Participatory Development Management: the effective way to achieve development?
2007
Africa 2000 Network
The Pan Africa 2000 Network (A2N) is a Civil Society Organisation (CSO) comprising of 14 National Organisations1 working with rural communities through various interventions in partnership with many stakeholders including government departments, research and training institutions, donors and other CSOs. With support from UNDP, the Network’s major activities include the implementation of Participatory Development Management (PDM) with a focus on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)2.
This policy brief draws on A2N’s successes, lessons learnt and challenges of facilitating PDM in Kabale district, Uganda, and aims to inform government, donors and CSOs about the need to upscale
and institutionalise PDM as a capacity development initiative in their efforts to reduce poverty.
The Policy issue
In most African countries, the village community’s experience of development is a process that comes to them from the government, donors or CSOs. Development is not a course of action that
they usually initiate, monitor, control or own. Many governments have attempted to change this top-down approach to development, within the decentralisation framework, which aims to ensure
that local communities down to the village level, determine and control their development.
In practice, this system has had very little impact at the local community level due to lack of capacities so as to be able to take part in the planning process which has resulted in poor participation by the communities in development management. In practice, planning starts not at the lowest (village) level but at a higher one.
The result is that local communities are excluded and the potential of decentralised governance to ensure the relevance, effectiveness, accountability and transparency of decision making is not
realised.
In order to ensure participation in development management at the community level, A2N (with support from UNDP) has developed a strategy for PDM in order to ensure participation in development planning at the community level and strengthen lower planning units.
Footnotes:
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The A2N participating countries are: Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Mauritania, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
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The MDGs are: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; Achieve universal primary education; Promote gender equality and empower women; Reduce child mortality; Improve maternal health; Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other disease; Ensure environmental sustainability; Develop a global partnership for development.
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