Notes on Participatory Development
Introduction
Participation, as an approach to development, began in the first instance, as an approach intended to subvert development orthodoxy (Richards, 1995). It is not as modern a concept as most people think, having first appeared in the development literature in the 1950s. This, and later developments of participation, were the logical direction to take with respect to so many failed, wasted and damaging top-down projects and programmes. Participation became known as being synonymous with democracy, equity and popular success.
More recently, participation has been formalised into a development approach, which is called Participatory Appraisal (PA) (other names can be seen in Table 1). PA was first named in a Rapid Rural Appraisal workshop, held in the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex in 1980, where the concept and name were introduced to address the problems associated with RRA (see Chambers, 1994).
Table 1.The Range of Participatory Approaches
Acronym
Description
AEA
BA
DELTA
D&D
DRP
FPR
FSR
GT
GRAAP
MARP
OOPP
PA
PALM
PAR
PD
PRA
PRAP
PRM
PTD
RAAKS
SB
TFD
TFT
Agroecosystem Analysis
Beneficiary Assessment
Development Education Leadership Teams
Diagnosis and Design
Diagnostico Rural Participativo
Farmer Participatory Research
Farming Systems Research
Gestion de Terroirs
Groupe de Recherche et d’Appui pour l’Auto-promotion Paysanne
Méthode Accéléré de Recherche Participative
Objectives Oriented Project Planning
Participatory Appraisal
Participatory Analysis and Learning Methods
Participatory Action Research
Process Documentation
Participatory Rural Appraisal
Participatory Rural Appraisal and Planning
Participatory Research Methods
Participatory Technology Development
Rapid Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Systems
Samuhik Brahman (Joint Trek)
Theatre for Development
Training for Transformation
Source: adapted from Cornwall, Guijt and Welbourn, 1993.
Participation has now been wholly taken on board by a plethora of development institutions. Possibly, the most important step for participatory approaches to development in Africa (and whose definition is adhered to in this paper) came in 1990 with an international conference in Arusha. Here, the African Charter for Popular Participation in Development and Transformation[i] (Arusha, 1990) stated that:
“Popular participation is, in essence, the empowerment of the people to effectively involve themselves in creating the structures and in designing policies and programmes that serve the interests of all as well as to effectively contribute to the development process and share equitably in its benefits”.
Participation has now come a long way from its early roots, it now has a history. While it’s rapid evolution and uptake have created many success stories and ‘participatory models of good practice’, there has also been a host of problems and contradictions. This paper examines the theory of participation, its uses, problems and contradictions, some success stories and concludes with a statement over ways forward.
The Politics of Participation
In order to understand PA approaches to development it is necessary to examine the role that participation plays at all levels and its function therein. Rahnema (1996) says participation has four functions:
Cognitive: Participation is aimed at finding new knowledge systems and creating a new role and image for development. Development, as conceived and designed by expatriate professionals using western scientific knowledge systems, is often inappropriate. Local Knowledge Systems (LKS) have often been ignored or rejected.
Political: Participation’s objective is to legitimise development as an avenue for helping the poor, empowering the powerless and thereby leading to equitable societies.
Instrumental: Quite simply participation is meant to ‘make things (projects) work’ by providing new avenues and techniques.
Social: Participation has given development discourse a new legitimacy and lease of life. In popular terms it has given encouragement to a flagging industry. Participation was the approach to bring development to the many and fulfil basic needs.
Participation lends a completely different perspective to the traditional development approach. It is a challenge and an affront to traditional, top-down, bureaucracy-led, development. Although there has been widespread adoption of participation in many aspects of development by a wide range of actors (dominated by NGOs and academic institutions), it is still, fundamentally, a threat to many existing organisations. For such organisations, the concept of empowerment of individuals and communities in order that they can prioritise, implement and solve their own problems, in addition to challenging to wider political causes of such problems is unconceivable. If this is true then the question should be asked, why then has there been, in the last few years, an unprecedented call for participatory practice by government and development institutions. Rahnema (1996) again gives six reasons.
