Local and Community-Driven Development

Building on the energy of our people

Promoting local and community-driven development

Dr Ian Goldman

Key message• Rethink the model - The current development model does not work – benefits the

few – inequality rising, even if now includes black people• Development happens inch by inch, person by person – and it happens in the

community, not in offices - 60-70% of our population is at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) – that is the reality we have to understand and work with for our unique contribution to be made

• Listen to our people systematically - Need to rethink our models to build on the BoP – listen and allow their voice to be heard, rethink service models, business models

• For bottom level services to work needs support – redesign from the bottom not the top – supportive policies, services and infrastructure must support this action in the community

• Our complexity is killing us and creates systems that cannot work at community level – just keeps the bureaucrats in jobs

• We have to trust communities (and more so than the institutions)• We have models and systems to build on that have been piloted• Let’s do it

Some positive signs – even the Economist (12 June p78)

• 2000-8 Africa’s annual output grew by 4.9% (at purchasing power parity)• FDI increased from $10bn to $88bn (more than India $42bn)• Inflation rate reduced from 22% in 1990s to 8% since 2000• World Bank’s annual “Doing Business” report rated Rwanda as top reformer in 2009• Natural resource sector only 1/3 of growth• Due to rising living standards, 200m Africans will enter the market for consumer

goods, and external companies pouring in• Benefits emerging from “frugal innovation” – targeting the BoP eg M-PESA,

retailing, Jiko portable charcoal stove reducing fuel consumption by 30%• Where government reduced its control of the telecoms market mobile phones

ubiquitous, eg SA/Kenya, vs Ethiopia only 2% penetration• BUT in SA the dualistic economy makes this very difficult

– 5m tax payers, 13m grant recipients, 12.5m people employed– 40,8% of adults in South Africa are employed, compared with 83% in Uganda, 80% in

Rwanda and 78% in Tanzania and Malawi (2010 Uasa South African employment report)

Benefits struggle to reach the bottom

Benefits

Incomes

Citizens

state

state

constipated

Trickle down does not work• Trickle down does not work – benefits are very sticky• The central state can never drive development – providing 80% of the energy with 20%

from below - need to provide the 20% which releases the 80%• Have to find a way to build from the base – the BoP (Prahalad)• Allow spontaneous development to happen – provide the right environment for that to

happen• Be careful of our formalised systems which are not adapted to the reality of most of

our society– 20 agricultural extension officers in N Cape, 1 for Botshabelo with 150 000 people – Court system and its delays– High expenditure on health and education but very poor outcomes– Professional-based services which are too expensive and don’t reach into communities– Land titling which is so expensive and slow to do– Labour legislation which makes it difficult to be flexible

• We invest so much in the institutions but most does not reach the people (constipation)

• In 2008 25% of people in rural nodes showing alienation (I can’t make a difference) and anomie (no-one cares about me)

Great strides can happen

• China increased life expectancy from 38 to 58 in just 5 years from 1960-65, way before the economic reforms– barefoot doctors (over 1 million) reaching into all

communities– Increase in local food supply

• Our resources are not insignificant – how can we turn these into better outcomes?

The need for multiple roles – and so hybrid organisation or partnerships to support

meaningful livelihoods

Research funded by Ford Foundation in Latin America, Africa, US and India

New forms of organisation and

partnerships

So what are some of the elements we can build on

• Treat the BoP as an opportunity not a problem – as the reality we have to understand and build on

• Explore what we can do to release energy and creativity at community level, BoP• Allow people’s voice and choice to emerge• Rethink processes to see what is best done locally, and what is best done at

higher levels– More context specific, frequently needed, requires local coordination, not technically

complex, the better done locally (eg home-based care, agric extension, maintenance of local water points)

– The more complex, significant economies of scale, covers large areas, the more to handle at higher levels (eg building tarred roads, dams)

• Setting up the decentralised structures, systems which can support that, and the incentives for coordination and integration

• Appropriate use of state resources and institutions to create the right enabling environment – but removing some of the blocks

Building from the bottom - Key governance issues for promoting sustainable livelihoods

Empowered communities

2 A responsive, active and accessible network of local service providers (community-based, private sector or government)• eg HBC workers, paravets, voluntary savings and loan groups

1 People active and involved in managing their own development (claiming their rights and exercising their responsibilities) (and what about poor people)?• eg Community-based planning, School Gov Bodies, CPFs

Developed in research funded by DFID on Institutional Support for Sustainable Livelihoods in Southern Africa

Governance issues (2)

Strengthened local government level

3 At local government level services facilitated, provided or promoted effectively and responsively, coordinated and held accountable• improving LG delivery with clear plans and budgets (IDPs and service delivery and budget implementation plans• Building capacity, improving accountability• improving inputs from communities to guide (CBP, PMS..)

