| dc.description.abstract | Although there is considerable interest in planning for particular
rural areas, (area -based planning) in East Africa, past experience
has been discouraging. The common experience of planning
without implementation has taken three main forms: target disaggregation;
the preparation for shopping lists; and development
studies which do not lead to action. In the meantime there has
been much implementation without area-based planning. Two
exceptions have been settlement schemes and the SRDP. The
experience of the latter to date suggests that with present
procedures, injections of high-level staff are necessary for plan
prepara.tion and implementation; that this reflects much less on
the capability of field staff than on the circumstances in which
they find themselves; that the main administrative bottleneck is
in Nairobi; and that implementability is the crux of good
planning. Common diagnoses of the problems involved and of prescriptions
to deal with them include inappropriate structures of
organisations, lack of coordination, lack of entrepreneurial
and problem-solving attitudes in the civil service, and lack of
trained manpower. '1'hepaper questions each of these diagnoses,
commonly made in both Kenya and Tanzania, and also the considerable
attention which has been given to social factors in
administration, and argues rather that if area-02,s8d planning is
desirable it can best be achieved through the design and testing
of experimental procedures through a combination of research,
consurtancy and training | en |
