Community-driven Development Research Articles

The Emergence of Self-Organizing E-Commerce Ecosystems in Remote Villages of China: A Tale of Digital Empowerment for Rural Development

The emergence of Alibaba's Taobao (e-commerce) Villages in remote China has challenged the assumption that rural, underserved communities must always be the recipients of aid to stimulate ICT-enabled development. Based on an in-depth case study of two remote villages in China, this research note shows how ICT (e-commerce) can empower a marginalized community, giving rise to a rural e-commerce ecosystem that can aid self-development. We propose the concept of digital empowerment to explicate our findings in the exploration of community-driven development: first, we identify the critical actors of a rural e-commerce ecosystem and how they use ICTs; second, we illustrate how the same ICT can be used for different affordances by the actors in the evolution of a rural e-commerce ecosystem. The paper also presents unintended consequences of rural e-commerce development. We conclude with suggestions on how to make ICT useful for rural development and, in doing this, challenge some of the prevailing theoretical arguments about this process.

Expecting the unexpected: the role of surprise in community-driven development: Table 1

Expecting the unexpected: the role of surprise in community-driven development: Table 1

Conflict Archaeology in the Netherlands: The Role of Communities in an Emerging Archaeological Discipline

While we were preparing another paper, we were surprised not to find an existing peer-reviewed overview of the Dutch development of conflict archaeology. Though a vast number of publications, theoretical debates and conferences on this topic does exist, nothing has appeared in academic journals. We argue that Dutch archaeology of modern conflict is primarily a community-driven development and that this is the cause for the current gap. To set the record straight we provide a review of this development up to 2015 and we argue that conflict archaeology might be the best example of community archaeology in the Netherlands yet because it started with the public. To illustrate how the results of conflict archaeology in archaeological heritage management can have an impact on local, national and army communities, we discuss the case of the 1940 battlefield ‘Grebbeberg Mount’.

Does Community-Driven Development Improve Inclusiveness in Peasant Organizations? – Evidence from Senegal

Using panel village census data from Senegal, we assess the impact of a decentralized agricultural development program—the Programme de Services Agricoles et Organisations de Producteurs (PSAOP)—on membership and assortative matching in community-based organizations (CBOs). We find that channeling agricultural assistance through CBOs makes these organizations more inclusive in the sense that several tradition-bound assortative matching patterns are broken: homophily in ethnicity and wealth are reduced. Traditionally marginalized groups such as men of nomadic background, women with small landholdings and little education and those residing in female-headed households become CBO members whereas the position of previous CBO leaders is not reinforced. Similarly, those households that received services from a CBO before the PSAOP was in place are less likely to stay. This leads to more heterogeneous CBOs and is in line with the terms and conditions of the program. On the other hand, the likelihood of CBO membership is reduced in project villages, with significant differences between men and women. Women disproportionately drop out of CBOs which receive PSAOP benefits. We conclude that for grassroots-level development projects to be successful, contextual factors need to be integrated into program design and implementation, since they shape local participation. Understanding local power relations and the potential for changing preferences due to external support are key to inclusive participation and development at the local.

Community Driven Development Policy as a Strategy for Rural Development: A Case ofFadama III Crop Production Co-Operative Societies in Anambra, Enugu and Imo States of Nigeria

This work evaluates community-driven development policy as a strategy for rural development looking at crop farmers’co-operative societies of the Fadama III Project in Anambra, Enugu and Imo States of Nigeria. The study estimatedannual incomes and productive resources used by the farmers before and after joining the project and identifiedconstraints to the realization of project objectives. Descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, means andpercentages, were used to analyze data on socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, their incomes andconstraints to effective realization of the project objectives while multiple regression model using the ordinary leastsquares (OLS) approach was used to determine the influence of socio-economic characteristics of the farmers on theirincome before and after joining the project. Hypotheses were tested using t-statistic in Two-Sample T-test. Thesignificant difference between productive resources utilized by the farmers before and after joining the project impliesgoodness of the policy which constitutes an injection of capital into the rural economy. The crop farmers’ annualincomes before and after joining the project were significantly determined by distance to the market, farm size,extension visits and value of productive resources. Irregular fund disbursement topped the list of nine constraints toeffective realization of project objectives arranged in descending order of seriousness. Early and prompt release ofproductive resources and cash counterpart contributions to the farmers, provision of more extension agents, servicesand logistics for the farmers and reduction of users’ cash contribution will ensure improved productivity, income andproject sustainability.

