Abstract:
Community participation in development programmes is revealed to be vital in
development approach in order to ensure success and sustainability of community
based programmes and projects. It provides the chance for local people and other
stakeholders to come together at one Table for the purpose of sharing experience and
decision making on the provision of social services in the community. This study
sought to investigate the effectiveness of urban community participation in planning
and implementation of development programme and projects. Specifically the study
expects to address the following four specific objectives, first to identify and describe
development programmes and projects, second to investigate the extent to which
urban community participate in planning and implementation of the development
programs and projects, third to describe and examine the challenges of community
participation in urban development program and projects, and lastly to examine the
ways used by the local government authority to motivate community participation in
development programmes and projects. The research findings revealed that
community participation in the development process has numerous benefits in service
delivery such as provision of required services, satisfied services, proper use of public
resources and speed up development process. The implication of these findings to the
policy makers and other stakeholders is to design strategies that could ensure that
there is effective participation of local community in decision making process from
setting priorities, develop plans as well as proper utilization of human resource and
implementation of programmes and projects which have been identified by the
community. Also the policy should state clearly the importance of conducting training
to mtaa leaders at the ward level.
