Context and background : In sub–SaharanAfrica (SSA) countries community participation in master planning is given less attention due to the pair of factors among of them being the top down planning tradition of bureaucrats, centralised planning system, low level of local community participation, shelving community self-initiatives, lack of implementation capacity and consensus building. In Tanzania, despite stakeholders’ participation in master planning and implementation is being emphasised in the Urban Planning Act No 8 of 2007; participation in planning process is reported to be very low coupled with lack of honest mediation and inclusion of all stakeholders in the planning and implementation processes.GoalandobjectivesThe need to move from conventional to participatory planning approach among other factors was to increase sense of ownership and incorporate local knowledge in spatial plans. however, there are limited justifications on how stakeholders participated in preparation of the Dodoma master plan of 2019. this study contributes to ontological knowledge of the communicative planning theory and Aronstein ladder of citizen participation from the point of view of the ineffective communication and power relation among stakeholders. the study explores whether stakeholders’ participation was genuine by analyzing how they were mapped, informed, educated and means through which transparent decision making was ensured throughout the process.Methodology:Mixed research methods were adopted whereby qualitative data were collected from officials, focus group discussion participants and key informants’ interviews through in-depth interviews in order to grasp in-depth information. quantitative data were collected from landowners using structured questionnaire so as to get the feedback how they participated in the process. Thematic analysis was used whereby different themes were created based on deductive variables narrated from theories and literature review. quantitative data was analyzed using statistical package for social science (SPSS).Results: Theresults showed that there was ineffective stakeholders’ participation particularly to the landowners and local community. this was contributed by low level of facilitation from officials from the capital city of the Dodoma which resulted to lack of extensive stakeholders’ participation. the study recommends proper mapping of stakeholders, timely and widely information dissemination in a transparency way and raise awareness campaigns about master plan to multifarious stakeholders.