USAID has supported voluntary family planning programs in Tanzania since the late 1980s, playing a key role in helping establish Tanzania’s national program. Family planning is integrated with other key health services in order to advance progress toward the goals of meeting unmet need, reducing maternal mortality, and improving child survival rates. Although modern contraceptive use in Tanzania continues to grow and the total fertility rate has fallen from 5.8 to 5.2 births per woman over the past 20 years, teenage pregnancy remains high and there has been limited change in the country’s unmet need for family planning.

The modern contraceptive prevalence rate in Tanzania increased from 20 percent to 32 percent over the past decade, with the variety of available methods steadily increasing to encompass a wider range of short-term, long-acting, and permanent methods. Through sustained efforts to improve the country’s health supply chain, national distribution of contraceptives has improved, although resource allocation and stock-outs remain problematic. Capacity building in the public sector, family planning outreach services, social marketing, and behavior change communications have also had a positive impact, as shown by growing access to and use of family planning services.