Re-grounding participatory video within community emergence towards social accountability

To achieve the transformational shift towards social accountability highlighted by UN post-2015 deliberations, more equitable and responsive relationships are necessary between marginalized communities and leaders. Of particular relevance to the sustainable development goal era is the need to build both local collective dynamics and longer-term exchange between excluded groups and state agencies as the foundation for accountable governance. Over the last decade, there has been a rapid expansion in the use of participatory video to unearth neglected perspectives, and transform communication dynamics within communities and across social levels, but it is only recently that claims of real-world influence have been interrogated critically. In this article, I propose that framing participatory video predominately as the means for participatory representation makes the curtailment of transformative social possibilities more likely. Therefore, I re-ground participatory video as a longer-term relational process (the means) towards community emergence (the consequence), in reference to key social psychological components. I draw on the use of participatory video by acutely marginalized communities in Kenya and Palestine to research the local enablers and barriers of change. Through exploring the possibilities and constraints in context I reflect on what such processes can contribute to community-driven development and how the key tensions can be negotiated. Looking ahead to SDGs, this raises key questions about the challenges faced in building longer-term accountability between the poorest and most marginalized groups and influential decision makers who can support them.

The National Solidarity Programme: Assessing the Effects of Community-Driven Development in Afghanistan

Over the past two decades, community-based approaches to project delivery have become a popular means for governments and development agencies to improve the alignment of projects with the needs of rural communities and to increase the participation of villagers in project design and implementation. This article briefly summarizes the results of an impact evaluation of the National Solidarity Programme (NSP), a community-driven development programme in Afghanistan that created democratically-elected community development councils and funded small-scale development projects. Using a randomized controlled trial across 500 villages, the evaluation finds that NSP had a positive effect on access to drinking water and electricity, acceptance of democratic processes, perceptions of economic well-being and attitudes towards women. Effects on perceptions of local and national government performance and material economic outcomes were, however, more limited or short-lived.

Cultures of Caste and Rural Development in the Social Network of a South Indian Village

Cultures of caste in much of rural India have become entangled with institutions of rural development. In community-driven development, emphasis on “local resource persons” and “community spokespersons” has created new opportunities for brokerage and patronage within some villages, which interact with existing forms of authority and community afforded by caste identity and intra-caste headmanship. In this article, we study how these entangled cultures of caste and development translate into social network structures using data on friendship ties from a south Indian village. We find that although caste continues to be important in shaping community structures and leadership in the village’s network, its influence varies across different communities. This fluidity of caste’s influence on community network structures is argued to be the result of multiple distinct yet partially overlapping cultural-political forces, which include sharedness afforded by caste identity and new forms of difference and inequality effected through rural development.

A Reflection on the Implementation of Second National Fadama Development Project in Kaduna and Katsina States of Nigeria

This study attempts to reflect on the implementation of the Second National Fadama Project in Kaduna and Katsina states of Nigeria with a view to assessing whether the project implementation has been effective in reducing poverty among the participating communities. It was therefore, hypothesized that there is no significant relationship between the Community-Driven Development Strategy and effective implementation of Fadama II project in the area of access to rural financial services and poverty reduction in the host communities. The primary data were obtained through the use of questionnaire and personal interview while secondary data were sourced from books, journals, unpublished materials and internet. The study showed that there is a significant relationship between Community-Driven Development and effective implementation of the project in the host communities. The research recommended that to enhance the success of future projects, the government should not interfere with the activities of such projects, especially in the selection of members of such associations and government should provide loan facilities to the beneficiaries in order to boost their assets acquisition capacity.

Autonomous but constrained: CBOs and urban upgrading in Indonesia

Community-driven development (CDD) programs, facilitated by decentralization, in developing countries have made community-based organizations (CBOs) key partners in new, participatory institutional arrangements for urban development and planning. Yet, little research exists on how such institutional arrangements and program design affect the capacity and effectiveness of CBOs. Studying the case of the Comprehensive Kampung Improvement Project (CKIP) in Surabaya, Indonesia, this paper illustrates how pre-existing relationships between influential local institutions impeded the capacity and performance of CBOs that were specifically created for implementing the program, and highlights general implications for involving CBOs in CDD.

