Commissioned Papers for the Regional Workshops
Democracy Forum 2000

The Role of Decision-Makers, Citizens and External Actors in Poverty Reduction Initiatives

by Jacqueline Adhiambo-Oduol

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1. INTRODUCTION

The theme of this workshop, namely Democracy, Poverty and Social Exclusion, highlights the increasing perception, especially from the perspective of external actors that democratic principles have a major role to play in projects and initiatives aimed at poverty alleviation and reduction. This perception is indirectly reflected in the World Bank’s observation that" at least as important as the policies and the resources for development are the efficiency and transparency of the institutions that carry out the policies" (p.11, Development and Human Rights: The Role of the World Bank). The Bank does not state categorically that it is only under a democracy that one finds an efficient and acceptable institutional framework for decision making. To do so would overlook the different interpretations assigned to the meaning of the term democracy. From a common dictionary perspective, democracy means " self-government" or in ordinary parlance, " rule by the people". This definition has few provisions for distinguishing one form of government from another. For this reason, Sartori (1965: 22-23) defines a democracy as:

"a political system in which the people exercise power to the extent that they are able to change their governors, but not to the extent of governing themselves. The only way the sovereign people can maintain the degree of power they need and are capable of wielding is not to give their governors unlimited powers".

This is an important point since people can use undemocratic means to decide on who are to be their leaders. Given this fact, the President of the World Bank avoids mentioning democracy as the political system for creating the linkage between economic performance and accountability. This is evident from his statement that:

"Irrespective of political systems, public decisions must be brought right out into the sunshine of public scrutiny. Not simply to please the markets but to build the broad social consensus without which even the best –conceived economic strategies will ultimately fail".

The reality however is the fact that it is mainly through a democracy in its " procedural- structural" sense that public decisions can be publicly scrutinised. According to Lipset (1959, 71), a procedural- structural democracy

" is a political system which supplies regular constitutional opportunities for changing the governing officials. It is a social mechanism for the resolution of the problems of societal decision-making among conflicting interest groups which permits the largest possible part of the population to influence these decisions through their ability to choose among alternative contenders for political office.... This definition implies a number of specific conditions: (a) a political formula, a system of beliefs, legitimising the democratic system and specifying the units- parties, a free press, and so forth- which are legitimised, i.e. accepted as proper by all; (b) one set of political leaders in office; and (c) one or more sets of leaders, out of office, which act as a legitimate opposition attempting to gain office.

Lipset’s definition shows that a democracy in its procedural structural sense must have the following components that are not mutually exclusive:

• Participation. This feature focuses on the extent to which popular consent is sought in selecting people for decision-making offices in the legislature and the executive arms of government.

• Inclusiveness of the process. The importance of this component lies in the observation that selection processes can still be manipulated to exclude segments of the population on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, education levels and property ownership.

• Competitiveness. This requirement refers to the extent to which a given political system is able to give the electorate choices in the form of for instance the existence of multi- parties.

• Civil Liberties. The defining characteristics of this component include freedom of the press, speech, and assembly; the right to vote and to petition the government and entitlement to due process of law and other legal protections.

Given these characteristics, a democratic state is taken to mean a state in which the masses are powerful. This implies that in such a state, governance is based ultimately on the opinion of the governed and not on force or the opinion of a selected few. Thus, democracy becomes real when the governed pass from acquiescence to volition and determine to do for themselves up to a point, what they have ordinarily allowed others to do for them. In undemocratic countries, the many allow the few to run the machinery of government more or less as they please. In democratic countries, popular opinion is no longer vaguely tolerant. Instead, it is definitely articulate. Not only do the many know what they want but also they seek to get it for themselves by targeting and controlling the instruments of government. True democracy is therefore founded on the doctrine of equality. It must ride on the people’s power where any sane individual, adult, youth, child, woman, man and person with disability has membership and the consequent possession of rights and duties.

