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On 18 November 2011 nearly 100 civil society groups from as many countries and 12 international organizations, including the International Budget Partnership, Greenpeace, and the ONE Campaign, launched a global effort to make public budgets transparent, participatory, and accountable. The effort centers on building an integrated and vibrant movement of organizations that will work at the local, national, and international level to promote government budgeting that is open and accountable to the public. The organizations meeting in Dar es Salaam to launch the global Civil Society Movement for Budget Transparency, Accountability, and Participation laid the foundation of the movement by signing a Declaration of Principles.

The Citizen newspaper in Tanzania reports that donors have challenged the Government to focus on improving the quality of education. The newspaper quotes Mr. Robert Orr, the Canadian High Commissioner to Tanzania, during a joint education sector review session in Dar es Salaam, saying that it was not sufficient to allocate teachers and text books to schools. It was equally important to ensure teachers are actually in classrooms and motivated.

Uwezo is quoted in an IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks) feature article on allheadlinenews.com. The writer uses Uwezo findings from the 2010 Annual Learning Assessment Report to illustrate how Uganda's rural primary schools lag behind in quality of education. In Kotido District in Karamoja, only 13% of students in the final year of primary school were able to perform arithmetic sums at their grade level.

The Ugandan weekly The Independent and the daily newspaper New Vision both published an opinion editorial written by Morrison Rwakakamba, Twaweza Uganda's Manager.

In the article, Morrison raises doubts about the willingness of the Ugandan Government to implement its own policy commitments of transparency to its citizens. Uganda is eligible to the Open Government Partnership, but did not join when the initiative was launched in September 2011. Moreover, the author claims that the Government has not delivered on its promises of openness and fiscal integrity which included transparent issuance of tax exemptions and the publishing of government balances.

Kwanza Jamii, the new Iringa newspaper, quotes the District Commissioner saying that more than 3,000 students between Standards three and seven do not know how to read or write both English and Swahili. These observations, made by the highest ranking government official in the district, mirror the findings of Uwezo�s Annual Learning Assessment Report 2011. The District Commissioner advised parents, students and teachers to work harder in order to reduce the number of illiterate students.

The Standard in Kenya reports that the Secondary School Heads Association and the Primary Schools Heads Association want the capitation grant increased from Kshs 10,265 to more than Kshs 20,000 and from Kshs 1,020 to Kshs 7,250, respectively, per student. The grant is spent on purchasing books, desks and other necessary equipment for learning. The current figures were set in 2003 when Kenya introduced free day-secondary schooling. School heads argue that since then prices have increased by more than double.

In contrast in Tanzania, the secondary school capitation grant is Tshs 25,000, or about Kshs 1300 only. For primary education, according to a government report, less than Tshs 3,000 or only about Kshs 150 was disbursed to primary schools in the last financial year. Read more.