Urban Resilience and Local Governance

The conceptualisation of politics and urban planning practices in Tanzania is important to the discussion of local governance and urban resilience. Historical and current practice reveals the intricate relationship between politics and planning. Political actors are also decision makers involved in the preparation, financing and implementation of plans. Planning is a technical process but also a political process as the citizens who are beneficiaries of plans are centred in decision making about how they will live, work and play. Urban planning processes have over time been influenced and impacted by political actors. However, conflicting interests often exist between political actors and urban planning.

Land policy reforms and decentralisation
Urban development trends in Tanzania have been influenced by the proliferation of informal settlements to meet housing demand, and the focus on short term economic plans at the expense of long-term physical plans to guide urban development. Therefore, Tanzania’s land reforms through the National Land Policy of 1995 decentralised land administration and exposed land to the free market, requiring fair compensation for land acquisition. However it effectively led to an escalation in the cost of land, further proliferation of informal settlements, and reduced government control over land. Government lost power over land, as most land was privately owned, with less land controlled by the state.

Loss of political actors’ interest in urban planning
Effectively, Government power’s loss of power diminished the interest of political actors in urban planning. This loss of interest has also been due to other key factors. Firstly, misalignment between physical plans and political boundaries and timeframes has resulted in lack of ownership by political actors. Secondly, misalignment between urban and economic plans has seen political actors prioritise economic plans which have an element of increasing income, and community members shun urban plans perceiving them an income-generation mechanism (through revenue collection) by Government. Thirdly, the static nature of urban plans has failed to enhance urban resilience to ongoing climate change impacts. Lastly, the limitations of urban plans in addressing land conflicts and rising informality have further reduced their priority for decision-makers.

Enhancing interest of political actors in urban planning
To enhance political interest in urban planning, it must be understood that urban planning is influenced by political constraints and shaped by the political system. Political interference occurs through the administrative arm of the government wielding its power and through political decisions and their administration by government agencies, which have transcendental repercussions in all sections of society. Two key interventions can thus incentivize political interest. The first is aligning urban planning with political terms and boundaries to ensure collaboration between planners and political actors in their implementation. Plans must be created for political levels like wards and constituencies. The second is enhancing  public participation in planning processes, making citizens primary stakeholders to foster community involvement, giving citizens a voice and a sense of community, and increasing resilience in urban plans. Interestingly, political actors have been found in practice to align with either planning authorities or citizens, depending on the nature of the planning issue and the level of public and political interest. 

Recommendations
To enhance political support for urban planning, the following actions are recommended: 

1. Align physical plans with political boundaries and timeframes to ensure that political actors have direct ownership of the proposed plans.

2. Prepare plans to build resilience of Tanzanian cities to urbanisation challenges and natural disasters like floods.

3. Use plans as a tool to address land conflicts.

4. Enhance community participation in urban planning practices for greater efficiency and acceptance of the proposed plans.

5. Consider how urban plans can generate government revenue for development projects.

Conclusion
Political interest in urban planning in Tanzania has declined due to factors like conflicting timelines with political terms, misaligned urban and economic plans, the static nature of urban plans, and their inability to address land conflicts or informality. To address this, urban planning should align with political timeframes and boundaries, enhance public participation, improve collaboration with political actors, and strengthen legal procedures for land conflicts. Furthermore, the government should prioritise budget allocation for urban planning. Preparation of plans by planning authorities will ensure social and community facilities are prioritised to serve wider community needs, as opposed to the current practice where private landowners independently initiate planning. 

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Rapid urbanization and population growth in Tanzania are straining planning, land management, infrastructure, and service provision, leading to the growth of informal settlements. The country’s population is 44.6% urban, exceeding the continental average of 43.5% (UN-Habitat, 2020).  About 70-80% of the urban population resides in informal areas, which make up 40-80% of built-up areas in cities, and are highly vulnerable to urban resilience issues. Over 60 years, the government has shifted from exclusionary to more inclusive strategies to address urban informality. This paper acknowledges that informal settlements are an integral part of the urban fabric, and from this perspective, examines these approaches in terms of governance and resilience.

