23430 0n Regional planning, local visions: Participatory futuring in West Africa I )tarting in 1990, the Club du Taking it to the field ahel-a branch of the Organiza- tion for Economic Cooperation and The impasse was overcome in part by Development responsible for coordi- turning to West African farmers for ar- nating northern donor agencies in sup- bitration. The Club and the CILSS hap- port of food security and natural re- pened to be collaborating at the same source management in the desert-edge time on a participatory study of decen- portions of West Africa-undertook to tralization and local capacity-building update existing long-term planning for in five countries of the region: Burkina the region. It cooperated in this effort Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger and Senegal. with the Interstate Committee for It involved case studies of local commu- Struggle Against Drought in the Sahel nities and associations which had as- ("C ILSS" by its francophone acronym), sumed major new development and an organization affiliating Ministries of management responsibilities on their Agriculture and other government own. Organizers of the five-country re- agencies of seven Sahelian countries in search effort suggested that one way to pursuit of similar goals, headquartered get beyond the stalemate over the in Ouagadougou. WALTPS Study would be to take its ba- The work was chiefly carried out by sic questions, observations and conclu- economists and political scientists en- sions to the field and ask members of gaged by the Club du Sahel, who used these same communities what they existing studies and available data on thought about the matter, since they regional trends to project alternate arguably represented the most impor- scenarios for the next thirty years of tant stakeholders of such long-range West African development. The result- planning. The specialists expressed ing document, popularly known as the some skepticism at such a populist No. 1 7 "West African Long-Term Perspectives approach: did local people have the February 2000 Study" or "WALTPS," stirred a good deal of controversy. There were dis- agreements between Europeans who IK Notes reports periodically on Indig- enous Knowledge (IK) initiatives in favored urban-oriented scenarios and Sub-Saharan Africa. It is published by North Americans who were more in- the Africa Region's Knowledge and clined toward rural-oriented ones, and Learning Center as part of an evolving IK partnership between the World between Northerners who did most of Bank, communities, NGOs, develop- the analysis and African researchers ment institutions and multilateral orga- SSI~ONL Sk,k,. who felt a little shortchanged. The en- nizations. The views expressed in this tire project seemed for a while to be article are those of the authors and 5111..-ml should not be attributed to the World mired in disagreements that obscured Bank Group or its partners in this ii- the usefulness of the data gathered. tiative. A webpage on IK is available at http://www.worldbank.org/aftdr/ik/ default.htm 2 necessary breadth of vision and distance from daily concerns the West African region as a whole over the last thirty years, required to contribute to such futuring? Proponents coun- concentrating on five related dimensions of daily life: tered that nearly every village had people who had either trav- * environment eled extensively in the region or were currently away working * demography in coastal cities, if not overseas, and that the combination of * economy this experience with first-hand knowledge of local conditions * society and culture made them essential counterparts. * politics. In the end, it was decided to undertake a local consultation on long-range planning across the five countries. The African The researchers prepared a digest of the essential findings and international researchers involved developed a trial of the WALTPS Study, but also took care to solicit local view- methodology for inviting debate and analysis of the future of points. The essential question was simply, "How have things the immediate community and the larger region in each of changed in your community and its surroundings from these the areas visited. It entailed enlisting representatives from a five points of view since the time when today's young adults variety of local social groups in the data collection, discus- were themselves babies?" sion and forecasting process. 2.Consider the underlying factors that seem to account for or explain these changes, their relations to each other, and Protocols for local debate the longer-term trends that they reveal. 3. Imagine the situation that might obtain in another thirty The work covered five sequential steps: years - in all five areasjust named - if the same trends and 1, Examine the most important changes that have occurred factors continued to operate in much the same manner. in the immediate community, the surrounding country and 4.Discuss future scenarios and conditions that the group might prefer to this forecast - that is, the type of future that they would like to deed to their children. 5.Consider what might need to be done at local, national and I K N o tes international levels to move the situation toward these pre- ferred futures. The methodology used to launch the process and guide de- Nfame bate varied significantly from one country to another: * In Ghana, for example, the research team took care to en- Institution large the sample of local associations and businesses visited in order to include a few secondary schools and higher train- Address ing institutes where they might get the perspective of the next generation of West African leaders. (The methods used in Ghana are presented more fully in a section at the end of this appendix.) * In Niger and in Mali, the research teams put together Afri- can language versions of the facilitator s manual and discus- _- - - ** -. * '. -.sion guide. * In Burkina Faso, researchers decided to ask each commu- nity to name a "panel" of participants, sampled by age and gender, and worked exclusivefy with this focus group. - t *l ;v iii. I I; * .^ * In Senegal, national researchers gave each local research team a set of simple facilitator's aids, including a map of Af- * * * * * ** * * rica, a map of Senegal and a flip chart with butcher paper and felt-tip markers. The participatory dimension of the exercise 3 was also given the greatest prominence in Senegal, where the Opinions regarding family planning differ markedly, par- national research team invited interested local associations ticularly between mature and older men, on the one hand, to organize the debates themselves, trained the staff that and young people and women on the other. The second group they selected and established contracts with these local insti- generally supports family planning; the first tends to reject it. tutions for direction of the work. One peasant woman in Senegal insists that "we are not ma- chines for manufacturing children." Yet a pater familias in a Local visions neighboring community bases his arguments on the far greater population density in areas of Europe: given adequate The exercise stirred a great deal of interest in all communi- resources, there should be no problem in handling popula- ties that took part-fifty-six of them in total across the five tion growth. countries. Substantive results of the experiment can be sum- * Local participants give particular emphasis to the relations marized as follows: between urban