These points bring to the fore the issue of the relationship between a procedural -structural definition of democracy and "human rights". While it is true that the defining characteristics of this definition are important at a conceptual level in dealing with the issue of democracy, poverty and social exclusion, it does not illustrate how a linkage can be established between the role of democracy, external actors and poverty alleviation and reduction initiatives. This important angle emerges when one extends the scope of Civil Liberties to cover the fundamental right to basic necessities such as employment, nutrition, shelter, health care and education especially for the poor. The added connotation to the sense of the term democracy also makes it possible to demonstrate in unequivocal terms the role external actors are playing in the fight against poverty.

In the Sub- Saharan African situation, poverty remains a major problem. UNDP reports that " some 80% of the Low Human Development Countries- countries with high population growth rates, low income, low literacy, and low life expectancy are in Africa...Within the continent, four of every 10 Africans live in conditions of absolute poverty" (ECA, 1999:2). In 1999, Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole recorded a growth rate of only 2.5%. Several explanations account for this grim picture: inadequate access to educational opportunities; inadequate physical assets such as land and capital; lack of access to credit and the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The sheer magnitude of the problems posed by poverty are sufficient to cast Africa as the "Hopeless Continent" (The Economist: May 13-19, 2000).

It must be remembered however that as a continent, Africa encompasses such a vast range of diversity that its complexity often becomes its defining character. For this reason, the subsequent discussion on the roles of the interplay of democracy and external actors in poverty reduction initiatives proceeds against the backdrop provided by what Oduol and Cirino (2000) called the Changing Images of Africa. The manifestations of these images can be summed up as follows:

• Africa as a dark but rich continent to be discovered;

• Africa as no man’s land to be sliced up like a piece cake between European powers;

• Africa as a newly independent continent full of hope and ready to take its rightful place at the very least on the shoulders of the historically giant continents which were not colonised;

• Africa as the indebted continent and one where the Lords of Poverty have a mandate to promote development through strategies that in essence are debt traps from which the poor nations will never gain control over their own economies. This is an image that depicts the African continent as somehow stunted and backward, unable to initiate or maintain progress or transformation, both through incidental growth and in an evolutionary manner.

• Africa as a continent of famine, civil strife, ethnic conflict, gender violence, institutionalised corruption, and the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS virus that is rapidly moving the continent from being in a state of dependency on aid to being in a state of near total collapse.

These changing images of Africa provide a situational context for the overall thread of the discussion in this paper. In the discussion, Africa’s past is not romanticised. Furthermore, the discussion does not blame foreign forces per se for the continent’s current problems for as The Economist 13 May succinctly argues " parts of Asia, too were subject to rapacious colonialists and have, within a generation after independence, established viable states and successful economies". Instead the paper argues that the challenges posed by poverty call for concerted efforts by national decision makers, the civil society, non-governmental organisations, regional and international bodies. The resulting interplay of their efforts should, in an ideal situation create the appropriate framework for the success of projects aimed at poverty reduction and hopefully eradication. This conclusion is based on the following premises:

1. The success of poverty alleviation projects at the national level require an enabling environment at the decision-making level;

2. The success of poverty alleviation efforts is only partially dependent on what governments can do. For this reason, the civil society has a part to play in poverty reduction efforts.

3. Without the contribution of external actors, most poverty eradication efforts would simply come to a standstill irrespective of questions of national pride.

Of late, the kinds of support needed at the national decision-making level to deal with the problem of poverty in many African countries have hinged on the question of effective governance as a basis for achieving sustainable human development. The term governance as used here means the exercise of political, administrative and social and economic governance in the management of a country’s affairs at all levels. It encompasses the mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations, and mediate their differences" (UNDP Policy Document, 1977). This definition implies that governance has a political, administrative, economic and social dimension that have to be addressed in efforts aimed at poverty alleviation and reduction. It also implies that there is a very close relationship between governance and the procedural- structural definition of democracy that incorporates the extended meaning of civil liberties as a characteristic that entails the fundamental right to basic necessities.

