Introduction  

Participation in some form or the other has been included as an important element in development strategies of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, participation has become an essential ingredient and a prerequisite of good governance. Development as a process of increasing people’s capacity to determine their future means that people need to be included in the process – the need to participate. Participation or empowerment is part of the process and definition of development. There is, therefore, a growing consensus that people everywhere have a basic human right to take part in decisions that affect their lives.

Consequently, participation in sub-Saharan African states has been promoted by the donor community, the agencies of the United Nations and the governments themselves. This paper discusses the concept of participation, focusing mainly on what it is and what it is not. Specifically, the paper defines the concept of participation, its advantages and weaknesses. It also highlights the constraints on participation and the strategies that can be employed it. 

Clarification of the context and major issues around the theme  

Defining participation  

Participation has been defined in narrow and broad terms. In its narrow connotations, participation is defined as the active engagement of citizens with public institutions, an activity which falls into three well-defined modes: voting, election campaigning and contacting or pressuring either individually or through group activity, including non-violent protests (Verba et al., 1978; Parry et al., 1992). Excluded in this definition are attitudes towards participation and participation in rural development efforts. In its broad terms, participation is a “collective sustained activity for the purpose of achieving some common objectives, especially a more equitable distribution of the benefits of development” (UNESCO, 1979: 15). 

Political participation has been an issue in development management from the beginning, but its significance has increased principally because it has become part of official rhetoric. Individual full participation in making societal choices and decisions is a natural outcome of the endowment of individual dignity because it contributes to individual self-development. Responsibility for the governing of one’s own conduct develops one’s dignity. In particular full individual participation within the local institutions contributes to the creation of community solidarity because everyone feels involved in what is going on relative to their welfare (Uphoff, 1986).  

Individual full participation boils down to popular participation where the largest proportion of the citizenry is invited and expected to express their wishes on issues of governance. On every issue, the views of the majority should prevail. This popular participation may be achieved through meetings in small and large communities through ratepayers associations, neighbourhood groups, and other political and social associations. Public or popular participation in decision making is an imperative tenet for democratic local government (Giddenjuys et. al., 1991). But in order not to deny the minority its rights of self-assertion, it is also a democratic imperative that while the majority would have its way, the minority must have its say. In return, the minority must accept the majority decision once that decision has been freely arrived at.  

Although there are different ways to define participation, the dominant perspective is to treat it pragmatically and to view it as a strategy to improve the development process.  

Varieties of participation  

Joan Nelson (1979) has identified three varieties of participation. They are: 

• Horizontal variety of participation, involves partisan or political behaviour – voting, campaigning, interest group activity and lobbying. In other words, the horizontal type of participation relates to activities to get people involved collectively in efforts to influence policy decisions.  

• Vertical variety of participation includes any occasions when members of the public develop particular relations with elites or officials, relations that are mutually beneficial. Examples include patron-client networks and political machines. In both these cases the public is not as concerned with influencing the government as it is with developing the particular relationship and receiving benefits from it.  

• Participation in administrative processes (which may overlap with either horizontal or vertical participation) takes the form of interest group activity to shape administrative decisions, or of a particular exchange between patron and client; but usually it is more inclusive than either of the other two varieties. It includes decisions by farmers whether to adopt a new technology, rural dwellers meeting together to plan communal efforts to put up a market or taking part in civic education programmes.  

Changes in the meaning of participation  

Byrant and White (1982) have postulated that the dominant concern during the 1950s and 1960s was controlling the amount and type of participation. For example, military regimes were efforts to foreclose participation at the national level. Indeed, participation was feared as a disruptive influence. Even where participation was encouraged in a community development programme, it was usually very limited in its scope. This preoccupation with the dangers inherent in participation was consistent with definitions of development as capital intensive and growth oriented and with administration as a hierarchical top-down structure.  

Participation, during the 1950s and 1960s, was defined in purely political terms; it meant voting, party membership, activity in voluntary associations, protest movements, etc. As modernization proceeded, it was assumed that the benefits of growth would trickle down to the public and gradually stimulate their involvement in these political processes. In the meantime, it was important to provide institutions to channel participation so as to prevent its potentially unstable results. Parties were particularly encouraged as a means to harness and manage the political energies and demands of the public (Deutch, 1961; Parry, 1972).  

