic disputes greatly reduced foreign aid. As the plan depended heavily on foreign capital assistance, the latter event was particularly damaging to its effectiveness. The departure of the advisors shortly after the completion of the plan in 1964 meant that not only was no revision forthcoming, but ensuing economic problems were not clearly diagnosed until late 1965, when a commission headed by a British economist reported to Government. (Ross Commission) 

Another similarity was the appointment of an Economic Committee of the Cabinet. This Committee failed to meet during the preparation of the first five-year plan, which partially accounts for the plan’s lack of realism, but during the second planning cycle the Committee played an important role. 

Apart from the manpower planning already described, the Foundation did not supply economic planning advice to Tanzania until midway through the first five-year plan period, a full five years after independence. When Tom Easterbrook arrived in June 1966 for a 14-month assignment, he found DevPlan “a skeleton with many of the bones missing.” Easterbrook found himself fighting fires from a base of shifting sand (only a mixed metaphor seems appropriate to describe the experience). He was faced daily with requests for advice on every aspect of development planning and economic policy save manpower, which was the only division of the Ministry adequately staffed. The situation improved in 1967 when more economists arrived as part of the build-up for the next planning cycle. 

Significantly, Easterbrook listed as the main weaknesses in the process: the absence of a regional planning capability; the chaotic state of parastatals; the lack of planning units in other ministries; and the need for a wages and incomes policy -- all subjects on which the Government eventually took concerted, if not always effective, action. 

By the time of Easterbrook’s departure, DevPlan had built up to a total of 16 or 17 competent economists, of whom two were supplied by the Foundation. It was Tanzanian policy to diversify their sources of development assistance in order not to become dependent on any single country or agency. At one point in the preparation of the 1969/74 Plan, advisors from 13 countries were working in DevPlan. The price of this independence from single-donor influence must have been a rather confusing mix of policy-oriented advice; but the policy definitely insulated the Tanzanians from undue donor pressures. 

In the period from 1967 to 1969, while the preparation for the second five-year plan was underway, DevPlan hit its stride, consulting with other Government ministries through 16 ad hoc working parties, planning an economic service for Tanzanian economists, and issuing annual economic surveys, reviewing agricultural prices, etc. Procedures were devised for drafting annual plans. Planning units in other ministries were also beginning to take shape. The Foundation supplied advisors to the Ministries of Agriculture; Lands, Settlement, and Water Development; and the Treasury. 

The plan coordinator in this period was Brian Van Arkadie, a British economist who had served on the Ross Commission and was for a time chief planning advisor in Uganda. Van Arkadie and Reginald Green, an American with extraordinary knowledge of African planning efforts, were recruited by the Foundation at the specific request of the Tanzanian Government. Both were unusually influential, but Green, who was attached to the Treasury from December 1966 until 1975 (the last two years under Swedish auspices), probably played as large a role as any foreign advisor in Tanzania since independence. 

Green’s advice was sought on a number of internal and external economic issues. Initially he focused on matters of East African economic integration. After the Arusha Declaration, however, he became deeply involved in negotiations with nationalized companies, and with the planning, strategy and performance of public corporations, which were set up to play a dominant role in the economy. He was also concerned with tax reform planning and international monetary policy, and he came to have general responsibility for overseeing economic planning. 

Despite the surge of planning activity that went into the preparation of the 1969-74 Plan, DevPlan never did develop the power and influence its counterpart achieved in Kenya. President Nyerere from the first preferred to see planning functions performed by the operating ministries rather than centrally, and he later decided to devolve meaningful planning to the regional governments. He was undoubtedly disappointed by the failure of the 1964 plan; in a sense, his small, economically vulnerable country had been punished by its major donors for daring to conduct an independent, principled foreign policy. Part of his strategy of increasing self-reliance was to spread planning responsibility broadly rather than to centralize it in a powerful ministry. 

Other factors were also important. DevPlan was at a disadvantage in the early years in dealing with long-established ministries, strongly staffed with experienced expatriates. There were frequent, often unexpected (in DevPlan) changes in government policy. Key ministry personnel were shifted often, generally without notice or overlap with successors. But perhaps most importantly, the President himself, and later the TANU Central Committee and Party Executive, took an increasingly active role in policy formation. DevPlan was seen as a coordinating Ministry for the purpose of running the planning process, managing the evolution of economic policy, and auditing results; it was not to be the originator of policy. 

In 1967 President Nyerere issued a series of policy declarations that led to a radical change in Tanzania’s development strategy. The first and most important of these was the now-famous Arusha Declaration, in which he announced the government’s intention to nationalize banks, life insurance companies, and selected milling companies and import/export firms. He also announced policies intended to prevent the emergence of a local elite or privileged class. These were particularly directed against large farmers, small businessmen, intellectuals, managers in the parastatals and the private sector, senior civil servants, and political leaders. The President was determined to prevent the growth of a dual economy, so common in Africa; to establish firm Tanzanian control over the economy; and to create a self-reliant, egalitarian society. It is significant that these policies were articulated by the President and approved by TANU leadership without consultation with the government ministries that were then made responsible for their implementation. 

