Many African countries have clearly established central development planning structures, unlike most countries in the North. This article takes a closer look at one such planning machinery, in Botswana, that having remained virtually unchanged for three decades is currently under review to reinvigorate its original commitment to popular participation, which was undermined in the process of national development. The article begins with a brief introduction to Botswana. This is partly because having one of the few stable regimes in Africa, Botswana is little reported on and so remains largely unknown, but mainly because policies and the structures that support them develop against a backdrop of specific historical experiences that shape these policies and structures. Subsequently, following a description of the country's current development planning mechanism and the factors that have led to its re-examination, we analyse an exploratory experiment in grassroots participatory planning, focusing on the attitudes of middle-management civil servants to its effects. The conclusions for participatory planning are generally positive, and may be relevant to other countries in Southern Africa, like Zambia and Zimbabwe, whose planning structures bear a close resemblance to those in Botswana, even though their governments have pursued different ideological paths since independence
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