Council for Non-Governmental Organisations in Malawi (CONGOMA) in collaboration with National Planning Commission (NPC) and Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN) went for a study visit in Zambia in October, 2019.
Among other things, the visit was aimed at learning how an established and successful planning institution formulates its plans and how it tracks the plans’ implementation; learning how Civil Society is actively involved in long term planning, implementation and Monitoring &Evaluation; generating good practices on National Visioning modalities and processes from Zambia; understanding how collaboration, partnership and cooperation between Civil Society, National planning Ministry, Government (especially Ministry of Finance), Development Partners and Private Sector is enhanced and sustained in formulation and implementation of long and medium term plans, and; establishing technical collaboration with partner institutions around long term planning and implementation.
Commenting on the tour, Chairperson for CONGOMA Steve Duwa said that it was pleasing to note that the Zambian Government is engaging Civil Society and the citizenry at every level of development planning. Duwa further added that apart from planning, CSOs are also involved in implementation and Monitoring of various development projects.
But why did CONGOMA choose a study tour in Zambia? the Executive Director of CONGOMA Ronald Mtonga had this to say; “Zambia was a very good choice; we feel like what we learned there can have a very big impact in Malawi. Apart from sharing same political, social, and cultural background, Zambia seems doing well than ourselves. Most things we saw there can work in Malawi. One innovation we saw is how they start budgeting, they start budgeting thematically, which is a good thing. We also saw how CSOs are accommodated in the National Planning Processes, a situation which does not happen in Malawi”, summarised Mtonga.
The delegation met officials from the Ministry of National Development Planning, Zambia Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (ZIPAR), Policy Monitoring and Research Centre
(PMRC), and the Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR) members and civil society partners.
Some notable keys lessons from the study tour include: allocation of resources should be made based on agreed priorities;prioritising productive sectors in development planning and programming so that development is sustainable; Implementation of flagship projects should have a commitment when they are approved for implementation so that the change that is sought is achieved; Involvement of the non-state actors is very key to national development, continuous communication with the general public so that there is information flow and feedback between Government and the citizen.
The whole process was made possible with financial support from IM Swedish Development Partner.