The participatory development approach under a 
microscope: the case of the poverty alleviation 
programme in Malawi 
BLESSINGS CHINSINGA1 
ABSTRACT 
In the wake of democratization most developing countries have had 
to reorient their characteristically top-down development strategies 
to embrace a participatory development philosophy in a bid to 
reinvigorate their rural development efforts. This article argues that 
the professed commitment to participatory local planning, as a 
hallmark of contemporary grassroots development intervention, is 
largely rhetorical. The exogenous nature of the drives to reform 
forces developing countries to pretend they are committed to the 
reforms merely to appease the West. These reforms can only be 
genuine and sustained if the will to do so springs from within 
developing countries with external stakeholders playing simply a 
•facilitatory role. The recognition of the voices, aspirations and fears 
of the poor in development efforts requires a pre-existing democratic 
structure and policymakers who are sympathetic to the basic 
interests of the rural poor. 
Setting the context 
There is little doubt that one of the most momentous policy events 
within the development community at the beginning of the previous 
decade was the return of poverty on the international development 
agenda. This is very much associated with the work of many years of 
1 Department of Political and Administrative Studies, Chancellor College, 
University of Malawi 
VOL 18 NO 1 JANUARY 2003 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA 129
the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme 
(UNDP), which, on the part of the latter, culminated into the inauguration 
of the Human Development Report (HDR) in 1990. In a similar spirit, the 
World Development Report of the same year focused almost exclusively 
on the state of poverty in the world. Suffice it here to note that the 
underlying theme for the HDR is essentially an ultimatum to all countries, 
regardless of their levels of development, to champion a human-oriented 
brand of development. 
In the greater part of the developing world, the recent deepening of 
poverty levels cannot be understood in isolation from structural 
adjustment programmes. They have constituted an overarching policy 
framework for a vast majority of developing countries since the 
beginning of the early 1980s, following their persistently disappointing 
economic performance. However, despite the zeal and commitment on 
the part of the adjusting countries, their economic situation has 
substantially deteriorated and, in most instances, shows little or no 
prospects of recovery. Unemployment and the price of essential 
commodities have soared and expenditure on social services, especially 
health and education, have progressively declined (Clark 1991, Chipeta 
1993, Chinsinga 1995). 
The debilitating impact of structural adjustment programmes led 
most adjusting countries to adopt special programmes known as the 
social dimensions of adjustment which, spearheaded by the World Bank, 
intended to give structural adjustment programme policy reforms a 
human face. These programmes were meant to develop the institutional 
capacity of host governments in close partnership with civil society in 
an attempt to integrate meaningfully social and poverty concerns in the 
development process (World Bank 1990, Kaluwa et al. 1992). The 
cumulative experiences with SDA programmes have certainly paved 
the way for the subsequent adoption of poverty alleviation programmes 
(PAPs) as a development philosophy for most governments in 
developing countries. 
In fact, poverty alleviation programmes have become more or less 
the dominant characteristic of contemporary development strategies. 
Examples include the Bolivia Emergency Fund in Bolivia; the Economic 
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Recovery Programme in Zambia; the Programme of Actions to Mitigate 
the Costs of Adjustment in Ghana; the Social Development Programme 
in Zimbabwe and the Poverty Alleviation Programme in Malawi. In 
practically all cases, the widely-shared view is that the possibility of 
success of the PAPs is critically contingent on participatory local 
planning. In other words, participation is deemed to be the life-blood of 
contemporary poverty alleviation and rural development efforts. In case 
of Malawi, for example, this perception is strongly echoed in one of the 
government's policy documents which states that "the policy framework 
of the Poverty Alleviation Programme of 1994 emphasises the need for 
aparticipatory process in which the government, the civil society and 
the private sector organize themselves to explore grassroots solutions 
to poverty" (GOM 2001:6). It is against this background that this article 
attempts to bring the participatory development philosophy under a 
microscopic lens, with particular reference to the Poverty Alleviation 
Programme in Malawi. 