Characteristics and drivers of informal settlements
Informal settlements in Tanzania are unplanned areas with informal land tenure, service provision challenges, and a mix of low- and middle-income residents. These settlements are not homogenous and vary in consolidation: (1) inner zones with high densities and chaotic structures, (2) intermediate zones consolidating rapidly without planning, and (3) peri-urban zones with urban poor and middle-income households. The informal settlements share three key features: (1) insecure tenure, often informal or customary, (2) structural quality of housing that is poor, highly dense, and compact, and (3) nature of the population comprises mixed socioeconomic groups, mainly low-income earners. The informal settlements are often located in environmentally vulnerable areas.

The growth of Tanzania's informal settlements is driven by urbanization and governance issues, such as poor land administration, lack of serviced land and affordable housing, multiple tenure systems, weak institutions, and poor enforcement of urban planning laws.

Institutional and governance framework for informal settlements
Tanzania's institutional framework involves national and local governments. The Ministry of Land, Housing and Human Settlement Development (MLHHSD) oversees urban planning, while the President's Office - Regional Administration and Local Government (PO-RALG) administers human settlements. Local Government Authorities (LGAs) implement these functions through decentralized governance at city, municipal, division, ward, and sub-ward levels. 

The country’s response to urban informality has evolved over six decades through legal, policy and planning frameworks, which though initially ambivalent, have shifted towards recognising informal settlers’ rights, and improving their living conditions. Five key periods are observed.

1. Slum clearance (1960s-1970s): Rapid rural-to-urban migration after colonial restrictions were lifted caused unplanned housing and urban sprawl, leading to government hostility towards informal settlements and their aggressive clearance.
2. Squatter upgrading (late 1970s-early 1980s): Supported by the World Bank, this marked a shift toward improving informal settlement conditions.
3. Sites and services projects (1972-1990s): These projects provided infrastructure and services, and community facilities to new informal areas and relocated households from flood-prone regions, especially river valleys.
4. Participatory upgrading approaches (1990s-2000s): After the failure of squatter upgrading, the focus shifted to community-driven, participatory approaches.
5. Comprehensive land reform and informal settlement regularisation (2000 onwards): Supported by policy and legislative changes, the integration of urban/informal and rural/customary tenure into modern land systems, and the regularisation strategy, marked a major shift. The 1999 Land Acts established the Certificate of Right of Occupancy (CRO), a 33-99 year leasehold, and residential licenses (RLs), an intermediate 2-5 year tenure. The 2004 MKURABITA program grants renewable RLs, providing occupancy rights in regularized informal settlements.

Vulnerability of informal settlements
Tanzania, East Africa's most flood-prone country, faces increased vulnerability in informal settlements, especially flood zones. Issues include flooding, sewer overflow, poor drainage, and pollution. Limited financial access reduces resilience, especially for poorer households. While community support helps, response systems are often inadequate. Declining urban green spaces worsen vulnerability, despite green infrastructure's importance for flood control.

Are the approaches working?
Recognizing the benefits of urban informality in Tanzania offers opportunities but requires acknowledging its shortcomings. Resilience models often focus on residents' adaptability to environmental changes. However, building resilience involves government, NGOs, CBOs, and residents working together to address challenges.

The role of Government
The government plays a key role as an enabler, shaping the involvement of other actors. In Tanzania, both top-down and bottom-up approaches have been implemented. While top-down approaches dominate, bottom-up methods are more sustainable. Centralisation, for instance in land administration and planning, hinders efficiency, but community engagement and decentralisation could improve outcomes. Limited community involvement, as seen in Tanzania's regularization program, has led to poor implementation. Secure, affordable long-term tenure is essential for empowering communities and strengthening urban resilience. However, Access to long-term tenure remains difficult for most due to unaffordability, leading many to bypass government processes for housing.

Government's role as enabler thus needs strengthening through improved institutional, governance, legal, policy, and planning frameworks. This includes better cross-sectoral coordination, enforcement, and transparency in urban services. Local structures, like wards and mtaa, offer untapped potential for urban development but need capacity building.

The role of communities and NGOs
From the 1900s to 2000s, policy changes in Tanzania enabled non-government actors to support the informal sector, particularly in coping with climate disasters and building resilience. Communities often use social networks to find innovative solutions, especially where formal structures are lacking. NGOs play a key role in strengthening these networks, engaging with residents, and influencing government policy.

