COURSE TITLE: COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE:...............................................................................................................................................4
INTRODUCTION, PHILOSOPHY AND NATURE OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT..........................4
Approaches to Community Development......................................................................................................4
Principles of Community Development.........................................................................................................7
Community Development Processes..............................................................................................................9
CHAPTER TWO:............................................................................................................................................14
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AS AN INSTRUMENT OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT............................14
Policy Issues on Community Development.................................................................................................14
Goals of Community Development.............................................................................................................15
Methods of Organizing Community Development......................................................................................15
CHAPTER THREE:........................................................................................................................................17
RURAL LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT.................................................................17
The concept of Leadership vis-avis the traditional institutions at the community Level..............................17
Defining the Traditional Institution..............................................................................................................18
Government and the Local Institution..........................................................................................................19
Conflict of priorities at the community level...............................................................................................20
Effective Leadership at the Community Level.............................................................................................20
CHAPTER FOUR:..........................................................................................................................................22
THE CONCEPT OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT..............................................................................................22
The Definition and Concept of Rural Development.....................................................................................22
The Concept of Rural Environment.............................................................................................................23
Nature of rural development........................................................................................................................23
Poor Infrastructural Facilities.......................................................................................................................23
High population Density and gross illiteracy...............................................................................................23
Low Technological Base and Under Development......................................................................................24
The Concept of Development......................................................................................................................24
Indices for Development..............................................................................................................................24
Steps in engineering development in the rural areas...................................................................................25
CHAPTER FIVE.............................................................................................................................................27
SOCIAL CHANGE IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT........................................................................................27
Forms of social change in rural areas. .........................................................................................................27
The School Of Thoughts..............................................................................................................................29
Sources of Social Changes...........................................................................................................................29
CHAPTER SIX................................................................................................................................................32
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RURAL EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT................................................................................................32
Rural Areas...................................................................................................................................................32
Educating The Rural Women......................................................................................................................33
CHAPTER SEVEN..........................................................................................................................................35
PROBLEMS OF DEVELOPMENT AT THE COMMUNITY LEVEL............................................................35
Problem areas...............................................................................................................................................35
Finance........................................................................................................................................................35
Personnel and Competence..........................................................................................................................36
Politics and Leadership................................................................................................................................37
The Community...........................................................................................................................................37

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 CHAPTER ONE:

INTRODUCTION, PHILOSOPHY AND NATURE OF COMMUNITY

DEVELOPMENT

Approaches to Community Development

There are six approached to Community Development

- Bottom-up Approach – Under this approach, low-income communities whether in urban

or rural areas needs certain basic facilities that are difficult or impossible to acquire,
either due to poverty or other constraints. Welfare –oriented governments have,
therefore, attempted to provide these basic facilities, but with great success. Recently,
new approaches have been adopted to improve the situation by encouraging people to
become involved in community – level decision making with respect to their needs and to
implement the construction of acceptable facilities. The communities would then
shoulder a greater responsibility leading to development with a higher degree of
responsibility. The suggested strategy for the increased emphasis on the bottom-up
community development has three components:

o Increasing knowledge about interaction between formal and informal institutions

at the local level.

o Upgrading community based components in existing and planned bank

projects.

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 o Proposals for stand-alone community development projects, including social
funds.

The term “bottom-up” implies decision making that comes from community members
without official status or positions. When the decision making process is seen to be more
democratic, starting from the common people and working its way up to centralized
agencies and officials, it is deemed to be bottom-up.
It is usually contracted with “top donor”. The effect of low income communities is
supposed to be an increase in “bottom-up” decision making processes.

- Community development Critical Approach – CD has always had a radiance agenda (Led
with, 2005). The practice is inspired by a vision of social and environmental justice. It is
fundamentally committed to bring about social change which contributes to the end.
Critical approaches to community development locate grassroots practice interim that
drawing vision of a just and sustainable future. The well-defined ideological base that
connects with our vision provides us with a framework through which to eradicate every
stage of CD process. This is an ideology of equality informed by such values as mutual
respect, reciprocity, dignity, mutuality trust and cooperation. This offers a system of
checks and balances to examine the validity of practice.

