MALAWI CASE STUDY

I. INTRODUCTION

Malawi re-attained it's independence in 1964 as the smallest and poorest of the three territories which hitherto had comprised the colonial Central African Federation. The country emerged out of colonisation under the dominance of Dr. Hastings Banda and the Malawi Congress Party, a situation which continued uninterrupted until mid 1990's. In May 1994, multi-party elections were held in Malawi which brought into power a coalition of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Alliance For Democracy (AFORD). This coalition is still holding though some claim that it is somewhat unsteady. That not withstanding, the political atmosphere in Malawi is remarkably different from that of Banda's era when arguably Malawi was the most repressive state in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa. The new politics has, albeit, unwittingly, reintroduced the euphoria of the early 1960's a major characteristic of which was public high expectations. The new government is aware of potential problems inherent in this extremely high public expectations. In this context, decentralisation is one way of redirecting the newly unleashed public energy.

Ninety percent of Malawi's population live in the rural areas and depend on subsistence agriculture for livelihood. Landlessness is a serious problem. Of the total usable land, 40 per cent is in the estate sector producing mainly tobacco, sugar, tea and coffee for export. The remaining is shared by 1.8 million small-holder households, a majority of whom cultivate less than 0.5 hectares. In addition to a poor resource base, therefore, Malawi's average population density of 106 persons per km2 is one of the highest in Africa.

Life expectancy at 45 years is low by any standards. Infant mortality rate at 134 per 1,000 live births is high. In addition, child malnutrition at 48.7%, stunting and wasting at 5.4%, maternal mortality at 620 per 160,000 births and general prevalence of disease, are also high by any standards. Due to poor nutrition, 50 percent of children are below expected height for age.

Of special interest to UNCDF is the status of education in Malawi. Unfortunately this sector faces many constraints. These include poor access, poor infrastructure, high repetition rates, high drop out rates and inequality.

Approximately 30 percent of boys and 48 percent of girls of school going age do not enrol. After coming into power in 1994 the new government eliminated school fees for primary education to improve access. This resulted in increased enrolment by 62 percent. Not unexpectedly, this policy has also resulted in overcrowded classrooms. An additional 22,980 teachers have been recruited but the system still needs more teachers, sanitation facilities and teachers houses. The problem of the education sector is easily seen in the classroom where in 1993, for example, there were 103 students on average per classroom. The latest shortage of classrooms is estimated at 38,000 units. The share of education in government expenditure is currently 17.1 percent, up from 11.1 percent in 1990/91.1 This is likely to go higher thus crowding out other sectors.

II. ECONOMIC SETTING AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION:

After independence in 1964, Malawi emphasised maintaining macro-economic stability with growth of infrastructure and estate agriculture as the main policy elements. While this trickle down approach proved somewhat effective in promoting growth and macroeconomic stability, it did little to reduce poverty. Furthermore, the economy had certain structural weaknesses which made it highly vulnerable to external and internal shocks. For example, tobacco continued to be the main produce, accounting for 70 percent of foreign exchange earnings. Given the structural weaknesses the growth momentum was lost in the mid-1980s, when a series of destabilizing factors came into play. These factors included declining tobacco prices in the international market, and civil strife in neighbouring Mozambique which increased international transport costs and brought large refugee and security related expenditures. In addition, drought in 1992 caused the economy to contract by 8 percent thus reducing smallholder output by 37.4 percent. This was followed by another drought in 1994 this time contracting the economy by 12 percent and reducing the production of maize, the main staple, by 50 percent. All these factors resulted in serious macroeconomic instability manifested, for example, in sharp exchange rate depreciation and high inflation of 35 percent in 1994.2 This, in turn, resulted in even more poverty.

It is against this background that stabilisation and poverty reduction emerged as central policy objectives of the post Banda government in 1994.

Poverty in Malawi is pervasive. In 1995, the country was ranked as the 9th poorest country in the world. The country has low average incomes (US$ 140 GNP in 1994)which are distributed highly unevenly.3

For the poorest 20 percent of households, even the most basic food needs are not fully met. Most of the poor in Malawi are to be found in smallholder households thus reflecting a rural urban bias. In addition female headed households have generally less income, thus reflecting a gender bias in "poverty distribution". Regional variation is also significant. The Southern Region which accounts for 51 percent of total households in the country has a higher share of poor households(66%).4 Some of the pockets of most severe poverty are to be found along the Mozambique border. These pockets of the poorest suffer from food insecurity, thus running out of food nearly four months before the next harvest. Even among the relatively "better off" rural households, constraints to smallholder productivity keep incomes low. These include small size holdings, restrictive land laws which prevent pooling for example, poor land quality exacerbated by easily observable soil erosion, a conspicuous absence of irrigation thus making agriculture vulnerable; lack of modern agricultural equipment and limited credit availability.