Community-Driven Development in Conflict-Affected Contexts: Revisiting Concepts, Functions and Fundamentals

Community-Driven Development (CDD) is a popular aid delivery strategy in conflict-affected contexts. While the strategy remains appealing, the growing body of evidence suggests that CDD does not systematically deliver on all the desired outcomes. This may potentially be explained by the lack of clarity around the objectives and theoretical underpinnings of CDD interventions. This paper proposes ways to clarify the objectives, outcomes, theories of change and core processes of the CDD strategy in an effort to improve the design and evaluation of CDD interventions. We suggest schemas for prioritizing the function and outcomes of a given intervention, provide examples of reduced form theories of change and identify a set of ‘core processes.’ We hope these suggestions will assist practitioners in making the theoretical motivations, assumptions and trade-offs of their design choices that much more explicit and in so doing, improve our ability to deliver better interventions to conflict-affected populations. This paper forms part of a wider conceptual project supported by UK Department for International Development (DFID)’s Research and Evidence Division.

A theory-based evaluation of a community-based funding scheme in a disadvantaged suburban city area

Community-driven development (CDD) initiatives frequently involve funding schemes which are aimed at channelling financial investment into local need and fostering community participation and engagement. This exploratory study examined, through a program theory approach, the design and implementation of a small-scale, community-based fund in Ireland. Observations, documentary analysis, interviews and group discussions with 19 participants were utilized to develop a detailed understanding of the program mechanisms, activities and processes, as well as the experiences of key stakeholders engaged with the funding scheme and its implementation. The findings showed that there were positive perceptions of the scheme and its function within the community. Overall, the availability of funding was perceived by key stakeholders as being beneficial. However, there were concerns over the accessibility of the scheme for more marginalized members of the community, as well as dissatisfaction with the openness and transparency surrounding funding eligibility. Lessons for the implementation of small-scale CDD funds are elaborated and the utility of program theory approaches for evaluators and planners working with programs that fund community-based initiatives is outlined.

IRUS-UK: Improving understanding of the value and impact of institutional repositories

>> See video of presentation (21 min.) Many educational institutions have repositories for research outputs. The number of items available through institutional repositories is growing, and is expected to continue to do so due to requirements for outputs from public-funded research to be open access. But how much usage are institutional repositories and their individual items getting?Jisc-funded service IRUS-UK is designed to help institutions understand more about the usage of their institutional repositories. It follows on from the successful PIRUS2 project, which demonstrated how COUNTER-compliant article-level usage statistics could be collected and consolidated from publishers and institutional repositories. IRUS-UK collects raw usage data from participating repositories and processes these into COUNTER-compliant statistics. This provides repositories with comparable, authoritative, standards-based data and opportunities for profiling and benchmarking. It enables institutions to run reports at both repository level (e.g. total download figures) and at item level. IRUS-UK has developed a taxonomy of 25 item types which all items are mapped to so that usage across specific item types (e.g. Article, Book Section) can be consistently compared. IRUS-UK currently has data from 63 UK institutional repositories, and has recorded over 17 million downloads since July 2012. The data from IRUS-UK can be used to provide information for management reporting, for usage monitoring, and for external reporting (such as annual SCONUL statistics for UK academic libraries). Data can be viewed within the online portal, or downloaded for further analysis. IRUS-UK recognises that institutional repository usage statistics may not represent total usage, and is investigating ways to combine usage to support institutions in their overall usage statistics. One development is usage figures for electronic theses and dissertations; IRUS-UK has demonstrated the possibility of consolidating usage statistics from institutional repositories and from the British Library’s Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS) to show total usage.IRUS-UK is a community-driven development, responding to user needs. User feedback has always been core to the service, and continues to develop with the establishment of a Community Advisory Group. Excellent feedback has been received from users on the ease and speed of set-up, and the value of having consistent, standards-based usage statistics and benchmarking opportunities.IRUS-UK: http://irus.mimas.ac.uk/PIRUS2: http://www.cranfieldlibrary.cranfield.ac.uk/pirus2/tiki-index.php

Community-driven development for computational biology at Sprints, Hackathons and Codefests.

