Project Summary

The contemporary world has always advocated for decision making that promotes a participatory approach where all stakeholders are equally involved. Commonly held hypothesis in the social and developmental sciences states that if ordinary people from the communities are empowered to participate in decision making and strategy formation, then a sense of responsiveness is authored. The Community-Based Monitoring Systems (CBMS project) seeks to promote a participatory approach where community members are going to be involved in decision making and authoring of poverty alleviation techniques. The project is being implemented in Mungule and Makishi for a time span of 1 year as a pilot. Thereafter, it will be replicated to more areas in Lusaka province after thorough project design and strategies have been learnt from the pilot.

CBMS starts with a census that aims to collect data from the grassroots levels, i.e. the households, in the urban and rural set-up of the Lusaka province. The data to be collected is going to be forwarded to the local government set-up of the Lusaka province so that when decisions are made, they can be made with reference to the to-be provided grassroots' level data in drawing up the developmental strategies. Data collection is going to be done by means of questionnaires and other specific statistical tools. Notable stakeholders to this project include ordinary community members, the Office of the President (Lusaka province), Lusaka City Council (LCC), Ministry of Community Development and Social Services (MCDSS) which has direct links with the Central Statistics Office of the Republic of Zambia (CSO), Senior Chief Mungule, Mungule local development committee and village headmen. The project is being implemented with the auspices of very competent researchers from ZRDC and financial / logistical support from grant aid from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC)-Canada through the Poverty and Economic Policy (PEP) Network being administered by the Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies-De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines.