Local content requirements in the petroleum sector in Tanzania: A thorny road from inception to implementation?

Tanzania has recently discovered huge offshore natural gas fields. This has led the Government to develop local content policies (LCPs) to increase job and business opportunities for nationals in the sector. We study the process behind the development of these policies and the positions of stakeholders. We find that although there is a positive view among domestic stakeholders of imposing such policies, there is much suspicion–to such a degree that it shapes their recommendations of which policies to include in the LCP. One reason is that the Government monopolized the policy development process and abstained from conducting a consultative process. Our findings suggest that future Tanzanian policy development should include in-depth consultations to maximize the decision maker’s knowledge base, add to the transparency of the process and manage expectations. This would also contribute to effective implementation and lessen tensions, conflicts and suspicion among stakeholders. This research is funded by the Norwegian Embassy in Tanzania, which is gratefully acknowledged. We are also grateful to Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, Kendra Dupuy, Siri Lange, Jan Isaksen and participants at the REPOA Annual Workshop 2016 for useful comments. CMI working paper number 6 2016 Repoa working paper number 16/4 August 2016 Authors Abel Kinyondo Director of Strategic Research, REPOA Espen Villanger Corresponding author. Senior Researcher, Chr. Michelsen Institute Printed version: ISSN 0804-3639 Electronic version: ISSN 1890-5048 Printed version: ISBN 978-82-8062-600-4 Electronic version: ISBN 978-82-8062-601-1 www.repoa.or.tz www.cmi.no