BackgroundComputational biology comprises a wide range of technologies and approaches. Multiple technologies can be combined to create more powerful workflows if the individuals contributing the data or providing tools for its interpretation can find mutual understanding and consensus. Much conversation and joint investigation are required in order to identify and implement the best approaches.Traditionally, scientific conferences feature talks presenting novel technologies or insights, followed up by informal discussions during coffee breaks. In multi-institution collaborations, in order to reach agreement on implementation details or to transfer deeper insights in a technology and practical skills, a representative of one group typically visits the other. However, this does not scale well when the number of technologies or research groups is large.Conferences have responded to this issue by introducing Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) sessions, which offer an opportunity for individuals with common interests to intensify their interaction. However, parallel BoF sessions often make it hard for participants to join multiple BoFs and find common ground between the different technologies, and BoFs are generally too short to allow time for participants to program together.ResultsThis report summarises our experience with computational biology Codefests, Hackathons and Sprints, which are interactive developer meetings. They are structured to reduce the limitations of traditional scientific meetings described above by strengthening the interaction among peers and letting the participants determine the schedule and topics. These meetings are commonly run as loosely scheduled "unconferences" (self-organized identification of participants and topics for meetings) over at least two days, with early introductory talks to welcome and organize contributors, followed by intensive collaborative coding sessions. We summarise some prominent achievements of those meetings and describe differences in how these are organised, how their audience is addressed, and their outreach to their respective communities.ConclusionsHackathons, Codefests and Sprints share a stimulating atmosphere that encourages participants to jointly brainstorm and tackle problems of shared interest in a self-driven proactive environment, as well as providing an opportunity for new participants to get involved in collaborative projects.

The Participation of npos in the Economic Development of Rural Communities in China: A Review of the Existing Literature

This article reviews literature of the last ten years on the participation of nonprofit organizations (npos) in the economic development of Chinese rural communities. The article starts by illustrating the significant role of npos in the economic development of Chinese rural communities, and summarizing three ways of npos’ participation: mobilizing farmers to establish and join mutual aid organizations; providing farmers with market information services; providing farmers with technological services. The existing literature investigates the positive role of npos in the economic development of Chinese rural communities from three theoretical perspectives: “social capital,” “collective action,” and “community-driven development.” However, in reality, unlike in theory, npos do not always play a positive role. They are faced with challenges in such areas as sound internal governance, professional external services, institutional environment, social cognition and financing environment. These issues are mentioned in some literature, but have not attracted enough theoretical attention. The existing literature is mainly based on theorization, and empirical studies are relatively insufficient.

Citizen Empowerment in Service Delivery

This paper examines different approaches for promoting empowerment and discusses conditions required for effective empowerment. It focuses on three empowerment models, including grievance redress, participatory performance monitoring, and community-driven development. There are three sets of factors that affect people’s ability to influence service delivery: institutional properties of empowerment models, citizen participation, and responses of service providers and public officials.Evidence suggests that all three models can enhance people’s capacity to engage with service providers and government agencies, articulate their needs, and demand better service quality and accountability. Yet, these models are based on distinct institutional arrangements that account for the variation in their empowerment and service delivery outcomes.Citizen empowerment in service delivery necessitates the need to enhance people’s ability and willingness to participate and express their voice. It also requires commitment of service providers and government agencies to facilitate fair and effective redress. To address these conditions, policy makers need to ensure careful design and effective outreach as well as support broader policies to allow opportunities for citizen participation, enforce the rule of law, and ensure inclusive access to services.

Fast-Track Institution Building in Conflict-Affected Countries? Insights from Recent Field Experiments

Summary. — This paper synthesizes evidence from four recent “community-driven development” field experiments undertaken in countries affected by violent conflict and assesses prospects for “fast-track” institution building. Conflict-affected environments are presumed to be settings that combine extraordinary need and opportunity for building institutions. The substantive and methodological consistency of the field experiments (Afghanistan, DRC, Liberia, and Sierra Leone) allows us to derive general conclusions about attempts at local institution building in conflict-affected contexts. The evidence tells us that CDD programs are far from “proven impact” interventions. We discuss reasons for the limited effects, with implications for policy and further research. 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).