Participation, as a concept, is seen as a necessary requirement. Governments and institutions interested in greater productivity at low cost are increasingly in need of ‘participation’ for their own purposes. They have also learnt to control the risks in possible unruly abuses of participation.
Participation has become a politically attractive slogan: important political advantages are obtained through the overt display of participatory intentions. Participatory slogans create feelings of collusion between the public manufacturers of the participatory illusion and their consumers.
Participation has become, economically, an appealing proposition. Because of small government funds, especially those devoted to rural development, participation is the low cost option. Some, cynically, see this as passing on government costs to the poor.
Participation is perceived as an instrument for greater effectiveness as well as a new source of investment. Participatory Approaches bring: a close knowledge of the ‘field reality’ which foreign techniques and government bureaucrats do not have; networks on relations, essential both to the success of on-going projects and long term investments in rural areas; the co-operation, on the local scene, or organisations able to carry out development activities. In this context, grassroots organisations are becoming the infrastructure through which investment is made.
Participation is becoming a good fund raising device. In the last ten years development-oriented NGOs have become very much ‘in vogue’. This is due to the reputation of NGOs and their participatory and less bureaucratised approaches allow them to meet the needs of the people with greater efficiency and at less cost.
An expanded concept of participation could help the private sector to be directly involved in the development business: private corporations and consulting agencies associated with development have been (successfully) lobbying for the privatisation of development, arguing that governments and international aid agencies waste taxpayers money.
For governments and development organisations then, the benefits of participation outweigh the costs. However, as a result of this reasoning, participation has come to be ‘disembedded’ from the socio-cultural roots which have always kept it alive (Rahnema, 1996). It is now simply perceived as one of the many ‘resources’ needed to keep the economy alive (ibid.).
Understanding Empowerment
Central to the idea and practice of participation is the notion of empowerment. In order to understand empowerment it is necessary to examine the concept of power. Nelson and Wright (1995) divide power in relation to participatory development into two components: power to and power over.
‘Power to’ relates to the process where both parties (beneficiary and external project) question the realities with which they started and both transform their understanding (Nelson and Wright, 1995). As a result of this interaction, the objective is to discover ‘more spaces of control’ (Giddens, 1984) where, although never powerless to start with, by developing confidence and changing attitudes and behaviours, they can alter the power differentials in their relationships (ibid.). This happens on three levels. First, differentials are altered on a personal level, where the individual develops their own self-confidence for action and associated abilities. Secondly, is the ability to speak for themselves (or their group) to negotiate and make or change relationships. Thirdly, is the ability to operationalize the realisation that group action is often more effective or ‘powerful’ than isolated action.
‘Power over’ is about gaining political power, outside the individual, and power over access to decision-making resources and machinery. In a Frierian sense, this is the process whereby marginalised groups (women, youths, the poorest of the poor) gain access to decision making institutions, such as either departmental or national sub-ministries, and the resources held therein. The challenge is for the marginalised group to receive treatment as equal partners in such institutions, so they have long term access to resources and decision making (Nelson and Wright, 1995). This form of empowerment is arguably the ultimate objective of a participatory project and can be seen in the ‘self-mobilisation’ category of participatory projects in Box 1. The evolution of limited power, to ‘power to’, to ‘power over’ is the process which participation allows; empowerment to local people allowing them power over the resources which affect them or restrict their development.
Box 1. A Typology of Participation
1. Passive participation
People participate by being told what is going to happen or has already happened. It is a unilateral announcement by an administration or project management without listening to people’s responses. The information being shared belongs only to external professionals.
2. Participation in information giving
People participate by answering questions posed by extractive researchers using questionnaire surveys or similar approaches. People do not have the opportunity to influence proceedings, as the findings of the research are neither shared nor checked for accuracy.
3. Participation by consultation
People participate by being consulted, and external people listen to views. These external professionals define both problems and solutions, and may modify these in the light of people’s responses. Such a consultative process does not concede any share in decision making, and professionals are under no obligation to take on board people’s views.
4. Participation for material incentives
People participate by providing resources, for example labour, in return for food, cash or other material incentives. Much on-farm research falls in this category, as farmers provide the fields but are not involved in the experimentation or the process of learning. It is very common to see this called participation, yet people have no stake in prolonging activities when the incentives end.