The problem of poverty is worsened by the declining level of off-farm incomes due to declining real wages and slow growth in labour demand. The demand for casual labour (yanyu)is growing much slower than the population growth. This means that projects such as UNCDF's are likely to attract a lot of labour (through the well known rural patronage system) but not necessarily the most efficient.

Alleviating poverty in Malawi is, therefore, a daunting task requiring a comprehensive approach. First, there must be a strong nexus between economic growth and poverty alleviation. This will, in turn demand a host of policy measures aimed at promoting poverty targeted investment, human resources development, land reform, agricultural growth institutional reforms and macroeconomic stabilisation. Decentralisation is one, but only one of these measures.

III. DECENTRALISATION IN MALAWI:

i. Historical Background

The basic elements of decentralisation in Malawi have been covered fairly well in the UNCDF's 1995 Project Document for Malawi and in a subsequent UNCDF case study for Malawi by Mary Anderson.5 Here we, therefore, need only re-iterate the main features and update the above documents.

Decentralisation in Malawi commenced with the establishment of the first six District Councils in the then Nyasaland in 1954. More districts were subsequently established until a fairly comprehensive system of local government was in place. Currently the country has 24 districts. The early councils were essentially associations of traditional chiefs with elected non-traditional councillors coming into the councils gradually. As part of the gradual introduction of the participatory elective principle, more powers were transferred from the chiefs to the local authorities. In addition, the non-elected District Commissioner was replaced by an elected chairman.

This essentially democratic institutional arrangement worked well until the mid 1960's when the introduction of the single party state began to have negative consequences on participation. The chiefs, many of whom possessed popular traditional legitimacy were removed as council ex- officio members. Election to council seats was subjected to party pre-selection. District Commissioners and the councils lost most of their powers as local service delivery was increasingly dominated by sectoral ministries. As part of this new arrangement, the Central Government took over the posting of all senior staff required by local authorities. In addition, the authorities lost the freedom to collect revenues.

From 1996 onwards, therefore, the single party ladder of branches began to dominate all areas of administrative and political life in Malawi. The bureaucratic counterpart of the single party was the network of development committees which included District Development Committees (DDCs), Area Action Committees and Village Action Committees. All these were essentially extensions of the central government control into the local areas. They therefore, had little to do with decentralisation or participation. The membership of the District Development Committees therefore, comprised of the District Commissioner as chairman, traditional chiefs, Local Officials , Party Representatives, Local Members of Parliament and a number of other appointed representatives. The Area Action Committees and the Village Action Committees were networks of the party at sub-district level. They reported to the District Development Committee. These control institutions were in turn controlled by the office of the President and the Cabinet.

The kindest interpretation of this institutional set up, therefore, is that it was a form of deconcentration, that is to the extent that there was any deconcentration at all. It certainly was not devolution. The District Development Committee did not have any corporate status and therefore was not a local government body. It had no staff of its own, no revenue raising power, no accountability to local populations. The line ministries ran the affairs of the districts. On their part the lower level committees, i.e. the Area Action Committees and the Village Action Committees were simply lower level extensions of the party machinery. This institutional arrangement closely resembles Kenyas District Focus For Rural Development. Indeed many of it's features were borrowed from Kenya in 1993 when Malawi officially adopted the District Focus concept.

ii. Current Institutional Framework

With the advent of multi-partyism in 1994 a number of changes were made to the district focus institutions. First, at the national level the responsibility for co-ordinating the decentralised institutions was removed from the Office of the President and Cabinet to the Ministry of Local Government. This ministry is now an extremely important one with respect to policy and programming of decentralisation against traditionally centralising ministries such as Ministry of Finance and Planning. Other changes made since 1994 have resulted in the following institutions.

