The paper reviews the current progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Tanzania with particular reference to
its MDG Acceleration Framework introduced in 2010, identifies challenges and opportunities, and proposes key pointers for a new
agenda. While Tanzania has made steady progress in many of the MDGs and targets, it is lagging behind in others. Direct targeted
policy interventions seem to have paid off in areas such as education, child health and gender equality. However, a little push could
enable Tanzania to achieve some MDG targets by 2015, if strategic policy interventions are effectively implemented on a priority
basis. Spillover effects of growth on rural communities seem to be weak, requiring a rethinking of its growth strategies. Recent
programs such as the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor, under the Agriculture First or Kilimo Kwanza initiative, could be a
stepping stone to achieving the poverty and hunger targets, if connected to small holder farmers going beyond a narrow focus of
technology intensive large-scale commercial farming. While Tanzania has a clear objective of aligning its development strategies
to achieving the MDGs, implementation of policies seem to have been constrained by gaps in institutional, financial and human
resource capacities. The MDG Acceleration Framework, with a focus on reducing hunger, provided cost-effective and innovative
solutions to address some of the key bottlenecks that prevented Tanzania from achieving the hunger target by 2015. To accelerate
progress, Tanzania could also apply similar cost-effective solutions to other MDGs targets where it is lagging.