2.1 Political Governance

From a political perspective, governance issues focus on decision- making and policy implementation arrangements by a legitimate state. This conclusion indicates that a given government in power will be representative of the wishes of the people as determined for instance by the results of free and fair elections. One clearly sees in this a linkage between democratic principles and effective political governance because for democracy to be present in a given country, there must be at the minimum the following conditions: " freedom to choose both the political party and the candidate to support; an electoral body that is independent from any of the political parties; removal of constraints on political parties and voters; media freedom; adequate security during political campaigns and voting exercises (Kenya Human Development Report, 1999).

Good governance at the political level on its own may not be the panacea for poverty reduction. However, when such governance is pegged to practices that include the following, then it can be the basis of successful projects that target poverty reduction:

• Government ownership of poverty reduction programmes. This is an important element, given the fact that significant proportions of Sub-Saharan African governments have specifically identified poverty reduction as a key policy objective in negotiations with external actors such as the World Bank. Information provided by the Bank shows that " the letters of development policy that are submitted by governments as part of the adjustment loan package to be approved by the bank’s board of executive directors rarely acknowledge poverty reduction as an important objective of national economic development" (Taking Action to Reduce Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Overview of the World Bank, p. 16).

• Closing the gap between very broad national goals as outlined in national development plans and more focused sector actions and projects. The latter include as examples thematic areas such as employment and sustainable livelihoods, natural resource management and gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment in the context of country co-operation frameworks with UNDP. The sector actions and projects are also more in line with the pronouncements that emerged from the 1995 World Summit for Social Development. In essence, they place poverty eradication at the centre of development efforts.

• Zero tolerance for corruption to ensure that people have trust and confidence in their governments. Africa is full of examples of public resources being diverted to those with power at the expense of the millions with nothing. Corruption should not be seen as a donor world problem but as a governance problem. Its genesis lies in the conglomeration of power and discretion alongside the now familiar lack of accountability and scrutiny. Changes are clearly needed at the legislative level to ensure that it does not thrive.

• The use of popular participatory practices as sustainable mechanisms in the fight against poverty. This objective is aimed at transforming poverty reduction initiatives from being top-down in their design and implementation to avoid alienating the poor even further. The civil society and non-governmental organisations are best placed to down-step specific government driven initiatives to make them more appealing to the poor.

• Ensuring that there is a clear separation of powers in practice between organs such as the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.

• The use of gender sensitive development policies since it is now known that different policies have different impacts on men and women. Women in particular often have to contend with the problems of oppressive economic conditions and a whole range of legal, cultural, social and economic constraints that can be dealt with through appropriate governance measures.

2.2 Economic Governance.

Decision-making at a policy level that has an economic dimension exemplifies what can be described as economic governance. Soon after independence, many African governments opted for state led and state controlled development strategies. This resulted in the public sector ownership of the means of production and distribution, ostensibly in the public interest. At the moment, there is a move towards a more liberal market in development strategies with some positive results being recorded. The ECA reports for instance that after:

"two decades of stagnation, from the mid-1990s, African countries started showing evidence of a turnaround. There is now convincing evidence of improved economic performance in a wide range of African countries, with recorded gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates in excess of 6% in several of them. The progress has been largely due to improved policy performance, particularly the adoption of less-distorted macro-economic frameworks, and the improvement in governance in many countries (ECA, 1999: 1).

Economic governance is crucial in the fight against poverty since through it, the continent can achieve the following goals:

1. attract funding to sustain investment in economic and social infrastructures;

2. encourage the private sector to play a greater role in spurring development;

3. lead to the formulation of policies and programs that promote broad based labour-absorbing growth patterns for the benefit of the poor.

To attain these goals, governments have had to reduce the role of the state in the management of the economy and focus more on the critical issue of fiscal and monetary policies. In this regard, when governments borrow heavily to finance budgetary deficits, poverty reduction initiatives are most affected due to the following factors:

• it crowds out private sector borrowing by reducing credit supply, thus eliminating an important channel for employment creation.

• it encourages short-term investment in areas that have very high financial returns without having any impact in the lives of those members of society who are most affected by poverty.

