Brief Description of The Project
The Living Conditions Monitoring Surveys conducted from 1991 to 2006 have shown that the incidence of poverty has reduced over the years. Available validated results show that the incidence of poverty declined from 70 percent in 1991 to 64 percent in 2006. The gains of this reduction can be noticed in rural areas, where the incidence of poverty reduced from 88 percent in 1991 to 78 percent in 2006. In contrast, the incidence of poverty in urban areas increased from 49 percent in 1991 to 53 percent in 2006. However, the perceived gains are only a modicum and have not resulted in adequate improvements in the livelihoods of most Zambian’s. Coupled with the loss of employment brought about by the closure of some industries most Zambians live in poverty especially in rural areas. A lot of citizens still have the challenge of accessing basic needs let alone participating in decision making as well as holding service providers and leaders/state authorities accountable for the colossal funs and reported to have been misappropriated every year.
Provincial estimates show that Urban Provinces have consistently emerged the least poor regions in all the surveys, although they have been experiencing substantial increases in poverty incidence.

Urban households are more advantaged in terms of access to all the facilities than rural households. For example about 93.0 percent, of urban households are within a 5 km radius of a health facility compared to 54.5 percent of their rural counterparts

It is not to overstate the fact on the ground to suggest that there is a need in Zambia to re-focus on rural development. Further, the 2006 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey indicates an increase in rural poverty from 78% to 80%. Recurrent cries characterised by among others weak local institutions of development, etc., all add up to this situation.

Current Approaches to Rural Development
By and large, many of the current approaches to people’s concerns are of narrow, short-term, reactive and relief orientated as opposed to being development oriented. The approaches have tended to be piece-meal and designed to only address issues in reactive way, in the short-term and only in a few instances, in the medium term. They take the form of, for example, fertilizer subsidies, relief food supplies, local trade imbalances, etc. These characteristics are also very dominant in key sectors and also in the political landscape where appeasement, rhetoric, occur at the expense of addressing real issues for citizens

It can be argued that the problem has mainly been due to ineffective participation by the beneficiaries let alone holding officials accountable in service provision and resource utilisation. Many Zambians, especially in rural are also deprived of vital information and channels of addressing their needs which could give them the ability to monitor issues of transparency and engage their leadership. In most cases they often do not see the government as being obliged to provide services and uphold their entitlements but more of a good big brother.

A lot of public projects implemented in communities need the participation of the disadvantaged in monitoring resource utilisation as well effectiveness, adequacy, quality and efficiency of service delivery. The process of empowering communities needs to be on a continuous basis in order to build the necessary capacity for them to be able to monitor projects in their respective areas. TIZ believes that there should be an institutional framework that gives space for citizens to claim their rights and make government as well as elected officials accountable in instances where principles of good governance are not respected

Objectives, expected outputs and activities
Considering the foregoing, TI Zambia embarked on implementing courses of action aimed at empowering disadvantaged groups in selected rural communities to curb corruption and foster development by engaging communities and service providers (public officials /leaders) in constructive dialogue regarding transparency and accountability in service delivery and local governance. This is facilitated by the use of community notice boards established in Mongu, Choma, Chongwe, Nyimba, Kasama, Mansa, Serenje and Solwezi.

Objectives:

• To advocate for active participation of the poor in the implementation of development activities in selected communities to monitor/ tracking transparency and accountability in service delivery and local leadership

• To facilitate the disadvantaged groups sensitisation campaigns on their rights and the need to address poverty and corruption through community dialogue meetings

• To enhance local leaders’ ability and service providers to adequately respond to the needs of the vulnerable communities through community dialogue meetings and score cards

Extent of direct engagement with communities
The initiative community driven therefore, members of the targeted communities, local CBOs and state authorities have been involved to start taking a lead from the inception such as mobilising around an entry point. Building an information/evidence base, going public, rallying support and coalitions for advocating and negotiating change, administering and generation of report cards, drawing up of action plan and implementation. Local committees and established CBOs are a crucial interface to this process as they demonstrated to be effective in this process. These are selected as they are in daily contact with the local communities thus, providing an initial entry for TIZ in communities as well as much needed additional expertise in operationalising the project.

By working closely with the disadvantaged communities, the project endeavours to demonstrate potential sustained efforts against corruption and reinforce the cost effectiveness of the chapter’s work in contrast to the common one-off activities. The project is bringing the work of the chapter in line with experiential benefits of combating corruption by entrenching accountability that relies on ordinary community members. This is in contrast to the traditional way of chapter’s engagement with technocrats and politicians, thereby negating the real impact of corruption on the livelihoods of the poor. Further, the project is offering disadvantaged communities avenues to meaningfully contribute to the improving of their livelihoods through specific decisions.

By

Louis Bwalya