5. Functional participation
People participate by forming groups to meet predetermined objectives related to the project, which can involve the development or promotion of externally initiated social organisation. Such involvement does not tend to be at early of project cycle or planning, but rather after major decisions have been made. These institutions tend to be dependent on external initiators and facilitators, but may become self-dependent.
6. Interactive participation
People participate in joint analysis, which leads to action plans and the formation of new local institutions or the strengthening of existing ones. It tends to involve interdisciplinary methodologies that seek multiple perspectives and make use of systematic and structured learning processes. These groups take control over local decisions, and so people have a stake in maintaining structures or practices.
7. Self-mobilisation
People participate by taking initiatives independent of external institutions to change systems. They develop contacts with external institutions for resources and technical advice they need, but retain control over how resources are used. Such self-initiated mobilisation and collective action may or may not challenge existing inequitable distributions of wealth and power.
Source: Pretty, 1994.
The challenge to participatory practice lies in the reality of the power relationships in any society, which manifest themselves in the organisational structures present. The challenge occurs when the political environment of previously accepted service delivery meets demands for the participation of those previously excluded from the decision making process. It involves and requires ideological development, and fundamental changes, both at the institutional and at the community level.
The Context of Participatory Approaches
Using participatory approaches does not guarantee that everyone get a say. Thus, there needs to be recognition by people using PA of the existing power structures in existence, not only in local communities. This is not to say that PA will reinforce the status quo, in some situations it may, in others it may not. What is important however, is to recognise that there are existing power structures where PA will be located. This allows space for negotiation.
There are also those that believe that participation may have led to a replacement of indigenous power structures. Projects using PA may have contributed to a dis-valuing of the traditional and vernacular forms of power (Rahnema, 1996). This danger may exist in some situations, depending on the authority of those introducing PA and local contexts. There are however the presence of informal resistance networks that have been written about extensively (Scott, 1976, Hyden, 1989, Rahnema, 1996) that act as a buffer against external threats and act to preserve existing, valid, structures.
The Use of Participation
There are a range of techniques that have either a full or part component of participation. Some are designed for research but most are aimed at the ‘action-oriented’ aspect of research and so are used for project identification, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
PA was developed as the first research method that was led by the beneficiary group, and not by the outside agency. PA has several major characteristics (Scoones, 1995):
the processes of participatory research are slow and difficult;
the techniques of PA are complex and require many other skills, especially of communication, facilitation and negotiation;
wider issues of organisational change, management systems, ethics and responsibilities also need to be addressed when using PA;
PA is based on an action-research approach, in which theory and practice are constantly challenged through experience, reflection and learning.
Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) is not a participatory appraisal technique (see Chambers, 1994: 98). RRA is a research technique that was developed from northern academic institutions and development organisations as a tool to facilitate the data gathering process for research and evaluation purposes. Its objective was to counter the ‘road-side bias’ and development tourism of previous activities. PA techniques have largely originated from direct multidisciplinary field experience in southern project and programme activities where the objectives have been implementation and monitoring and evaluation.
PA used in a rapid manner remains an extractive process, the difference here being that feelings are being extracted in addition to physical attributes. PA are not rapid, they are slow and time consuming exercises. The importance of time is highlighted by Roche (1994:165), who says “being there and remaining there, even if no ‘activities’ are possible is important, for reasons which include moral support, playing a witness role, providing a symbolic presence, and enabling programme staff to reassess what role they can play and what new opportunities they might take”. Rapid PA are more of a danger to development work than RRA, at least RRA admitted its faults. Table 2 below clarifies the distinct differences between RRA and PA in terms of development, implementation and results:
Table 2. RRA and PA Compared
RRA
PA
Period of major development
Late 1970s, 1980s
Late 1980s, 1990s
Major innovators based in
Universities
NGOs
Main users
Aid agencies, Universities
NGOs, Government field organisations
Key resource earlier overlooked
Local people’s knowledge
Local people’s capabilities
Main innovation
Methods
Behaviour
Dominant mode
Extractive
Participatory
Ideal objectives
Learning by outsiders
Empowerment of local people
Longer term outcomes
Plans, projects, publications
Sustainable local action and institutions
Source: Chambers, 1994
Despite the difficulty in using PA techniques, they are necessary because, as Richards, (1995:14), points out “understanding the dilemmas of the rural poor is extremely difficult because they lead extremely complex lives”.