- Community Driven Development Approach (CDD) – This is an approach that gives

control of development decisions and resources to community groups. Poor communities
receive funds, decide on their use, plan and execute the chosen local projects, and
monitor the provision of services that result; it improves not just incomes but also the
peoples empowerment, the lack of which is a form of poverty as well.
Through its support for CDD, the International Development Association (IDA), the
World Bank funds for the world poorest countries, has been harnessing the energy and
capacity of communities for poverty reduction since the start of the decade, IDA lending
for CDD has annually over 50 operations for an average total of USS1.3 billion per year.
Through its support to CDD programmes, IDA finances services such as water supply
and sanitation, housing and schools that are tailored to community needs and likely to be
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maintained and sustainable. By emphasizing transparency and accountability in local
decision-making, IDA’s CDD initiatives have contribution to more empowered citizenry,
more responsive government particularly at the local government level, improved
delivery of public goods, and services, and more sustainable community assts. In post-
conflict countries, in particular, the approval has helped deepen peace-keeping by
fostering attitudes of trust and tolerance in the process of rebuilding communities.
CDD is increasingly seen as a nexus between bottom-up and top bottom approaches to
improve government and service provision.
IDA naturally adopted the CDD approach as a mechanism for improved service delivery
in key public sectors. But building on the principle of participatory governance and
country-based aid that are hallmarks of its support, IDA has used CDD also to foster
social accountability that supports decentralization of services. Recently, CDD has
become an IDA priority for empowering poor communities and building greater
accountability.

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 CDD was also a reaction to the failures of earlier approaches to targeted poverty
reduction; such as integrated development programmes for a geographical area, and
lending to agricultural credit institutions. Such failure was also widespread outside the
World Bank and encouraged a genuine more towards greater decentralization – a more
away from reliance on central government as the main service provider and participation.
World Bank 2009.
CDD programmes fit well with the agenda of improving governance since, if well-
designed and well-implemented, they strengthen transparency and accountability.

- Places-based Approach – There is a growing body of literature that suggests places are
social constructs and that individuals help to give meaning to particular constructs and
that individuals help to give meaning to particular loci
Here place cannot be defined solely through geography or territory because place is also
derivable through social processes. Place is something that can be nurtured and reshaped
through individual or collective effort. A placed based approach aims to help, address
and cooperate the activities of different state holders related to initiatives that promotes
social well-being. A paced-based approach promotes a framework that allows
stakeholders to both develop shared meanings on place and establish promoters for action
that can help guide public policy to engage local stakeholders and encourage nurturing
interactive placed – focused dialogues by entering into a place-based approach discusses
policy and institutional structures operating at the local, provinces and federal lvels in
relation to this approach.

Principles of Community Development

Community Development has been previously defined as any action taken by any agency which
is primarily designed to benefit the entire community. This defined by the following principles:

- Start with the people

- Build relationships, by introducing new ideas, showing how they meet identified needs
- Projects to be undertaken should be kept a simple as possible.
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- There should be the involvement of as many community people as possible in all
activities from the start of any project.
- Train people close to their home communities.
- Train in locally acceptable ways.
- Train trainers who can then in turn train others.
- Involve local leadership
- Cooperate with governments.
- Encourage interdependent relationships vs dependent or totally independent relationships
- Planning services
- Servicing self help groups.
- Naming support and social action groups
- Building community networks
- Improving quality of life
- Working towards social justice

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 - Empowering individual and communities.

- Start with the people –

Here, CD should be the sole prerogative of the immediate beneficiaries. It should be people
oriented. The communities should be solely allowed to decide on their immediate needs. A
community as example may be in need of both water and good roads. But if they are
allowed their choice, probably they would decide on water first before the road construction.
Here, efforts should be intensified on the provision of water.

Community development should be people-driven and should embrace perceived

community needs.

- Secondly, CD should build bridges and relationships, by introducing new ideas, showing
how they can be able to meet identified needs.

- Projects to be undertaken on behalf of the community should be kept as simple as before.

It should be what the community will be able to afford. The technology a times when
possible sheared be locally sourced.

- In case of training programmes, people should be trained within their communities to

reduce transportation costs, and moreover, training should be done in locally acceptable
ways, and if possible train those that can evenly retrain others.

Community Development Processes

In order to streamline our development, there are specific sets of guidelines that need to be
followed. The development process consists of a set of seven steps, transaction between the
different communities when the cul… are matched that describe the finalization of each step.

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Depending on the situation not all the seven steps are necessary.

