Corruption in Tanzania: The Case for Circumstantial Evidence By ...

For the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), governance and human development are indivisible entities: human development cannot be sustained without good governance, and governance cannot be sound unless it sustains human development. UNDP defines governance as the exercise of political, economic, and administrative authority in the management of a country’s affairs at all levels. Governance comprises the complex mechanisms, processes, and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, mediate their differences, and exercise their legal rights and obligations. Good governance has many attributes; it is participatory, transparent, and accountable. It is effective in making the best use of resources and is equitable. In addition, it promotes the rule of law.²¹

Governance is participatory in the sense that it includes the state but transcends it by taking in the private sector and civil society. The three together create a favourable political and legal environment. The private sector generates jobs and income. The civil society facilitates political and social interaction—mobilising groups to participate in economic, social, and political activities. Because each has weaknesses and strengths, a major objective of our support for good governance is to promote constructive interaction amongst the three.²²

Mwenda is of the strong view that such definitions do not constitute, jurisprudentially, well-set-out legal definitions of good governance.²³ He made a case that if, indeed, the term good governance is a legal concept, then it is not enough to state simply that good governance is epitomised by predictable, open, and enlightened public policy; a bureaucracy imbued with a professional ethos acting in furtherance of the public good; the rule of law; transparency processes; and a strong civil society participating in public affairs.²⁴