A range of workers at the Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF), have participated in the third monitoring and evaluation conference held in Zanzibar earlier this week and brought together stakeholders from various sectors to learn and exchange experiences on the two topics.

In a phone interview with this journalist, the Fund's IT specialist, Peter Lwanda, said the conference targeted at extending knowledge and awareness on the whole process of evaluation and monitoring of projects.

"The monitoring and evaluation in our various departments has been conducted for a while now, the conference is important for us to link ties and continue to learn more efficiently at place of work," said Lwanda.

According to him, TASAF has been running various projects in Zanzibar and in the meeting officials also presented the achievements achieved by the beneficiaries of the fund in Zanzibar.

"When it comes to evaluation, we have also been evaluating ourselves through hired external experts believing that we cannot evaluate ourselves if we want the right results, and the main thing is to ensure that the goals of this fund are included in each of its projects," he said.

The third conference, which started on September 17 and involved stakeholders from various sectors, ended yesterday in the islands.

It was recently reported that TASAF has successfully uplifted 400,000 households from abject poverty through extension of Livelihood Productive Grants (LPG).

The Fund had since 2014 provided LPG to beneficiaries as it now considers existing the mentioned uplifted beneficiaries as per the programme design, which are then provided with coaching and mentorship training during payment windows.

The LPG disbursed to 83,666 beneficiary households amounted to 17.1bn/- as the first installment and 77,972 beneficiary households received a full amount valued at 13.9bn/-.

The maximum amount of LPG per beneficiary households is 350,000/- which has been helpful to widows, youths and people living with disabilities to establish income generating activities such as small scale businesses.

TASAF further supports these investments with business development skills and technical training. A total of 60,327 beneficiaries’ savings groups with 838,241 members have been formed.

The cumulative amount of savings in the groups currently stands at 7.9bn/-. Out of these savings, 3.2bn/- was given out as loans to members for investing into their income generating activities since 2019.

As of June 2024, a total of 5,195,605 direct beneficiaries have been enrolled in the program, with 55.7 percent being females and 44.3 percent being males.

Established in 2000, TASAF is a government agency dedicated to advancing social protection and poverty reduction efforts in Tanzania. Its implementation has been observed through phases namely TASAF 1 and 2 (2000 – 2012), followed by the first phase of Productive Social Safety Net (TASAF3- PSSN I) from 2012-2019 and currently implementing TASAF3-PSSN II from February 2020 to September 2025.

PSSN II has the objective of improving access to income earnings opportunities and socio-economic services for targeted households while enhancing and protecting the human capital of their children. Implementation of PSSN II is based on two major components: Productive household support and strengthening institutional Capacity and Integrated Delivery System.