United Nations
Development Programme

Plot 24 Prince Charles Drive, Kololo

P.O Box 7184

Kampala, Uganda

Tel: (256) 414-233440/1/2/5

Fax: (256) 414-344801

Email: registry.ug@undp.org

Background

Uganda has embarked on decentralization as a critical government policy. In 1997 the Government of Uganda, through an Act of Parliament, developed and adopted a decentralization policy known as the Local Government Act. The Act aims at enhancing delivery of services to local communities where a majority of the poor live.

The Local Government Act of 1997 states that one of the objectives of decentralization is empowering people through participatory development 'to ensure democratic participation in and control of decision making by the people concerned.' It also advocates for a building-block approach to development planning emanating from the village to the district through parish and sub county levels.

Development objectives

UNDP aims to contribute to the implementation of Uganda’s decentralization policy by building a participatory and consultative culture in development initiatives. The project objectives aim at:

(a) empowering the community to effectively participate in planning and management of development programmes that impact on them directly

(b) ensuring that community vision driven plans are used to build development plans for higher level councils and governments

Key activities & expected results

• creating awareness of councillors, technical staff, religious leaders and opinion leaders at district, sub-county, parish and village levels in the programme areas of the importance and modalities of community participation in development management
• training trainers of participatory development management community facilitators
• providing village/cell community facilitators with participatory development management facilitation skills
• producing village/cell, parish and sub-county participatory profiling and development planning manuals
• facilitating and guiding the production of comprehensive village/cell strategic and one-year Action Plans
• training members of the Parish Development Committees in techniques of integrating village/cell profiles and strategic development plans into parish plans
• training members of the sub-county Technical Planning Committees in techniques of integrating parish/ward profiles and strategic development plans into sub-county plans

This project aims to support the deepening of the decentralization process through empowering lower levels of government (parish and village levels) and enhancing the impact on poverty reduction with effective involvement of people themselves at various levels of government.

Implementation phase

The project is currently in the process of providing technical backstopping for the introduction of the PDM concept to the political and technical staff, as well as to CSOs at the district level in the 8 pilot districts. Owing to the success of the PDM concept, follow up meetings are being conducted to identify the possible options for scaling up the project to other districts.

UNDP Trac Resources: 330,000