4 The province/district supportive and supervising local gov

Governance issues (3)

Realigning the centre5 The centre providing strategic direction, redistribution and oversight, and responsive to community and LG/provincial level realities

• focusing on outcomes not outputs• improving policy, eg promoting CBP, stipends for community-based workers……• increasing distribution to communities (eg R50k discretionary funds in CBP going to wards)• strengthened M&E and feedback

1 People active and involved in managing their own development (claiming their rights and exercising their responsibilities) (and what about poor people)?• eg Community-based planning, School Gov Bodies, CPFs

Empowered communities (ie with sense of agency)

2 A responsive, active and accessible network of local service providers (community-based, private sector or government)• eg HBC workers, paravets, voluntary savings and loan groups

Communities expressing their voice and choice

• Examples of local level planning – community-based planning – international good practice

• Applied in over 12 municipalities in SA including large ones like Ekurhuleni, eThekwini, Mangaung, as well as small rural

Situationanalysis

Consolidated outcome

Stated by group Where group comes from

Reduced risk of HIV/AIDS

Youth Village X

Single mothers Village Y

Improving agricultural production and sustainability

Farmers All over the ward

Elderly etc

Mothers

Improved safety and security for children

Children

etc

Funding communities to take forward community action

• in Mangaung (R50k per ward, evaluation showed 98% spent correctly), in eThekwini (R200k), in ekurhuleni (R100k)

• Internationally examples from Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia – and nearer home, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Burkina Faso…..typically R1m/ward in places far more corrupt than SA eg KDP in Indonesia (now R10 billion per year)

MASAF in MalawiElement Zambia (ZAMSIF)

Grant handled where

CMP and CMSIP - the communities open their own bank account and manage the funds. The MASAF transferred funds directly into these bank accounts that had control mechanisms put in place. For the SSP projects, funds were transferred into the bank accounts of a Project Implementation Agency i.e. NGO/FBO/CBO, which accounted for the funds to MASAF.

Role of local government

LGs played a leading role in processing and supervision of all projects in their jurisdiction. LGs were also responsible for ensuring that a development plan was developed and updated from where projects were funded (see Planning process above).

Key lessons The autonomous nature of MASAF was attractive in that it delivered outputs within agreed timeframes thus providing a service to the community when most needed.

In early phases of MASAF, participatory rural appraisal (PRA) was not adequately implemented due to lack of capacity in the communities and LG. The skills in PRA were part of the capacity building for MASAF 3.

There was disjointed collaboration between community projects funded and the sectors which affected the recurrent support to newly constructed infrastructure. Increased participation of sector departments was a key feature in MASAF 3.

Key elements of KDPStructure funded

Villages each of between 1000 and 3000 people. The funds are managed by a team selected by the village assembly at large.

Type of plan In beginning only sub-projects, but now the villages are preparing multi-year development plans and lists of priority investments for more than one year and for funding other than the block grant they themselves control.

Grant covers what

“Open menu" with a small negative list, mostly for basic village infrastructure (lots of access roads and bridges), social infra. and facilities (health facilities, schools, scholarships etc.) and up to 25% can be used as capital for women's savings and loan groups, for revolving funds.

Size of grant Grant $6k to $22k per village, depending on location, population and % of poor. On average there are about 12 to 20 villages per sub-district and a population of 12 000 to 50 000 for a subdistrict. Each sub-district was guaranteed at least 3 years, which was quickly increased to 5 years.

Grant handled how

Villages open a joint account at the sub-district, where banks located. Sub-district financial management unit, set up as part of the project, and staffed totally by villagers, elected in open village assembly meetings and then again decided on at a inter-village meeting (by the 6 reps from each village).

Role of local gov

Unearmarked block grant at sub-district level (division of district). No money used at the sub-district level. They sign off on list of selected projects (agree or reject but NO line item veto), sign off all disbursements from local branch of national treasury, monitor planning and project construction and call monthly or biweekly coordination meetings to review progress and problems and help to resolve problems that arise. LG oversees and pays consultants

Evaluation of KDP in Indonesia• real per capita consumption gains were 11% higher among poor

households in KDP2 areas compared with control areas. • poorest quintile of kecamatans saw similar positive impacts of 5% in

comparison with control areas.• The proportion of households moving out of poverty in poor kecamatan

was 9.2% higher in KDP2 areas compared with control areas. • Households in less poor kecamatans see either no benefit or negative

impacts. • The proportion of household heads gaining access to outpatient care was

11.5% higher in KDP2 areas compared with control areas• KDP2 reduces unemployment by 1.5% in comparison with control areas.

