Jaap de Visser addresses Kenyan government officials on Integrated Development Planning

Prof Jaap de Visser, the director of the Community Law Centre and senior fellow of the centre’s Multilevel Government Initiative addressed a group of officials from Kenya on the topic of Integrated Development Planning (IDP). He outlined the background to IDP, the legal framework and also discussed some of the challenges in implementing this progressive and ambitious system.

The presentation resonated with the visitors from Kenya not in the least because the Kenyan system of intergovernmental relations bears many similarities to the South African system. Both countries face tremendous developmental challenges, both countries have a constitutional division of powers between central and subnational governments, a strong participatory ethos in the constitution as well as an insistence on cooperative relations between spheres of government.

This meeting is to familiarise a group of 15 Kenyan government and municipal officials in the principals and practice of Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) in South Africa. IDPs were introduced in South Africa in 2000 in a bold effort to strengthen the strategic capabilities of the new system of local government.

Their scope is comprehensive and they are intended to be genuinely integrative, e.g. combining policy planning with the budget, linking sectoral and spatial plans, and providing feedback between forward planning and evaluation. There is also a strong participatory aspect to the system. IDPs have a 5-year time horizon designed to coincide with the municipal electoral cycle.

The third generation of IDPs is currently in operation. In practice, experience in implementing IDPs has been uneven across the country, with the larger metropolitan municipalities generally coming closest to the vision outlined in the legislation. There is much to be learnt from this experience for municipalities in other countries.

The meeting was hosted by the Deputy Executive Director of the Human Sciences Research Council, Prof. Ivan Turok and Leanne Seeliger, Chief Researcher at the HSRC. This meeting was for senior public sector officials from Kenya from 19 to 24 February 2014 at HSRC in Cape Town.