1. Presentation of the idea.

2. Unite requirements for idea execution
3. Design specification
4. Time and cost estimates
5. Implementation
6. Testing
7. Completion

1. Presentation of an idea – Here a community who lacks electricity will want the community to
be connected to the national and this may be referred to as rural electrification. Some other
communities may need rural transformation through opening up of road networks for the
evacuation of farm produce from the rural areas to urban markets.

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2. Second step in the process - uniting of requirements for idea execution. When a community
presents an idea for execution, there is need to draw a road map for the execution of the idea.
Here the community may need to form a committee on rural electrification as it concerns the
community. Here members of the committee will now put heads together and see how that
need can be achieved.

3. Then comes the step of Design Specification. This includes time and cost estimates. How
much would be needed for its implementation and how the funds would be sourced. It would
also determine the physical instruction in terms of how many poles to be created, points of
erection and how many homes would be affected.

4. Implementation stage – the implementation stage launches all planned efforts and directly
attempts to facilitate community change. Building on the previous three stages of
community action. Throughout the precious stages, resources were gathered and assessed
subgroups formed to focus on specific tasks and active citizens recruited.
In this implementation stage, these resources are formerly committed and people are given tasks
of going forward to achieve the goals established by the organization and its subgroups to
maximize their impact, each subgroup should –

a. Meet to review goals, objectives and immediate steps for action as action efforts are
launched, it is essential that all participants be clear about the planned goals and the
methods for meeting these goals. It may be the case that some subgroups needs certain
clarification on how to proceed and the resources available to support successful action.

b. Identify clear and measurable stages or benchmark for all objectives. While goals,
objectives, and action plans have already been established, it will be useful to identify
clear benchmarks or measurable impacts. This will serve to provide activists with
feedback and to show that action efforts are making progress. Such measurable impacts
will also show the general public that the organization is fostering positive changes on
behalf of the community. As stated tasks are achieved, these can be promoted and
marketed accordingly.
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5. Testing – Empowered with plans and a detailed background, subcommittees can move
forward. As they take action, opportunities and mechanism for feedback and discussion
should be presented. These opportunities can be through meetings, informal gatherings or
established contacts can be arrived at to provide the insight and advice needed to adjust
action plans. As achievements are made and measurable impacts achieved, it is important to
celebrate and promote them through informal celebrations and other promotional awareness.
It may also be the case that some action efforts have failed. The fact that these did not reach
success is irrelevant, and should be celebrated as the first effort of what will be many valid
action efforts. CD is achieved if diverse groups are brought together and channels of
communication established. From this process, future efforts will emerge that will achieve
success.

6. Completion – CD and locally based actions are a never ending process. Both need to be

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continuously cultivated. As progress in various forms is made, it is essential that mistakes,
obstacles, and inconsistencies in application be identified and addressed. To fine tune
actions, opportunities to effectively measure outcomes and provide feedback are vital to the
long-term achievement of goals.
To provide feedback, formal debriefing meetings should be established at the conclusion of
action efforts. These meetings can evaluate progress, identify obstacles and explore new
means of dealing with unforeseen problems. At these meetings, all subgroups / committees
can report on their activities, progress, obstacles and methods for adjusting to challenges.
The development of any community is not a onetime event in which success or failure is
detailed. It is a process where the bringing together of actively interested and diverse
community action process, channels of communication and interaction are established that
cut across class and other lines. This is a remarkable achievement and represents Community
Development.

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 CHAPTER TWO:

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AS AN INSTRUMENT OF RURAL

DEVELOPMENT

Definition of community development

The United Nations Economic and Social Council defines CD as the process by which the
efforts of the people themselves are united with those of the governmental authorities to improve
the economic and socio- cultural conditions of communities to integrate these communities into
the life of the nation, and to enable them to contribute fully into national progress. These
essential elements are:

(1) The participation by the people themselves in effort to improve their level of livelihood.

(2) Secondly, the provision of technical and others in ways that encourages initiative, self
and mutual help and make them more effective. It is expressed in programs designed to
achieve a wide variety of specific improvements

Policy Issues on Community Development

CD whose major thrust is emphasized on streamlined change, population participation and

leadership training involves a dynamic interaction between the central government and the
villages or communities. The level of success in this form of relationship has become an
instrument for forging a more constructive role for government in development, helping to

establish on the one hand a better understanding between the ruler and the ruled within the
village and between the central government and the village authorities on the other. The ability
of community development to adapt itself to changing conditions in the village and the
community life is largely due to its pragmatic approach to problem-solving in community

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 development.