Proposal for a Community

Development Grant for South Africa

21 September 2009

Proposal to Treasury from COGTA for R200k/ward, plus support for CBP, capacity building of local government

Total cost if covered all wards only R1.3bn – just imagine how much social capital that would generate!

Current example happening in Richtersveld

• Developing trust relationships and understanding community dynamics

• Community-based planning to develop a coherent plan to which all commit

• Work on local organisational development and leadership with the community property association

• CPA as implementing agent for Community Works Programme (650 jobs)

• Whole range of projects identified to take forward building on local assets, and people’s preferred outcomes (not needs) – see next slide

• They have their own money from restitution – but in other places could be community development grant as proposed by COGTA

• Contact [email protected]

Objective1: Health and Safety & social ResponsibilityEksteenfontein Lekkersing Kuboes Sanddrift

Se

c

Strengthen the policing forum through an awareness day (for children, by police)

Consult with the closest police station to submit needs/problems

Sa

fety

Upgrade and extend the clinic

Appoint health staff: nurse, councillors and cleaner

Make a list of shortcomings in the clinic

Identify current weaknesses in the emergency service

Monitor health condition of the community

Improve the delivery of health service

Employ a full-time nurse and a local AIDS councillor

Build an extra room for AIDS counselling

Equip health workers better (better qualified)

Identify local experts in field medicine

He

alt

h s

erv

ice

Make emergency services available

Provide first aid training up to the highest level of ambulance operators

Make a local ambulance service available

Em

erg

en

cie

s

Create an umbrella sport body

Lay out a quad bike course

Improve sport and recreational facilities

Organise regular sporting events

Initiate physical and/or sport activities for women, to promote health and self confidence

Promote increased physical activities and sport participation under the whole community

Establish a gym in Sanddrift

Organise a sports day for the whole community

Organise fun walk for middle age and old people

Ex

erc

ise

Investigate opportunities to improve the quality of water, e.g. by obtaining desalting equipment

Promote better eating habits and access to healthy food

Conduct a series of workshops on healthy food and preparation of food

Give training in the making of vegetable gardens in own yards

Have a vegetable garden competition

Write up the knowledge on the field and the medicine

Die

t

2 A responsive, active and accessible network of local service providers (community-based, private sector or government)• eg HBC workers, paravets, voluntary savings and loan groups

1 People active and involved in managing their own development (claiming their rights and exercising their responsibilities) (and what about poor people)?• eg Community-based planning, School Gov Bodies, CPFs

Empowered communities

Venn Diagram from BelaBela 2003

Expanding local services - as China• Potential of massive expansion of value-added services using community-based

and paraprofessional models without increased budgets• People trained to provide narrow but value-added services

– Farmer-based extension specialised on animal health, vegetables, forestry……– Home-based care– Community health workers– Community-based water and sanitation– Urban rangers– Adult literacy volunteers

• Potential for many in each community• Can use EPWP and Community Works Programme to fund stipends for these

services• Improving people’s livelihoods through the stipends, training, increasing

confidence, potential career pathing• Providing wide expansion of services• Some directly supported by government, some by NGOs such as Hospice for HBC

Community-based worker model

Vision of a community with widespread services

HBCHBC

HBCHBC

CAHW

VCT

Forestry

Veg

wastewaste

wastewaste

wastewaste

wastePump attendants

SGB/PTA

Police volunteers

Peer educators

Community

Trad court

TBA

VHW

Police

ParaextensionistsCoordinators

Paralegal

AHTs

Water Techs

Principal

Forestry Techs

Justice Midwife Clinic

Literacy

Paraprofessionals providing support

Community-based workers/structures

Health at home/Kenya• $5.4m• Door-to-door pilot with 210 000 households, where testing teams

welcomed into 95% of homes and 80% agreed to be tested• Community mobilisers inform that doctors coming to do home

testing• Counsellor then does pre-test counselling and the test• Post test counselling provided for all• Trained health workers provide TB screening, malaria bednets and

de-worming• Counsellors carry PDA and GPS devices to collect and enter data

on family health, record test results and identify the location of the household for follow-up

An example in SA

• SACLA South African Christian Leadership Assembly • teams of carers are responsible for a catchment area of

houses [families]• they then visit these houses to flag health issues (manage

minor ailments/basic first aid/referrals for more serious issues) and assist with development concerns such as early childhood development/access to services etc

• They promote health and development education and community mobilisation teams are linked to professional health workers/facilitators for supervision and coordination

• Many others, especially in the health field

Examples of local construction, maintenance and operation of infrastructure

• Labour-based road maintenance – Zibambele in KZN– The maintenance need of the road is based on a maximum of sixty working

hours per month– A Zibambele contract is awarded for twelve months and is renewed annually.– Contracts target the poorest of the poor, who are identified and selected by

their own community, focuses on woman headed households who make up the majority of the poorest families

– Training includes technical skills on road maintenance and social development and life skills.