The social cost of the macro- economic policies that are being implemented is certainly high with some quarters calling for their suspension. Oxfam has argued for instance that structural adjustment programs undermine the prospects for recovery and compound inequalities. The organisation points out that export-led strategies for growth based on primary commodities should be pegged to a wider strategy that regulates supply and demand, at levels that reflect better prices for specific commodities. It argues furthermore that SAPs offer a "future for growth through exclusion, leaving the poor marooned among islands of prosperity" (Oxfam 1995:10).

These arguments are relevant but they need to be linked to the point that macro-economic policies by themselves cannot sustain growth. In the ECA’s opinion, the additional elements needed to sustain growth include among others: structural diversification, declining transaction costs, competitiveness and the stewardship of environmental and ecological resources.

2.3 Administrative Governance

Decision-making processes at the national level can be instrumental in enabling the success of poverty reduction initiatives from an administrative perspective in contexts where there is an efficient, independent and impartial public administration system. Unfortunately, such a system remains largely an ideal in most Sub-Saharan African countries. The Kenyan civil service exemplifies this.

The country inherited a highly effective public administration system from the British colonial masters. That was in 1963. The state then began to introduce increasing state control of the economy that resulted in new regulations and procedures for the civil service. A small but efficient civil service could not deal with these new demands and so the civil service was expanded significantly at the expense of quality. By 1996, the number of people employed in the service (including the Central Government, Teachers Service Commission, parastatal bodies, enterprises with majority shareholding by the government, and local government) stood at 700,000.The country’s inability to satisfy the demands of this large workforce is currently reflected in low morale and the disintegration of the incentive structure in the service. It also noticeable that despite Kenya’s 36 years of independence, the civil service still has the mentality of control mechanisms instead of providing an enabling environment for development and services. It partly due to this that the previous efforts aimed at making administration people friendly and client focussed through innovative approaches failed to achieve their intended goals. One such approach was the country’s District Focus for Rural Development.

It was meant to encourage the allocation of resources on the basis of the question of geographical equity in the fight against poverty, but factors such as poor preparation, lack of knowledge on participatory planning techniques and the absence of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms effectively sealed its fate. The lesson to be learned from this example is that a well-trained and motivated civil service is essential for the success of poverty reduction strategies. In essence therefore, African governments need to " attract back to public service the level of talent seen in 1960s and 1990s. (Additionally, they) need to develop a public sector that will spark innovation, spread best practice, support individual and community initiatives in the rest of society and make Africa less dependent on outside advice" (The World Bank Annual Report, 1999:41). This is something that can be achieved with proper planning and commitment as can be seen from the current structure and quality of the civil service in Malaysia for example. It selects and retains only the best talent.

3. KINDS OF SUPPORT AT THE LEVEL OF THE CIVIL SOCIETY

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society organisations (CSOs) and the ordinary citizen have a contribution to make in poverty alleviation and reduction initiatives. This contribution is recognised in Kenya’s current National Poverty Eradication Plan for the period 1999-2015. The plan is based on three key action components. Firstly there is the Charter of Social Integration which indicates quite clearly that citizens and communities have certain rights and responsibilities that they can use to provide an enabling environment for pro- poor policies. The second component is the focus on social inclusion as a charter to be followed by citizens, policy makers and public servants. The final component deals with the use of social mobilisation and the delivery of basic social services as a framework on the basis of which partnerships can be established between the government, private and voluntary sectors. One sees in this plan the clear admission that governments, civil society organisations and the donor community have mutually supportive roles to play in poverty eradication efforts. And it is important to recognise the role of external actors, particularly UNDP and DFID, in the process of coming to this conclusion.

In this connection, the government of Kenya has specific targets to be met by its line ministries of education, health, water resources and social services. By way of comparison, non –governmental organisations will be expected to:

• develop skills in participatory poverty appraisal methodologies;

• have a representative in the Commission for Poverty Eradication;

• be part of the "Partnerships Against Poverty" scheme at divisional, district, city and national levels;

At another level, policy makers who include Members of Parliament, chief executives, directors and senior managers will be expected to strengthen government links with civil society organisations. They are also expected to:

• regularly review laws from the point of view of their relevance to the advancement of the poor;

• review public debt and ensure it is managed prudently;

• remove all taxes and customs duties that impact unfavourably on small stakeholders;

• support policies for a stable macro-economic framework;

• ensure there is a unit in government with sufficient staff, resources and powers to tackle poverty across the nation;

• set up monitoring and evaluation systems to determine the rate at which plan rates and targets are achieved.