Goals of Community Development

Community development is concerned with the development of the human elements within a
community. This implies the realization of human potentialities and its ability to control his
environment as a measure of real development and an increase in material progress and a
corresponding increase in the development of human capacities and social institutions which
would have otherwise been superficial and temporary.

The major goals of community development should be –

- To induce social change for balanced human and material resources

- To strengthen the institutions structure so as to facilitate social change and the process of
growth
- To promote social justice by permitting the less privileged groups to give expression to
their aspiration and to participate in development activities

Methods of Organizing Community Development

CD being an instrument for inducing change has to give close attention to the strategy and
tactics that it considers using and the time needed to achieve its objectives. The methods to be
used, depends largely on the characteristics of the community concerned. In most cases, local
survey to generate data or information is the first requirement of local action and thus should be
done with the full participation of the rural people. The information collected should be used for
a diagnosis covering as many aspects of community life as possible. On the basis of this,
together with the projection of existing trends, it is possible to formulate alternative action
proposals.

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 CHAPTER THREE:

RURAL LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

The concept of Leadership vis-avis the traditional institutions at the community Level

Leadership is a sterling ability to move men and material resources for the attendance of enacted
policies or the carriage of the resolution of the people. Leadership has either been defined or
explained in various ways according to relevant experts. It is important to understand what
leadership is in terms of definition, nature and characteristics.

Leadership can be defined as an influenced process. Areas of influence, include official position,
financial controls, organizational influence, knowledge, interpersonal contacts; personal
characteristics. It involves one person trying to get others do something that he wants them to
do. This is influencing the activities of an organized group towards goal setting and
achievement. It further implies that a leader must be able to influence the followers towards
setting appropriate goals and towards effective achievement. Leadership is a sterling ability to
move men and material for the attendance of the enacted policies or the people in such a manner
to bring to bear the resources of such resolution. A leader is a coordinator and a participating
type so as to bring about functional result in the organizational set up in the community.

Leadership is the ability to influence authority and power to direct and re-direct priorities for
effectuating the stipulated goals of an organization. Rural leadership therefore is the ability of a
person designated as a leader to influence and control the community efforts towards the
realization of the objective of an area.

Traditional rulers are the custodians of local tradition and customs. They exercise traditional
authority which is usually obtained from father to son, according to local customs and traditions.
Their major functions are the fact that they help the local councils to maintain law and order in
their local domains.

Secondly, they serve as a link between the people and the government by explaining to the

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 people what the government is doing what problems his immediate environment is confronted
with. An example may be the issue of flooding or erosion. They are also the chief priest or
heads of all the traditional religion and ceremonial worship

Defining the Traditional Institution

Since the pre-colonial days, even before the advent of African civilization, there was traditional
institution in Africa that serves as the head of government. There was government that was
traditional in nature, tailored according to cultural contemplation to accommodate the pattern of
living reasonable for then political engineering and social relations.

The government covered among other things any exigency that may consciously or
unconsciously result whose spontaneity may discomfort our geo-centric occupation. The
government had all the elements of the present day organs of governance, being the legislature,
judiciary and the executives sometimes embedded in one person.

The effectiveness and practicability of the three depended essentially on the persons holding
and molding the political authority. The traditional institution is a respected organ in the socio-
political hierarchy of authority in any geographic divide. The traditional rulers are more
knowledgeable in rural governmental affairs. The historical development of the people are
being handed over to the custodians of culture being local kings. These kings relate with each
other and as such the development question is handled by the local leaders through studies of
their existence and what the previous kings had dominantly settled their minds on. Geographic
settlement and discrepancy emanating from boundary adjustments need the input of the
traditional system.

The community has a human heart and feeling and in such position, every effort for its
maintenance and sustainability will always be on how every facet of organization is put in place.
The traditional lords should be recognized in the political schemes of the country’s advancement
and be used for more able areas but through the pragmatic belief and consciousness of making
things happen for the realization of this. The role of the traditional institution is to liaise with the
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 government and the people within their geographical areas with the intention of discussing their
problems and solutions.

Here, the traditional rulers can set up committees whose duty would be to marshal out the
community desires for physical solutions. They are to open channels through which physical
and material resources can come to the area. It is also their role to galvanize means of economic
production for the furtherance of development. The rural areas cannot just develop on the
platform of sycophancy or parasitic tendency but only fervent recourse to abide by accepted
norms.

