Challenges in integrating population variables into local government authorities’ development plans

Abstract

This paper examines the challenges in integrating population variables into Local Government Authorities (LGA)’ development plans in Chemba and Mpwapwa District Councils in Dodoma Region. The study intended to examine challenges faced by LGA in integrating population variables into short, medium, and long-term development plans. The target study population was LGA’s Development Planning Officers. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design in which both qualitative and quantitative data were collected. Univariate analysis was done to capture the distribution of respondents in frequencies and percentages. Cross-tabulation captured the association of variables at a 95% significance level. The findings revealed that LGAs face several challenges in integrating population variables into development plans. These challenges are institutional that includes scarcity of data, lack of political commitment, limited access to computing facilities, and inadequacy of statistical data sources. The resource-based challenges are the unclear relevance of the decision among development planners, limited understanding of population variables and insufficient expertise to prepare needed projection inputs. The planning process-based challenges are the bureaucratic structures in centralized planning offices, reliance on secondary data from outdated socioeconomic profiles and too many directives from the central government. The study concludes that institutional setup, resource constraints, and the nature of the planning process prevent LGA’s from devising comprehensive development plans. The findings require LGAs to exert more effort into timely reviewing and updating of reliable sources of data, improve understanding of planners on population variables and increase experts on projection inputs. Too many directives (central government priorities) order to create development plans which foster local economic growth and address the issue of youth rural-urban migration. The study recommends that LGAs improve updating all sources of data for planning purposes, and review the planning approach in an attempt to make it more equitable and egalitarian, instead of being a top-down regurgitation of central government policies. Besides, development planners need to be acquainted with methodologies for integrating population variables into development plans.