Abstract. Full text book chapter is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84194Due to limited rainfall and uneven spatial and temporal distribution of water resources, water has become a restraining factor in agriculture and livestock production of China and Tanzania. As it is most considered as common-pool resource, the management of water resources is a complex issue in agricultural and pastoral industry. Traditional water management modes include nationalization and marketization, but complete market-oriented or government management could not reach the sustainable use of water resource due to nonexclusive and interconnected features of water. Therefore, China and Tanzania introduced water resources community self-management in rural arid areas. Farmers as resource users in community conducted mutual supervision and mutual benefit to realize reasonable, fair, and sustainable use of water resources. However, community self-management is restricted by formal institution from the government of China, and Tanzania’s community self-management relies on the financial and technical support from foreign NGOs; the communities’ ability to obtain benefit needed to be improved. We compare water resources community self-management mode in China and Tanzania through case studies, put forward the differences of self-management mode in two countries, and analyze the characteristics of successful water resources community self-management mode.