Furthermore, their roles can be said to be the following:

- To make peace, adjudicate cases and provide equity and justice.

- It is the duty of the traditional lords to provide the forum for rectification of grievances.
- It is also their duty to provide project and propagate representative government which
will be all embracing and accommodating.
- It is also their duty to organize economic units and develop along product lines. This
can be achieved through mobilization, education and channeling of resources to that area
and concertizing the people to follow suit.
- Lastly, it is their duty to be objective and not subjective in their reasoning, allocation of
values and adjudicating of cases.

Government and the Local Institution

The government as a matter of necessity should then accordingly:

- Provide the executive capacity, for the local leaders in harnessing , propagating and
projecting the aims of the rural areas within their confines.

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 - They should resuscitate all organs and agencies of local leadership respecting cultural
contemplations.

- Also, providing capital and material resources to the local population for self – reliance
and economic involvement.

- The government should establish community agencies to be controlled by the local

chiefs with authority.

- As a matter of priority should engender economic development in the local areas.

Conflict of priorities at the community level

The traditional values though revered in the society sometimes engage in activities that negate
the essence of their existence. They sometimes act outside their assigned functions. The crux of
the matter is that the development of the rural areas would have been put in a better perspective
if the traditional institution is deeply involved in local restructuring.

There is also the issue of lack of enlightenment. Those selected to lead are often not enlightened
on matters concerning their immediate domains. Most of them are into power due to hereditary
consequences that may not have any experience in the art of administration and development.
The structure of traditional administration had made it increasingly difficult to use the local
leaders to create enabling governmental role.

Another area of conflict between the traditional institution in one hand and the other levels of
government is the non-inclusion of their roles in the Constitution. The government is of the
opinion that traditional administration is their creation and therefore should abide by their
administrative bureaucracy.

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Effective Leadership at the Community Level

Leadership is an integral part of management. Leadership effectiveness measures to an extent to

which the leader achieves the functions of his office or set out goals. Leaders should therefore,
have the following characteristics, intelligence, self-confidence, initiatives, capacity, and socio-
economic status. Leadership characterized by mediocrity cannot achieve the set-out goals. The
rural leadership has its statutory functions or its target associated with them. It is the
responsibility of the leadership to achieve these targets. Failure means slowing down progress,
which reflects on output. The problem this creates is ultimately traced to the leadership.

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 CHAPTER FOUR:

THE CONCEPT OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT

The Definition and Concept of Rural Development

Rural development has been defined in various ways by different authors as follows:
- As a process whereby concerted efforts are made in order to facilitate significant
increases in rural resource productivity with the central objective of enhancing rural
income and increasing employment opportunities in rural communities for rural dwellers
to remain in the area.

- An integrated approach to food production, provision of physical, social and institutional

infrastructures with an ultimate goal of bringing about qualitative changes which
culminate in improved standard of living of rural population.

- It also involves effecting improvement in living standards of farmers and the rural
populace in general.

- The main concern in rural development is to bring about the modernization of rural
society through a transition from traditional isolation to integration with the nation. It
constitutes a process of planned change for which one approach or the other is adopted
for improvement and or transformation of the lot of rural populace. It is concerned with
the improvement of living in the rural areas on a self-sustaining basis through
transforming the social-spatial structures of their productive activities.

- It involves creating and hindering opportunities for individuals to realize full potentials
through education and share in the decision and action which affect their lives. An effort
to increase rural output creates employment opportunities and root - out fundamental
cases of poverty, disease and ignorance.

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 The Concept of Rural Environment

Development as a concept has been subjected to various theoretical interpretations and empirical
operationalization consequently, it eludes any precise definition. Nonetheless, most students of
change would agree with the notion that development is a process by which a continuous
increase in system’s efficiency produces the conditions which results in general upliftment. It is
that process which is concerned with the general improvement of man’s living conditions. Thus,
both the physical and psychological elements of development mutually reinforce each other in
the process of general upliftment, which is indispensable to development.

Therefore, rural development is a determined and concise attempt to focus on the general
upliftment of man’s living conditions in the rural area.

Nature of rural development

Rural infrastructure constitutes the substance of rural welfare. Efforts to raise rural welfare must
therefore go beyond the traditional and limited approach of raising per capita income through
agriculture. Agricultural developments projects to the provision of rural basic needs such as
health and medical facilities, rural transportation facilities, electricity, pipe-borne water and
schools. Rural Kenyans must be appreciated beyond their roles as mere producers of food and
fiber for the needs of the urban economy.