The role of the private sector
The state's failure led to a "minimal state" approach, where it regulates while the private sector provides services. The Urban Planning Act (2007) enables private and popular participation in urban development. Public-private partnerships (PPPs)  are increasing housing supply. Regularizing informal settlements allows self-builders to invest in land and housing, boosting wealth. However, private sector investment is limited due to high risks and lack of collateral, leaving residents reliant on community finance. Collaboration between private and community actors could improve financial access.

Partnerships should not absolve the state of responsibility. Along with its enabling role, the state must ensure the private sector balances social and environmental needs with profit goals, while adopting a resilience approach.

The role of data as a decision-making tool
Lack of data hinders crisis planning and response, and increases residents' vulnerability. Active community engagement is vital for up-to-date insights. When quantitative data is scarce, qualitative data provides essential understanding of life in informal settlements and helps develop practical solutions.

Recommendations
Concerted efforts by all actors, and enhancement of mechanisms and strategies to improve the living environment in informal settlements are necessary. Below are some recommendations that could strengthen current strategies and approaches.

Government

1. Strengthen the role of government as enabler in terms of institutional and governance frameworks.
2. As an enabler, plan and provide the necessary land, infrastructure and services to support urban development and ensure urban resilience.
3. Ensure effective vertical and horizontal multi-sectoral and multi-governance coordination.
4. Prioritise bottom-up governance approaches by strengthening local autonomy in decision making for planning and urban growth.
5. Improve coordination at the local governance level by integrating formalised institutional arrangements with existing local administrative structures.
6. Let the government play the leading role in coordinating collaboration between different actors.

Communities, NGOs and private sector actors

1. Provide support for the co-creation of solutions by including CSOs and CBOs in partnerships for community-led planning and development.
2. Provide greater support with more funding to NGOs.
3. Leverage the convening power of NGOs to bring together various actors to map social capital opportunities.
4. Collaborate with local community leaders in data collection to leverage local knowledge, and build a centralised database.
5. Involve the private sector in informal settlement upgrading initiatives.

Mechanisms for informal settlement upgrading

1. Establish more flexible regulations for informal and unplanned settlements that facilitate long-term interventions.
2. Strengthen enforcement of urban planning related laws, regulations and frameworks.
3. Increase access to long-term security of tenure by making the entry-point RLs and CROs affordable.
4. Encourage private sector actors to invest in appropriate areas adjacent to informal settlements.
5. Support collaboration amongst socio-political structures at the community level to ensure more bottom-up and inclusive approaches.
6. Build socio-political infrastructure by strengthening socio-political norms, values, rules, and relationships that underpin efforts towards inclusive and resilient settlements.
7. Invest in innovative financial solutions that address the impacts of aggregate shocks, as opposed to leaving communities to their individualised resilience-building efforts.
8. Mainstream urban resilience in policies, legislative frameworks and urban plans.
9. Further invest in and mainstream community-based informal settlement upgrading initiatives.

Conclusion
Informal settlements house a significant portion of the urban population. However, their resilience poses a significant challenge to achieving sustainable urban environments. To address this, informal settlements should be normalised and accepted as integral parts of the urban fabric and their resilience prioritised. The regularisation of informal settlements in Tanzanian provides an opportunity to improve these settlements using an urban resilience lens. Urban governance is a collective effort, and crucial to achieving greater impact through innovative and coordinated responses by the government, working in partnership with non-state actors to build resilience in informal settlements.

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Tanzanian cities face an urgent urban food security challenge due to high population growth. In developing countries like Tanzania, the poorest of the urban population spend up to 85% of their income on food, making it a key economic driver. The disparity in food expenditure particularly between rich and poor urban households highlights the need for urban planners to ensure food is affordable and accessible, especially for the poor. Urban food planning must prioritise affordability to provide equitable access to nutritious food for all residents.

