Despite Africa’s potential, the large amount of funding and various development interventions over the past decades, poverty in Africa has not been abated significantly. To tackle multi-dimensional challenges, past... [ view full abstract ]
Despite Africa’s potential, the large amount of funding and various development interventions over the past decades, poverty in Africa has not been abated significantly. To tackle multi-dimensional challenges, past development programs led by central governments or external organizations alone have clearly shown their limitations. Consequently, local capacity development deserves more attention than ever as a means of reducing poverty and promoting sustainable development. However, there has been no clear definition of capacity or capacity assessment framework that can be applied at the community level in the context of rural Africa. Against this backdrop, undertaking a critical assessment is indispensable to examining roles of local capacity and exploring effective and efficient approaches to capacity development to ensure sustainable development outcomes in rural Africa. This study aimed to develop a capacity assessment framework that can: 1) evaluate capacity of rural communities particularly development leaders, 2) examine linkages between local capacity and sustainable development, and 3) identify factors that contribute to levels and qualities of capacity at community level – for recommending feasible capacity development approaches for contributing to long-term sustainable development in rural Africa. For accomplishing these objectives, a series of research activities has been undertaken in six communities in the Wa West District of Ghana and six communities in the Mulanje District of Malawi. The communities were selected based on distribution of geographical and administrative areas and development project history, i.e., existence or non-existence of integrated rural development projects with capacity development components supported by external development partners. Functional capacities, which are soft skills of development leaders for facilitating community-driven development, were examined as a main pillar of this research. Key dimensions of functional capacities examined include “Mutual Accountability”, “Engagement and Participation”, and “Ownership”. The research also examined one selected area of technical capacity as well as communities’ perceptions about 16 key development sectors that have been selected based on the context of rural Africa, for comparison with functional capacities. These dimensions have been examined mainly through focus group discussions (FGDs) with separate groups of men, women and development leaders, totaling 568 participants in the 12 communities. Observations and individual interviews were undertaken for crosschecking with the results obtained through FGDs. The capacity assessment revealed: i) critical linkages between functional capacities and sustainable development, ii) external support’s limited contributions to functional capacities (despite positive effects on technical capacities and development outcomes to some extent), and iii) crucial roles of local ownership in sustainability of development. The research also affirmed the validity of community-level capacity assessment tools that have been developed through this research as well as potentials of these as a learning tool for facilitating changes in mindset and actions for impacting the sustainability of development outcomes. Based on the results, the research offers some concrete and practical recommendations for putting more emphasis on institutional platforms of development leaders consisting of diverse representatives, functional capacities with long-term perspectives, local ownership, and application of community-level capacity assessment, leading to inclusive sustainability for development, which is the central theme of the conference.
6e African perspective on the old and new world challenges for sustainable development
