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Shadreck Tanyanyiwa Correspondent
Government has embarked on crafting an Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper for the period 2016-2018. Consultative meetings started on May 3, and will run until May 30, 2016.

About 27 days of criss-crossing the country getting input from the “experts on poverty” — the poor, on how to improve their living standards.

The time frame alone tells you that the resultant IPRSP would be rushed.

For instance, I presume the team would travel to remote areas such as Nyabawa in Rushinga; Mukumbura in Mt Darwin; Kanyemba in Guruve for input from these communities.

These remote areas are just an example.

Every province has remote parts, where people are the experts on poverty.

Announcing the launch of the IPRSP recently, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa acknowledged that poverty remains one of the biggest challenges in Zimbabwe.

The consultative meetings should therefore, gather the nature and extent of poverty and consequently, propose strategies to reduce and eliminate poverty.

There is no doubt that Zimbabwe has since independence crafted some novel development plans, centred on people participation, especially, in rural areas, with the objective of reducing poverty.

In the early 1980s there were the Prime Minister’s Directives that set up the grassroots development committees such as the village development committees and ward development committees; and there were also the national development plans.

All these were centred on active participation of people in development, “…people’s participation is a prerequisite for any development activity.” However, most of these plans remained on paper, as government officials sought to fast-track development.

In the current process of drafting IPRSP, people who experience poverty should be at the centre of initiatives or strategies to address poverty. The resultant consultations must produce strategies that underscore the important role of people’s participation in development and to the country’s modernisation and the ultimate goal of building a moderately prosperous society.

Community-based development is one strategy that can help “lower and eventually” eradicate poverty.

CBD advocates the active participation of people in their own development – identifying their own development needs and contributing to the planning, designing, implementation and evaluation of development.

However, communities must be willing to participate in development. Active community participation allows people greater control over their lives.

This bottom-up approach builds on local strengths and promotes community participation and leadership as well as ownership of both the problems and the solutions.

Diversity in communities must also be acknowledged.

Same poverty issues in different districts would require different approaches and treatment; even same poverty issues in villages within one district would also demand different approaches.

To ignore these diversities and cultural specificity would be disastrous.

The thinking behind active community participation was that if communities are to survive economic and social crises, they can do so by becoming empowered, building on their existing capacity and using the skills they have to determine their own future.

The late President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere once said, “At every stage of development people do know what their basic needs are. And just as they will produce their own food if they have land, so if they have sufficient freedom they can be relied upon to determine their own priorities of development and then to work for themselves.”

People’s participation in development is the engine for launching the processes of economic transformation; it is the motor for accelerating the process of change and development.

During the countrywide consultations, let the voices of the poor resonate.

In the past, there has been a danger of allowing the voices of the “elite” to drown those of the poor, thereby allowing the “elite” to act as the voices of the voiceless.

The “elites” are there to maintain the status quo — happy to see the poor poorer. They would rebuff any strategy meant to improve the living standards of the poor.

The popular belief that active participation of communities in development delays decision making occurs only if people act on limited information.

Honest and frankness with participants is crucial, since participants are sensitive to any appearance of disabuse and deceit.

Therefore, if people have limited information they can resist development no matter the benefits that it brings; creating friction and squabbles that might reverse development.

Entrenched blunders go deeper, last longer, and do more damage.

Any strategies on reducing and eliminating poverty should be based on the perspective of poor women and men.

These strategies should take into account the political, economic, social and institutional context of the poor, in order to avoid mistakes of the past.

This calls for local ownership of the final IPRSP draft.

PRSPs have often been criticised for the poor quality of participation of marginalised groups.

We can draw lessons from these and produce an Interim Poverty Reduction Paper that the poor can relate with.

Dr Shadreck Tanyanyiwa is a journalist who holds a Doctorate degree in Development Studies. He can be contacted at [email protected]