Faith Based Organizations and Development in Tanzania

Abstract

Faith Based Organizations (FBOs) have attracted growing attention in international academic and policy studies concerning the role of the nonprofit sector and the role of religions in development. Supported by important international research organizations, donor agencies and government development bodies, these studies are seeking to establish the contribution of hitherto inadequately recognized non-governmental sectors and actors to poverty alleviation and development among large, mostly marginalized, populations. This paper examines FBOs as important development actors in the non-profit sector in Tanzania. More importantly however is the fact that to a very large extent FBOs in Tanzania are local institutions. They do receive some international assistance as well as being influenced international discourse on a number of issues, yet by and large the control is local and they operate guided by their own internal logic. While the academic and policy discourse on the non-profit sector is relatively recent, starting especially in the late 1980s, FBOs in Tanzania have been active for more than a century. The paper examines both the traditional and current roles of FBOs in the country with the view to establish their contributions in meeting the challenges to development in Tanzania today. It draws on analytical frameworks found in the study of the non-profit sector and civil society organizations as well as the concrete experience of religions and FBOs in the development process in Tanzania.