Tanzania: Preventing the Resource Curse

The “Preventing the Resource Curse” Capstone project focused on developing robust anti-corruption mechanisms to prevent the ‘resource curse’ in Tanzania’s natural gas sector. The project aimed to develop policies that addressed the paradoxically poor development outcomes in resource rich Tanzania. To ensure the equitable distribution of project gains— both financial and non-financial—amongst all stakeholders, the project constructed a holistic social impact strategy that integrated tenets of good governance, transparency and accountability into natural resource projects.

Working with the client, Tanzania’s Prevention and Combatting of Corruption Bureau (PCCB), the team developed a strategic legal and policy implementation framework that emphasizes three critical areas: 

1. Developing a Social Impact Assessment and Management Tool to manage relationships between foreign direct investors and affected communities;
2. Institutionalizing and legally integrating this Tool into the Tanzanian government’s broader governance system; and
3. Legislative drafting aimed at reforming key legislation related to the extraction of natural resources in Tanzania, especially the natural gas sector.

Taken together, these three pillars will offer PCCB a policy road map to create the institutional structures necessary to tackle the natural gas resource curse in Tanzania. In the end, the team offered an innovative set of recommendations that better facilitate the PCCB’s mandate to combat corruption in Tanzania.