Ultimately, the goal is to try to understand local realities in local terms (Cornwall and Fleming, 1995:9). Richards, (1995:15), highlights the danger of not doing this,
“Put explicitly, what kind of muddle are we in if one set of participants - the organisers, holds the view that the farm calendar being plotted on the flip chart is a template for agricultural action, and the other group - the rural poor (sic) - sees it as an outcome of what they do?”
Because of the complexity of local realities and in attempting to overcome problems, such as the one highlighted by Richards, there has been debate on the relationships between anthropology and PA. Scoones, (1995), says PA needs anthropology (and ethnography) to continue the process of reflection, self-critique and theoretical and methodological enrichment. These combined aspects are needed to understand the context of the local realities and especially in relation to distinct cultural identities.
There are valuable lessons that participatory appraisal can learn from anthropology. As mentioned before PA tends to be a long process, not just because of the PA methods that are used, but also for the PA user to develop a relationship with the communities where s/he works. Hyden (1980:6) points out, there are “serious limitations inherent in research exercises where the investigator fails to become part of the social environment that he examines”. To become involved in the communities is important because:
“Involvement in the community we study may be the precondition for a critical understanding of the structures and processes we try to elucidate through our research”. (Hyden 1980:6)
This is not to imply that the PA user should live with those communities for years. However, the PA user should be willing to spend prolonged periods with those communities in order to understand local priorities. The following case study highlights why this is important.
Case study: Agroforestry and Participatory Appraisal in Burkina Faso
In 1993, ADESSI, a Burkinabè NGO, received funding from Reseau Afrique 2000 (a programme of the UNDP) for two years for an agroforestry programme. The first phase of the agroforestry project (Projet Agroforestier) had a non-participatory approach. The objectives of the project were:
the protection of the local environment and ecosystem;
the training of villagers in soil management;
soil improvement and nitrogen fixation;
soil and water conservation;
the improvement of the socio-economic conditions of the local population;
educational exchanges/interaction between different villages and areas.
To achieve these objectives, ADESSI attempted to create three departmental village nurseries. At the time of implementation, ADESSI worked through the local Ministry of Environment and Tourism (le Service Provincial de l’Environnement et du Tourisme (SPET)) based in the provincial capital, Léo. This relationship proved problematic because of insufficient supervision of the hired technical staff of SPET from members of ADESSI stationed in Ouagadougou and an uncertainty of the hired staff of the project goals. ADESSI also proved to be over-ambitious with the nurseries’ production levels of 100,000 tree seedlings per season. It has been demonstrated by a wealth of examples that centralised, large-scale nurseries, aiming to be supply centres for the surrounding areas, rarely work because of a lack of involvement of the local people. At the end of the first two years of the project, less than one percent of the total seedling production in all the nurseries were planted and it is unsure if those planted survived the first season. The nurseries failed because:
they were ‘top-down’ decisions, few discussions with the village groups had been undertaken and the villagers were ‘told’ what to do;
nursery workers were employed and paid by ADESSI so there was little involvement by the village groups in nursery activities;
lack of access to the villages and lack of perceived need by the departmental population meant that the nurseries failed to supply the departmental population with tree seedlings;
in two of the villages the nurseries exacerbated village conflicts between two opposing cantons because it was not clear who ‘owned’ (i.e. had responsibility) for the nurseries;
after the nursery workers contracts had finished, the nurseries went into disrepair;
in two of the villages the communal nursery materials were used for private use and consequently caused additional conflicts.
In 1993, a second phase was initiated through funding from Diakonia (a Swedish donor) to attempt at the rehabilitation of the three nurseries. It was decided after three months of attempting their rehabilitation that only one of the nurseries could be continued, and this should take the form of a ‘jardin polyvalent’ (a mixed garden with vegetables, fruit trees and a tree nursery).
