Ensuring Sustainability of Donor-funded French Language Projects in Tanzania: A Critical Policy Analysis and Implementation Framework

Abstract

Donor-funded French language projects can expand instructional capacity, professional mobility and regional communication in Tanzania, yet their public value depends less on the duration of external finance than on whether useful functions become embedded in Tanzanian institutions. This critical narrative review integrates evidence from Tanzanian language-in-education research, education policy, foreign-aid scholarship, international development project management, teacher professional learning and implementation-sustainability studies. Literature published from 1 January 1995 to 15 June 2026 was prioritised, with earlier foundational studies retained where necessary. The review finds a distinctive policy opportunity: French is already represented in national curricular provision and has functional relevance in East African regional institutions and peacekeeping, so donor initiatives can reinforce an existing policy and demand environment rather than construct an isolated parallel system. The principal threats to sustainability are nevertheless structural. They include nominal rather than operational country ownership, weak recurrent-financing arrangements, projectised staffing, one-off professional development, insufficient adaptation to Tanzania's Kiswahili-English-French linguistic ecology, urban concentration, dependence on donor-controlled materials or digital platforms, and monitoring systems that privilege activity completion over institutional capability and post-exit outcomes. Evidence across fields indicates that durable effects are more plausible when policy alignment, local decision authority, professional capability, recurrent resources, locally usable materials, stakeholder demand, equity and adaptive monitoring are designed as mutually dependent conditions. On this basis, the review proposes a Tanzanian Sustainability Transition Framework organised around six domains and a staged transition from co-design to post-exit learning. The framework is a synthesis-derived implementation model rather than a validated instrument. Its central policy implication is that donor exit should be treated as an institutional transition problem: projects should progressively transfer functions, authority, recurrent obligations, knowledge assets and accountability to capable Tanzanian actors while preserving the ability to adapt. Prospective evaluation is required to test whether this approach improves sustained provision, equitable access and learner or professional outcomes.