Food Systems Planning
Urban planning is crucial for shaping the food environment through factors like proximity to nutritious food, land-use planning, zoning regulations, food infrastructure and regulations. However, in Tanzania, food systems and planning are not well integrated into urban land use planning. Multi-scalar food systems planning has an important role to play in ensuring systems thinking in food systems planning. It consists of three distinct and closely interrelated spheres: the entire food cycle (production, processing, marketing, consumption and disposal), the actors involved, and the multiple spaces and scales within which food systems operate. Food systems planning is therefore a multi-stakeholder and community-based process. The concept of multi-scalar food systems has been partially initiated in Tanzania using main entry points of safe food, nutrition and hunger, key stakeholders' engagement is still limited. 

Entry points for integrating food into urban planning
There are several entry points to integrate food into urban planning processes. Urban agriculture is largely practiced in Tanzania for self-sufficiency and to reduce food purchase costs, but is fragmented and not considered by local authorities in planning processes. The lack of supportive infrastructure further hinders residents from achieving the intended impact. Hence, a critical entry point is safeguarding land for urban agriculture and protecting and expanding important market infrastructure for nutrition.

A systemic approach to food distribution can enhance access to sufficient, affordable, and nutritious food. Rikolto is piloting the Participatory Food Security Systems (PFSS) approach in Arusha and Mbeya, aiming to ensure safe and affordable food while improving city-region food systems and livelihoods for farmers and market vendors. They are also collaborating with SMEs to develop a model that provides good prices for smallholder farmers who sell directly to the SME, and affordable, healthy food for consumers.

Food retail distribution planning is important as it affects access to nutritious food. In Tanzania, farmers and brokers are key players, with street and market vendors as main sellers in urban areas. However, these vendors often lack proper hygiene facilities, impacting food safety. Although street-based trade is technically illegal due to the Business Licensing Act, street food vending continues to employ millions. Integrating informal food systems into urban planning is crucial to ensure these vendors can provide safe, nutritious, and affordable food. Recognising the importance of street food vending, Rikolto, in collaboration with the Tanzania Horticultural Association (TAHA) and Trias, piloted mobile street food vending kiosks and designed market food vending kiosks in Arusha city.

Land regulations, land zoning and land use are important for urban food systems planning. The Urban Planning (Zoning of Land Use) Regulations, 2018 specifies critical land uses, such as agriculture. However, urban areas in Tanzania still lack food infrastructure partly due to a lack of prioritisation and financing. Tanzania can use city-to-city global learning platforms such as the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact signed by Arusha, to draw lessons on integrating urban planning and food systems.

Multi-stakeholder and community participatory planning
Multi-stakeholder policy formulation and action planning is a useful method to integrate food into urban planning. Rikolto has supported multi-stakeholder platforms in Arusha and Mbeya to coordinate actions towards a more sustainable food system. Government agencies, NGOs, farmers, businesses, and community groups, collaborate to achieve common goals related to food security, environmental sustainability, economic viability, and social equity. While food system infrastructure remains a priority, social interventions such as increasing revenue collection to support market operations and supporting vulnerable groups to actively participate in food system activities are crucial.

Recommendations
Urban food planners need to adopt a holistic approach that integrates urban planning with food system planning. 

1. Integrate planning strategies to improve food access and nutrition outcomes. This includes developing comprehensive food policy frameworks, and ensuring zoning regulations prioritise the establishment of food markets, community gardens, and urban farms in strategic locations.
2. Recognise the significant role of small and medium-sized urban centres in shaping food demand and production dynamics. Their proximity to hinterlands, peri-urban areas, and abundant land make them potential food security hubs and net food producers. Promoting agro-economic diversification, strengthening local food value chains, and fostering knowledge sharing can enhance their role in food security and resilience.
3. Prioritise food affordability in urban food planning initiatives. Targeted interventions and policies to reduce the financial burden of food expenses on vulnerable populations are crucial. Greater impact would be achieved through collaboration with smallholder farmers, local markets, food retailers and community organisations, and public support for community-led initiatives such as community gardens, urban farms and food cooperatives, would achieve greater impact.
4. Recognize street vending as a legitimate form of employment and trading. This requires amending laws, integrating informal food markets into spatial planning, promoting inclusive zoning policies, investing in vendor-training, providing safe and hygienic spaces and infrastructure, creating dialogue platforms, and extending social protection to vendors.
5. Integrate climate and environmental constraints into food systems planning. City climate action plans should address food-related challenges exacerbated by climate change. Promoting short supply chains can help localise food production and reduce environmental impact. Partnerships between local stakeholders and government agencies to jointly address food security and climate resilience challenges, such as food councils or similar mechanisms, are crucial.
6. Create an enabling environment to protect land for urban and peri-urban agriculture. This includes securing land access and tenure rights for urban farmers, and developing backyard farming regulations. Recognizing the importance of urban agriculture in open spaces, especially for vulnerable populations without land access, is crucial. Conserving peri-urban agricultural land is also essential. 
7. Build capacities to support multi-stakeholder policy formulation and action planning. Training local stakeholders involved in food systems platforms would enhance their ability to plan and implement initiatives efficiently. Streamlined coordination, promoting public-private partnerships, strengthening community engagement, and advocating for supportive policies are all crucial for building sustainable and resilient food systems.

