Development for the people

Civil Society in Zambia has finalised its input to the National Development Plan (NDP), which will outline the framework for national development for the next five years. The priority for Civil Society has been ensure, that the NDP will aim at reducing poverty levels.

By Rasmus C. Dawes, Development Worker, CSPR

In 2005 Zambia has been in the process of formulating its fifth National Development Plan (NDP). The NDP is the overall plan for national development for 2006–2011 and will succeed the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and Transitional National Development Plan.

The cardinal question for civil society is whether the NDP will form an effective development framework that will result in national development and a significant reduction of poverty levels.

This year has been marked by much debate and publicity of the attainment of the HIPC Completion Point. Also, 2005 marks another important milestone for Zambia, namely the transition from the PRSP to the NDP. Civil society in Zambia participated in various ways in the process of designing and monitoring the PRSP.

This is not to say that civil society agreed with the source of the concept of the PRSP, neither did civil society participate because stakeholder participation was a PRSP requirement. Civil society participated because it recognised the need to address the unacceptable poverty situation that the majority of Zambians were facing by putting in place a fairly good PRSP. Similarly, the preparation of Zambia’s 5th NDP would be incomplete without civic participation to ensure a continued poverty focus.

Engaging with Government

Amongst the reasons for civil society engagement is the fact that it has a wealth of information to contribute to the NDP and as a key stakeholder deems it necessary to advocate for correct priority setting. Also, national ownership of the NDP will only be achieved, if civic participation is genuine throughout its formulation. The reasons for engagement are manifold.

As was the case with the formulation of the PRSP, Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR) took upon itself the crucial role of coordinating civil society’s input into the formulation of the NDP. With more than hundred member organisations located at national, provincial and district level, CSPR is well vested for this critical process. CSPR recognises that government has limitations in the extent of including a wide spectrum of stakeholders in development processes such as the NDP and thus must be complimented.

Civil society roadmap

Following Government’s disclosure of the roadmap for the NDP in April 2005, CSPR drew up a civil society roadmap that would guide and enhance civil society input to complement the Government led process.

The civil society roadmap was intended to ensure broader inclusion of the poor people’s voices, to both directly and indirectly influence the final outcome of the NDP.

Civil society’s efforts at engaging in the NDP process were kicked off at an inception workshop in June 2005. Here the Government NDP Road Map was presented, as well as that of civil society.

The main presenters and speakers were drawn from civil society, Government and the International Community. Amongst participating organisations were several MS-Zambia partners working with community based national resource management and agricultural management. Civil society thematic groups were revived and held their maiden meetings at the same workshop.

Although CSPR commended Government for undertaking NDP consultations at district level, they stressed the importance of ensuring a people centred approach. The process needed to be “truly” bottom-up. CSPR was committed to take the process to the people by undertaking consultations in provinces, districts and communities.

NDP input

An ongoing strategy of the CSPR groups operating at provincial and district level, is to lobby and advocate for poverty reduction by actively participation in government development processes.

The NDP presented an important opportunity to do just that. Therefore, the provincial civil society groups have been active, through their representation on the PDCCs and DDCCs. The aim has been to feed civil society’s concerns and recommendations into District Strategic Plans and thereby ultimately the NDP document.

Another important means to ensure that the people’s voices were heard in the NDP was to undertake community input sessions. Civil society visited several sites in five provinces to gather community concerns and priorities. These findings were coupled to the development of provincial civil society NDP position papers that would later make their way to national, provincial and district planning authorities.

In addition to gathering provincial, district and community input, CSPR has been coordinating a comprehensive process to develop civil society position papers to reflect its concerns, priorities and recommendations for various sectors of the NDP.

The civil society position papers focus on Agriculture and Food Security; Employment and Social Protection; Industry and Mining; Water, Sanitation and Low Cost Housing; Education, Youth and Child; Health and Nutrition; Environment; HIV/AIDS; Macro-Economics; Governance and Gender.

In order to reach consensus amongst civil society on these papers several consensus building seminars have been held at provincial and national level.

Development for the people

Civil society has been, and still is, intensively engaging with Government by putting across its concerns and recommendations in the DDCCs, PDCCs and Sector Advisory Groups (SAGs).

The slogan that has unified civil society during this important time has been that the fight against poverty can only be successful if a pact is made between Government and the People of Zambia. There is need to ensure participation, accountability, commitment and transparency in national development.

It is expected that civil society formally launch and handover its NDP recommendations to Government in early November 2005. According to Government, the draft NDP is expected ready in time to inform next years budget preparations. The hope is that it will contain the views and priorities of the people on poverty and national development.