An inquiry on strategies to mitigate fake certificates: a case of Tanzania

This paper is about strategies to mitigate fake certificates in Tanzania. Fake certificates have been alarming and the government of Tanzania tried to take some initiatives to solve the respective problem. Previous strategies which traditionally were used by the government to curb the problem; included submission of copy of form four certificate and copy of form 6 certificates of selected applicants to employing authority, rules and regulations such as Standing Orders, despite such traditional technique fake certificates still persists in public sector recruitment. This paper unravels the traditional strategies and also proposes new strategies to mitigate fake certificates including digitization of verification process at all levels of education from secondary school to college and university levels. Besides, education measures on the effects of fake certificates in public sector recruitment is to be provided from grassroots level such as primary schools in order to bring awareness to students from the elementary stage. The approach used in this study is a triangulation whereby two sources of data primary and secondary data were used to gather information on strategies to mitigate fake certificate in public sector recruitment. In general the findings points out that although the previous strategies were good but they had weaknesses. Therefore this paper recommends alternatives strategies to fill gaps found in the previous study by proposing new strategies such as digitization of verification process. By doing so inferences demonstrate that, if such new strategies could be employed the problem of proliferation of fake certificates to a larger extent would be managed.