The 1970 review of development planning in Tanzania, conducted by Ben Lewis and Gerald Helleiner (an economist from the University of Toronto who had recently spent two years at the University College Dar es Salaam), drew a basically optimistic picture of the planning process, despite recognition of a number of serious deficiencies. Lewis and Helleiner noted that the first plan had been largely a facade because there was little understanding of planning, and the operating ministries lacked the expertise and inclination to regard the process seriously. They mentioned both an inability to prepare projects properly and the frequent failure to conduct economic evaluations, but they found comfort in the increasing number of economists supplied to Government by foreign aid from 1967 onward. 

They found the second five-year plan a great improvement over the first, because it emphasized the constant need for evaluation and regarded planning as a continuous process rather than a spasmodic effort to be undertaken each five years. At the highest level of government, Tanzanians were actively involved in drafting the second plan and the degree of commitment to the process seemed to be growing. 

The most serious deficiency identified by the consultants was the shortage of suitably qualified Tanzanian manpower for managerial posts in the burgeoning parastatal sector and economic posts in government. In 1969 they found 37 citizens employed in the economic service, out of a total of 98 posts, but their training was generally inadequate. The second plan called for a complement of a 163 economists by 1973, of whom it was hoped that 96 would be citizens. Even if this target were achieved there would remain 67 positions to be filled by expatriates. 

Not surprisingly, Lewis and Helleiner placed most emphasis in their recommendations on training and staff development. A diploma program specifically oriented to Tanzania’s needs had already been supported at the University of Toronto by the Foundation, but few qualified Tanzanians could be spared to take advantage of it.   The team recommended increased attention to the quality of training offered at The University College Dar es Salaam. There, too, a B. Phil. Program had been initiated, without Foundation support, but DevPlan did not endorse its courses and its quality was suspect. The consultants also found fault with government efforts to develop indigenous economic capacity. No one seemed to be responsible for the deployment and development of Economic Service staff. Despite the shortage of economic competence in government, the team detected resentment of the expatriate domination of DevPlan, but did not find it directed at the Foundation because of the small percentage of staff it supplied. 

As in Kenya, the report described the Foundation’s objectives as “to assist substantially in the establishment of a lasting, effective planning process, indigenously staffed, widely spread and used throughout government.” It did not find this objective to be fully shared by the Tanzanian government, but the team thought the President, in particular, favored the spread of the planning process and that the Government in general was moving in that direction. They concluded that the Foundation should be prepared to continue work in the planning field in Tanzania through the decade of the 1970s and should place strong emphasis on the development of Tanzanian staff, but only if the Government shared the Foundation’s sense of the overriding importance of such a program. 

In response to these recommendations, the Foundation agreed with The University College Dar es Salaam and the Tanzanian Government to provide fellowship support for up to 15 government candidates per year for an M.A. course in economics at the University. Unlike the B. Phil. Program in Kenya, the Foundation would supply no staff for the program, nor would the courses be geared essentially for DevPlan. The Tanzania Program was open to any Government agency or parastatal requiring staff trained in economics. 

The Foundation continued to supply key advisors to the Principal Secretaries of Treasury and DevPlan, both specifically identified by Lewis and Helleiner as being critically important. 

Green remained in Treasury and Bevan Waide, on loan to the Foundation from the World Bank, replaced Van Arkadie in DevPlan. During the 1969-74 plan period, DevPlan, in addition to issuing an annual economic review and assessment of Government performance, was called upon to produce, via the Cabinet, a rolling annual plan. Ministerial and regional priorities were to be negotiated at appropriate levels, but this turned out to be an awkward task. Ministries were unaccustomed to planning in regional terms, and there was no mechanism for integrating their views with those of economic secretaries in the regions. The 1970 annual plan failed to include regional priorities due to timing difficulties. The plan for the subsequent year revealed little evidence of ministerial-regional coordination. 

In 1973, Green transferred to Swedish auspices and Waide returned to the World Bank. The last advisor to DevPlan, Tim Aldington, worked on agricultural sector planning in 1974 and 1975. This assignment involved mounting frustrations. The major decentralization of governmental functions that began in 1972 made planning on the basis of past experience increasingly difficult, and DevPlan seemed gradually to be losing its utility. In 1976, it was reincorporated into the Treasury. Aldington felt that in the course of his assignment he was able to bring somewhat more attention to investment output criteria than was earlier the case, but he could not recommend that another advisor replace him. In general he thought expatriates were becoming increasingly ineffective in policy-oriented work in Tanzania. 

          In all, the Foundation provided nine long-term advisors for a period of 26 man-years. Only two of the nine were Americans.