The Design of Rural Development [antikvár]

What explains the very limited impact of past development programs on the low-income rural populations in Africa? Why -despite a great variety of approaches tried by donor and national agencies and despite a great amount of experience generated by these efforts- has the problem of rural poverty remained acute? If future rural development programs are to leave a more long-lasting and positive imprint on rural Africa and the rural world in generál, what lessons has this experience to offer for the specification of target groups, the sequencing and phasing of activities, and the choice of policies and institutions? Concern about these questions and a search for more realistic operational guidelines resulted in intense discussion within the World Bank in 1971. This revealed how little theoretical framework there actually was for guidance in designing and administering programs in rural development and how little systematic, operationally focused analysis actually existed of the practical experience of the past. From this discussion emerged the basis for the present study. In carrying out a study of this kind, an international agency such as the World Bank is able, of course, to provide an operational focus; but equally important, it is able to draw upon comprehensive evidence developed from a diverse set of experiences in order to examine somé of the most important policy and institutional issues of development faced by national governments and donor agencies. To exploit these opportunities, however, analysis of the development issues must go well beyond the use of formai analy tical tools if an understanding is to be reached of the many administrative, technological, sociopolitical, and environmental factors that influence the quality of rural planning and that often explain the ineffectiveness of its implementation at the micro level. To analyze such issues, the present study draws on detailed evidence from seventeen rural development programs in sub-Saharan Africa. In each case existing survey data and analysis have been used in combination with interviews with a number of persons involved in planning, implementation, and evaluation of the programs. From the mass of micro evidence produced, the study identifies the most basic factors that require attention if the gap between the overall objectives of rural development and the actual performance is to be reduced. Thus, the most important feature of the study lies not so much in a set of definitive solutions as in a way of analyzing the diverse sets of specific con-