The participatory development approach—a snapshot 
In contemporary development debates participatory local planning has 
assumed central importance, following the recognition that decentralized 
government is a necessary framework for sustainable rural development 
efforts and good local governance. The ultimate creation of functionallyrobust 
decentralized structures largely depends on how effectively 
participatory local planning is institutionalized (Clark 1991, Makumbe 
1996, Osman 1997). In other words, participatory local planning is seen 
as an essential precondition for successfully executing plans and 
programmes for poverty alleviation. 
The importance of participatory local planning in development 
management and implementation is widely recognized. In the continental 
context, for instance, the African Charter on Popular Participation was 
legislated in 1990 as the climax event during the United Nations 
Conference on Popular Participation held in Arusha, Tanzania from 12- 
16 February 1990. This charter realizes that nations cannot be built 
without the. popular support and the full participation of their people 
and that people's involvement or participation results in the 
VOL 18 NO 1 JANUARY 2003 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA 131
democratization of the development process (Wunsch and Olowu 2000, 
Makumbe 1996). The spirit of the African Charter on Popular Participation 
resonates with the underlying theme of the HDR, which was 
coincidentally inaugurated in the very same year. Likewise, the 
underlying thrust of the African Charter on Popular Participation is to 
champion a human-oriented view of development. It recognizes that 
African people have been greatly marginalized in the process of their 
own development, as quoted in Makumbe (1996:1) 
The marginalizing of the participation of the people in the 
formulation of public policies has been exacerbated by the 
persistent socio-economic crisis which Africa faced throughout 
the 1980s, with the consequential ever-growing concern and 
preoccupation by governments with short-term crisis management 
Participatory local planning basically asks development planners, 
practitioners and researchers to give up what they have up till now 
erroneously considered their fundamental prerogatives: to define 
problems and to solve them (Mikkelsen 1995). The need to reorient 
grassroots development strategy is largely based on the perception 
that, for a project to be sustainable, it must address those problems and 
aspirations which are identified by the poor themselves and it must 
have a management structure in which they have confidence. The appeal 
of participatory local planning can, therefore, be summed up as follows: 
"no development program, however, grand, can succeed unless the 
local people are willing to accept it and make an effort to participate" 
(Makumbe 1996:12). This involvement of the local people throughout 
alii the important junctures of the project cycle makes it possible to 
utilize their knowledge about local conditions to solve local problems 
more efficiently and effectively. Development problems should not be 
defined by experts in isolation but should be based on dialogue with 
the affected parties (Mikkelsen 1995,Osman 1997). 
Participatory local planning has two different objectives. It either 
takes the form of transformational or instrumental participation. The 
latter is a way of achieving certain specific targets. Participatory local 
planning thus becomes the driving force for determining people-based 
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development processes and enlisting the willingness of the people in 
undertaking sacrifices and expending their social energies on its 
execution. In this form participation largely serves as a means to achieve 
efficiency in project management. It is a management strategy through 
which the state attempts to mobilize local resources. The former is 
perceived as an objective in and of itself. It takes the stand that people 
have a fundamental right to participate fully and effectively in the making 
the decisions which affect their lives at all levels and at all times 
(Mikkelsenl995, Makumbe 19%). 
Taken in this light, participation entails empowerment and the 
promotion of social justice, equity and democracy. When participation 
is purely instrumental, the participation of the beneficiaries of the 
proposed development intervention is construed as an operational 
barrier. Their non-participation is viewed, therefore, as a technical, 
educational, administrative or financial barrier needing to be corrected. 
When participation is viewed as transformational, the non-participation 
of the beneficiaries is a structural barrier. The problem of nonparticipation 
in this case becomes a social conflict that has to be resolved 
through compromise on conflicting policies or removal of departicipatory 
social structures or political reforms 
The concept of empowerment espoused in this paper follows 
Ugbomeh (2001:291) who says that a person is empowered: 
When the person grows in the subjective sense of feeling able to 
do things hitherto out of reach, when a person develops the ability 
to do things which were not previously within the person's 
Competence, and when doors of opportunity, which were hitherto 
closed, swing open to allow access to information, influence and 
opportunity 
Overview of the 1994 poverty alleviation programme 
A brief overview of the 1994 Poverty Alleviation Programme, sets the 
platform for bringing the participatory development philosophy under 
the microscope. This overview outlines the institutional structure, the 
content of the policy initiative and the management and implementation 
of the programme (GOM1994). 