Behind all these expectations is the requirement that funding will be needed to deal with the problem of poverty. Such funds will come from internal and external sources. For many countries in Africa, funding may come from UNDP in partnership with UNESCO, UNFPA and WHO through the 20/20 initiative. This arrangement proposes that governments and aid programmes should allocate 20% of their budgets to basic social services.

The World Bank is an excellent example of an external actor in the fight against poverty. The Bank’s interest in poverty eradication efforts stretches back to 1993 when its Africa Region established a Poverty Task Force. Its specific mandate included:

• Determining how the Bank could review current activities and best practices to strengthen its operations and assist governments in reducing poverty and improving food security in Sub-Saharan Africa.

• Recommending improvements and innovative practices to improve food security.

• Recommending action to enhance the poverty focus of rural initiatives such as the Special Programme of Assistance to Africa and the Global Coalition for Africa

In recent years, the Bank has focussed on poverty assessment as the analytic instrument in its poverty reduction efforts. The instrument provides a basis for discussion between the Bank and respective governments on questions of funding. From the Bank’s perspective, poverty assessments constitute the key strategy in the fight against poverty. The main components of the strategy include increasing the productivity of the poor by encouraging investments in human capital, providing support for improved economic policies, funding rural and agricultural economic development and programmes and addressing the question of debt relief.

Kenya’s poverty assessment report shows that the monthly overall poverty lines per adult equivalent in rural and urban areas stood at Kshs. 978 and Kshs. 1490 respectively in 1994. On the basis of these poverty lines, about 43% of all Kenyans fall in the overall poverty bracket. From the report, it is also evident that the poor have a larger average household size (6.4 members) compared to the non –poor (4.6 members) and that " although education increases one’s chance of escaping from poverty, it is no guarantee of avoiding poverty altogether as nearly a third of the urban poor reach the level of secondary education". Other salient points in the report include the information that:

• Almost all households in urban areas have access to safe water.

• Almost 100% of the rural poor use firewood for cooking purposes.

• The total household income for the non-poor is about twice that of the poor.

• When fertility is cross tabulated on the basis of education levels and poverty as variables, it emerges that poor women still have higher fertility levels, unlike their urban counterparts at all levels of education. It is the case however that as the level of education increases, fertility levels tend to fall.

• Most Kenyan children, poor and non-poor have access to primary education.

• To a significant extent, stunting, wasting and underweight rates are higher for children from poor households.

• The analysis of employment trends by socio-economic categories shows that subsistence farmers constitute the largest group.

These and comparable information from other country specific poverty assessment reports enable the World Bank to make informed decisions on lending policies. In the case of Sub-Saharan African countries, bank lending targets the rural sector, where most of region’s poor live and work. Lending also targets improvements in infrastructure, especially in rural areas to reduce transaction costs. Virtually all African countries have benefited in fiscal 1999 from the Bank’s lending policies. As examples, Burkina Faso received a $90 million package to improve agricultural productivity and incomes through an integrated, farmer –oriented agricultural extension system, while Ethiopia is at present benefiting from a $100 loan aimed at improving primary health care mothers, children and the rural poor.

World Bank literature tends to de-emphasise the role of political considerations in the Bank’s lending policies. In fact, a cursory glance at the literature suggests that such considerations are a non-issue in the Bank’s operations. There are strong reasons for stating however, that the Bank favours democratic practices as a basis for spurring long term economic growth, the ultimate pre-requisite for poverty reduction. This conclusion is inferable from the Bank’s view that:

"the international community understands better than ever which policies most effectively contribute to economic growth; openness to trade and investment, stable exchange rates, low inflation, sound fiscal policies, and acquisition of high technology". (The World Bank, 1998:8). A more unequivocal picture on the Bank’s stand is evident however in the preparatory stages of the World Development Report for the year 2000/2001 where it is affirmed that the fight against poverty has to be underpinned by one major front, namely:

"Empowerment of the poor by increasing their voice and participation in decision-making, not only as an important outcome but also as a vital input to improving policies, institutions, effective service delivery, and the political basis for the pursuit of pro-poor growth". (The World Bank, 1999:101).

