Area Development Planning
The Case of a Peripheral Water Catchment Basin in
Cameroon, West Africa
Jan Veenstra
ITC, P.O. Box 6, 7500 AA Enschede, The
Netherlands, Phone: +31 (0)53 4874232,
Telefax: +31 (0)53 4874399; E-mail:
Wolters@itc.nl
1. Abstract
This paper considers local development administrations according to their general
management functions, by which policies are made, resources are allocated, and area-wide
sectoral interventions are coordinated, implemented, controlled, monitored and evaluated. In
view of the changing context of local bureaucracies, caused among other things by
decentralizing forces, a first series of propositions is launched on opposing schools of
development thought, and on blueprint versus process planning. Here, resource planners
are to reconcile principally two conflicting sets of policy options: those favoring political
stability and free-market economic growth "from above", versus those accounting for socio-
spatial equity, peoples participation, preservation of local cultural identities and natural
resource conservation "from below". A second series of propositions deals with regional
development planning "from above and below". Here, three sequential planning rounds are
suggested: turning away from narrow project-shopping-list routines, towards strategic area
planning, supported by problem- and action-oriented policy studies.
Added to this paper is a description of a reduced regional planning procedure including a
data checklist for the Tikar water catchment area in Cameroon, West Africa, which
consultants' study was funded by the EEC, Brussels.
2. Changing context of local development administration
The urgent need for Third World countries to improve both material and social living
conditions for a growing population makes the planned development of collectively available
resources unavoidable. Therefore, adoption of an efficient and effective problem- and action-
oriented approach to public development planning is of utmost importance, particularly at
sub-national levels of regions, provinces, districts, urban and rural neighbourhoods. Here,
local government administrations have been (over)burdened during the last decades by
area-specific resource development tasks; this, in addition to the traditional routines of
upholding law and order, raising public revenues on behalf of the central treasury, and
operation and maintenance of physical and social infrastructures (roads, water and electricity
supply, schools, hospitals, housing, agro-livestock services, etc.). It is to be particularly
emphasized that recent drives towards decentralization in public resource management not
only increase quantitatively the workloads of local bureaucracies, but also diversify
qualitatively the statutory tasks, the authority structures and planning capabilities needed at
lower government levels. As will be explained below according to common distinctions made
between planning theories (McConnell, 1981, p. 14), this changing context is accentuated at
the same time by:
• conflicting resource development views, shifting in substance from staged economic
growth and distributive/basic-human-needs concepts towards local self-reliance and
environmental protection.
• "bottom-up" community participation in public decision-making and planning
procedures,- but simultaneously by a growing "top-down" squeeze on local government
(expenditure and revenue) budgets: the central power of the purse pressing hard for
local financial autonomy and self-sufficiency (Davey, 1983, pp. 163-179).
All in all, these opposing trends result in an increasing demand for urban and rural area
development planning, its inter-sectoral coordination, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation
between and within these local government machineries themselves. Obviously, “from inside
shortcomings” result from limited administrative capabilities and hived-off legal competencies
of sub-national bureaucracies for coping with external transformation processes currently
taking place in Third World countries at large:
• population growth and rural-urban migration
• agricultural intensification, land degradation and encroachment by deprived peasants
• deforestation
• unequal access to public services, lending capital and natural resources.
The commonalties of these conflict-laden processes (threatening notably such transitional
border-line zones such as rural-urban fringes, coastal deltas, wildlife-park buffer zones,
seasonally contrasted “transhumance” and piedmont areas) require a typically co-
determinative research approach:
• multi-disciplinary
• multi-tiered
• multi-annual, - both with hindsight and in a co-evolutionary future study perspective
(Zinck and Farshad, 1990/95).
Therefore, based upon lessons learned in the Third World during the last decades, the
following sections of this paper consist of working hypotheses, or propositions regarding (the
theory and practice of) general development planning, regional and rural development
planning as applied to a Atranshumance@ piedmont zone in Cameroon, West Africa.
Propositions regarding opposing schools of development thought in a substantive sense
(Firey, 1960, pp. 11-54 and 243-253; Moris, 1981, pp. 89-98; Todaro, 1990, pp. 62-94:
Dahiya, 1991, Vol.1, pp. 223-245/325-346; and UN/ESCAP, 1979, pp. 13-15 and 23-31)
Staged economic growth, modernization and redistribution theories have painted a too
optimistic picture of urban industrialization and the route Afrom peasant to farmer@ as the
single universal (in fact western) development path for societal evolution. In contrast to
evolutionary theorists, adherents of the dependency, centre-periphery and domination
theories have too heavily concentrated on international factors of overriding influence upon
internally polarizing forces at sub-national, (i.e., regional and local) levels.
In advancing ecologically balanced and institutionally sustainable resource development,
long-term time horizons could hardly be reconciled with short-term human aspirations
striving for socio-political stability, and for continuation of existing natural resource
exploitation processes including inherent capital- versus labour-intensive technologies.
Here, spatial resource planners are to be mindful of the ideological mixture of academic
disciplines, i.e. of economists, sociologists and eco-biologists. They are all operating from
different development concepts and idealistic policy criteria such as economic efficiency and
gainfulness, social equity and distributive justice, cultural adaptability and political legitimacy
as well as ecological sustainability and biological diversity. Thus, collective resource decision
making and development planning are today inspired by a multi-disciplinary range of agreed-
upon methods of scientific inquiry, data collection and analysis, cause-effect and incentive-
response generalizations, and as a consequence by antithetical policy prescriptions and
rationalizations for local-level problem solutions (MacIntyre, 1979).
