Civil Society Organisations’ Role in Enhancing Accountability and Community’s Participation in the Management of Public Funds: The Case of the Constituency Development Fund in Kenya

In a bid to enhance community’s participation in development at the grassroots level, the government of Kenya in 2003 established the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) through an Act of Parliament. The implementation of the fund has been faced with the challenges of downward accountability and low community participation. This paper seeks to explore the roles played by the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Kenya in enhancing accountability and community’s participation in the CDF processes. This study uses Gaventa’s “power cube frame work” to analyse the findings from the field. The CSOs are faced with ‘invited spaces’, ‘created spaces’ and ‘closed spaces’ in the process of engaging in CDF. The CSOs in interacting with the three ‘spaces’ are undertaking awareness raising and sensitisation campaigns on the community’s rights, roles and responsibilities in CDF. CSOs are also undertaking community mobilisation and advocacy work on CDF. The findings also reveal that the political context within which the CSOs operate constrains the CSOs from playing their role in the CDF processes. The study used both primary and secondary data collected from the field together with literature from books and journals to draw its conclusion as presented and discussed in the paper.