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Background
Community Driven Development and Sierra Leone International donors, governments and NGOs invest substantial resources in the community driven development (CDD) approach, yet until recently there has been little rigorous evidence regarding its efficacy. For the World Bank alone, over 9% of total lending supports CDD projects, placing the magnitude of investment in the billions of dollars (World Bank 2007). By emphasizing local participation in and control over project implementation, CDD aims to provide public goods through a process that empowers the poor. While advocates promise a long and varied list of benefits ranging from more efficient and cost effective infrastructure construction to the transformation of authoritarian institutions, critics hold concomitant concerns that participation requirements function as a regressive tax and that project benefits are easily captured by local elites. This study contributes to a concerted effort to carefully evaluate claims on both sides of this debate and gather rigorous evidence regarding the impacts of CDD.
While the emphasis on participation stems from the intrinsic value of civic engagement and empowerment, it further relates to a broader theme in development that institutions matter for economic growth. Academics and development practitioners agree that strengthening the transparency, accountability and inclusiveness of institutions could be an important precondition for development—as well as being important objectives in their own right. Yet they also acknowledge that it remains unclear what types of interventions could successfully make progress towards these goals. CDD has become one very popular mechanism to try to build such institutions, aiming to exert influence on community dynamics and authority structures beyond the immediate sphere of project activities. Its success in enhancing local governance in particular also remains largely unsubstantiated. The “GoBifo” Project (which means “Move Forward” in the national lingua franca, Krio) and impact evaluation thus aim to assess the overall effectiveness of CDD as well as its specific impacts on institutions in Sierra Leone. The recent history of poor governance and civil war, coupled with widespread and chronic poverty, makes Sierra Leone a challenging and appropriate place for the CDD approach. In particular, three typical CDD components—provision of basic infrastructure, focus on empowering marginalized groups in local decisions, and explicit ties to local governance structures—align well with the recent history and current priorities of the country. To start, the contemporary United Nations Human Development Index—which compiles welfare measures like life expectancy, education and standards of living—ranks the country 180th out of 182 (United Nations 2004). In response to the underlying gaps in service provision and low household incomes, GoBifo provided block grants to communities to use toward building local public goods like schools, latrines and grain drying floors; and/or sponsoring skills training and income generating activities. These grants were deposited in community accounts that GoBifo facilitators helped communities to open and that were then available for other community projects. Second, as many observers suggest that the disenfranchisement of young men created frustration and anger that helped fuel Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war (1991-2002), GoBifo facilitators placed special emphasis on enhancing the voice of youth (defined as adults aged 18 to 35 years) in local decision-making. Along similar lines, since women have historically held less power in local governance as compared to men, GoBifo encouraged women to actively participate in all aspects of project planning and implementation, including managing their own sub-projects. Third and finally, the Government of Sierra Leone reconstituted its system of Local Councils in 2004, over thirty years after they were abolished under the one-party state of President Siaka Stevens. These democratically elected politicians represent wards, which are sub-district administrative units each comprising roughly 10,000 citizens. Housed within the Decentralization Secretariat, GoBifo provided “bottom up” support to the decentralization process and local government by giving funding and technical assistance to both Village (VDC) and Ward Development Committees (WDC). By coordinating development planning and activities between the two levels, GoBifo created links between citizens and the local politicians who represent them.

Precursors to the GoBifo Project
GoBifo project designers aimed to develop innovative solutions to challenges that two existing World Bank-supported programs were encountering and provide a more localized complement to their ongoing operations. Specifically, the original grant proposal to the Japanese Social Development Fund (JSDF) emphasized the need to pilot innovative approaches aimed at strengthening village-level institutions and empowering women and youths. An assessment of the National Social Action Project (NSAP)—a major vehicle for reconstructing basic infrastructure destroyed in the war “identified the lack of community social capital as the main challenge for implementation of community-driven development in Sierra Leone… Ex-combatants, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and in particular women and youth, are marginalized and unable to participate in development activities and decisionmaking processes at the local level” (World Bank 2004). In response, GoBifo aimed to “strengthen social capital by enhancing the capacity of villages and local governments to design and implement strategic development plans at village and ward levels” (World Bank 2004).

 

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  • Uploaded By : Brett
  • Posted on : March 08th, 2019

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