In promoting genuine area development in Third World countries resource planning
practitioners have to reconcile indeed two conflicting sets of policy options:
• on the one hand, to respond to bureaucratic interests of national headquarters in
combination with private entrepreneurs and progressive farmers favoring politico-
administrative stability and free-trade economic growth "from above"; and
• on the other hand, to respond to community interests of poverty-stricken, rural and
urban masses favoring equalization of incomes, know-how and bargaining power,
popular participation and resource mobilization "from below", in combination with
preservation of local value patterns and natural resource conservation.
Propositions on opposing styles of public resource management in an administrative
procedural sense (Litchfield, 1956; Lindblom, 1959, pp. 79-88; Ozbeckhan, 1969,pp. 13-15
and 130-153; Faludi, 1971, pp. 253-266; Myrdal, 1972, pp. 107-174; Veenstra, 1976/1982,
pp. 29).
Collective decision making is considered synonymous with public management, and ought to
entail all levels, from (inter)national to local, with regard to long- and short-term time
horizons. Here, the three-tiered cascade system or integral lock image of figure 1 will crop
up in the minds of socio-spatial planning practitioners involved at either the bottom or the top
end. In mixed economies all over the Third World, public and private (geo)-information
packages for policy making, development planning and plan implementation are travelling up
and down between various decision-making levels, as indicated by the circular arrows. The
following systemic elements are distinguished in figure 1.
At all territorial levels of government and private organizations the classic decision-making
cycles A-E are repeatedly and simultaneously swinging around like sluice-gates, -thus
representing five public management roles or tangent wheels turning around as follows:
A= Policy making on such contested problems, development objectives and alternative
courses of action as rural/urban employment generation, income distribution, supply
of public services and physical infrastructure, environmental protection, etc. This, in
view of compartmentalized knowledge bases, one-sided technology know-how,
conflicting values of powerful interest groups and unstable institutions.
B= Area Programme and Action Project Planning for allocating, among other things,
renewable natural resources (land/water, forest/vegetation, fishery and
livestock/wildlife resources) in combination with capital/infrastructures,
human/institutional resources, equipment and managerial skills.
C= Communication, inter-departmental coordination and community participation for
channeling policy making and resource allocation outcomes (A + B) into and
between organizations, both vertically and horizontally, thus pressing for local
organizational change.
D= Control of policy and programme/project implementation (among others) through
land use zoning, water rating, wage structures, credit schemes and legal statutes of
(watershed) development authorities, including enforcement of norms and standards
collectively agreed upon.
E= Internal monitoring and impact evaluation of management functions A-D
regarding such policy test criteria as economic efficiency, distributive effectiveness,
political acceptability and ecological sustainability.
Figure 1. Public resource management: a set of locks joining general
policies to detailed projects.
At this point it is to be realized that planning per se contains rationalizing elements of all five
processes A-E. However, some of these elements are emphasized by various planning
professions, operating from different concepts and ideals of collective consumption,
production and politico-administrative behavior. Particularly physical (town and country)
planners have been concerned mainly with zoning regulations, building codes, etc. in order
to program and control (B + D) specific urban and regional land uses.
Similarly, economic development planners have paid attention to employment and income
generation (A + B), whereas accountants usually focus on expenditure and revenue
programming and budgeting (B + D). Subsequently, the following definition of planning
emerges:
Public planning entails a multi-annual process of successive rounds to systematically
elucidate the specific development problems and goals, to explicitly select a multi-
disciplinary range of policy criteria, to appraise alternative development options and means,
to identify available human, capital, natural and institutional resources, and to implement,
monitor and evaluate future policies, programs and projects collectively decided upon.
Note in figure 1 the action areas 1-3 specified along the vertical axis and demonstrating
three basic forms (I-III) of human aspirations in collective decision making and planning. The
Roman numerals in front of the brackets refer to one of the three dominant forms, assuming
that they prevail in the particular action area concerned, over and above the two other forms.
In this case, we see that in area 3 the dominating form III consists of operational-executive,
short-range project management striving mainly for efficient resource utilization at relatively
stable micro-levels of government administration (district, village), private businesses and
voluntary associations. Here, the main questions posed (what, where, when, for whom?)
require concrete action on housing or irrigation blocks which, for example, dominates this
particular area 3, without being completely screened off from strategic and normative forms
II and I.
The second area of action is dominated by strategic intermediary, middle-range program
management, striving for effective socio-cultural changes at meso-levels of rural regions and
urban municipalities, (semi-)private firms and cooperatives. In this intermediate case,
wedged between normative policies (I) and action projects (III), the most -important question
is: How, in view of the multitude of development objectives and scarcity of resources do we
arrive at integrated rural/regional development frameworks?
Ideally, in the first action area I, normative valuing, long-range policy making dominates at
both national and international macro-levels. Despite frequent attempts to drown the
principal question in floods of strategic and operational issues, the following can still be
heard: what are we developing for? What are the innovative, distributive or emancipatory
features of our (intersectorally co-ordinated) development policies, which we are
implementing legitimately at various administrative levels?
Ideal-type distinctions, thus summed up regarding territorial resource management in public
and private spheres, are jeopardized by the apparently autocratic behavior of:
• Dominating local government authorities, such as those in the national capital, regional
port or other metropolitan centers.
• Influential central agencies such as finance, public works, railways, etc.