Together with the members of ADESSI, the aims, approaches and objectives of their agroforestry programme were rethought and reworked. The result was a village tree nursery programme that would be based around a needs assessment exercise with a participatory approach to agroforestry development. After exploratory participatory appraisals with village groups in Sissili, the objectives of the second phase of ADESSI’s agroforestry programme included:
to increase agricultural production through the integration of agroforestry techniques in the local farming systems;
to improve the nutritional status of local communities (especially women and children) through fruit and vegetable production through dry season gardens;
to take the pressure off local forest resources through the management of planted woodlots for fuelwood, medicine, building poles and food;
to create self-sustaining village tree nurseries to provide local communities with access to tree seedlings and as an income generating activity;
to heighten the awareness of local communities of environmental issues in their own local production systems.
Employing a participatory approach allowed local groups to articulate their needs, wants, problems and proposed solutions. Throughout this participatory process, it became clear that there were different groups involved, different stakeholders. These included women’s groups, men’s groups and youth groups who all had different interests. It also became apparent that there were differences were between ethnic groups; one pastoralist group were interested in trees for cattle fodder, one sedentary group were interested in compost pits, and another group wanted fruit trees. The participatory approach was also very important to determine organisation and project management, on areas such as nursery management, management of revenue, supervision and upkeep of the trees and soil and water conservation structures.
This diverse social and ethnic background offered a range of different issues and it was clear that project success involved more than improved technologies. The social process of negotiation, discussion and conflict resolution was central to the success of the work in the villages. It became clear that, in order to understand local production strategies there had to be an understanding of local social and cultural systems. Understanding of local social systems was achieved through a process of participatory appraisal and intense and prolonged dialogue between the extension workers and the local communities.
There was a range of project activities that were implemented with the village groups over the two year period. These included: approximately 60,000 trees planted; 13 village nurseries set-up; approximately 5 km of windbreaks planted; 10 wells dug; 5 dry season gardens put under cultivation; approximately 10 km of erosion control bunds constructed; 100 compost pits dug; 15 communal orchards planted; 13 group ‘running funds’ set-up (village group funds); 13 village demonstration farms operationalised; and a number of natural, organic pesticides introduced.
Participatory Approaches in Action
Participatory development approaches take many forms, and are not simply limited to listening to what farmers have to say. Obviously there is a role for each different approach, from more effectively eliciting farmers’ knowledge to putting across theory to policy makers, to implementing participatory training programmes for extension workers. Some participatory programmes have a wider ranging impact than others.
Chambers (1994) identifies three different scales of PA to development, which although once seen as contradictory, need not be. The first of these scales is called the safe and secure participatory model, where the professional works intensely with one or a small group of communities. This level of work is likely to achieve very good results and be highly participatory. The second scale involves working with one or a range of organisations on a departmental level, attempting to change the organisation(s) structure so it becomes increasingly participatory. PA should influence the institution’s growth and direction although this approach entails much, often frustrating, work as the PA is rejected or resisted by rigid bureaucracies. The third scale is working inside national or regional organisations to attempt a broader spread of PA. Here, as Chambers points out, there will be trade-offs. It will be risky and critics will abound but it is nevertheless an important level to work at.
Thus, wherever PA of good practice is carried out, it promotes a change in recognised thinking, and it is good. Whether facing the frustrations of seemingly endless resistance in a Ministry, or listening to farmers elucidate their problems, PA leads to greater empowerment.
The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) works at all these scales in West Africa. The IIED’s PRA-Sahel Programme has established PRA training networks with key institutions in Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal. Their aims are:
To strengthen the capacity of relevant institutions to conduct participatory planning, follow up and evaluation of development programmes at the grassroots level;
To identify obstacles to PRA development in the region; and
To maintain standards in the use of participatory methods (Gueye, 1995).