District Councils: The District Councils have been retained. Altogether there are 24 District Councils in Malawi each coinciding with boundaries of district administration. Traditionally District Councils are autonomous bodies managed by elected and employed officials. They have legal identity, common seal and defined set of functions, powers and duties. They have their own budget, and programmes of activities financed from own resources and central government grants. They can hire and fire their own lower level staff while the Local Authorities Service Commission undertakes this role for higher level staff. At the moment Malawi is in the process of developing a new Local Government Bill which will set the stage for elections to the District Councils. In the meantime, elections to these councils have now been postponed to 1999 while the current terms for the councillors have been let to lapse. One interpretation of the postponement of the elections is that the government is not too keen to hold elections. It is not sure of winning. Another interpretation is that the government would like to wait until it's idea of decentralisation consolidate around the proposed District Assemblies which will be a truly devolved form of decentralisation.

Municipal and Town Council: There are four urban areas with the status of Municipal Council. These are Blantyre, Lolongwe, Mzuzu and Zomba. Like District councils they are constituted under an Act of Parliament which spells out their powers, functions and duties. The councils are run by elected officials and on the whole, have adequate and qualified staff as well as more resources than District Councils. Town Councils are constituted under the same Act as Municipalities but operate in a much smaller area and offer a smaller range of services. Currently there are eight Town Councils in Malawi.

District Development Committees: There is a District Development Committee in each district. Unlike District Councils, Municipal and Town Councils, District Development Committees are an administrative creation. They therefore do not have legal mandate to raise revenue. They depend on government revenue and donor finance to fund their programmes. Following change of government in 1994 their membership was re-defined in order to make them more participatory by way of breaking the old one party hold on the committees. Currently the membership comprise of : District Commissioner(Chairman), Mayors and Chairman of District and Town Councils(up to December 1995 when elected councillors in local government were abolished,) all members of parliament in each district, and representatives of NGOs in the district. District Development Committees are the institutions through which UNCDF's projects are being implemented. In this connection, it should be noted that these institutions, currently, have limited capacity to choose programmes or projects. They lack the necessary and appropriate skills needed for project selection and ranking. Furthermore, District Development Committees have no staff of their own. They depend on staff of central government ministries, NGOs and District Councils for planning, vetting and implementation of community based projects. They have very limited recurrent budgets to maintain the development activities.

District Executive Committees: Each of the 24 districts has a district Executive Committee. The Committee is chaired by a District Development Officer in the six pilot districts designated as Local Impact areas in 1993. Assistant District Commissioners Chair District Executive Committees in the other 18 districts. Membership of District Executive Committees now comprises of all district heads of sectoral ministries in each district, Clerks of Councils, religious leaders and heads of NGOs in each district. The District Executive Committees vet projects submitted to District Development Committees for funding as well as monitoring and evaluating the projects. Their capacity is therefore critical to the implementation of Local Development Funds since they are the technical arms of the District Development Committees.

Area Development Committees: These committees are set up under the auspices of the District Development Committees. Their area of jurisdiction is the same as that of the chiefs who in Malawi are non-elected traditional officials.

The chiefs chair the Area Development Committees. Membership of the committees include village headmen, school masters, extension workers from government and NGOs, constituency chairpersons of all registered political parties in the area, leaders of the religions and business community and members of parliament from the area. These are the committees which collate projects community after which they submit them to the District Development Committees for funding consideration. These have no resources of their own.

Ward/Village Development Committees: These are the lowest tier of development committees. These committees are chaired by Village Headmen. The membership includes members of parliament, NGOs, extension workers religious leaders and business representatives. They have no resources of their own and therefore have to rely on Sectoral Ministries or Local Councils for project maintenance resources.

iii. A Dual System and Proposed District Assembly

It is evident from the above outline of decentralised Institutional framework that Malawi is currently operating a dual system. The District Councils represent the traditional form of local governance. However, their relationship with the District Development Committees is still ambiguous. Furthermore its representative nature is currently under question given that elections to the councils have been postponed until 1999. The District Development Comittees on their part suffer from a number of problems. Chief among these are:

• Lack of technical capacity.
• Inability to generate own resources.
• Lack of own personnel.
• Dependence on District Executive Committee for technical expertise.
• Inter-parties political conflict.
• Dependence on personalities to define the power balance between the various bodies in the committees e.g. between the clerk/chairman of local councils and MPs, Chiefs and District Commissioners.