VOL 18 NO 1 JANUARY 2003 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA 133
Institutional structure 
The PAP institutional matrix consists of the Presidential Council, the 
National Steering Committee and eight task forces. The presidential 
council is headed by the President and includes the 'Wee President, 
some cabinet ministers, religious groups, the Chamber of Commerce, 
the African Business Association, the private sector, academic 
institutions, traditional leaders, the three regional governors of the United 
Democratic Front party and independent members with experience in 
development issues. The Council is responsible for giving policy 
directions and guidance as well as assisting in sensitizing the populace 
on government priorities. It has a final say about which poverty 
alleviation interventions to be implemented. 
The National Steering Committee is headed by the Secretary to the 
President and Cabinet. It has members from the civil service, nongovernmental 
organizations, the private sector and, where necessary, 
co-opted members from the donor community. The committee is 
responsible for co-ordinating the activities of various task forces to 
avoid duplication of functions and resources. 
The task forces are responsible for the actual implementation of the 
poverty alleviation programmes. These include agriculture, health, 
population, the informal sector, public works, social welfare and 
education. In conjunction with local communities they assess the needs 
of the poor and assist in the planning and design of poverty alleviation 
sectoral programmes. 
Content of the PAP policy initiative 
The PAP was designed primarily with the intention of addressing the 
salient features of poverty in the country, which include household 
food insecurity and low productivity among smallholders, a weak 
institutional enterprise sector, limited access to essential social services 
and a shortage of management capacities for planning and implementing 
key poverty alleviation programmes. Its underlying objectives can, 
therefore, be summarized as follows: 
• To increase agricultural productivity among resource-poor farmers; 
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• To promote employment and income opportunities in the informal 
sector; 
• To improve the access of the poor to priority services and 
• To enhance the capacities of the local communities in managing 
development. 
The PAP policy initiative has four component programmes, each 
designed to address one of the four objectives raised above. These 
programmes are: 
Smallholder agriculture productivity programme 
The objective of this programme is to enhance household food security 
especially among the resource-poor farmers through the increased 
application of on-farm technology, the expanded coverage of extension 
services, the increased access to farm in-puts and labour saving 
technologies, better environment management and a more sustainable 
utilization of fisheries and forestry. 
Small enterprise development programme 
The principal objective of this programme is to create alternative nonfarm 
income opportunities to reduce poverty by making better policies, 
increasing entrepreneurial and technical skills development and 
improving access to credit, appropriate technology and marketing. 
Social development programme 
The programme aims at strengthening the delivery of social services 
(basic education, primary health care, low-cost housing, rural transport 
and sanitation) to the poorest segments of the population. The emphasis 
is on the development of alternative delivery systems through increased 
community participation. This has to be understood in the context of 
the failure of traditional top-down methods of service delivery. The idea 
was to take advantage of administrative and political reforms to 
decentralize the government administrative machinery by putting in 
place innovative institutional frameworks which would not only be closer 
to the people but in which their voices would be respected. 
Management for development programme 
The programme aims at creating efficient and effective managers of 
economic and social development. It thus envisages the formation of 
competent and motivated leaders to steer and implement development 
VOL 18 NO 1 JANUARY 2003 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA 135
activities at local levels as of critical importance in the implementation 
of anti-poverty programmes. 
Management of the programme 
The management of the PAP is entrusted to the Ministry of Economic 
Planning and Development, which is the secretariat for the whole 
programme. It liaises with the Office of the President and Cabinet and 
the Ministry of Community Services to ensure that appropriate 
institutions are established and strengthened. The Ministry is further 
responsible for incorporating PAP projects into the National 
Development Programme. 
