Influence of Participants Preparation for Citizen Fora on Equity in Resource Allocation by County Governments of Kenya

Public participation has become a basic requirement for good governance in democratic societies across the world. It is also instrumental in development practice, where it holds the promise of including the community in agenda-setting as well as decision-making in development planning, implementation and sharing of development benefits. In Kenya, both the national and county governments have been engaging the members of the public in participatory processes including budget making process with various degrees of success. For the goals of public participation to be realized, the forums for engaging citizens must be structured in a way that the desired outcomes are achievable. Participants preparation is critical for ensuring they give meaningful and quality input. This study sought to investigate the influence of participants preparation for citizen fora on equity in resource allocation by county governments in Kenya. The study surveyed targeted members of the public who had participated in the budget hearing forums organized by county governments in nine counties selected for the study using a multistage sampling procedure. A total of 491 respondents selected through systematic random sampling, as well as 27 county government officers who were interviewed as key informants. The resulting data, both quantitative and qualitive was cleaned, coded and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics and content analysis respectively. The findings of the study show that sufficient publicity in planning for the forums and availing timely, comprehensive, and adequate information to the budget forum participants have a positive and significant influence on equity in resource allocation by county governments. Specifically, it showed that sending invitations to members of the public in a timely manner through channels that are widely accessible to the members of the public leads to a higher number of people attending which is important for decisions that promote equity outcomes. Furthermore, availing adequate budget information helps the participants to understand the entire budget process, the proposed projects and the amounts allocated which enables them to give proposals that engender equity in resource allocation. The study recommends that county governments should strengthen both the publicity and civic education to ensure that members of the public are sufficiently mobilized and empowered to give input that will enable the counties to allocate resources in an equitable way.