• Powerful international private corporations dealing with oil, diamonds, electronics,
wholesale trade, etc.
We propose, nevertheless, that the three basic forms of public resource management (I-III)
appear to be simultaneously present in a more or less latent, yet integrated state; this is to
include the concomitant conflicts involved at all levels of spatial resource management in
both government and private settings. This is also to include the appropriate decision-
making processes A-E and planning techniques which are seen to be alternately
emphasized by the mixture of scientifically trained professionals at different levels (I-III) of
the various institutions concerned.
Finally, feed-back and feed-forward loops (as indicated by circular arrows) are to react inside
the collective management system upon solving conflicts and problems, but also upon
seizing opportunities by the socio-political actors, i.e. representatives of groups in various
well-known inner party circles. Here too, it occurs that more or less rational trade-off devices,
but above all influence, power, interest and leadership skills, of these collective gatekeepers
come to bear upon the allocation of public resources in debate and negotiation of multi-level
decision-making situations. Public and private management situations are thus primarily
typified internally by contractual networks of interpersonal and inter-institutional co-operation,
competition, bargaining, co-optation, coalition, brokerage, etc. directed more or less towards
collective consensus.
Last, but not least, it is to be realized that two main forms of public decision making and, as
a consequence, two typical planning styles are practiced, i.e., blueprint and process
planning. Assuming complete access to information and technical know-how of future public
works (irrigation, sewerage and housing schemes, roads, electricity supply systems, etc.),
engineers, architects and physical planners design and implement their blueprints. This type
of comprehensive planning stems from the idealized model of economically rational (wo)man
fully capable of collecting and handling all necessary data, dealing with all planning options,
applying a multi-disciplinary range of appraisal criteria, controlling all necessary resources
for plan implementation, and apparently surrounded by a stable and predictable physical,
economic and socio-political environment.
These omnipotent features of a rationally deciding person are perhaps an escape route or
disguise for site-specific design and closed-off construction of a single bridge, for example,
where engineer-planners are left to their own bureaucratic devices. However, for urban and
regional plan formulation and implementation, people's behavior is never fully
understandable, predictable or controllable --not even in socialist "command" states. In view
of a complex and turbulent environment and many different interest groups and planning
agencies, as well as a wide range of development problems and goals, the number of
appraised alternatives and interventions is to be limited and related to a few well understood
collective goals. Here, socio-spatial planners can merely strive for public consensus with
incremental changes, i.e., by improving the problematic status quo in successive rounds of
trial and a lot of error. To achieve that plan implementers work together, socio-spatial
planners become negotiators, brokers, and sometimes even advocates on behalf of poverty-
stricken urban and rural communities. Thus, planning becomes the "science of muddling
through and disjointed incrementalism". It can be considered as an ongoing learning process
grasping for development targets which are constantly on the move and in need of progress
monitoring and impact evaluation to prepare for new interventions, i.e., future projects,
programs and policies becoming increasingly more efficient, effective, socio-politically
acceptable and legitimate.
Propositions on regional development theories, typologies and strategies "from above and
from below" (Friedmann, 1966, pp. 67-98; Veenstra, 1970, pp. 12-25; Hilhorst, 1971, pp. 81-
106; Friedmann, 1973.a, pp. 41-64 and 235-248; UN/ESCAP, 1979, pp. 32-41; St`hr and
Fraser Taylor, 1981, pp. 63-69; Belshaw and Douglass, 1981, pp. 1-15)
In order to combat the typical adversities of Third World rural regions, development planners
have quite arbitrarily relied upon theoretical constructs of regional economic growth
originating from inside and/or outside, of agricultural modernization and polarized centre-
periphery integration, as derived from historical experiences in industrialized countries.
Misapplication of industrial- and urban-led policy prescriptions over recent decades left ill-
treated Third World peripheries with the following unresolved problems:
• Lack of local decision-making and planning capacities, and of proper territorial control
over their own resources.
• Continued polarization of development in a few urban core areas, resulting in spatial
concentration of social benefits and market forces.
• Severe damage to rural ecologies of transitional physical environments caused by
increasing population pressure and unrestrained exploitation of natural resources.
• Boom-bust phenomena associated with heavy specialization in one or a few export
commodities.
• Spatial enclave effects, i.e., failure to translate government investment projects into
broad-based rural development because of leakages of local savings and the brain-
drain from rural regions to urban cores and abroad; and
• Increasing spatial manifestations of rural-urban inequalities.
Mindful of this bleak picture, the attached regional typology of figure 2 could be employed as
the conventional stone of wisdom "from above" in differentiating nation-wide regional
development problems, main features and subsequent development planning strategies for
spatial resource management.
It should be recognized that any government is, in the first instance, forced to limit nation-
wide regional development efforts "from above" because of the following constraints:
• Simultaneous overall establishment of a socio-spatial and administrative planning
system creates red-tape rigidities and socio-political tensions unfavorable for
continuous adaptation to a turbulent environment, both at home and abroad.
• Scarcity of skilled personnel to properly survey and plan, and also implement, monitor
and evaluate regional development strategies, programmes and projects.
• Scarcity of capital resources to finance nation-wide large-scale infrastructural
investments.
• Inability of a vertically, sectorally organized government administration to rapidly adapt
to the territorial decentralization required for such nation-wide efforts.
It will therefore be necessary to list a country's regions according to the legitimate priority
that can be attached to their development planned from above, and act upon it successively.
