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Mr. Charles Sakyi, Executive Director of the Centre for the Development of People (CEDEP), a community- development NGO, has asked development planners of the district assemblies to be sensitive to the concerns of the people.

They “should have political sensitivity” to make the people benefit from their expertise.

Mr Sakyi, himself a management and development consultant, was speaking at a policy dialogue on evidence-based development for district planning officers, development practitioners and community development experts from selected metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies in the Ashanti region, in Kumasi.

It was organized by the Ghana Information Network for Knowledge Sharing (GINKS), an NGO, to help encourage the use of evidence-based information for policy initiatives and implementation at the district and local levels.

Mr Sakyi said development planning required that, practitioners always had information on hand to give to policy makers.

The purpose of research and evidence in development planning was to use the best evidence available to make development decisions.

He stressed the need for planning officers in the assemblies to build partnerships with policy makers, decision-makers and researchers in generating evidence for the activity.

Mr. Joseph Donkor, a development planner at the Regional Coordinating Council, noted that research evidence had not received much attention in development planning process in many of district assemblies and said this had been due to delays in publishing research findings.

Added to this is the lack of linkages between researchers and end users of their findings.

He said it was important that political and administrative heads in the districts were encouraged to accept the need to use research in their activities and provide financial support to conduct research at the local level.

Mr Kirchuffs Atengble, Programme Coordinator of GINKS, said evidence-based policy initiatives were crucial in the development planning process and called for policy makers to consult experts in the planning process.