Supporting each level of the participatory development process, from bureaucracy to community, is vital in instilling a permanent change. For such a process to succeed, the IIED have identified that there must be:
A conscious and critical adoption of the principles and spirit of PRA as a working plan;
The commitment to involving grassroots communities in long term participatory planning;
An awareness that PA are not fixed methodologies and are adaptive and creative;
The training of staff, not only in methods, but also the roots of PA;
The development of an organisational structure that promotes the philosophy of participation;
An awareness that objectives will not be achieved quickly (Gueye, 1995).
Box 2 below describes the above aims in practice in an example of a participatory approach to training in Senegal.
Box 2. Participatory Approaches in Senegal
In northern Senegal, the NGO Associates in Research and Development (ARED) has collaborated with IIED to establish a PRA training programme for some communities. As part of this process, ARED has published a handbook in the Fulfulde language.
Involving grassroots communities in the preparation of training workshops producing teaching aids and elaborating teaching methods accessible to all parties concerned, are essential in the overall participatory process.
Village animators, trained in PRA by ARED, now act as village facilitators in a community based process of participatory planning. This process allows the communities to plan and conduct their own analysis without the presence of any external facilitators (‘power to’).
This situation presents many advantages. First, biases stemming from the interaction with outsiders are offset. Second, plans are made according to the community’s own constraints. Third, distortion of information to suit external agency needs becomes unnecessary, as the results of the process are fed into the community’s own development process. Finally, the principal of ‘optimal ignorance’ works well as information is provided by the community itself, who can therefore decide what is useful or not in the context of their own activities.
Source: Gueye, 1995.
Another example of a participatory approach to development in West Africa is Gestion de Terroirs. Gestion de Terroirs began as a political participatory tool to increase the effectiveness of rural investment but has now become an instrumental participatory tool for rural resource management programmes (see Box 3). This example highlights the difficulties in transferring theory into sustained practice within a wider context of changing political circumstances.
Box 3. Gestion de Terroirs: From Politics to Practice
The origins of Gestion de Terroirs can be traced back to the mid 1980s from the Government of the socialist leader of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara. It came from the need for an extra level of governance at the village level to allow public participation in the investment and development process. At that time there were four levels of administrative structures; national Government, regional level administration, provincial level administration, and district administration. Below this, on the village level, there was no structure that allowed for planning or administrative activities for development purposes.
The Government of Burkina Faso created an institution called le Programme Sahel Burkinabè (PSB), which was officially attached to all the ministry offices, with support from international donors to co-ordinate development activities. Sankara and PSB had talks on how the Government could co-ordinate all development projects and develop structures for bottom-up planning. This came from the rationale that, without structures at the village level, there could be no discussions about investment and planning. The concept of Gestion de Terroirs was developed to provide community organisational structures to allow for bottom-up planning and participatory development. Gestion de Terroirs originated from a political will to improve national planning and investment from a grassroots base, i.e. the village, through building organisational and institutional structures in a participatory process.
Unfortunately, the present president, Blaise Campaoré, did not carry through the initiative started by Sankara. Presently, Gestion de Terroirs has been transformed into a development approach and has been formalised, most recently by the United Nation Sahelian Office (UNSO). In essence, it is a response to land management in areas that have experienced high localised population growth and are consequently undergoing a management crisis, i.e. as local situations change, old management practices are no longer effective for resource management and so new systems need to be developed. The word ‘terroir’ essentially means ‘land’ but is defined as a spatial entity traditionally managed by a village community (‘the village’) which has occupation and exploitation rights founded on accepted responsibility and a competence recognised by all users of the ‘terroir’ i.e. a land territory under a common property management scheme (UNSO, 1994).
A full bibliography is available by contacting Barefoot.
© Christopher and Joanne Hartworth, Barefoot Research and Evaluation
[i] The ‘African Charter for Popular Participation in Development and Transformation’ was adopted in Arusha, Tanzania, in February 1990, at the end of the International Conference on Popular Participation in the Recovery and Development Process in Africa. The conference was a collaborative effort between African people's organisations, African governments and United Nations agencies. It emerged from suggestions by non-governmental organisations to the 1988 mid-term review of the United Nations Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development, 1986-1990 (UN-PAAERD).