In case of actions being undertaken, i.e., resource surveys, plan formulation and
implementation for typical regions' transformation, the following policy recommendations can
be made. If the development objective of national and regional government authorities and
local interest groups is to spread economic activities over all sub-regions and districts, and if
the existing regional center is strong and well-located for supporting such a distributive
objective, the best spatial development strategy would be the dispersion of the planned
social and physical infrastructure investments from sectoral headquarters in the regional
capital over the area's secondary and tertiary centers. Among these central places the ones
closest to the district's boundaries will have highest priority given the objective of socio-
economic expansion-- all this subject to its economic feasibility: a road leading from nowhere
to nowhere would be pointless! On the other hand, if the development objective is to
consolidate the district's production and consumption structure, rather than its spatial
expansion, the investments related to exploitation of natural resources will preferably be
concentrated either in one central growth point or along a dominating transport corridor.
It should be remembered that the legitimate socio-spatial strategies in question are a strong
indicator of the stage in which the country's center-periphery relationships find themselves.
When the country's dominating structures, i.e. central cadres, banking and marketing
institutions as well as transportation and communication networks, are exploited mainly for
extractive purposes, strategic planning proposals will differ in substance from the ones that
are collectively accepted in case the distributive elements have become important,- leaving
aside environmental protection and local religio-cultural identity raising specific interests.
All in all, central plan administrators and intellectuals (mis)guided by these socio-spatial
strategies and inherent policy instruments have not been able, at least within a tolerable time
span, to improve or even stabilize levels of living in Third World peripheries. Here, rural
regions have not been considered as the source of self-sustaining economic growth, but
were treated as administrative areas composed of production zones: policy criteria for local
resource use being "top-down" determined by elitist interest groups residing mainly outside
the rural society. So, it was proposed that these regions were to be functionally integrated
into the (inter)national economic system through production for export. Regional strategies
therefore focused on development of trunk roads, particularly to the capital city and port, on
modernization of agro-livestock production, and provision through intermediate towns of
public services and industrial dispersion. However, these prescriptions have been silent
about institutional reforms needed: land and water (re)distribution, government
decentralization, devolution of political power, popular participation and community self-help,
in short, about equity enhancing policies and projects. The result has been rural stagnation
and planned dependency of the majority of rural and urban poor “small people” upon extra-
local political and economic control.
Figure 2. Regional development planning characteristics "from above"
Characteristics Typology of regions
1. Upward-transitional 2. Downward- 3. Peripheral natural
regions, core areas and transitional: old resource frontiers
corridors agricultural/industrial
regions
Development Strangulation of economic Stagnant urban and Creation of new
problems growth; inefficient rural economies industrial matrix,
absorption of rural-urban leading to structural transport corridors,
migration into labour force; poverty; inability to irrigation works,
inadequate physical, support population at agricultural
economic and social adequate levels of communities, including
infrastructure in cities living basic administrative
and social Services
Main features One or more clustered Low productivity and Population movement
cities; agriculture for export capitalization; into new areas;
and support of urban fragmentation of agricultural, forest and
populations; capital- agricultural holdings; mineral development;
intensive industrialization old mining practices; weak settlement
and farming; adequate small potential pattern; strong
market organizations, and resource base; dependencies on
intercity and farm-to- selective outward outside world
market transportation migration; widespread
apathy and fatalism in
relatively isolated
village communities;
sub-standard services
Multi-functional
Consolidation of
Spatial integration through
Spatial planning
expansion of activities
activities and re-
carefully selected
strategies directed
into resource region;
activating distressed
secondary and tertiary
towards:
establishment of
areas by investment
growth points and urban
- Agricultural/land
strong focal city, and
(return flow)
development corridors,
use planning
transport and
incentives; selection of
including the direct
- Infrastructural
communication
intermediate growth
surroundings with their
planning
linkages with outside
points and rural
own economic
- Energy
world. Popular bottom-
resettlement projects
specializations
planning
up approaches in and
along the perimeter,
- Environmental
around small district
including necessary
management
towns
service and rural
- Development of
Development
information
packages
systems and
planning staff
through on-the-
job training
3. Local Grassroots Planning as an Antidote
Thus, in the last instance, district and regional planning officers as well as their
colleagues/sectoral managers, i.e., the field activists, are to frame their own appropriate
policy prescriptions "from below". The latter are meant as an antidote for, or complementary
to, conventional propositions "from above" as laid down in figure 2. These grassroots
precepts might prove to be particularly suitable for many Third World areas that in the near
future cannot expect to benefit from "top-down" industrial enclave development, and thus are
to be employed as provisional second-best strategies "from below" while competitiveness in
the world economic system is built up. Called also "trials for Selective Spatial/territorial
Closure" (SSC), the following substantive ingredients are considered essential for regional
strategies "from below".
• For example, provision of broad and equal access to land and other available natural
resources through land reform.
• Assignment of priority to the satisfaction of basic human needs (food, shelter and basic
services), but reducing dependence on outside inputs by promoting local trade,
transport and service facilities.
• Promotion of productive activities, exceeding regional demand (export-based), priority
being given to:
• Full employment of local labour and natural resources.
• Regionally adequate technologies which are to minimize waste of scarce
resources while maximizing the use of regionally abundant resources, taking into
account local cultural patterns and value systems as well as conservation of
renewable natural resources: land, water, forests, pastures, etc.
• Competitiveness in extra-regional markets by qualitative product differentiation,
rather than by purely quantitative price competition in standard mass production.
