Watch 2 minute video clip on using both participatory and traditional research as evidence: WMV (515kb)

What type of evidence have you found to be most compelling in trying to influence the PRSP process?
As a network organisation, we feel the most important evidence comes from the voices of the poor themselves, through using participatory approaches and having the poor identify their priorities for the national development plans. Combining the voices of the poor with some of the analytical work of civil society strengthens the argument and the case that we then present to the government to influence their policies at the end of the day.

Do you find that is the same for all government ministries?
I think that all ministries have reached the stage where they do not want civil society groups to speak as national entities. They want civil society to bring to the table what is really happening on the ground. Civil society tends to be the bridge between the policy-makers and the grassroots and as we influence policies, the voices of the grassroots have to filter through.

Can you give some examples of how the voices of the poor have influenced policy?
When looking at the fifth national development plan, we used participatory approaches to collect some of the priorities in five different districts of Zambia. The poor have been able to identify whether they wanted water and sanitation, whether they wanted roads, and so on. What we found this time round was that the priorities are very different depending on the locality. Based on that, we have been able to push through to the government an approach that will try to move away from distributing resources evenly across the different sectors and across the different districts, so that it is possible to target and set priorities according to the different locations. This is a unique situation. During the formulation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), the government tended to determine the priorities. This meant that if the government's priority was roads, they would disburse the same amount of money for roads to each area, irrespective of the width or the length of the roads etc., whereas now they are able to identify things that are unique to each of the different locations and, on that basis, they are able to distribute resources based on the priorities of the people.

Are the people then able to be involved in monitoring or evaluation?
The lesson of civil society is proving to be that it is critical not only to get your voice across in the setting of national priorities, but also to follow through on how those priorities are being implemented; otherwise, it will be a lost case. In Zambia, we tend to say that if the nation could have been developed on policies and plans alone, we would be a very developed nation. As such, it is very important to understand what is taking place at the implementation stage. What we are now doing is involving the communities in monitoring their own priorities and we feel that not only should we involve them in monitoring their own priorities, but they should also be involved in influencing how the results of the monitoring are being used. In other words, if they know whom to target to ask questions about resource utilisation or about priorities in a particular year, then they will be able to ask the questions. Through that experience, we have found that the evidence from the monitoring can be used in a very influential manner. If it is coming from the people in a particular location themselves, they are able to demand accountability using that evidence and they are able to demand results, and we feel that this is critical for any nation.

How have you managed to develop the capacity to do that?
In our poverty monitoring and assessment work, we have been going to the same locations for the past four years and, over the years, skills in participatory methodologies have been built in the communities. Initially, we experienced a sense of research fatigue because we were going to the same communities. However, over time, we found that those communities are becoming more proactive because they know that they can use that information to influence the resources targeted to their areas and development in their areas. I think that this approach of utilising the same skills in the same areas over a period of several years has been quite influential.

Could you give us some examples?
Through the poverty monitoring work, it was found that in one of the provinces, the Eastern province of Zambia, there was a rural health facility that had started to be built using poverty monitoring resources. Over a period of time, that project was abandoned and the communities did not understand why. After engaging with civil society groups and looking at the national budget as the policy instrument, it was found that the resources had actually been budgeted, yet it took a lot of pushing, using the evidence from the Yellow Book (which is the budget instrument) to get these resources to trickle down. Through pressure from civil society and the communities within the area, resources eventually got through to that rural health facility and at the end of the day, the health facility has been built and is being accessed by the communities within the area. There were similar projects in other areas where resources were supposed to be dispersed for roads but because the communities had not known that, they had not been able to follow up on it. By sitting with the communities and showing them the evidence and the policy instrument (the Yellow Book), they are then able to follow up for resources to be dispersed within their area and for more accountability.

Do you find that some groups tend to focus on some issues and priorities to the detriment of others? How have you handled that diversity?
When you are using participatory methodologies, you target different groups within society differently. For example, you will have focus group discussions with the women that bring out very different priorities to the focus group discussions you have with the youth, or with the men. Through those, you will be able to identify the different priorities so that at the end of the day, when you bring them together, you will be able to say that across the different groups, the priority for us will be water and sanitation, or it will be health facilities, and so on. It is a matter of collecting the evidence at the initial stage and being able to target the different groups differently, as well as recognising that the priorities are going to be different according to the different groups within society. After doing that, you are able to find a sense of commonality amongst the different groups and through that commonality you can identify priorities.

How have you managed to create a culture in Zambia where the voices of the poor can really have an influence on policy?
As we do our work, it is very important to recognise that one voice alone will not have an influence, but that when you have an alliance or a network dealing with or pushing for the same cause, it will actually make an impact. If a poor person in the most remote village in Zambia is calling for water, and this particular argument is being pushed at the local level, at the district level and up to the national level, based on the voice of that person represented through a core of civil society groups in partnership with government and the international community, that voice cannot be ignored. That is how we have been able to drum up support, by creating alliances and building networks so that we can ensure that the voices of the poor and the marginalised are actually represented at the end of the day. Otherwise, if that voice is isolated, it will not have an influence.

Have you found that the same type of tactics is persuasive with bilateral and multilateral donors?
The same type of tactics is beneficial when we begin to engage with donors as well, because when the donors engage with our government over the priorities of the day, they need to be able to engage over the issues that are coming from the people. A lot of African countries are now calling for ownership of national priorities and for accountability by the government to its own people and the donors are supposed to support that cause. The only way that they can support that cause is to listen to what the people are saying. Civil society has been the voice that has been able to engage with the donors and the communities and the poor people, so by bringing these voices together, the donors are then able to speak based on what the people are saying. What we are saying in Zambia is let the people drive - let them drive the planning process and the budgeting process. When the donors are requesting government accountability, it should be accountability to the poor people first and thereafter the spill-over effects will be to satisfy the various conditions of the donors.