– Support services include assisting contractors to, obtain identity documents, open bank accounts, organize themselves collectively into credit unions, and invest savings in other productive activities.

• Mvula Trust’s work on community-based water and sanitation• Mobilising local volunteers – FBOs, HBC etc• Pilots of the Community Works Programme

M-Pesa mobile money in Kenya• Set up by Safaricom• 100 000 small retailers who sell airtime in the form of scratch cards can

register to be agents, taking in and paying out cash – 17600 done so compared to 840 bank branches

• People build up e-float which can the be transferred by mobile phone – cash deposited for e-float in an affiliated bank and middlemen who ferry cash around the country

• Rural areas tend to withdraw, urban areas deposit• Used by 9.5m people, 23% of population• Transfers equivalent of 11% of Kenya’s GDP per year• Inspired more than 60 schemes across the world• MTN rolling out mobile money in several African countries and now has 890

000 users in Uganda since launch in March 2009(Economist 12 June p 87)

Building on local assets• Using local land for food production, both homestead gardens, and

on fields• Mobilising local labour eg through Community Works Programme,

home-based care etc• Support for local markets for local produce, eg purchasing for

primary school nutrition, local supermarkets (thoyandou Spar)• Building peoples self-organisation – ie social capital - CBOs, coops,

ward committees, project groups, village water committees…..• Enhancing mobilisation and recycling of local capital – eg through

voluntary savings and loan schemes, building on capital transfers through social grants

• But needs massive expansion of support to local CBOs, and support to civil society which is insignificant at the moment

Strengthened local government level

3 At local government level services facilitated, provided or promoted effectively and responsively, coordinated and held accountable• improving LG delivery with clear plans and budgets (IDPs and service delivery and budget implementation plans• Building capacity, improving accountability• improving inputs from communities to guide (CBP, PMS..)

4 The province/district supportive and supervising local gov

Improving quality of local services

• Integrated planning (but our IDP has no carrots and sticks to encourage integration – just exhortation)

• Coordination and integration of services eg linking home-based care organsations with clinics, hospice…

• Enhancing accountability – and making service providers accountable to their clients – need for innovation

• Long route of accountability– Leg 1 is about citizen’s voice – political accountability– Leg 2 is about the compact – state capacity and accountability

• Short route of accountability, leg 3, is about citizen power• Both extremely weak

From WDR 2004 Making Services Work for Poor people

Realigning the centre5 The centre providing strategic direction, redistribution and oversight, and responsive to community and LG/provincial level realities

• improving policy, eg promoting CBP, stipends for community-based workers……• increasing distribution to communities (eg R200k discretionary funds going to wards)•National Community Development Policy Framework

Moving beyond the silos – from rhetoric of participation to action

• Commitment to empower communities and move away from the paternalistic “we will do for people” (which doesn’t work)

• We have to build communities’ agency, their assets and change the rules of the game (eg community development grants)

• Each dept trying to reinvent wheels (COGTA, DSD, DRDLR….) – learn from the current models and agree standard systems (CBP already approved by SETA)

• Common policy to which all committed (eg Community Development Policy Framework, 12 outcomes which cross depts)

• Putting the ingredients into a working system and developing the upscaling modalities (manuals, run training…)

• Upscaling it (proposal gone to Treasury from COGTA)• Mainstream funding underlying it

Building leadership at all levels

• “leaders who could broaden horizons, uplift the spirit, mobilise the necessary resources and empower others to act in the best interests of their own organisations and larger society are sorely needed…a crisis of leadership pervades every level of society…broad civil society…must be in the vanguard of developing a new cadre of leadership solidly embedded in a collective morality and democratic institutions and having as its defining features the respect for human life and human rights…fairness and justice, responsibility and compassion”, Jairam Reddy, M&G 25 June 2010, Getting Ahead p1

Summary• Accept the current model is not working for the poor (60-70% of population)• Listen and allow communities to express their voice and choice (and plan)• Fund them to take responsibility and take local action • Support local service provision in communities so covers the whole country (use

community-based models and paraprofessional including in private sector)• Rethink government functions to support front-line service delivery and increase

proportion of funding going to the front-line• Support citizens to express citizen power and hold service providers to account

(need to develop models) - will strengthen compact between politicians, services providers and citizens

• Strengthen local leadership and local organisational development• Many other countries have taken this route – why not SA – so many of the

ingredients are in place – take the plunge - experience internationally is that communities are far more accountable than local government

• Move beyond service delivery from above to a compact between responsible citizens and a responsive state