A Need of a Compulsory Corporate Social Responsibility in Tanzania: An Analysis of Laws and Practices

Corporate social responsibility is the corporate practice to contribute to the surrounding society. It can simply be termed as bringing back the part of the business profit to the society. The CSR practices in Tanzania are more charitable community support projects by the business entities rather than being legal. In Tanzania exists various economic sectors like entertainment, industry, tourism, manufacturing, agriculture, transport, communication, sports, fishing, ports and so many other sectors. However, over all these sectors it is only in the mining and petroleum sector where the CSR programmes are legally recognised. This infers that it is only the provisions of the Mining Act of 2010 and the Petroleum Act of 2015 which considers the compulsory implementation of corporate social responsibility programmes. On the other economic sectors the implementation of the programmes are not addressed at all in the provisions of the law. Hence, the performance of the CSR programmes is left at the business entities’ discretion. Some of the business didn’t implement any CSR programme at all in the surrounding community. Therefore there is no sign of these businesses of bringing back a fraction of what they have acquired from the community. In this sense therefore, there is a need of amending the existing legal regime (s) or else to enact new law (s) which will recognises the compulsory implementation of CSR by all entities operating in all economic sectors in Tanzania. This will help the community to remain with the positive sign for the investment fixed in their areas as well as to raise the company reputation.