Since Local Development Funds in Malawi operate through the District Development Committee, in one way or the other, the problems inherent in this system are bound to affect the implementation of Local Development Funds projects. Hopefully, most of the problems will be resolved with the creation of the proposed united system to be called the District Assembly. The proposed District Assembly would have the following features, among others.

• A non-elected chief Executive as head of the District -Management Team. The latter will consist of heads of departments in the district. Chief Executive to chair Assembly.
• Elected Councillors, and Mayors as members.
• Chiefs and MPs as ex-officio members without voting powers.
• The elected members to make policy for execution by the Chief Executive and his Team.
• The position of District Commissioner to disappear.
• Considerable functions to be devolved to the District Assembly including Education, Agriculture, Planning, Health, Land, Forestry, Water, Works, Research, Women and Children Affairs and Research.6

IV. LOCAL DEVELOPMENT FUND:

In 1993 the departing Banda government created what it called Local Impact Areas, as pilot areas, in the government's overall programme of district based development. The overall idea behind the creation of Local Impact Areas was to pilot a participative, transparent, accountable and cohesive structures for planning, implementing and monitoring development activities at the district level. Six districts were identified as Local Impact Areas. These were Mongochi, Nsanje, Thyolo, Dedza, Mchinji and Nkhaka Bay.

Initially the Government of Malawi contributed US$ 26,000 to initiate a District Development Fund in each of the six districts. This was in April 1994. The UNDP 5th Country Programme, on it's part, concentrated it's assistance in the six Local Impact Areas districts. The districts appear to have been chosen by the Government of Malawi on the basis of geographical representation rather than other criterion such as poverty based ranking. The socio-political selection criterion meant that, from the very beginning, poverty targeting was problematic. A second issue worth noting is that the new Government of Malawi adopted and accepted the District Focus Institutions introduced by the Banda government, only this time, without the dominance of the one party. Thus in the six pilot districts, District Development Committees and the lower level committees outlined above, became the "decentralised" institutional arrangements the purposes of implementing projects within the districts. The UNDP went along with this on the basis that one must "go with the context" rather than wait for ideal decentralisation. After some initial hesitation based on its desire for more genuine decentralisation, UNCDF agreed to take part in the decentralisation experiment in the six districts. Thus, from 1996 UNCDF started putting in each of the six districts a matching fund of US$ 26,000 a year.UNDP on it's part continued to provide technical assistance for the District Development Fund through its Management for Development Programme.

Other donors involved in Local Development Fund in Malawi include the World Bank, the European Union, UNICEF, USAID and ODA. The World Bank deserves special mention because of it's size and approach.

The World Bank funds the Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF) under the Malawi governments' Poverty Alleviation Programme. The Fund is potentially much bigger than the pilot District Development Fund. It is estimated as high as US$ 40 million over 24 districts. This is to be contrasted with the expected total capital contribution of District Development Fund of approximately US$ 3 Million in the six pilot districts, with an additional US$ 5-6 Million to cover all technical assistance under District Focus for the five year period, 1995-2000. 7

This mission found four issues worth noting with respect to Malawi Social Action Fund. First, the Fund is supporting a broader range of activities than UNCDF but some of the community based infrastructure activities are similar to those supported by UNCDF. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing but it raises the issue of co-ordination in order to avoid confusing the local communities. Second, the Fund has adopted the approach of funding communities directly as opposed to going through the District Development Committees. The Fund's argument is that the government's institutions are slow and consequently disbursement is slow. The direct approach has, not unexpectedly, made the Fund the darling of the local communities. However, the mission was of the view that the direct approach raises serious questions on the extent to which the Fund is contributing to generating lessons on institutionalised decentralisation, as opposed to direct community strengthening. Three, the Fund has assumed a somewhat high profile in Malawi's politics of development. The close identification of the Fund with the UDF raises the question of whether the Fund is now seen as a political slash fund. Arguably this close association could have negative consequences not too far down the road. But, again arguably, the close association does facilitate faster transaction of business by bypassing possible areas of conflict. Four, direct funding raises the question of how much financial control the Funds's managers can exercise in order to avoid seapage. The mission found mixed opinions on this issue with those supporting a more institutionalised approach to decentralisation and local development arguing that seapage will inevitably occur. The World Bank, on it's part insisted that, so far, everything is under tight control.