Conclusion
Tanzania's urbanization poses challenges for food security and nutrition. Issues include food insecurity, undernutrition, urban poverty, climate change, and limited access to urban land for food activities. A holistic approach integrating urban planning with food systems is needed, along with increased research, policy development, and community engagement. Partnerships between government, NGOs, academia, and communities can help implement strategies for resilient food systems. Inclusive planning can lead to more equitable, healthy, and sustainable urban food environments.

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African cities face rapid urbanisation and unplanned growth, threatening biodiversity particularly in peri-urban, rural, and conservation areas on urban fringes. Inner-city green open spaces, which serve as green lungs in the cities, providing ecosystem services, are often not neglected or encroached upon. Urban greening and green infrastructure should thus be at the centre of urban planning as a means of attaining urban resilience. Urban green infrastructure planning can buffer cities in the face of adverse impacts through the diverse delivery of ecosystem services, and provide climate change mitigation by producing a variety of ecosystem services and having a proactive multi-function and multi-discipline approach. Green infrastructure provides various socioeconomic and cultural benefits to help cities build resilience, including cleaner air and water, recreation spaces, flood protection, diverse habitats, and beautiful green spaces.

Local governments are critical actors in championing the green urban development strategy and responding to climate and biodiversity challenges. Creating an enabling environment which integrates greening will positively influence their abilities to help urban communities become more resilient and achieve environmental, social, and economic benefits.

Growth and Greening in Dodoma
The city of Dodoma, the national capital of the United Republic of Tanzania, located in a semi-arid or dry-land environment, has long invested in building urban resilience as a way of adapting to the rapid urbanisation and climate change related challenges. The efforts have been wide-ranging, encompassing climate change adaptation, sustainable water and land management, and the promotion of green solutions for urban development, and reflect a comprehensive approach to addressing water scarcity, unreliable rainfall, severe land degradation and environmental degradation. Deforestation is a major issue, particularly in areas surrounding Dodoma, due to clearance of vegetation for agriculture, and domestic fuel deficiency which has been driving firewood harvesting. Forest patches in the urban areas have also been cleared for infrastructure development and fuel wood consumption.

The city has pursued greening initiatives since the Dodoma City Master Plan of 1976. However, early initiatives were mostly designed with minimum involvement of local communities and not sustainable due to missing links in planning, decision-making, and project implementation. The current Dodoma National Capital City Master Plan (2019 - 2039) includes a landscape improvement plan, which looks at making Dodoma a “biophilic city” through the concept of "greening and bluing the semi-arid Capital City of Dodoma". The plan aims to have 6,573,292 trees planted (an average of 1,643,323 trees planted every five years) in addition to creating and expanding more water bodies. 

Greening Initiatives
Greening initiatives, mostly through tree planting campaigns, have intensified in Dodoma. The most prominent is the Greening Dodoma Project spearheaded by the Vice President’s office since 2018, aimed at mitigating against climate change. Forest zones have also been developed, providing greenery in the areas surrounding the city. Additionally, a city open space system has been developed, and the growth and health of young plants are being monitored. Greening is also being encouraged through educational campaigns like the “Study with a Tree” which aims to cultivate a culture of protecting the environment among students. In addition to tree planting, grape farming which is solely done in Dodoma promotes green open spaces whilst supporting the livelihoods of peri-urban farmers. Other greening efforts have included application of nature based solutions such as regenerative agriculture in community farms, sustainable irrigation and native flora integration. 

