PARTICIPATORY APPROACHES TO DEVELOPMENT

Case study of Namuwongo Urban based IDP slum, KampalaBy PEMO

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Project partner : Forum on International Cooperation University of British Columbia

Before project Days after the project

Background • Namuwongo is one of the worst slums in Kampala begging for

development.

The very close location of this slum to lake Victoria makes it of prime importance for public health in Kampala and East Africa.

Lake Victoria

Namuwongo urban IDP

Location of Namuwongo

Project facilitators

• This project was a collaboration between Practicing Environmental Managers’ Organization (PEMO) and Forum On International Cooperation University of British Columbia (FICUBC - Canada) and the local residents of Namuwongo.

Rationale for the project

• After years of inadequate government driven development, we were able to use locally driven development approaches for Namuwongo development through participatory development planning techniques. This propagated local ownership and to date the community is pursuing various paths of its own development.

How to implement participatory development

• Through representative local participation, we identified development challenges, prioritized them and later drew a community action plan to be implemented by a Community Based organization that we created during the process.

The results

• Today the Namuwongo Community Based Organization (NACODO) a collection of democratically elected representatives from the four zones (3 from each) of Namuwongo, implements development initiatives and our role has been reduced to supervision and monitoring as well as promotion of the CBO to various development partners.

The outcomes of participatory development programs

• Today the Namuwongo Community Based Organization (NACODO) a collection of democratically elected representative from the four zones (3 from each) of Namuwongo, implements development initiatives and our role has only been reduced to supervision and monitoring as well as promotion of the CBO to various development partners.

Relating participatory appraisal to current AGOA need

• Assume government would be PEMO and FICUBC, we would then go to local agricultural producers, organize them, learn from and with these local agricultural stakeholders, identifying with them locally based agricultural challenges, prioritizing them in the context of these local areas, and drawing community/challenge specific action plans, latter forming community/challenge/initiative based community organizations which would then be promoted, advised and supervised by government.

The strengths• Such an approach is based on the

fact that local people have knowledge, resources, are more aware of their local challenges, and if organized they can be the impetus for their own agricultural empowerment

• There is nothing new about participatory approaches to development, it is entirely consistent with the basic good strategic planning. This approach begs for local ownership of the development process.