V. UNCDF IN MALAWI:

1. Disbursement:

As stated in the main body of this report UNCDF disbursement commenced in March 1996. Thus, by the time this mission visited Malawi, project activities had been going on for just over one and a half years. This is not a long period. Consequently quite a number of issues are still evolving. In the meantime, the Government of Malawi and UNDP had commenced their activities in June 1994 for Malawi Government and February 1995 for UNDP. Information available to the mission showed the absolute amounts of UNCDF disbursement increasing from the initial disbursement of Kwacha 1.9 million in March 1996 to double that amount at Kwacha 3.8 million in October 1997, presumably as initial obstacles were overcome. The first disbursement of March 1996 shows Thyolo receiving the highest amount and Nkhaka-Bay the lowest.

This pattern is also true of UNDP funding in the six districts in December 1995 and Government of Malawi in September 1996. The pattern is however not the same from June 1994 to November 1995. During this period all districts were allocated equal amounts by both the UNDP and the Malawi Government. The explanation for this is that after the initial three disbursements, two by Malawi Government and one by UNDP, a formula was developed to vary the allocations on the basis of three variables, viz population density, illiteracy, and infant mortality. 70 percent was to be allocated on the basis of this formula while the other 30% would be allocated equally.

On the basis of this formula, Nkhaka Bay was expected to receive the lowest at 14% of the funds and Thyolo the highest at 20.4% in 1997. The point about this formula is that it does begin to target inter district inequalities. Whether this has a direct impact on poverty is another matter altogether.

2. Project Menu:

An analysis of the project menu in the six districts shows that all the districts are implementing fairly identical projects. These include school blocks, teachers houses, bridges, water installation and, boreholes. In all the districts, education, related projects such as school blocks and teachers houses are the most popular. This is true for both Malawi Government projects and UNCDF projects. This reflects the "brick-driven" development which the mission has discussed in the main report.

3. Project Selection Matrix:

For purposes of project selection, the Malawi District Development Planning Manual lists 16 criteria against which projects are supposed to be assessed before being selected for funding. These are:

• Degree of community participation.
• Consistency with district objectives.
• Equality/Fairness and Justice.
• Project Cost.
• Resource Utilisation.
• Project Benefit Time.
• Technical Feasibility.
• Management and Implementation Control.
• Gender Impact.
• Self Reliance.
• Sustainability
• Income and Employment Generation
• Population Issues
• Environmental Issues
• AIDS Prevention issues

Each Project is supposed to be ranked separately on each of the criterion using a score of 1.4. 4 represents Excellent, 3 Good, 2 Fair and 1 Poor.

The mission wishes to note the following with respect to these criteria. First, it was evident to the mission that projects are usually selected on the basis of rural distributive fairness rather than the technical ranking. Two, on occasion, the District Executive Committee would use the ranking to push a controversial project through the District Development Committee thus using technical criteria to diffuse conflict. This was, however, more the exception than the rule. Three, the criteria are not weighted. This is of special significance with respect to targeting poverty, community participation and sustainability. Four, there is no explicit or deliberate experimental design in the project selection matrix. An experimental design would, for example, instruct the project assessment team to weight different criteria from time to time in order to see the effect of this on project performance down stream.

4. Project Size:

As stated in this annex and in the main body of this report, UNCDF's contribution to the overall Local Development Fund in Malawi is fairly modest compared to other donors such as the World Bank. However, the strategy of concentrating the effort in a few districts should yield considerable benefits as long as utmost effort is made to collate the lessons learned and their replicability.

At the level of specific projects, we wish to note that most of the projects are of the size that one normally associates with and encounters in local communities. Thus UNCDF project allocations range from about Kwacha 60,000 for a small school block in Mangochi district to Kwacha 340,000 for a fairly large school block in Nsange district. The average allocation is roughly Kwacha 160,000 which in our view is consistent with community based manageability. It should be noted, though, that as the communities become more and more confident in managing their own projects, the allocation requests are likely to increase. This is, in view of the fact that communities are likely to start requesting comprehensive packages such as school block, teachers houses, water and sanitation, all packaged as one project. At that point UNCDF will have to make a policy decision on maximum grant size and the kind of composite package it is likely to fund.