• Introduction of national credit and pricing policies which offer terms of trade and loans
favourable to natural resource utilization in agriculture, forestry, fishery, animal
husbandry, etc., especially in peripheral regions.
• Improvement of intra-regional transport systems, intermediate city functions (growth
poles) and rural-to-rural transport and communication facilities.
• Introduction or revival at district, village and neighbourhood levels of communal
decision-making structures for self-determination and self-reliance regarding integrated
resource allocation, storage and processing of regional produce, allocation of regional
surpluses, savings, etc.
Although (or perhaps because) egalitarian societal structures, regional consciousness and
local empowerment are outstanding SSC preconditions, an understandable lack of support
from central governments in Third World nation-states forms the major reason why rural
regional planning "from below" has made little progress on a large territorial scale, and then
only during relatively short, revolutionary periods. On the contrary, foreign development
assistance should be mistrusted for turning the donors' planning frustrations with the western
scene (resulting from among other things democratic equalization, welfare state
consumerism, ecologic failures and ruthless infrastructure planning) into too innovative
experiments in the Third World, thus exercising societal vivisection indeed on a global scale.
Propositions on conventional versus reduced working procedures for integrated area
planning: a plea for staggered territorial institution building and organizational change
(Smith/IBRD, 1980, pp. 1-48; Johnston and Clark, 1982, pp. 155-224; Korten, 1986, pp. 1-
15, etc.; Uphoff, 1986, pp. 1-79; Israel, 1990, pp. 111-201; Staudt, 1991, pp. 35-80 + 190-
214).
Provincial and district planning officers all over the Third World have been urged during last
decades to formulate their own medium-term strategic frameworks or eventually foreign
aided, integrated area development plans. The aim is to counteract the "black magic" of
shortsighted annual routines of project-shopping-list procedures and fragmented sector
programming and budgeting, predominantly guided from central headquarters in national
capitals.
Both indigenous and expatriate field practitioners have seen, however, those brand-new
strategical frameworks, i.e., "out of the blue" inter-sectoral project bundles being defused
during the 1980s, like unexploded bombs. A general lesson has thus been learned: not
trying to change from the omnipotent foreign side, but rather from the domestic side of
standing bureaucratic procedures for project/sector/area planning and budgeting. So, in area
development planning it is proposed to manoeuvre between two extremes, i.e., between the
"devil and the deep blue sea" of:
• On one side, central policy guidelines, statutory rules and regulations rigidly governing
the bureaucratic operations of annual planning and budgeting routines, actually
weeding out sectoral project lists; and
• On the other side, quasi-academic one-off happenings of comprehensively constructing
an integrated area development blueprint comprising a heavy load of intersectoral
project packages, which leave many questions on their consistency, implementation
and replication unanswered.
Figure 3a. Global outline of a comprehensive regional planning
procedure (Free from: Van Staveren and Van Dusseldorp, 1980 and
OAS/DRD, 1984).
So, in the first instance, conventional regional planning procedures will be dealt with, but
their reduction and adaptation to specific rural settings will receive increasing attention; refer
to the explanations given in attached figure 3a. To start with, conventional prescriptions by
would-be neutral and dispassionate adherents of a consistent methodological canon indicate
that after the necessary selection of a priority region (2) the area development team should
begin its tasks with an inventory and analysis of both central and local development
objectives and policy issues, of human, natural and capital resources, (non-)physical
infrastructure, etc. Macro- and area-specific diagnoses together lead to an assessment of
development problems, potentials and constraints (5). Problem structuring in its turn is
followed along with eventual feedback loops by selection and formulation of a regional
development strategy (6) which subsequently determines the selection and framing, in
(pre)feasibility terms, of inter-sectoral project packages to be implemented, monitored and
evaluated (13 + 12). Particularly foreign assisted, single-region planning exercises including
the multi-disciplinary hotch-potch of resource surveyors, socio-spatial planners and program
controllers/evaluators (temporarily jetted in from abroad) are to be mistrusted because of
their time-consuming work and costly team management. Here, difficulties have been
encountered in applying the broad conventional prototypes of the 1970s as detailed in figure
3a, to specific Third World rural peripheries. For instance, the internal inconsistencies of
applying the Israeli "Rehovot Approach" of integrated rural development (Weitz, 1979) to a
predominantly rural region in the Orinoco basin plains of Venezuela have been summarized
by Belshaw (1983, pp. 9 and 19), as follows.
Re steps 1-3 of macro-diagnosis: confusion abounds over what would constitute the
(exact boundaries of the) priority planning region, and over the macro- as well as area-
specific development objectives, target groups, constraining policy issues and resources to
be expressed by planned per capita growth rates for the regional income, net savings and
investments, (sectoral) labor participation, production, consumption, service and poverty
indicators. Because of the isolated single-region emphasis, the existence of inter-regional
linkages for migration, land encroachment and broad ecosystems' imbalances, as well as for
agro-produce marketing, transport and processing, for provision of farm inputs, consumer
good supplies and financial flows has been neglected.
Re step 4 of area-specific diagnosis: In land use planning, mismatches have been noted
between land suitability classes and smallholder farming systems, being mapped at
inappropriate scales. In this respect, land tenure relationships, land reform, agricultural
commodity price shifts and labor wage differentials have usually been overlooked. So, the
relative competitiveness of local manufacturing vis-à-vis extra-regional enterprises located in
larger urban centres of contiguous regions has seldom been analyzed.