Poor Infrastructural Facilities

It is either there is complete absence of infrastructural facilities or they are in poor conditions
such facilities includes good road network, electricity, pipe borne ware, health facilities.
Although they are capital intensive, they are essential in bringing about economic development.

High population Density and gross illiteracy

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 Rural environments witnesses high population density. They cluster within specific areas and
thereby causing congestion. There is no family planning, due to the low literacy rate. Greater
percentage of the rural people are not educated and this affects in the area of decision- making
and in the management of economic activities.

Low Technological Base and Under Development

Rural environment is characterized by low technology, which reduces output. There is also under-
employment. Labour intensive activities reduce output and theory creating disguised
unemployment.

The Concept of Development

Development could be defined as a process of sustained increases in total and per capita income
accompanied by structural transformation and modernization of socio-economic environment. It
could be economic development or growth. Economic growth does not present the sources of
increase in per capita income or the character of factors of production and infrastructure
facilities.

Economic development takes into account the distribution, sources of growth, development and
infrastructure and administrative framework essential to sustained economic. In particular,
development implies not merely the growth of per capita income or real income, but also its
distribution, the sources of growth, the development of infrastructure, and administrative
framework essential to sustained economic growth.

Indices for Development

Increase in per capita income – income per head

This is a major index that determines whether a society is developing or not. But where the
index signifies an increment that means that there is a development effort.

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 - There is also more even distribution of income where by not few individuals are holding
the nation to ransom. Money is circulated in the hands of larger number of individuals.

- Reduction in the level of unemployment. Where many people are employed, this means
more people paying taxes and this is meant to be used for the development of the society.

- There is danger in a mono-economy. A mono economy is a situation where an economy

earns income in a single item or commodity. So therefore, investment should be made
into other ventures for diversification.

- There is also the increase in the supply of high level manpower. .

- Balanced development should be seen in both the rural and the urban centers.

Steps in engineering development in the rural areas.

- The first step is carrying out informal survey and fact finding missions.

- Identifying small groups, leaders and interest groups.

- The third step is the identification of community problems.

- After the identification of the problems, the citizens and the government should be aware
of it.

- There should also be what is known as plan articulation, proceeding on the planned
action of change and evaluation and re-evaluation where necessary.

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CHAPTER FIVE

SOCIAL CHANGE IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Nature of Social Changes In Rural Areas

Social change is a process by which alterations occurs in the structure and

functions of a social system (social group, community). Any change that occurs
either in idea, norms, value, role, and social habits of a group or in the composition
or organizations of their society could be referred to as social change.

Forms of social change in rural areas.

- Modifications in human attitudes and behavior pattern as a result of

education e.g. improved seedling in the area of farming.

- Alteration in social conditions resulting from changes in political or social

organization. This will result into loss of part of the family’s labour supplied
by the children, an example is the instituting of universal primary
education for universal basic educations.

- Effecting reforms in major legacy and functional system of the society, an

example is the passing the law on valued added tax. Whenever a law is
passed it will call for a change in the way of life of people and this further
call for adjustment.

- Changes in the materials culture i.e. in the arts an artifact of the culture. This

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 is often the outward manifestation of changes in the non- material aspects of
culture. Social changes penetrate all aspects of social life and may manifest
as:

- Economic change- This occurs in the mode of production, economic

relations and statuses of people in the society e.g. industrialization,
production of crops for sales rather than domestic consumption. It could be
the location of mineral in commercial quantities that will enhance income
and employment .

- Political change – This deals with the change in the distributions and
operating mechanism of social and political power within the social system
for materials, power concentration in the hand of chiefs.

- Technological changes – Technological changes entails way of applying

scientific and other organized knowledge to practical task. Technological
changes that are evident in other area are transportation, communication,
health, education, housing and leisure.

- Cultural changes - This referred to the changes in the non-material aspects of

culture e.g. religion and the belief system.