Identification and assessment of needs 
The PAP policy initiative is being implemented through the district 
development committee (DDC) institutional matrix in order to afford 
local communities direct participation in the identification as well as 
implementation of programmes that affect them. 
Forum for development 
The forum is intended to facilitate the link between DDCs and the various 
task forces through quarterly meetings in which DDCs present their 
proposals to the task forces. The forum for development serves as a 
basis for sectoral programmes formulated by task forces. Once the 
sectoral programmes are formulated, they are submitted to the National 
Steering Committee for approval. 
Implementation 
The actual implementation of the approved projects is carried out by 
the institutions identified by the various task forces, which closely 
supervise and monitor the progress being made. They also keep the 
National Steering Committee informed through the production and 
submission of reports. 
The 1994 PAP—an analytical glance at its participatory development 
philosophy 
In contemporary development discourse the potential success of PAPs 
is critically dependent on how the concept of participation is ultimately 
institutionalized. Because grassroots development plans have to be 
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based on the aspirations of the people if poverty is to be significantly 
reduced, the rural population must expected to act as the subject of its 
own destiny through participatory local planning (Goudsmit and 
Blackburn 2001). 
Much as the 1994 PAP policy initiative clearly flags beneficiary 
participation as its guiding philosophy, it is, however, totally silent on 
the modus operandi of the form of participation that drives its 
implementation. No attempt at all has been made to even define the 
concept of participation in the context of the PAP programme and yet a 
premium is placed on it as the driving force behind the country's 
development philosophy. 
In the PAP's institutional implementation matrix, the mandates of 
some agencies, for example, the Presidential Council and the National 
Steering Committee, are clearly in conflict with the underlying spirit of 
participatory local planning. While the Council is responsible for 
sensitizing the populace on government priorities, the National Steering 
Committee retains the final say on which poverty intervention strategies 
have to be implemented. These mandates give the impression that the 
professed commitment to participation is less an effort at real 
empowerment of the poor than a managerial or rhetorical device. It is 
essentially a management strategy through which to mobilize local 
resources in order to implement a series of stand-alone donor-inspired 
development projects and not the PAP (Mutizwa-Mangwiza and Conyers 
199^, Chinsinga 2000). 
Likewise, the mandate of the task forces within the PAP stands in 
stark contrast with the spirit of participatory planning. Their domain of 
responsibility is to review and prioritize poverty alleviation interventions 
identified by communities through the DDC institutional matrix. This 
makes it difficult for the PAP to steer the empowerment process of the 
beneficiary communities to the point when they can ultimately graduate 
from reliance on external forces in order to articulate their genuinely-felt 
priorities. Furthermore these task forces are exclusively composed of 
technocrats who, by virtue of being located in the driving seat of 
government—Capital Hill—are .arguably, divorced from prevailing 
social, economic, political and cultural grassroot realities. Ideally the 
VOL 18 NO 1 JANUARY 2003 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA 137
role of the task forces would have been limited to appraising the technical 
feasibility of the preferences arrived at by the DDC: instead they remove 
from the people their inalienable fundamental right to define their own 
development priorities. 
Politics also presents a challenge to the possible institutionalization 
of participation in the PAP. The government has taken advantage of the 
programme to make sure that the structure of the PAP is dominated by 
United Democratic Front cadres. It is already feared that government 
cadres may make exploit the programme politically. This fear, of course, 
is situated in the broader context of African politics as explained by 
Bayart (1993). The title of his book borrows a Cameroonian local term— 
Politics of the Belly—to characterize the political and policy 
environment of the majority of African countries. This expression "the 
politics of the belly" is a loose translation of the proverb "people know 
that the goat eats where it is tethered and those in power intend to eat." 
With the tradition of competitive, fair and objective politics yet to 
take root, there is certainly little doubt that PAP resources are susceptible 
to abuse. Reports of graft and patronage regarding the PAP programme 
abound and it is likely that this corruption may alienate a large number 
of people from participating in the programme. As early as 1996 
according to Kangwere (1998), the widely-shared perception among 
the people was that the visible beneficiaries of the programme tended 
to be the better-off and those well-placed within political circles. 