Re steps 5-13: sustainable development of human, natural and institutional resources
pointing towards strengthening local community participation and self-determination, public
administrative capabilities, decentralized statutory powers and financial absorptive capacities
requiring in turn the progressive improvement of a planning data base, sequential plan
(re)formulation, implementation, on-going evaluation, on-the-job training of local
administrators, etc. - has been hastily omitted altogether in "out of the blue" single-shot
happenings.
Consequently, the external co-determinative adversities of, and internal planning limitations
for, rural-led regions in the Third World suggest the following reduction and shifts in
emphasis to be made in area development procedures, i.e., the staggered approach
climbing the managerial ladder in figure 1 "from below". Here, lessons learned from mistakes
made during the 1980s already led to a checklist with constituent components of a multi-
annual working procedure for improving (in sequential rounds) rural planning-cum-
implementation capacities at lower government levels in Aceh province, Indonesia
(Veenstra, 1989, pp. 532-542). In order to gradually break the shackles of top-down control
and enable lower-level self-determination, the conventional wisdom of planning activities 2-
13 represented in figures 3a/b is to be relaxed, and closely tied to nation-wide bureaucratic
planning and budgeting routines, as exemplified by the West-African case of figure 4 and
explained below. Particularly in view of Tikar's disintegrated administrative structure, but
generally accounting for the limited availability of government funds and qualified planning
staff, measures were to be taken at three territorial levels as follows.
First, at inter-provincial level, i.e. for the geographical entity of the Tikar water catchment
basin as a whole, an inter-sectoral steering and monitoring committee (SMC) is to be
established. It should be reinforced by a qualified foreign volunteer/rural plan co-ordinator
and his local counterpart, as well as by a mother-and-child health care officer/female
volunteer from abroad. This regional SMC, consisting of representatives of the central
planning ministry, provincial and district heads and technical sectoral officers is to safeguard
the annual plan formulation, budgeting, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of pilot
programs with proposed interventions A.6.1-D.3.4. (in figures 5 and 6 of Appendix 1) to be
executed in the exemplary priority chiefdoms initially selected. Here, mobilization and co-
ordination are to take place of foreign donors (:EEC, FAO, UNICEF, Federal Germany, etc.),
sectoral government agencies and local communities involved in the multi-annual planning
procedure of figure 4.
Second, at district level, the expatriate Tikar plan co-ordinator/catalyst and his locally
nominated planning colleagues are to merely steer by the three existing district development
committees (DDCs) during their annual budgeting meetings in favour of integrated priority-
chiefdom plan implementation.
Third, emphatic revival of rural village structures, local leadership and of traditional chiefdom
councils is to be aimed at. Hereto, inside priority zones, existing village development
committees (VDCs) are to be given an official status and fresh start, instigated by specifically
appointed, priority-zone co-ordinators/chiefdom development volunteers from abroad. These
expatriate community development workers are to catalyze particularly the respective priority
chiefdom councils (CDCs) including local technical staff for participatory planning and
grassroots implementation of the exemplary project bundles A.6.1.-D.3.4.
Figure 3b. Detailed Design for Rural Regional Planning Procedure (Free
from Belshaw, 1983, Appendix 1.2)
Planning Steps Associated Planning Activities, Methods and Techniques
(in approximate
time sequence
of figure 3a)
Step 3. - Characteristic policy indicators for regional economic growth and structural transformation
Macro-Diagnosis from "peasant to farmer": Weitz, 1979, Tables 1-6; FAO/WCARRD (1980). Socio-Economic
Indicators for Monitoring and Evaluation; Sundaram (1984). Data and Information Needs for
Sub-National Planning.
- Inter-sectoral input-output relations within the region, including labour, capital and
commodity flows.
Step 4. - Demographic analysis: birth, mortality, natural increase rates; net rural-urban migration
Area-Specific patterns; age cohort structures
Diagnosis - Geographical distribution of agro-economic zones, urban and rural service networks;
centrality analysis on rural access to social and physical infrastructure; refer to figure 7.
- Natural resource assessment: hydro-geological survey; agro-meteorological analysis; land
suitability classification and land use surveys, utilizing indigenous knowledge systems as
well
- Rural micro-analysis: farming systems and household economy studies through rapid rural
surveys; village systems analysis; commodity market, factor market and enterprise analyses
- Rural institutional analysis on behavior and performance by "gate-keepers" in collective
decision making and control: refer to figure 1.
- Assessment of recent public sector policies and on-going projects, their effects and impacts
according to stated development objectives.
Step 5. - Economic growth, distributive and environmental consequences of recent patterns of
Rural Problem collective resource management: incidence of deprivation, and rural poverty causation
Structuring analysis; refer to Gregory (1967, Ch. 7) and Birgegard (1980).
Step 6. - Reconciliation of national and regional devel. objectives, their assumed effects and impacts
as well as magnitude of required resources in view of devel. problems, potentials and
Preliminary
Strategy constraints: receipt of central planning resource ceilings, physical and social planning
norms; submission of cases for revisions hereto; regional revenue raising estimates.
Formulation And
Selection - Identification of major policy shifts, and of potential projects: phased decentralization - both
functional and territorial - and popular participation; analysis of top-down sectoral initiatives
(Lichfield, 1975;
Hickling 1978; v. relevant for the region.
- Iterative matching of identified project packages, resources, policies, their effects and
Steenbergen,
1990) impacts: analysis of expected costs and benefits of alternative development strategies, with
subjective probabilities.