By the 1970s, the meaning of participation in the development context began to be redefined. Rather than being identified with political and electoral processes, it became associated with the administrative or implementation process. A number of reasons account for the redefinition of the political scope of participation. First, according to John Cohen and Norman Uphoff (1978: 11), the change of attitude was initially spurred by politicians, and “had a notable counter insurgency quality about it”. Participation was valued as an alternative to revolutionary movements and uprisings. The reasoning was that if people could be mobilized to be part of the development process, they would be less available to revolution. Second is the realization that the political process was too undeveloped to elicit preferences or involve the public, and therefore participation would have more impact within the implementation process. In the words of Grindle (1980:3):  

The implementation process may be the major arena in which individuals and groups are able to pursue conflicting interests and compete for scarce resources. It may even be the principal nexus of the interaction between a government and citizenry.

Those in development projects picked up the involvement of the public in the implementation phase of development and particularly in administrative processes and referred to the practical values of involving farmers or peasants in the development taking place in their villages. For example, Uma Lele (1975) reviewed African rural development projects and found that participation had been a significant and positive component. This because: 

Participation in planning and implementation of programmes can develop the self-reliance necessary among rural people for accelerated development (Lele, 1975:150).   

A similar study of thirty-six projects carried out by Morss et. al (1975) tried to explain why some were more successful than others. Success was measured by benefit-cost ratios, the number of new agricultural practices, the extent to which the projects increased the farmer’s capacity for self-help, and the project’s capacity to be self-sustaining. They found that the best predictor of success was the extent of local action in the project. They defined participation as involvement by the farmers in project design and implementation and as commitment of either labour or money. 

Analysis of the challenges  

A number of challenges or dilemmas and obstacles confront participation. This section is devoted to identifying the benefits of participation as well as examining its challenges and obstacles. 

The benefits of participation  

Popular participation has a number of benefits. First, popular participation mobilizes greater resources and accomplish more with the same programme budget. Second, it is also economically efficient in that it uses generally under-utilized labour and, to a lesser extent, can build upon indigenous knowledge which also tends to be under-utilized. Thus more services are provided at less cost. Third, participation can better project design. It ensures that felt needs are served. Presumbly beneficiaries will shape the project to their specific needs in ways that outside planners cannot. A sense of immediate responsibility and ownership by beneficiaries puts pressure on a project to be truly worthwhile. Fourth, participation can become a catalyst for mobilizing further local development efforts. There tends to be greater spread effects as villagers communicate with kin and associates in other villages. Fifth, it creates local level awareness, competence and capacity where it did not exist before (Finsterbusch and Wicklin III, 1987). 

The challenges of participation  

Notwithstanding these benefits, participation is not a totally unmixed blessing. In recent years, participation has become something of a political catch-phrase and many people with a serious interest in politics have become suspicious of it. According to Derbyshire (1984), the scepticism which is often attached to it, is perhaps best summed up in the words printed on a poster displayed by French students during the 1968 disturbances in Paris. Translated into English, it read: 

I participate

Thou participatest

He participates

We participate

You participate

They profit  

Whether it is political or local government participation, the one thing that sceptics ask is, how real is it? In other words, to participate effectively must mean to be able, as a consequence of the participation to have some influence over any resultant decisions (Derbyshire, 1984: 227).  

One of the challenges of participation is that even when it occurs within the administrative arena, it is a profoundly political process. The major contribution of participation is political rather than technical, that is, participation does not necessarily enhance the effectiveness of a project as much as it enables the participants to influence what is meant by effectiveness. Participation is one way for the poor to “contribute to establishing a definition of project effectiveness that serves their interests” (Bryant and White, 1982).  

Some of the specific challenges or dilemmas that confront administrators as they work with participatory projects are the following:  

• Access: Which groups or members of the public should be included?  

• Responsiveness: To whom should administrators be responsive, to the organized public or the unorganized and less visible public?  

• Professionalism: What is the best way to evaluate citizen preferences when they contradict professional training and judgement?  

• Effectiveness: What can an administrator do if organized publics either veto or dilute a project so that little is done? (Bryant and White, 1982: 212).

The implication of these questions is that the value of participation is not in its presence alone. The value of participation varies depending on who is participating at what stage of the administrative process and what kind of activity they are doing. Rather than valuing participation per se, the important issue is what kinds of participation are appropriate to a given task and given environment. In the words of Uphoff et. al. (1979: 5-8): 

Having “more” participation is not always “better” as the value depends on what kind of participation, under what circumstances, by and for whom? 

