E-Participation for Equity in Low-Income Neighborhoods

New Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), in particular mobile phones, have proved effective in increasing participation of some sectors of the population in public affairs. ICT are helping to take government closer to the people, making it more transparent and responsive. However, little has been done to help citizens participate online throughout the policy cycle and even less to engage the most vulnerable communities in such processes in order to increase equity. This chapter presents the conceptual framework for e-participation in low- and middle-income neighborhoods, reviewing first the main features of traditional participation and later the strengths and weaknesses of e-participation. As with traditional participation mechanisms, e-participation can be effective if it increases political equality and therefore needs to help engage all social groups including the most vulnerable. However, ICTs can also be limiting and even backfire as they cannot replace a broader participatory process and an institutional design that needs to enhance political equality, avoid elite capture, count on expert opinion, and build on traditional methods of participation. This chapter ends by applying this framework to a slum-upgrading project in Mtwapa, Kenya. The Mtwapa e-participation platform is presented as a proposed institutional design in a low-income context that aims to facilitate an effective process through comprehensive and inexpensive ICT-enabled citizen participation.