The apparent dominance of political expedience in the implementation 
of the PAP policy could be understood as one manifestation 
of the failure to identify clearly the various groups of the poor in the 
country and their needs. Prior to the launch of the PAP no consultation 
with the poor had taken place to establish the actual extent of poverty 
in the country. What should have been established were facts such as, 
who are the poor? Where do they live? What do they perceive to be 
their problems? How do they think these could be solved? 
The PAP policy interventions were largely designed on the basis of 
categories of the poor which were identified in the 1993 GOM/UN 
Situation Analysis of Poverty. Subsequent monitoring for poverty 
trends in the country, initiated under the aegis of the PAP, has revealed 
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that the major issue, as far as the people are concerned, is the lack of 
agricultural credit, yet the emphasis in PAP has been on general credit 
(National Economic Council (NEC) 1998,2000). Poverty in the country 
is widespread and deeply entrenched. The 1998 Integrated Household 
Survey, for instance, projects the incidence of rural and urban poverty 
at 66.5 per cent and 54.9 per cent respectively. It also reports regional 
variations in the incidence of poverty. In the Southern Region, the 
prevalence of poverty is estimated at 68.1 per cent; in the Centre 62.8 
per cent and 62.5 per cent in the North. The incidence of poverty, as 
estimated by GOM/UN in 1993 prevailed at the rate of 60 per cent and 65 
per cent in urban and rural areas respectively. The problem of poverty, 
especially rural poverty, is, therefore, a serious one urgently requiring 
robust policy interventions. 
Challenges of the concept of participatory local planning 
The implementation the PAP certainly raises several critical issues about 
the notion of participatory local planning as a principal feature of 
contemporary poverty alleviation strategies. Currently, most 
policymakers tend to view participation as a neutral concept. This 
supposes that development facilitators can extricate themselves from 
their world views, that is, their beliefs, convictions, attitudes and 
perceptions when they are engaged with the potential beneficiaries of 
development interventions. The same assumption is equally true for 
the would-be beneficiaries themselves. But this may not be the case 
(Clark 1991, Goudsmit and Blackburn 2001). 
Participation is better seen as a negotiation process in which case 
there are at least two actors who confront each other and communicate, 
hoping to eventually arrive at satisfactory trade-offs. It is obvious in 
the Malawian case that the grassroots cannot count themselves among 
the principal protagonists of participatory local planning processes. In 
practice, the planning team almost always influences, animates, induces 
and manipulates the negotiation process. The closest we can come to 
authentic local participatory planning is if the negotiation process 
between planners and the local people is structured in such a manner 
that they engage in the process as equal partners. 
VOL 18 NO 1 JANUARY 2003 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA 139
This is particularly pertinent in the reference to the mandates of the 
Presidential Council, National Steering Committee and the Task Forces. 
The spirit of give and take necessary to participatory planning must 
prevail among all the stakeholders in grassroots development, which, 
among others, include government officials, non-governmental 
organizations and the intended beneficiaries of development 
interventions. The major stumbling block, however, is that most 
governments want to take politics out the equation of the notion of 
participatory local planning. 
If, participation is taken as a negotiation process, then grassroots 
demands will be seen as flexible proposals and development plans must 
be capable of adjusting easily to new circumstances (Clark 1991, Goudsmit 
and Blackburn, 2001). When this happens the PAP will provide the 
state with a conceptual and methodological framework enabling it to 
negotiate with rural constituents on a continuous basis. This is crucial 
for blocking tendencies already manifest in the implementation of the 
PAP in which the planning process is designed to mesh with official 
policies at departmental and national levels. 
The desired bottom-up approach is forced to adapt to a top-down 
reality, particularly in view of the contradictory mandates of the various 
agents implementing PAP. Flexible local planning is essential because 
the results of participatory planning exercises are never comprehensive: 
they change over time, with techniques used, the level of organization, 
the personalities of the participants, the socioeconomic situation and 
so on. Current PAP understand participatory local planning as being a 
largely truncated negotiation process. 
