Tanzania: The Diagnosis

What our team of 42 Tanzanians and 20 ILD researchers -with the help of 932 key informants throughout Tanzania and Zanzibar (See Annex)- have found is nothing short of extraordinary.

First, what Tanzanians are generally not aware of, is that in the process of creating solutions for operating outside the law, they have built their own economic model. This model is underpinned by 17 solid and well-documented "archetypes" -patterns of social interaction whose further development is fundamental to the creation of a legal economic order that is rooted in Tanzania's indigenous culture.

Secondly, we have identified what are probably the 67 most important bottlenecks in the legal system that are responsible for the exclusion of the poor and account in part for their inability to create wealth.

As a result, this report has been able to put together some preliminary indications as to what the Government of Tanzania might do to integrate its enormous extralegal economy under a single rule of law - based on existing Tanzanian practices and beliefs that will create immediate benefits for all Tanzanians and not only the small minority already using the present legal system.

This report is divided into six parts:

• Volume I: an Executive Summary for those who wish to know its contents in 25 pages; and for those who wish to examine the contents in detail, there is the full 1,700 page presentation: the Program to Formalize the Assets of the Poor of Tanzania and Strengthen the Rule of Law: Final Diagnosis Report.
• Volume II reports on Tanzania's extralegal economy, its archetypes and its size
• Volume III analyzes the institutions and costs of the nation's legal economy
• Volume IV details the barriers to using property and doing business nationwide
• Volume V offers a step by step view of how ordinary Tanzanians experience the existing legal procedures regulating business and real estate
• Volume VI provides the documents that support the Diagnosis.

The Executive Summary can be downloaded at the bottom of this page. If you require the other volumes, please contact the ILD by clicking on this link.