RESOURCE UTILIZATION EFFECTS OF FADAMA III UNDER RAINY SEASON AND DRY SEASON WATER MELON (Citrullus lanatus) PRODUCTION IN GOMBE STATE, NIGERIA

The study was conducted in Gombe State, Nigeria to examine the impact of Fadama III project on resource utilization under rainy season and dry season water melon production. A combination of stratified and simple random sampling was used to draw up the 308 respondents. Both descriptive and inferential statistics (difference-in-difference and efficiency ratios) were used to analyze the data. The results reveal that estimated marginal value product(MVP) of land (NGN 20.60), seeds (NGN 29.62), organic chemicals (NGN33.00) and fuel (NGN13.33) were higher than their respective marginal input cost (MIC) for beneficiaries of Fadama III project meaning that their r > 1 (underutilization) because of the limited access to farm resource faced by farmers. For the non-beneficiaries group, the MVP of land (NGN28.28), seeds (NGN26.30), organic chemicals (NGN30.46) and fuel (NGN20.41) were higher than their corresponding MIC implying that a 1% increase in either variable will lead to an increase of the corresponding total value product. It was further disclosed that the average mean total area contribution to output by Fadama III beneficiaries was 41.7 tons/ha valued at NGN10,121.0 per ton compared with the non-beneficiaries water melon farmers in rainy season with average mean total area contribution to output of 27.1tons/ha valued at NGN1,733.0 per ton. In dry season, it was 100.7 tons/ha valued at NGN 1,812.0 per ton for beneficiaries compared with total area contribution to output of 70.8tons/ha valued at NGN425.0 per ton for non-beneficiaries. This signifies that the beneficiaries were better off than the non-beneficiaries in both rainy and dry season farming in terms of total plot area cultivation. The findings, even though, shows a moderate substitution existed between family and hired labour, in the study area, family labour was more economical to use by Fadama III beneficiaries rainy season.In terms of non-crop activities, the demand for hired labour was elastic. A 45% increase in value addition was also reported with expected increase in the respondent’s income through reduction of post-harvest losses. The study recommends that farmers in the study area should be allowed to have increased access to farm land through community-driven land certification approach and more processing technologies through community-driven development approach.

When Empowerment Disempowers: A case study of Ghana’s Community- Based Rural Development Projects

This paper argues that the term ‘empowerment’ is too complex a concept to be simply ‘inserted’ into development project designs without prior and precise conceptualization. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in 2010/2011 and using Ghana’s Community-Based Rural Development Projects (CBRDP) as a case study, the paper outlines power struggles that occurred between Traditional Chiefs and Local Government Officials over the right to manage the projects. The analysis shows that the mal-application of ‘empowerment’ in the CBRDP’s design impacted negatively on the projects. As the project’s officials did not envisage the feuds there was no strategy in place to monitor and manage unintended outcomes. The paper provides a theoretical and empirical basis for policy-makers and program officials to consider more carefully the politico-cultural contexts of ‘development’ beneficiaries rather than focusing on positivistic and normative terms, such as empowerment, which seems to characterize many development projects at the global level.KEYWORDS: Empowerment, Local Government, Chieftaincy, Development policy, Community-Driven Development.

Participation without Deliberation: The Crisis of Venezuelan Democracy

The legacy of Hugo Chavez is contentious. Some lament the deterioration of Venezuelan democracy from one of Latin America's most stable political systems to a populist authoritarian regime. Others celebrate Chavez's participatory project of institutionalizing structures for community-driven development, redistributing oil wealth through welfare policies, and creating a political party closely linked to mass movements. This article provides an alternative assessment of Venezuela's democratic quality by drawing on deliberative democratic theory. I argue that Chavez's participatory project is incomplete because it fails to create structures for deliberative politics. Without these mechanisms, Venezuela remains vulnerable to crises brought about by “uncivil action,” such as military coups and violent protests, making deliberation an important component in averting crises in democratizing polities.