Citizen Participation in Local Governance: The cases of the Bangalore Urban Poverty Alleviation Programme and the Angolan Citizens’ Participation Initiative

The concept and practices of citizen participation as an important aspect of development strategy is discussed in this paper by considering two projects from India and Angola. The paper highlights the concepts and various aspects of participation as a development tool and analyses citizen involvement in the design, planning and implementation of policies and programmes that affect their lives. Actors within the participation arena included opinion leaders, local officials, Non Governmental Organizations, politicians and members of the community. The main objective of these projects was to improve the lives of people and meet their specific needs such as creating credit schemes, construc-tion of schools, hospitals and expansion of electrification. Nonetheless, there were challenges such as low level of capacity of citizens and local bodies, in-ability to raise local resources, pre-conceived ideas of donors and lack of coor-dination of institutional actors. Accordingly, this paper argues that despite the merits of participation it is sometimes a complete waste of time and resources as such it must be used selectively. Finally, the role of local government in community development is significant and it ought to be equipped with the human and financial resources to perform creditably.