The half-hearted commitment to participatory local planning apparent 
by the agencies within PAP could, in some quarters, be defended as a 
safety valve against excessive participation. This refers to a populism 
that blindly adheres to whatever the local population proposes 
(Makumbe 1996). Much as development facilitators must not enter 
communities with preconceived ideas, they should, nevertheless, have 
the breadth of experience to know what can and cannot work. Facilitators 
must be non-directive "up to a point" (Clark 1991). Excessive participation 
can curtail the sustainability of local development processes if planning 
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teams do not rigorously evaluate the technical feasibility of what is 
proposed. 
The need to guard against excessive participation is appreciated, 
but the problem is such an approach is not always be made in good 
faith. In many cases it is a simple pretext for subordinating powerful 
voices among the grassroots in the development processes. The degree 
to which local people participate in collective initiatives is affected by 
the extent to which they are aware of the social forces militating against 
their socioeconomic welfare (Makumbe 1996, Ubgomeh 2001). Without 
an in-depth appreciation of the causes of their suffering, underprivileged 
people may resist participation. The apparent lack of knowledge their 
own socioeconomic status is linked to the devastating impact of poverty, 
which forces most people to be almost entirely concerned with survival, 
rather than with the attainment of better living conditions. 
In Malawi poverty is deep and severe. As Ubgomeh (2001:591) says, 
"in regions [and countries] of extreme poverty participation can become 
a luxury not all can afford". Unless the livelihood of the poor can be 
guaranteed, it is unrealistic to expect them to mobilize themselves for 
self-help development (Osman 1997, Oyugi 2000). To achieve a 
meaningful participation of the rural masses in development, therefore, 
they need to be assisted in creating and developing organizations 
through which they can become aware of their rights and collective 
strength to act as a pressure group in the negotiated process of 
participation. This has been overlooked altogether in the PAP 
implementation institutional matrix. 
Concluding remarks 
There is little doubt that participatory local planning is now the catch 
phrase in contemporary rural development efforts and local governance. 
The major challenge, however, is how to institutionalize it effectively in 
grassroots development programmes. The manner in which the notion 
of participatory local planning is currently conceived makes this a 
significant challenge. There is a deep-seated tendency, as evidenced in 
the PAP institutional implementation framework, to view participation 
as a neutral concept. This means that the framework for institutionalizing 
VOL 18 NO 1 JANUARY 2003 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA 141
participation lacks any component of a negotiation process. Significant 
strides in institutionalizing transformational participation can be made 
if. and only if, stakeholders reorient their perception of participation 
from being a neutral concept to being an untruncated process of 
negotiation. If this does not happen instrumental participation will 
continue to dominate real project situations and the transformational 
principle would not extend beyond the project plan documents 
(Mikkelsen 1995, Makumbe 19%). 
The apparently questionable commitment of developing countries to 
the participatory development philosophy could perhaps be better 
understood in the context of the exogenous nature of the drives to 
reform. In Malawi, for instance, the origins of the PAP are intimately 
linked to the 1993 GOM/UN Poverty Situation Analysis, during which 
the Malawi Congress Party official position on poverty was openly 
challenged. 
According to the officially-orchestrated slogan by the former 
President of Malawi, the late Ngwazi Kamuzu Banda, as long as 
Malawians were well fed, had adequate clothes and lived in houses 
which did not leak, there was no poverty in Malawi. Political reforms 
since 1992 have given donor agencies and other actors the 
unprecedented opportunity to press the government to adopt a 
participatory development philosophy as an indispensable dimension 
of good governance. 
As a result, local participation has been sought without a meaningful 
reform of the power relations between development planners and the 
grassroots (ILO 1985, Osmanl997). But through the authentic process 
of empowerment, the process of participatory local planning could be 
gradually restructured into a level playing field for negotiation between 
local masses on one hand and development planners on the other. It is, 
however, important to note that the success of participatory local 
planning requires a pre-existing democratic structure and central 
policymakers who are sympathetic to the basic interests of the poor. 
This can only happen if the desire to reform the participatory planning 
local development processes is genuinely endogenous. 
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