Partnerships in greening initiatives
Partnerships with non-state actors play a pivotal role in Dodoma’s greening initiatives. Some major collaborations have been with international organisations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), UN-Habitat, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The private sector has been greatly involved, for instance Vodacom Tanzania Foundation (VTF) which is supporting the Greening Dodoma Project and the African Development Bank supporting the Tanzania Green Solutions for Sustainable Urban Development in the Dodoma City project. Community engagement has been paramount throughout the greening process, with stakeholders, including local residents and authorities, involved in decision making and implementation which fosters a sense of ownership. For instance, local community youth and women groups are key implementing partners in the Greening Dodoma Project.

Challenges and opportunities in Dodoma’s greening initiatives
Dodoma’s greening initiatives, implemented amid various challenges and opportunities, offer valuable insights for policymakers and urban planners. Challenges include financial and institutional capacity constraints, lack of integration of greening in urban planning, policy gaps, the governance approach which has not deeply involved community members, need for public awareness among the city's residents, spatial constraints from compact development, and poor management and protection of open spaces from urban sprawl.

Harnessing opportunities can sustain greening efforts over the long term. The city’s newness allows for the allocation of more green urban spaces and protection from invasion. Solutions like rainwater harvesting can be integrated in infrastructure developments. Effective urban planning, such as the current Dodoma City Master Plan, should ensure allocation of open spaces for urban and peri-urban agriculture. There is strong national government support and political will for the greening agenda which Dodoma City Council can tap into to develop green infrastructure strategies and build urban resilience. A suitable regulatory environment through supportive municipal laws and strengthened enforcement is critical. Private sector involvement in managing green urban spaces helps overcome budget constraints and enables better risk-sharing in long-term investments.

Recommendations
A holistic and collaborative approach is imperative in envisioning the future of Dodoma's green investments and developments. Some key recommendations include:

1. Starting early by focusing greening efforts in schools. School grounds are key for ecological, pedagogical, and social transformation.
2. Integration of greening and green infrastructure into spatial and urban planning.
3. Tying greening initiatives to livelihoods. For instance, urban agriculture can serve as a catalyst for poverty alleviation and sustainable livelihood provision. 
4. Amplifying incentives can bolster public acceptance of regulatory interventions.
5. Raise awareness about environmental benefits and foster appreciation for nature.
6. Enforcement of regulations through inclusive governance that empowers non-state actors to actively participate.
7. Empowering local communities to lead and maintain green open spaces.
8. Private sector involvement can help meet the financing gap and enable better risk-sharing in green infrastructure development.
9. Expanding the definition of greening beyond tree planting, to preservation of existing natural flora in peri-urban areas, riverbanks, and other ecologically significant zones.

Conclusion
The unchecked urban expansion threatens biodiversity, increases climate change vulnerability, and weakens urban resilience. Urgent greening initiatives, beyond tree planting, are essential in Dodoma and other African cities. As urbanization accelerates, robust green infrastructure planning is needed, supported by comprehensive policies, resources, and innovative financing. A holistic, collaborative approach is crucial, recognizing the benefits of green spaces and engaging communities.

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Rapid population growth is leading to an increased demand for urban services. This is taking place at rates that are beyond the capacity of local governments. Furthermore, local governments have experienced challenges in providing services in informal settlements, leaving them excluded from the benefits of urban services.  Service provision is a responsibility of local governments, and in Tanzania, the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania under Act no.14 advocates that “every person has the right to live and to the protection of his life by the society in accordance with the law”. Community mobilisation has proven effective in promoting alternative waste management practices in informal contexts. These practices should integrate with urban service delivery systems, support a circular economy, and align with national waste management policies. The points below capture a reflective conversation organisation through four key questions, unpacking waste management in Tanzania,  providing insight into how community led processes offer value and require a different worldview to implement effectively.