and rural areas but speak of complementarity, 1 .The leaders and members of the local associations in- two-way flow, even reverse migration more often than do the volved-both women and men-turned out to be very inter- authors of the reference studies. Some speakers in towns and ested in the idea of forecasting and discussing the future of cities stress the need for increased investment in rural areas, their community, country and region-and quite capable of where most of them continue to have close ties. playing an active role in the exercise. They were particularly * There is general recognition, most pronounced in land- gratified by: locked countries like Mali and Niger, that it will be necessary * the feeling of having for the first time the opportunity to henceforth to rely to a greater extent on local resources and play a part in political deliberations about development strat- ingenuity and that, given growing xenophobia in host coun- egy and the future of their environment; tries, out-migration is no longer a good solution. * the chance to get a systems view" of the evolution of their * Exception is widely taken to the reference studies for not environment and to question local practices that seemed in- having paid greater attention to the deterioration of social compatible with sustainable development; values and to the ethnical and moral side of current trends. * this pilot-testing of a procedure that might enable local as- The breakup of traditional family structure and an increase in sociations to do more systematic long-term planning and to individualism are mentioned in both urban and rural areas. visualize their relationships with their larger social environ- ment. 3,There is a tendency to paint the past (represented for the 2.Their analyses of the changes that have occurred at the lo- purposes of this exercise by the 1960s) in somewhat idealized cal level, of the trends underlying them, and of likely and pos- colors: the soil was then fertile, wildlife was abundant, people sible futures coincide often, but not entirely, with those of were content, etc. On the other hand, current circumstances the authors of the different reference studies. The following are seen as extremely critical and everyone speaks of seeking themes stood out in the debates: remedies. * The biggest changes and the most disturbing trends identi- 4. In the political realm, participants gave good marks to the fied were those in the ecological and economic domains, con- beginnings of democratic processes experienced in recent cerning agriculture in particular. Widespread and very pro- years but reproached the political parties with creating dis- nounced awareness of the deterioration of the environment sension. Their prescriptions for the future included giving and of the role that human activity (population increase, much greater prominence to local governance. Particular im- farming methods, natural resource use) plays in it were ev- portance was attached by nearly all to the phenomena of lo- erywhere evident. cally managed associations, cooperative businesses, and in- * Though it is recognized that population is on the increase tervillage federations. The problem of linking these nearly everywhere and that interaction among social and eth- grassroots movements with the official decentralization and nic groups has intensified at the same time, neither fact is democratization programs now under way was also frequently universally interpreted as a problem or a source of conflict. mentioned. 4 5.The researchers who coordinated the exercise drew atten- Participants in the concluding workshop felt that the long- tion to some major resistance to decentralization at the local term payoff to the methodology tried out in the course of the level among groups that benefit from the present situation exercise lies with its transformation into a strategy and a set and call for clearer policies regarding the procedures to be of tools for self-assessment and strategic planning of the dif- followed. Better coupling of the top-down forms of decen- ferent types of local associations and businesses that took tralization with the bottom-up movements now developing in part. This kind of instrumentation seems sorely lacking in the field offers perhaps the simplest way of both circumvent- many associations, which rarely have a method for self-evalu- ing local resistance and creating a solid base for decentrali- ation, information storage and retrieval or planning. zation efforts, they felt. The results show one other thing of major importance as 6.Better regional integration and cooperation among the well, and this is the pressing need for better tools and prac- Sahelian countries was mentioned frequently by all partici- tices of "horizon scanning," strategic planning and informa- pants, but one important qualification to this conclusion tion use within these organizations. Paradoxically, at a time stands out. It was recognized that, to a certain degree, the when project planning methodologies are either falling into name "Sahel" itself and the membership of the CILSS desig- disuse or becoming the target ofjustifiable criticism in aid nate a critical dimension of the problem, not the solution. agencies themselves, some of the most rudimentary and Economic development in West Africa depends in good mea- much-used of these tools may turn out to be 'just the ticket" sure upon better coordination between landlocked and in local associations, communities and enterprises. coastal areas along the north-south axes of precolonial com- One of the research teams was asked to propose a simple merce that fueled the development of the regions' great em- project planning methodology to a local association involved pires but were later broken by colonial patterns. Long-term in the futuring exercise and, somewhat sheepishly, could solutions to economic stagnation seem therefore to require come up with nothing other on the spot than the ancient new alignments between Sahelian countries and coastal ar- "logframe matrix." To the surprise of the researchers, this eas like Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Guinea and was an instant hit, because it at least offered a "template" for Liberia-and across Francophone/Anglophone divides-that organizing local reflection about possible futures and worth- CILSS can help facilitate but cannot realize within strictly while investments. Perhaps its shortcomings were as much a within its own framework. consequence of being used at the wrong level (very centrally rather than more locally) as they were a function of its inher- Methodological lessons ent invalidity. How much of donor organization and govern- ment agency practice now criticized might prove downright At the same time, the local long-range planning study" was catalytic if transposed into the hands of local actors? a methodological experiment as much as a substantive in- quiry into citizens' perceptions of the West African future. This article is based on research conducted by local researchers with the support and technical supervision of Peter Easton, Associate professor Graduate Studies in Adult Education., Florida State University, with the active collaboration of the concerned African communities. The research was carried out under thejoint aegis of the Club du Sahel/OECD, the Interstate Committee for Combating Drought in the Sahel/Comite Inter-etat Contre la Secheresse (CILSS) and the Associa- tion for the Development of Education in Africa. WORLD BANK 1