Community participation in infrastructural development in Africa: The role of community development experts
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Date
2020
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Faculty of Humanities, Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
Abstract
African societies, during the pre-colonial era, mobilized their local
structures, such as council of chiefs, youth, women, elders to participate
in development projects, and sustainability in such projects was
guaranteed. The colonial era brought about urbanization, which in turn,
bred individualization. The ‘we feeling’ of the communities was eroded.
Government, alone, now planned, implemented, monitored, evaluated
and handed development programmes/projects to beneficiaries.
Acceptability and sustainability of most of such programmes/projects
were lost until government could no longer meet the ‘needs’ of the people.
This continued into independent era of African nations. Presently,
community participation in its development process is seen as panacea to
achievement of sustainable infrastructural development programmes/
projects. Africans, having imbibed and diffused urbanization and
individualization of the colonial perspectives into the rural areas, now
grapple with technical knowhow of community participation in
development process amidst various inhibiting factors resulting in
unsustainability of development programmes/projects. This paper, using
available secondary data, gave an overview of community participation
in African nations, effects of community participation, identified factors
inhibiting community participation in development process, methods of
achieving active community participation in development programmes/
projects were highlighted, and recommendations for enhancement of
active community participation in development process were proffered.
Description
Keywords
Community, Participation, Development, Programmes, Africa, Development Experts
Citation
Veta, O. D. (2020). Community participation in infrastructural development in Africa: The role of community development experts. Icheke Journal of the Faculty of Humanities, 18 (1), 1 - 21.