6. Devolution of powers State governance in Zimbabwe is overly centralized and this has led to the marginalization of certain provinces. During the outreach meetings, there were numerous calls for devolution of power as a means of ensuring that governance is brought closer to the people and all provinces receive a fair and equal share of support for development initiatives. Devolution of power refers to the transference of executive, legislative and related powers and responsibilities from the central sphere of government of one sovereign state to the other tiers/spheres of government that exist at a subnational level, such as a province or local. Devolution of power is one of the modern mechanisms used to bring government closer to the people and allow people to actively participate in governance processes including policy formulation and evaluation. Mavedzenge, J (2011) in a paper titled “Fundamentals of an effective devolution of power model” and published by the Daily News of Zimbabwe, lists the following as prerequisites for a constitutionally and democratically sound devolution of power model:           Devolution of power must be recognized as part of the nation’s founding values and principles. Government must be constituted by spheres/tiers of government. Usually, they are three tiers namely the national sphere, the provincial sphere and the local sphere. The spheres of government must be clearly defined as distinctive, interdependent, interrelated and cooperative of each other. There must be devolution of substantive legislative and executive powers to the provinces and local spheres. There must be clear principles that regulate intergovernmental relations. Amongst other things, this will guarantee the functional and geographical integrity of each sphere. There must be clear demarcation of the functional areas of concurrent and exclusive legislative competence. The constitution must set out clear procedure and grounds on which the national parliament may intervene to legislate on functional areas of exclusive provincial legislative competence. The constitution must also set out a criteria of resolving conflicts between national and provincial legislation as well as those conflicts that involve municipality by laws. The constitution must also provide for adequate access to resources by all the spheres of government. To avoid marginalization of any population group, there must be constitutional provisions that require gender balance as well as representation of minority groups such as the disabled in all spheres of government. The table below evaluates how far the COPAC draft constitution captures the above mentioned tenets of a strong and effective devolution of power model; Tenet Where it is captured in the Remarks COPAC draft Devolution of power must be Section 3 (1) (L) declares that Recognition of devolution of 30