Although the above questions tend to assume administrators want to be responsive to the public, the dilemma for the public is that this assumption is not always accurate. They may be easily manipulated by administrators who feel primarily accountable to their agencies or supervisors. The public’s problem is to hold administrators accountable and to find some ways to influence them. Accountability is particularly important precisely where political institutions are weakest. In sub-Saharan Africa, citizens would therefore view the same problems differently. In other words, citizens are also confronted with the following dilemmas or challenges: 

• Access: Assuming that bureaucrats are trying to build coalitions with supporters, what voice or access can non-supporters have?

• Responsiveness: But what about those instances when this is not the case and opposition threatens them? How can the concept of loyal opposition be instilled? What recourse do the poor – the peasants – have to be taken seriously?

• Professionalism: Based on their professionalism, administrators may readily assume they know what is best for project beneficiaries and others in the community; this presumption is particularly popular in the third world, where there is often a great social distance between bureaucrats and the public. At the same time, it is easy for the public to be intimidated by the expertise and training of administrators. The problem for citizens is therefore to develop an independent source of authority.

• Effectiveness: The public may define effectiveness very differently than administrators; peasants, for example, may have other goals they are seeking quite separate from those of the experts (Bryant and White, 1982).

The foregoing has shown that administrators and citizens have different perspectives on the participatory process. One way to incorporate both is to view participation as a learning process, as mutual interaction. Administrators need to share their judgments with citizens, at the same time that they need to temper their professional judgment with an awareness of citizen preferences. The mutuality of the process will work best if the public has its own organizational base and is not totally dependent on administrators to listen to them. In other words, the process should not only be useful to the administrators, but facilitate and protect the interests of the public as well (Bryant and White, 1982). 

The obstacles to participation 

The experience with participatory programmes in African has not been encouraging. In the words of Uma Lele (1975:162): 

Even where development of local participation is an important objective of rural development and where political education in mass participation is a key element of the development strategy, programmes have not developed genuine participation and responsibility among the rural people. 

In most of sub-Saharan Africa, popular institutions like local government units and cooperatives have not performed very well. Governments have extended their bureaucratic tentacles down to the village and district levels. It is the official agencies which still initiate and carry out most development on behalf of the people. The people themselves have become recipients of development as if development is something outside their realm of experience. Of course, there are rays of hope here and there with decentralization and rural development programmes, but across the board the scene is one of despair and disappointment. 

Often participatory schemes are launched without sufficient prior preparation. In a rush to product quick results, the tasks of anticipating problems in the field and making provisions for dealing with unanticipated situations are simply side-tracked. Those concerned with the making of development plans and programmes tend to forget that participation cannot be achieved by plans formulated in isolation in central government offices way from the people concerned (Mathur, 1996). The point made by Alfonso (1983: 44) on the rhetoric of participation by development agencies is still valid today: 

Regularly incorporate the rhetoric of participation in their development plans – the reality seldom resembles the rhetoric. A growing body of evidence suggests that one explanation for the gap between rhetoric and reality can be found in the operating structures of organizations responsible for the implementation of development projects. Participation requires more than planning mandates and/or good will. It requires basic new skills and a reorientation of operating structures which plans alone cannot achieve. 

There are political, socio-cultural and bureaucratic constraints to participation. 

Political constraints 

Political constraints are still the biggest obstacle to participation in sub-Saharan Africa. African leaders still have paternalistic and neo-patrimonial tendencies, which they use to consolidate their power and prestige. In spite of democratization and good governance, most African leaders today have not been able to relinquish their predecessors’ obsession with power. Consequently, there have been overt and covert attempts to either enfeeble civil society organizations or coopt them. The growth of autonomous institutions has been stunted. This obsession with power has led to not only a concentration of power but also a centralization of decision-making, which also resulted in lack of participation of people in rural areas. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa have embarked on decentralization programmes with the aim of promoting popular participation, accountability, responsiveness and effectiveness. However, most of the decentralization efforts in sub-Saharan Africa have not been able to empower the local people to enable them participate in decisions largely because of the lack of political will and commitment on the part of their leaders. Moreover, political leaders have not still accepted participation in planning and management by organizations that are outside of the direct control of the central government. 

