A really powerful report was launched on Monday July 4 in Dar es Salaam. The Uwezo East Africa Report presents, for the first time, data comparing literacy and numeracy levels across East Africa, based on a survey of over 80,000 households-- the largest exercise of its kind.

Water and electricity are the lifeblood of development. Tamasha did a village survey of eight districts in Tanzania to find out how young people access water and electricity services. The findings show that in many places there are multiple water projects, but electricity remains a rare commodity. Despite the multiplicity of water sources, methods of tapping it for domestic and commercial use remain largely inefficient. As a result, young men have to cut schooling hours and interrupt other economic activities in order to spend time looking for water. This policy brief recommends that young people be trained and employed to maintain water projects. The private sector should be given incentives to invest in solar power so that more people will have access to reliable electricity in rural and remote areas. Read the research brief.

Last year, Uwezo carried out the first Annual Learning Assessment Report, which provided a country wide picture of the level of basic numeracy and literacy skills of our children in primary schools. Over 40,000 children in over 20,000 households, across 38 districts in Tanzania were assessed - this was the largest survey of its kind. One year on... Have these results changed? Are our children learning more?

Can mobile phones help bringing primary school teachers and pupils back into the classroom? Teachers' absenteeism in Uganda is one of the highest in the world, with obvious implications for the quality of education. With absenteeism rates of 20% - 30% varying per districts, teacher absenteeism costs the Ugandan government US$ 30 million every year for paid services that are not delivered (World Bank, MoES). And if teachers are absent, why attend as a pupil? 27% of Ugandan children are not in school at any given moment, despite free universal education. And it appears pupil drop-out is on the rise. Surprisingly, despite these dramatic figures, no routine data is available on pupil and teacher attendance.

Citizens are mapping an informal settlement in Tandale, Dar es Salaam in order to improve delivery of basic services. The project is managed by the GroundTruth Initiative, with support from Ardhi University, the World Bank and Twaweza. GroundTruth recently completed a similar project in Kibera, Nairobi, and lessons from Kenya are taken on board for the Tandale mapping.