Institutionalizing Participatory Development in Zimbabwe

The book explores opportunities and challenges for emplacing participatory development in rural Zimbabwe and compares that with Zambia’s experiences. In participatory development ordinary people’s relations with development organisations and inter-organisational interactions in joint and separate spaces as organisations facilitate development are important. Initiators regulators and participants of the interactions are many formal and informal local and external. Governments shape and participate in the interactions (policy and implementing activities) but under-fund local governance institutions. Government strengthens but also distorts local relations. Distortion is increasingly the situation in Zimbabwe. People’s participation is the bottom-up influence needed for organisational interaction to be locally meaningful. The crisis in Zimbabwe has put a strain on organisational interaction & relations with people stalling institutionalization of participatory development. These findings are applicable to many situations even where poverty and institutional stress are lower.