Bureaucratic constraints 

A major constraint on participation is the bureaucracy. Constraints are inherent in the very body politic and routines of the bureaucratic machinery. Most government-administered development agencies came into existence long before participation became part of development philosophy. They were designed with a centralized, service-delivery approach in view where flexibility and responsiveness to needs in the field have no place. Therefore, these programme agencies lack development orientation. Participation and such innovative ideas are, in fact, an anathema to it. Scholars of bureaucratic behaviour all agree that “finding ways of inculcating the spirit of experimentation and creativity into hierarchical and control-oriented bureaucracies has eluded most administrative reformers” (Rondinelli, 1982:46). 

A number of reasons explain why bureaucrats do not have faith in the values of participation. First, bureaucrats believe that they alone have answers to all problems faced by the poor and that they are the only ones who have a right to this knowledge. In their scheme of things, the only role people can and should play is to act as mere recipients of the delivery system. However, to be effective the participatory approach requires that there be a sense of partnership between administrators and the people. If this condition is not fulfilled, there will hardly be any scope for people to participate in the development process. In short, bureaucratic paternalism turns rural people into passive recipients of governmental services. Second, bureaucrats feel uncomfortable with working methods that involve consultation. Participatory methodology entails frequent visits to villages instead of working in the comfort of their offices in the capital. If this approach is followed, the job of activating the local community cannot be left to extension agents as was the case before. Third, one fear which commonly grips bureaucracies is that if lower level officials are delegated more functions and responsibility, things are bound to go wrong. Decision-making authorities at the higher level invariably view the officials lower down the hierarchy as lacking in competence, and hence untrustworthy. Decentralization is impossible to practise under such circumstances (Cheema and Rondinelli, 1983).  Third, the highly centralized character of bureaucracies does not allow the field staff any discretion to act. Their inability to act when the local situation demands that certain things be done promptly discourages the people to come forth. Rather than act and as a result get into trouble, the field staff prefers to sit back, and await orders from above. Often it is safer not to act than to act. 

Socio-cultural constraints 

It has often been assumed that the deeply ingrained attitudes of fatalism among rural dwellers hinder the participatory process. It was assumed that peasants and the poor were happy with the thing around them, and that they had no aspirations to change their ways. Substantial evidence now exists in anthropology that such assumptions are not tenable. Admittedly, participation does not fascinate many rural people. However, this lack of interests in their own development has nothing to do with the attitudes of fatalism, the innate conservatism and other such traits which have been attributed to them for too long. Participation appears quite irrelevant to the poor in their circumstances. Rather they prefer to seek help from their families, landlords, money-lenders, shopkeepers, and from anyone who may be a friend in need (Mathur, 1996). 

The most significant factor that restricts participation by the poor is their low level of awareness. Governmental assistance seems irrelevant because many people are simply not aware of public services which exist for them right in their own village. The elite groups tend to monopolize all contacts with the outside agents. Often the poorer groups see no point in competing with the more affluent for services and benefits which the contacts bring. Explaining why the poor regard participation as of no particular concern to them, Huntington and Nelson (1976:118) have outlined three basic reasons for this situation: 

• The poor lack resources for effective participation – adequate information, appropriate contacts, money, and often time;

• In low-income strata, people are often divided by race, tribe, religion or language; even where cleavages are obvious, distinctions may be drawn on the basis of differences in sect, income, status, or place of origin that outsiders can barely perceive;

• The poor tend to expect requests or pressures on their part, whether individual or collective, to be ignored or refused by the authorities and these expectations are often justified. Worse their attempts may provoke governmental repression or prompt reprisals from the private interests threatened by the self-assertion of the poor. Those on the margin of subsistence are particularly vulnerable to threats from employers, landlords or creditors.

If participation is to be meaningful, there should be participatory local organizations of the poor. By linking with development agencies of the government at the local level, the local organizations can provide to the members a forum to participate in the designing and implementation of development programmes. However, the number of villages in sub-Saharan Africa without local organizations is much larger than the number of villages with local organizations. Even where organizations of the poor have been in existence for some time, they do not seem to be functioning very well in projecting their demands and otherwise helping their cause (Mathur, 1996). The poor simply lack necessary skills in organizing and managing their affairs collectively. Electing capable leaders, calling meetings, making decisions, keeping records, raising subscriptions, and handling funds are some of the tasks that require for their performance a certain degree of managerial ability. Generally, the poor in villages lack these skills and thus are not in a position to establish organizations of their own to promote development. This factor severely limits the emergence of participatory processes. 

Other constraints 

Three other constraints are also associated with participation. First, using existing patterns of local power and organization can reinforce exis