Prime
Pertinent questions about management of Dar es Salaam
What you need to know:
- Large cities like Dar es Salaam pose special management challenges. They occupy a special position in the country’s economic, social and political life. How much of the city should be left to local government authorities, and how much should be in the hands of the central government is always a problem to consider.
The first week of November 2024 saw the signing of contracts between the Ministry of State, President’s Office Regional Administration and Local Government (PO-LARG) and a number of contractors to implement Phase II of the Dar es Salaam Metropolitan Development Programme (DMDP). Some 250km of roads will be constructed. The expected projects include the construction of drainage systems, markets, bus stations, public open spaces and solid waste management infrastructure. Clearly, this is going to bring a lot of relief to the residents of the city, estimated to hover around 8 million people.
Large cities like Dar es Salaam pose special management challenges. They occupy a special position in the country’s economic, social and political life. How much of the city should be left to local government authorities, and how much should be in the hands of the central government is always a problem to consider. The Central government, latter, being in position of raising a lot of both internal and external resources, finds itself compelled to handle a lot of development activities in the City. It should be noted that a city is also a political asset. What happens in a large city has more than local implications. It is the concern of the whole nation.
As a result, there have been clashes, in many countries, between central government and local (especially city) governments, should the latter appear to be getting too powerful. A city like Dar es Salaam is the largest source of national revenue; has the largest port and airports, has the largest number of important industrial establishments, as well as the largest economic and social institutions, including hospitals and institutions of higher learning; national stadiums and cultural centres. As remarked by one observer recently: “roads are too important to be left to local governments”. The same could be said of water, electricity, transport, environmental management and so on.
Local governance structures over the city of Dar es Salaam have changed considerably since the mid-1990s. Already, by the mid-1980s, Dar es Salaam was presenting huge governance challenges so much so that in June 1996, the Dar es Salaam City Council was disbanded and was replaced by a City Commission. The Commission did a great job of cleaning up the city and improving infrastructure. However, its tenure was temporary.
During this interim period, the future of the local governance structure for Dar es Salaam was contemplated. The unitary structure was seen as being inadequate to handle city matters, as it had grown considerably large. The City was divided into three Municipalities: Ilala, Kinondoni and Temeke, efforts being made to balance the assets of Dar es Salaam over these municipalities. Ilala got the city centre, the richest area in the City; Kinondoni had the high value area of Oysterbay; and Temeke got the port, the airport and the industrial area.
In 2014, two other municipalities, Kigamboni and Ubungo were created, out of the Temeke and Kinondoni municipalities respectively.
A Dar es Salaam City Council (DCC) was also established, with separate responsibilities from the municipalities, as an overarching authority to mainly coordinate issues and attend to issues cutting across the municipalities; and matters of inter-dependency such as inter-district road networks and joint activities such as transport, environment, tourism, employment and the like. Soon, however, clashes developed between the five municipalities and the overarching DCC, which had no physical territory. Clashes also included misunderstandings over sources of revenue. In February 2021 the DCC was abolished and its duties transferred to the Ilala Municipality which was elevated to a (Dar es Salaam) City Council, possibly shedding its name of Ilala.
This situation seems to be unsatisfactory and the Minister of State in charge of local government said recently, at the signing ceremony referred to above that: “All major cities around the world have a ‘Metropolitan City’ and we cannot have councils operating in isolation. There needs to be a central authority to coordinate efforts across all councils allowing the city to grow to international standards”. The Minister has thus ordered the expedition of the establishment of the Dar es Salaam City Management Authority (DCMA).
This has got lovers of local governance, particularly Decentralisation by Devolution scratching their heads. Will the DCMA be a local authority (like was the former DCC), or a central government agency (like are TANROADS, TARURA, RUWASA)? Hopefully, there will be public consultations over this.
Besides, it is time our cities were managed by professionals, people who are well-grounded in managing enterprises. Such people should be appointed on a competitive basis and they should have targets to attain over a certain period, in various aspects of urban development such as infrastructure, land use planning, housing, waste and environmental management, transport, economic development (especially employment) law and order, and so on. There is need to explore ways of giving city governments more local autonomy (including revenue sources) so that they can be taken to task by city residents, when things go hay wire. This way, city authorities might be made to focus on the needs of the city residents.