How are you engaging with the Waste Management issue? And with the interdependencies of waste with other sectors?
Real solutions to address waste management have not been developed in Tanzania. Challenges have emerged due to the increasing rates of waste production and consumption which have produced greater amounts of non-organic waste that are polluting and harming the environment and compromising human health. Lack of awareness is often noted as a key cause of poor waste management behaviour, but the core challenge is the lack of systems that can help solve the structural problem. We cannot ask people to be mindful of how they dispose of their waste if we do not have adequate collection systems, and we cannot ask people to not dump their waste if collection is irregular. These systemic problems require systemic solutions - collectively designing a system that works for all. 

The paradigm that you're working on is around Zero Waste. What does this mean? How do we know that we're in a zero waste reality? What does this look like? How has your zero waste work in cities evolved in Tanzania?
The zero waste system that Nipe Fagio is trying to implement requires that the challenges produced by our consumption and production systems are addressed. The ambitious objective of the approach is to have zero waste in the environment. Interventions must consider redesign and repurposing principles. The approach can also generate employment and promote social justice. However, upstream solutions are required for downstream solutions to work. 

Since 2019 when initiated, the zero waste systems have resulted in the creation of successful waste cooperatives, opening the door for the registration of other waste-related cooperatives and waste pickers groups. The entry point for the zero waste approach was trying to understand what people in communities value and use and understanding their needs in order to identify approaches to support community engagement and subsequently begin conversations about segregation at source. The ethos is to manage as much waste as possible at the local level, particularly through decentralised organic waste treatment processes. The value addition of the approach includes improved waste record-keeping for better insights into waste typologies, fewer municipal trips to landfills, and recovery of 70–85% of usable waste from household waste.

Through this process, what are the links that you see with the Zero Waste work led by communities in terms of improving the resilience in these cities?
A common question that often arises is how this approach has worked in Tanzania where waste management projects often fail due to poor community buy-in. Nipe Fagio’s zero waste approach prioritises community collaboration which is achieved through a bottom up approach, that in turn builds confidence in the community that their efforts are achieving expected outcomes. Integration with the community throughout the project was a purposeful inclusion into the model.

What are the principles that you witness that have made your engagements more successful?
Effective community engagement requires trusting the process, allowing communities to adapt plans to their needs, and embracing what organically emerges and how the community interprets and adapts plans to their own needs. Rigid, top-down approaches risk rejection, while bottom-up methods that embrace uncertainty often yield better results. Purposeful community-led initiatives yield greater impact.

Could you describe a little bit what this has looked like in Dar es Salaam, given that you've been working to convince funders to shift away from a focus on large plants and into a bit more of a decentralised approach?
In solid waste management, there is a general perception that handling people adds complexity due to diverse perspectives and expectations. However, it is from people in households where solid waste will typically emerge and where solid waste management needs to start. In Tanzania, there is growing recognition that people are central - you cannot implement solid waste management before engaging communities, before engaging people. Similarly, the idea of decentralised waste management at the community level has become more prominent.

How do we go from narrative change to meaningful change on the ground? How are you making the value proposition work for funders?
The challenge with working with international organisations seeking to create impact on the ground is that their value propositions may differ from what is required in our context. It is therefore important to acknowledge the strengths of different organisations in the system and align these with the elements required to improve or transform our systems. Partnerships are essential, and by engaging honestly we can start to see broader systems change. 

How does the Nipe Fagio Zero Waste Approach contribute to urban resilience?
You cannot achieve resilience without engaging communities and resilience is not a top to bottom approach, but rather a collectively built process. It’s about creating systems that address local problems, supporting their articulation, and ensuring that people can contribute the very solutions that they have been working on already. 

To achieve resilience, two main elements need to be solved. The first is segregation at source - without segregated waste, any system that is developed will fail. The second is social justice, which is about ensuring that people are seen, and their voices reflected in the solutions implemented. By adopting a social justice approach to the zero waste work in Tanzania, many people working in cooperatives have not only seen the positive impacts of the initiative in their communities, they have also contributed to broader societal goals and found meaningful work.

Closing reflection
When people are given a good choice, they will take it. Although people may bring complications to a project if their needs are not represented in externally-led processes, when they are engaged earnestly and honestly they can become strong allies to a project.

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