Introduction
M&E has been conducted in international development partner projects since 1990s. The practice has however not been professionalized akin to that of auditor and accountants. It has been left to sector specialists who undertake periodic project reviews, monitoring and evaluation. These sector specialists however have not had a cadre of personnel to assist them in undertaking M&E activities. The Certificate in M&E aims at developing a pool of auxiliary M&E technicians who can provide support and assistance to senior sector specialists in conducting M&E assignments.

M&E is an integral part of project management, development planning, and budget execution. M&E has now been sufficiently integrated into Tanzania’s national policies and programmes such as M&E systems for the Five Year Development Plan II (2016-2021), Vision 2030, MKUKUTA II, TASAF II; and MKUZA II and Vision 2020 for the case of Zanzibar. The Government of Tanzania is increasingly emphasizing on accountability, and monitoring of results. In FY 2017/18 the Government budget guidelines directed all MDAs/LGAs should make provision for M&E activities in-order to ensure effectiveness, efficiency, maximize impacts, and to ensure sustainability of results. The Government has established M&E Units in all Town Councils and Municipalities (14 in total) on a pilot basis and plans to scale-up to District Councils in the next 2 years. These Units do not have skilled manpower to design, establish, monitor, evaluate, and report on their development plans including implementation of industrialization in synch with the FYDP II (2016-2021).

The vocation of monitoring and evaluation assistants has been an open and available opportunity for many young people who finish their ordinary secondary schools certificate, or who volunteer in the NGO sector, as data collection assistance in M&E activities such as quality assurance and planning. The Certificate in M&E will enable course participants to increase their skills in M&E data collection recording, managing database and obtain certification, and therefore increase their prospects in serving as M&E assistants to serve various organizational and research needs. This will increase the pool of qualified M&E assistants who can be available to undertake systematic data collection in a reliable manner that minimizes the researcher’s bias and margin of error.

An increasing number of private sector organizations including manufacturing industries engage in periodic or routine M&E particular of data collection on sales, customer satisfaction and consumer behavior. These organizations normally incur cost in consulting and employing part-time people to collect, and report such data. Certificate in M&E holders will earn increasing recognition to serve the data needs of organizations which is in the increase in the economy. Specifically Certificate in M&E graduates will serve as field level officer for these organizations.