An assessment of stakeholders’ participation in land use planning process of Luapula Province Planning Authority

Abstract

The legal framework of Zambia has laws that support participatory land use planning process but there are no guidelines on how it should be done. Thus, the research aims at assessing if the Luapula Province Planning Authority (LPPA) has a land use planning process that incorporates effective stakeholders’ participation.The research is based on secondary data, especially the land use planning process in the Urban and Regional Planning (URP) Act No. 3 of 2015 of the Laws of Zambia and the participatory land use planning process of Kilimanjaro Region.The data analysed show that there is lack of effective stakeholders’ participation in the LPPA land use planning process; the LPPA land use planning process does not have the provision to capacity build stakeholders during the land use planning process; lack of participatory land use planning guidelines; the institutional framework under customary authority is not part of the land use planning process and the LPPA land use planning process is a top-down approach.The conclusions state that the legal and institutional frameworks in existence are inadequate for effective stakeholders’ participation in land use planning process of LPPA. In addition, the stakeholders are not incorporated in the LPPA land use planning process in terms of decision making but incorporated as reactants to the decisions made by the public authorities.The recommendations are that a National Land Use Planning Commission composed of representatives from stakeholder groups needs to be established. In addition, some sections of the URP Act No. 3 of 2015 of the Laws of Zambia need amendment inorder to have continuous feedback between the land use plan makers (planning firm(s) and planning authority) and the stakeholders. Furthermore, Village Councils must be given power to make decision by establishing them as Village Planning Authorities.