This front highlights the point that although poor people may be relatively powerless at the individual level, they are a powerful force at the community level where they are able to produce their own leaders and set their own directions once they have been socially mobilised. The enabling tools for social mobilisation include literacy, improved nutrition and enhanced health.

So far the discussion has emphasised what one could call the positive aspects of external intervention in poverty, that is making it possible to focus on a greater sense of accountability and transparency in poverty reduction initiatives, and creating an enabling environment for popular participation. However it is widely acknowledged that external actors, while largely responsible for determining the policies and programmes for poverty eradication by states are themselves not a model of democracy. They are not accountable to the people of their governments, have their own interests and agendas which are sometimes counterproductive to the development of African states and can be openly patronising in their promotion of the so called partnership with member states.

Although there are different kinds of external actors with equally diverse policies an important point to note in this context is how and why they, like the states, use undemocratic principles and practices that lead to social exclusion. Social groups actively defend their domains against outsiders. It is important to recognise that the aid framework and strategy adopted by most external actors does not use the claim of partnership to obtain ownership of the process by the states. In the context of understanding the links between deprivation and development, one cannot deny that the particular patterns of development encouraged by external actors have exclusion built into them. This is particularly true given their tendency to embrace what Hunter (1997) calls the orthodox view of development.

In this view, poverty is a situation suffered by people who lack money. Assistance is provided to help transform traditional subsistence economies, considered backward into industrial economies defined as modern. The core assumption is that the aid extended should enable the African states to develop to the extent that they have unlimited economic growth, a clearly western model of development. This is why the measurement for development becomes the rate of economic growth; Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita; industrialisation, including that of Agriculture. The process of achieving this development and therefore the means to eradicate poverty is top-down, " reliance on expert knowledge, usually Western and definitely external; large capital investments in large projects; advanced technology; expansion of the private sphere." This view of development as an avenue for promoting poverty reduction initiatives through democracy and partnership is misleading. It results in a situation where African states are excluded from the international commodity markets on acceptable terms; from high wage markets; from the benefits of the transnational company operations; from security and from global resources.

Intergovernmental organisations, actors in the international economic system, such as transnational companies and financial intermediaries; the media; international coalitions of unions, NGOs and academics, as well as powerful states promote this kind of exclusionary development.

What is needed in order to build a viable partnership between internal and external actors and to obtain co-ordination and ownership of the development process is the alternative view. Here poverty is defined as a situation suffered by people who are not able to meet their material and non-material needs through their own effort. The goal of development is to create human well-being through sustainable societies in social, cultural, political and economic terms. In which case the external actors should develop programs and projects with the assumption that the most important thing is to go for self-sufficiency so that the voice of the marginalised groups, including that of the African states themselves, inculcates core societal values. The measurement of progress will then be the fulfilment of very basic human needs of everyone such that nobody starves and there is political empowerment of everyone.

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS

The poor constitute a significant proportion of the populations of many Sub-Saharan African countries. The problems they face are relatively similar. These include inadequate access to employment opportunities, inadequate physical assets, minimal access to credit and poor sanitary conditions. Because they constitute a major proportion of national populations, the poor have the potential of creating political, economic and social instability. For this reason, efforts aimed at dealing with the problems of the poor will invariably require interventions that target the interplay of effective decision-making at the national level, the active participation of civil society organisations and the technical, material and financial contribution of external actors. This rich mix of mutually reinforcing roles militates against the use systems of governance that are autocratic in nature for the simple reason that autocracy is the greatest enemy of transparency, accountability and popular participation and the greatest ally of bad governance. What the continent urgently needs is good governance to ensure there is sustained economic growth to fight poverty. This growth is bound to come if national development policies are adopted in a context of regional and global interconnectedness. On the one hand, governments cannot ignore the actions and policies of such actors as financial institutions, corporations, international non-governmental organisations and regional organisations. On the other hand, donors, development banks and international organisations fund and carry out projects in individual countries that have specific governance philosophies. What then is the relationship between national decision-makers, citizens and external actors in given poverty reduction projects? A focus on the following aspects can help answer this question:

• The orientation of the project towards the people involved in it.

