Seeking partnership: the state, community participation and the provision of social services: analysis of experiences from Tanzania and Zimbabwe

Abstract

As a notion, the words 'participation’ and participatory’ entered the development jargon during the late 1950s. The realization that the oppressed had not only failed to 'unfold like a flower from a bud’, but also that populations were kept out of all the processes related to the design, formulation and implementation of development programmes and projects led to the advocacy for the end of top-down’ strategies and the inclusion of participation and participatory methods as an essential dimension of development. As the 'Development Establishment’ also began to realize the fact that billions spent on development was not producing the expected results, a new consensus was forged among planners, NGOs and field workers that a change in the relationships between the different parties to the development activities was imperative.