Community participation in enterprise development programmes for poverty reduction and sustainable development in Ghana

To trickle down poverty in rural areas, development partners and national governments have instituted enterprise development programmes which call for the establishment of some participatory frameworks to enable rural entrepreneurs determine for themselves, the exact Business Development Service (BDS) they desire to bring about economic improvement and social change. In ensuring that the concept of participation is not merely a wish list, the article modified Choguill’s ladder of community participation as a de facto lens to examine whether “participation” really exists in these programmes by drawing on evidence from the Rural Enterprises Programme (REP) in Ghana. Using qualitative in-depth interviews grounded in a single case study design (REP), the study observed that despite the existence of structures that appear to involve entrepreneurs at all stages of the decision-making process, beneficiaries think otherwise. Notwithstanding, some context and power-induced factors were identified to have accounted for these discrepancies.