Do you see a role for more traditional research?
There is definitely a role for more traditional research. As a civil society network, we utilise participatory approaches to get the issues from the communities, but we also commission traditional research. What the traditional research does is provide us with a closer look at a particular issue, which will help us to build the case. It might be an issue that the communities are raising, but traditional research helps us to be able to put the argument together and back it up by several types of evidence. It helps us to understand and to build a case around a particular issue, so there is definitely a core role for it.

Can you give an example of a time when both types of evidence [participatory and traditional research] have been used?
An example would be where the communities have been calling for increased inputs for agriculture, and for timely distribution of these inputs. This has been a call from the community in the past and it was actually included in the first Poverty Reduction Strategy. The government committed to doing this, but there was not a solid case to say what the implications or impact of late dispersements of agricultural inputs on the poor person would be at the end of the day. Civil Society for Poverty Reduction commissioned a study to look at the implications. The study found that late dispersements actually influenced the amount of crop yield that the community were able to achieve and from this, the impact on poverty reduction in the area could be seen. So this is an example of the complementarity between traditional research and what the communities are saying. We bring them both together and build a case.

Are you aware of other countries in Africa that are using a lot of participatory research in similar ways to CSPR?
There are a lot of countries in Africa using a lot of participatory research. I know that in Uganda, the Uganda Debt Network have been doing a lot of work in this area, especially with regard to budget tracking - where they track the budget from the allocations right through to the distribution and the impacts at the end of the day. Other groups include the Malawi Economic Justice Network, which is also doing a lot of work on budget issues. There are several groups doing this sort of thing.

Do you think that the villages you are dealing with want to be involved with budget processes and issues? And do they have the capacity?
Once the communities understand what the implications of any policy tool are, they are able to engage in their own way. I am someone who feels very strongly that communities have the capacity to engage in the development process, be it macro-economic processes or technical processes. The challenge is for those who would like to involve them to explain the process to them. Once they understand the process, they will be willing to engage, and they will be able to identify the priorities and follow it through. The core issue for all communities is that their engagement should be able to bear fruits. It is only when there are no fruits of their engagement at the end of the day that they feel fatigued and wonder the point of it all is. It then becomes the challenge of civil society to ensure that their engagement actually bears fruits.

What are the key challenges in bridging research and policy in Zambia?
Getting civil society to be more coordinated could be quite a challenge. The very definition of civil society is quite a broad one, because we are moving from having organised groups to having groups that are not very formalised as part of civil society, so getting this group organised to be able to speak with one voice is a challenge. Once you achieve that, you can actually have an impact.

Secondly, another challenge is ensuring that you have a listening government. Having a government in place is good, being able to do your own research and policy analysis is good, but being able to present these core issues to a government that will actually listen to you is a challenge, because government is about the personalities that are in place. If you want consistent engagement with government, the hope is that you have personalities in government that have a sympathetic ear towards civil society. Members of parliament are the mandated representatives of society within any particular country and at times, the core challenge is the calibre of Members of Parliament and their ability to understand the issues and to understand that they are actually representing a particular constituency. Quite often, you find that Members of Parliament really engage with their constituencies during election time, but when it comes to representing the voice of the poor person in a parliamentary debate, you find that this is not done too well.

What we are trying to do is be a resource for Members of Parliament, through getting the evidence and presenting it to them. However, for them, the main concern is credibility - how credible is the research that civil society is doing, and how credible is the policy analysis? This is the third challenge: credibility. The capacity of civil society to do good traditional research is very low and as such we have a tendency to hire consultants to do the work for us, which we then try to package and target to various stakeholders. The capacity to do research and credible policy analysis, and to be able to engage with different stakeholders, is only now beginning to be built within civil society. That capacity is still quite limited, but through establishing partnerships with northern civil society groups and think-tanks like ODI and the Civil Society Partnership Project, we are finding that this capacity is being built.

How would you define credible evidence or research?
Credible evidence or research is the sort of evidence that can be utilised by policy-makers without doubts. You have policy-makers who pick up a research document and look at it and, on the basis of the packaging and the way the argument is laid out, they feel that they cannot use it in debates. We have had Members of Parliament who have sat with civil society to tell us that we know our stuff, but it has not been presented in a way that would allow politicians to utilise it and hold their heads high in parliamentary debates. The onus is now on civil society to ensure that as we gather our evidence, we have strong arguments, which are set out in a very clear and coherent manner, and which will allow the different stakeholders to utilise this information. Otherwise, if the argument is disjointed, it is not taken as credible work.

Are they more interested in content and message than who the messenger is? Is the credibility of research questioned simply because it comes from civil society?
It is the content that matters. Policy-makers in Zambia have been utilising a lot of civil society evidence and research work for their arguments. For example, with the international community, in calling for debt relief, they have been using some of the research work that we have been doing. So the feedback from policy-makers and Members of Parliament is that it is useful (because what they are telling us is that they want to use what we are generating), but we need to do it better.

Are you including the academic community when you talk about civil society?
In our case we do include the academic community because we do believe they are part of civil society, but the involvement of the academic community in that grouping of civil society has been quite limited. Within the network of Civil Society for Poverty Reduction, we are doing some work with the University of Zambia, especially with the Economics Department.

Back to interview list