- Dialogues with responsible policy makers leading to choice of preferred interim regional
development strategy: strategic choice approach in Third World planning.
- Project formulation and appraisal on following aspects:
Steps 7-13.
Detailed Project social cost: benefit or cost: effectiveness analysis.
agro-technological and engineering feasibility incl. applied research priorities.
Generation And
Implementation planning standards and norms for physical and social infrastructure, guided by rural and
urban settlement plans; refer to relevant propositions hereafter.
Along The
Project Cycle/ environmental impact assessment.
Treadmill (Refer institutional feasibility with special reference to rural poverty alleviation: popular
to Rondinelli, participation and self-determination, reform of internal structure and operating procedures
1977, pp. 5-18; of standing organizations as well as inter-institutional jurisdictions.
but also to indicators and interventions for (particularly deprived) target groups: women, children,
Morgan, Honad- cultural minorities!
le, Rosengard, distributive outcomes and impacts of projects.
and Rondinelli, reorientation of interim strategy choice in light of increasing micro- and macro-planning
1983, pp. 299- information, of shifts in national policies and inter-regional coordination on large-scale
339; Bendavid- multi-regional projects.
Val, 1991, pp. - Five-year development, and rolling regional action plans (1-2 years) being prepared, and
173-224) negotiated for (foreign) funding: formal procedures for major projects only.
- Design and introduction of appropriate monitoring and evaluation systems for regional plan
implementation and operation, review and reformulation (: Casley and Kumar/IBRD, 1987),
including a georeferenced base-line data bank being built up.
- High- end medium-level manpower planning and budgeting; in-service and on-the-job
training programmes; "appreciation-level" training for politicians and community leaders
through workshops and seminars; popular literature, other media and public meetings for
target groups involved in plan formulation and implementation.
- Design and introduction of effective financial accounting, auditing and inspection measures.
In order to mobilize and regularly inform all public and private parties directly concerned with
Tikar's experimental planning-cum-learning process (1990-96), annual seminars of 2 to 4
days each are to be organized at district and priority chiefdom levels.
The annual routine meeting, held by DDCs all over the plain, took place in January 1991.
Taking advantage of this, explanations are to be given on the selection and identification,
and eventual (foreign) funding, of the first round of four priority-chiefdom project packages by
some of the principal expert consultants mentioned in our synoptic chart of figure 5. In the
same vein (but with the assistance of the newly appointed Tikar plan co-ordinator, his two
regional planning colleagues and local community development workers), district and
chiefdom seminars are to be held in 1992 and 1993, dealing among other things with:
• progress made by and lessons learned from implementing pilot interventions A.6.1.-
D.3.4. in the four priority zones;
• building up a local data base for long-term Tikar planning purposes (refer to Appendix 2
for examples)
• retreat of foreign project funding and chiefdom development volunteers from the first
round of four priority chiefdoms 1990-92;
• subsequent re-selection of a second round (1993-96) of about three other priority
zones in the area.
Running parallel with the successive rounds of local seminars, three on-the-job training
cycles (1991-93) are proposed for a limited group of about 25 senior sectoral planning
officers, who preferably are at district level the "seconds in command" inside their own
agencies, i.e., agriculture, animal husbandry, education, public works, etc. Three field
workshops of three weeks each are to deal with a wide range of short- and long-term rural
planning subjects, as spelled out in this paper's propositions, and to be presented by an
interdisciplinary group of expert trainers/consultants who will use as case-study materials all
the reports A-D and maps 1-16 listed in figure 5 of Appendix 1.
Here, to liberate local planners from their functional bondage to central headquarters, a
scaling-up revision or topsy-turvy twist in lower-level area planning is suggested:
III Away from narrow project feasibility, implementation and progress monitoring through
logical frameworks (Callewaert, 1988)
II Towards focussing on core problem structuring and strategic area development choices
to be made (Van Steenbergen, 1990; Hickling, 1978), ultimately
I Supported by action-oriented policy studies (Majchrzak, 1984) laying initial emphasis on
conflicting policy issues, means and instruments, as well as on interested stakeholders,
their available resources and controversial values.
So, instead of being fragmentarily instructed from above by sectoral policy guidelines and
annual resource ceilings, local field staff is to gradually establish its own well-grounded
cumulative body of grassroots planning knowledge, supported by a multi-disciplinary range
of action-oriented policy indicators generated by rapid rural data collection and processing
techniques.
The learning-by-doing process of figure 4 cannot be effectively adjusted without (Clayton
and PJtry, 1981, pp. 1-11 and 253-260):
• Monitoring, defined as a process of measuring, processing and communicating
operational information on project performances, external conditions and impacts; and
• Evaluation, i.e. determining cause-effect relationships between project inputs and
outputs including external constraints, using logical frameworks as an analytical tool for
determining strategic effectiveness.
Figure 4. Operational-cum-strategic planning procedure for Tikar
plain, Cameroon, 1990-1996: refer to Appendix 1 with
description of reduced regional planning study in West
Africa, including synoptic figures 5 and 6.
Components of learning-by Planning rounds 1-3
doing process
1. First round of 1990-1992 2. Second round of 1993- 3. Strategic development
priority area mobilization, 1996 priority area selection, plan formulation for Tikar
plan implementation, plan formulation, plain as a whole by local
monitoring and evaluation implementation, monitoring district administration itself;
and evaluation 1997-2001.
1. Multi-level and Intervention A.6.1.:
intersectoral institution Establishment of regional SMC, as well as revival of priority-
building: chiefdom and local village development committees.
