About Us

Background and current status

“Actions for Democracy and Local Governance” (ADLG) is a dully registered national nongovernment organisation (NGO) advocating for active citizens participation, local democracy and governance in Tanzania. The establishment of ADLG was highly motivated by the readings of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Tanzania’s local governance structure and practices, politics, elections and respective political decisions that affect welfare and livelihood of rural, poor and marginalized Tanzanians.

ADLG enables abilities of teachers, young people and religious leaders within small hold farmers, mining and fishing communities to actively promote citizen-led democratic governance, people’s democracy and accountability at village, ward and district levels. ADLG works to challenge practices, promote innovations, critical thinking and also inspiring the rural communities to join the momentum of active citizenry.

1. Legal establishment of organization

Name of Organization : Actions for Democracy and Local Governance
Acronym : ADLG
Legal status : Limited with grantees without shares
Year of establishment : May 2010
Year of registration : 2011
Registration number : 84372
TIN registration number : 118-847-407

2. Statement of capacity of organisation at present

ADLG has been implementing governance programme in 6 districts of Shinyanga Region (now split into Shinyanga, Simiyu and Geita) since 2011. A core component of the programme has been the capacity-building of 408 Community animators through training sessions and on-going mentoring and coaching. The approach of the programme has been non-issue specific, meaning that the animators are supported to develop a broad range of skills and access various types of information and they themselves, along with their community, decide what issues they would like to follow up and take action on.

ADLG also facilitates open dialogues at village and district levels (as part of local activism and advocacy) within these communities with interest of bringing issues raised during trainings and mentoring sessions to the attention of “policy makers” at Local Government level.

ADLG is an active member of Agriculture Non-state Actors Forum (ANSAF) and Policy Forum; these are the most active and reputable CSO national networks in Tanzania. ADLG joined these networks to get connected to national level advocacy and also skilfully connect issues raised at local government level to these national level efforts. ADLG is also working with ANSAF in Social Accountability Monitoring System which is really starting to gain momentum in Sengerema and Bariadi districts.

ADLG works with Hakielimu in facilitating radio dialogues particularly on education issues in one district as a pilot project. Here the animation goes to another level where we facilitate dialogues within the community (as usual) but these dialogues continue through a community radio available at the district.

ADLG seats at the Policy Forum’s Board of directors to support the implementation of the 2014/16 strategic plan.