5. Project Completion:

For Common Receipt8 Government of Malawi and UNCDF projects, it would seem from the data availed to the mission that the project completion rate was quite high between 1994 and June 1997. In Thyolo 31 out of 39 projects implemented had been completed. In Dedza 20 out of 26 projects had been completed. In Nsanje 11 out of 25 projects had been completed. In Nkhaka BaY 16 out of 24 projects had been completed. In Mangochi 19 out of 38 projects had been completed. This shows an overall completion rate of 63 percent, with significant variations between Mangochi at 50% and Thyolo at 79%. However, most of UNCDF's projects are still incomplete due to late start up. Thus, only Thyolo at 58%, Dedza at 50% and Mongochi at 20% have any completed projects so far. Most of the completed UNCDF projects are education and water projects which could reflect either their early commencement date or the communitie's priorities. The mission was unable to establish which was the determining factor. At any rate, for both Government of Malawi and UNCDF projects Thyolo seems to have done better than the other districts perhaps reciprocating for the higher allocations the district has been receiving.

6. Project Sustainability:

As stated in the body of this report, this mission formed the opinion that project sustainability has not been given adequate thought.

7. Capacity Building:

This issue is discussed in the main report. To reiterate, capacity building is needed at all levels in Malawi. Currently UNDP is the Major actor in this area. As stated in the main report, UNCDF should assess carefully the areas it should be engaged in with respect to capacity building. The mission would like to re-iterate the recommendation that UNCDF should invest in those institutions capable of collating policy lessons and engaging in policy advocacy. This should include the ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation Secretariat.

8. Scaling Up:

The decision to scale up district based planning and development has already been made. All that remains is for the government to develop the necessary capacity. To this end, District Planning Officers are being viewed as crucial to the upscaling exercise. The government has, therefore, embarked on training District Planning Officers. It is unlikely that UNCDF can have much influence with respect to the pacing and timing of upscaling either. What will affect this exercise much more than the donors are the internal dynamics of Malawian politics. In this respect, it is politics which will eventually determine the overall nature of decentralisation. Such issues as the legal status of the proposed District Assemblies, the relationship between those Assemblies and Local Authorities, the extent of devolution to these Assemblies; all these are essentially political issues which no donor can expect to influence a great deal. However, UNCDF, armed with well thought out policy lessons from the current pilot exercise should endeavour to assert some influence. This calls for a well thought out advocacy strategy. We therefore recommend that UNCDF give serious though to developing such a strategy.

VI. SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS:

1 UNCDF projects have now taken off after the initial delay. The activities commenced in 1996, nearly 1 1/2 years after UNDP and the Government of Malawi commenced local developing funding.

2 The Malawi project is being implemented within the institutional context of District Development Committees which some students of decentralisation doubt will lead to meaningful decentralisation in Malawi. This can be justified within the Aristotelian logic of "going with the context" rather than the platonic logic of the blueprint.

3 There are several other donors involved in local development funding in Malawi. A number of them, most notably the World Bank and European Union have adopted a different approach from that adopted by UNDP and UNCDF. At this point, each approach has it's own merits. However, in the medium and the long run each approach will be judged on the basis of it's stated objectives. If the objective is to build local infrastructure as quickly as possible, then direct disbursement has it's own merits. If, on the other hand, the objective is to facilitate the evolution of decentralised institutions, then working within the District Focus and the District Development Committees has it's own merits too.

4 A review of the UNCDF projects in Malawi shows a fairly common project menu, a fairly good record of project completion (especially if one takes into account the Government of Malawi projects which have been on the matrix ground much longer a well though out project selection which however is rarely followed, and a project size which tallies with common sense expectations of what the Malawi rural communities are capable of managing at this stage. However, all this is likely to change in the near future as the communities gain confidence and perhaps became overambitious.

5 Project sustainability and capacity remain important issues and so does the strategy which UNCDF should employ in order to influence upscaling which the government has already decided to embark on.

VII. MAIN CONCLUSION:

The main conclusion to be drawn from the Malawi case is that decentralisation is a highly political exercise. Therefore, UNCDF and other donors must have a fairly adequate grasp of the politics of decentralisation in the countries they are operating in. This requires investing in up to date analysis of the politics and institutions of each of the countries.

A second major conclusion is that one cannot advocate decentralisation and at the same time claim to be apolitical. In other words, in the 1990's it is becoming increasingly difficult to hide under the old and narrow concept of participation as management and administration of projects. The concept of participation has now come to embrace democratic cum political participation. In order to handle this more comprehensive participation, donors like UNCDF will need to develop a political strategy. This is sadly missing from all project documents. We recommend that this issue be given some thought.

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