• The question of whether or not the project has local control and the extent to which it makes use of local human and material resources. The answer here must always be a compromise with donors and the national governments in control.

• An assessment of the sufficiency of the external aid provided.

• The appropriateness of the project’s intended target group.

At an external actor level however, one often finds clear specifications on what each stakeholder has to do for a given project to start. In the case of UNDP for instance, specific issues have been addressed from the national and UNDP perspectives. The national level component is based on information derived from the following areas:

1. Analysis of the national development problem to be addressed.

This area should have information on the measurable indicators of the problem and the population group most affected by it. A further requirement of this area is an indication of the gender and environmental aspects of the problem followed by information on the previous experiences and the lessons learned by national and international partners in dealing with the problem.

2. Outline of the national programme

The focus here is a brief summary of the national programme aimed at dealing with the problem identified in (a). Generally, when there is no national programme in place to deal with a development problem, relevant information is taken from government national development plans, policy documents and strategy papers. In cases where one of the first objectives of UNDP programme support could be to finalise a national programme, the following additional information is also provided:

• The development objective: the overall goals set by the government;

• Strategy: how the national development objective will be reached;

• Beneficiaries: disaggregated according to gender and other variables such as indigenous groups where relevant;

• Major sub-programmes: components of the overall programme. This particular part may require an organisational chart.

• Institutional arrangements: Arrangements for the management of the national programme through such organs as ministerial co-ordinating bodies and legislative mechanisms

• Funding.

1. Capacity Requirements and Assessment

This area should identify the major strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for support in the national programme.

The key areas outlined here illustrate UNDP’s commitment to poverty reduction programmes that create an enabling environment for pro-poor economic growth and encourage the advancement of gender equality and the status of women. The areas demonstrate furthermore that countries stand a better chance of dealing with development problems when their strategies for dealing with those problems are linked to global and regional initiatives. In essence, the issue here is how the organisation appraises projects.

In this connection, a key element in UNDP’s appraisal of specific projects is the concern with the sound design of such projects. At a policy level, people not directly involved in its formulation and design do the appraisal of a project. After this stage, a local project appraisal committee (PAC) holds a meeting to evaluate the project. There are guidelines on the criteria to be followed in appraising a project. They concern principally the following set of criteria:

• Relevance. This criterion addresses the question of the extent to which project objectives are relevant to (a) development priorities at the local, national, regional and global levels, (b) target groups and (c) the UNDP mission of promoting sustainable development.

• Logical soundness. The defining characteristic of this criterion includes the answer to the question of whether or not in a given project, the most promising strategies were selected and defined.

• Potential for sustainability. The areas of interest here include enabling policies, financial support, and the capacity to carry on the initiatives appearing in a project at an organisational and individual level.

• Incorporation of the lessons learned. Project documents should demonstrate an awareness of the experiences of other development institutions.

• Stakeholder participation. The main issue here is the extent to which the main stakeholders in a project participate in its identification and design stages.

• Management. Good projects have sound management arrangements especially from the standpoint of cost effectiveness and capacity building measures.

• Costs. Estimates relating to cost should be realistic in terms of what a project requires to produce the targeted results. Additionally, specific inputs by governments, UNDP and other partners must be clearly defined and justified.

As a response to the question, "What then is the nature of the relationship between national decision-makers, citizens and external actors in given poverty reduction projects?" as posed earlier, one can state that it entails the following features: (a) a holistic and comprehensive method at the planning phase for dealing with development problems (b) policy dialogue with national actors (c) the involvement of most stakeholders in the planning and implementation process.

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