by Sheila Farrell
Elidetha and friends who benefited from an Mboni ya Vijana project with TDT funding to provide a borehole in her village in Kigoma region.
A good year for TDT
Tanzania Development Trust, the development arm of the Britain Tanzania Society, has just completed another good year, although revenues at £243,000 were £50,000 below their 2023-24 peak due to a reduction in legacies and large “one-off” donations.
Just over half of our general income comes from individual donations, with BTS members providing around half of these. A further 10% comes from BTS members using TDT as a tax-efficient way of sending money to their own projects in Tanzania. Although we have diversified our sources of income in recent years, attracting more external grants and non-BTS donations, it is ultimately your generosity that determines the number of projects we are able to undertake each year. So please think about whether you might be able to donate a little bit more now, or remember us in your will.
TDT has completed some truly inspiring projects in 2024-25 in its core areas of clean water, girls’ education, and small income-generating activities, benefitting an estimated 110,000 people. Most of the projects are small (under £6,000) but provide the seed capital needed to help people to help themselves.
In the water sector, we have on-going programmes for the construction of shallow boreholes and spring protection works. These are great value for money. Costing around £1,500 each, they provide clean water to small villages of around 1,500 people who previously relied on dirty ponds or streams at risk of disappearing during the dry season. The public health benefits have been immediately apparent, and many of the schemes also reduce the time spent fetching water. Around half of our income was spent on clean water projects last year, allowing us to bring clean water to over 60 villages.
In education, we provided 13 schools with hostels, computer technology or help in growing their own food, as well as a boarding school for teenage mothers in Tabora. TDT is also closely involved with a vocational training centre and school for deaf children near Dodoma.
Small income generating projects help people to set up sustainable businesses that add value to local agricultural outputs, make use of local raw materials, or supply regular local demands for things like school uniforms. Pass-a-pig (or goat) schemes remained popular, and last year we became involved for the first time in a plastics recycling project offering commercial incentives for better waste management.
TDT is run entirely by volunteers, so 100% of the money we raise goes directly to projects in Tanzania. Our UK-based Project Officers are responsible for ensuring that all projects are properly vetted before any funding is approved and follow up on projects after they have been completed to check how effective they have been. However, our big success in recent years has been in building up a 17-strong team of Local Representatives who act as our eyes and ears on the ground. Local knowledge is the key to effective development assistance, and they have been invaluable in providing it. So a big Thank You to our Tanzanian volunteers.
If you would like to read TDT’s Annual Report in full, you can find it at https://www.bit.ly/TDTAR25