- regional, i.e. Appointment of regional plan coordinators and priority-
interprovincial (SMC) chiefdom development workers
- District (DDCs)
- Chiefdom (CDCs)
- Village (VDCs)
2. Start up, information + Intervention A.6.2.: Closing seminars organized
community participation Annual seminars to be organized for some days at district around strategical frame-
and priority-chiefdom levels. work
3. On-the-job training of Intervention A.6.3.: Subjects of third policy
second-tier planning staff First operational workshops Subjects to be dealt with oriented workshop of 1993:
(Veenstra, 1982, Table A): subjects to be dealt with in during second strategic Theories, strategies,
-
Learning-by-doing 1991: workshop 1992: objectives for regional
workshops Identification, Regional and rural development planning
- -
formulation, monitoring development planning including typologies of
+ evaluation through stages, steps and sub-regions
logical frameworks of rounds “from above Structural elements of
-
priority area project and below” rural poverty, rural
packages: classic Antagonistic development planning
-
project cycle/treadmill development views approaches and
Foreign + domestic Secondary + primary techniques
- -
program budgeting data collection, Rural settlement policy
-
and implementation processing and options, including
reporting including drinking water, primary
questionnairing health care and
Problem structuring + education, feeder
-
selection of problem- roads, rural energy
related factors for area supply and small-scale
priority setting, and rural agro-processing
choice of preferred
strategies
4. Staggered Introduction of Intevention A.6.4.:
Monitoring + on-going M/E of first round of four M/E of second round of
Evaluation = M/E packages newly sel. prioritiy area
programs
5. Building up local planning Intervention A.6.5.:
data checklist c.q. GIS Standard data list and maps to be established for priority-
maps; refer to Appendix 2 area project packages + strategic development framework to
be formulated for Tikar plain.
A.6.6.: A.6.7. Integrated strategic
framework formulated “from
Second planning round
above and below”
executed
Our Tikar regional plan co-ordinators and local community development workers are to be
warned in advance, however, of introductory failures in monitoring and evaluation (M/E)
systems usually associated with (Bamberger and Hewitt, 1990, Annexes C-I):
• A poor system design, i.e., production of more M/E data than are needed or can be
analyzed;
• Inadequate staff, equipment, transport, etc. for M/E activities such as early base-line
surveys;
• Substantial delays in processing and analysis of data and in presentation of M/E
results;
• M/E reports remaining untouched, i.e., unused by local sectoral officers who feel
themselves threatened by M/E results!
Despite conflicting imperatives of plan evaluators and administrators, M/E processes
(directed towards both area programme and action project data collection and analysis)
contribute principally to inter-sectoral efforts at district and priority chiefdom levels to improve
secondary data initially used to:
• structure development problems and objectives for the Tikar plain as a whole (study
phase I/step I.2);
• establish a standard list and portfolio of synthetic and thematic maps representing
problem-related factors, or scored policy criteria for priority-area re-selection during
1992 (original study phase I/steps I.3+4)
• identify budgeted project packages B.2.1-D.3.4 per priority chiefdom (original study
phase II).
Ultimately, becoming well-versed by three training workshops during 1991-93, supported by
foreign technical assistance and project funds and provided with an improved data base, the
"second-in-command" group of senior sectoral officers is now to take over the second round
1993-96 of continued planning in, say, three other Tikar chiefdoms to be selected. Here, the
same planning steps and study phases as presented in figure 6 of Appendix I are to be
adhered to, but taking into account the lessons learned from trials and errors during 1990-
92. An independently operating SMC is to organize instructive seminars (again at district and
newly selected chiefdom levels) to reinforce local village and chiefdom structures and to co-
ordinate local and foreign funds made available for newly formulated project packages,
being monitored and evaluated, etc. with continued assistance of regional plan co-ordinators
and local community development workers.
Note that the repeated selection of priority zones is not considered to be a final objective in
itself. On the contrary, the two sequential rounds of priority package formulation and
implementation are to serve the main aim of building up local planning capacities and a
reliable data base for the Tikar plain as a whole. This is to leave the bureaucratic routine of
annual project shopping lists behind and to strive for a multi-annual development strategy
(well understood by the local administration) which by itself comes to grips with rural
planning weaknesses in this part of the Third World. As a consequence, national long-term
planning guidelines, large-scale interventions and programmes (such as the artificial lake
MapJ designated "from above", i.e. from central headquarters in YaoundJ) are to be
incorporated into a five-year development strategy for the entire catchment, thus integrating
the rather short-sighted annual priority-area packages "from below" with a long-term
strategical framework for the entire plain "from above". Because of acquaintance with new
crafts and team spirit built into the local planning machinery from below during 1990-96, the
inter-provincial SMC is now to work towards an indicative five-year Tikar development
framework 1997-2001. Finally, a series of seminars during 1995-96 should inform a broad
audience, including politicians and senior officials from national to local levels, on the
following topics.
• Secondary and primary data collected and processed, including (computer-assisted)
production of synthesized and thematic maps; refer to Appendix 2.
• Study reports produced by sectoral working groups with regard to
• socio-economic, institutional and project funding topics of domain A in our
synoptic chart of figure 5 in Appendix 1;
• the production sectors of domains B and C in our chart;
• rural infrastructure sectors of domain D in our chart.
• Leading (sub)sectors, key projects and supporting programs ultimately indicated by the
Tikar strategic framework for another five years to come: 1997-2001.
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