Behavioral changes - This is a part of cultural changes, but it specifically embraces

changes arising from the influence of reduction on the attitude and overt reaction
of people.
Social change maybe planned or unplanned. Planned social change has to do with
human intervention in the shaping and direction of change towards some
predefined goals.
Unplanned social change is the type that occurs suddenly usually though the act of
nature, thereby affording human beings no chance to plan before it occurs. Change
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 may also be total or segmental in its coverage.
Direct contact change deliberately introduces a new idea into the social system
with the aim of bringing about the change in specific aspect of the system
activities.
Theories of change have generally been concerned with;
- The sources of social change
- The time of span of change
- The effect of change on the changing unit.
The School Of Thoughts

- The Diffusion school : It views social change as an educational process. It

places less emphasis on the internal state of individuals but hold that the
world society could be divided into two campuses on the basis of the relative
modernity or permittivity of each segment.

- The Conflict Camps

-
This school of thought views man in the totality of his social relations and
maintains that the gathering of small bit of facts about the past and aspects of the
society can never yield the big truths about the social order itself.

Sources of Social Changes

Invention involves the recombination of existing cultural traits to fashion out new
thing and the rate of which this takes place is directly related to the existing cultural
base.
Discovery is the sharing with others of a perception of a fact object or relationship which has always existed
but was not known. Discovery can enhance the cultural base in a society and therefore the rate of invention.

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 - Diffusion involves the spread of cultural traits from one group to another.
The following have enhanced cultural diffusion:

(1) Increased and more efficient communication facilities.

(2) The speed with which people can now travel from part of the world to
another and ,
(3) The existence of specifically trained personnel for the diffusion of
innovation. Other sources of social change include; formal educational
institutions, urbanization, governmental policies, application of science and
technology.
- Culture and structure of the society: This is when specific cultural traits
become tightly interwoven with others in mutually interdependent manner.
Change in that direction becomes almost impossible e.g. the rearing of cows
and the religion of Fulani’s.

PREVAILING ATTITUDES AND VALUES

A society that changes rapidly is the one changes in which its members are critical
and skeptical of parts of its traditional cultures and are ready to accommodate and
experiment with the new ideas of technology, originating externally and suppresses
all those that do not confirm to its internal norms and values with change more
slowly than the one which is liberal.
- Migration and population changes: This is mainly the movement of the
people from one place to another, which brings them in contact with new
cultural traits prevalent in other areas. This social and cultural change is
greater in society where there is constant emigration and immigration.

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- Perceived Need: Here the society emphasis in determined by the need it
perceives. Emphases are placed on food and raw materials if it is in the rural
areas.

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CHAPTER SIX

RURAL EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Main Contents

3.1 Rural Education

3.1.1 The rural area
3.1.2 Education of rural women

RURAL EDUCATION
The important of education in an individual life cannot be over emphasized. It has
long been acknowledged that education greatly affects an individual’s life
chances. This is confirmed by the high rates of income return to education. It is
however reasonable to assume that the accessibility to the school will be an
important factor making for its utilization. The rural areas are as deprived in
education as they are in other respects. Two sets of statistics could illustrate this;
The first is the figure of literacy and Secondly the proportion of children of
primary school age who are attending school. The rural areas present a picture of
severe and growing educational under- development. This impairs social
economic and political development of the rural community which are already
desperately poor and frustrate other possible aim for education, connected with the
wider definition of development such as social justice , personnel development of
the people, the position of women and even levels of sickness and mortality.

Rural Areas
The rural areas are comparatively under privileged. The disparity emerges in

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primary school environment that are lightly skewed in favor of the urban centers.
This urban bias is even more pronounced at the higher levels of
education. The first step towards securing social justice in the education sector of
the rural population would be to devote more attention to the primary as
compared with the higher levels of education. But a solution was
however found by the Federal Government with the establishment of Universal
Basic Education (UBE) of the present administration , amongst others to boost
basic education in the rural area and to reduce the urban- rural disparity in the
provision of education.

Educating The Rural Women

The rural woman is besotted with a lot of problems amongst which is lack of
education.
Resistance to the provision of education for rural women sometimes , is the result
not only of their general state of subjugation but also of the fact that the role which
is assigned to them does not seem to imply any need for education.
In addition, rural women, when they marry by custom go to live with
their

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husband’s families. To spend time and money in educating a doctor who is going to
take whatever she has gained away in marriage and a benefit to her immediate
family. However, quite apart from the considerations of social justices there is a
strong case on pragmatic grounds for giving some priority to female education the
rural women constitute a substantial proportion of the population. Educating them
therefore would release and inform the constructive abilities of a substantive part
of the rural population. It is also believed that both the health and nutrition of
children are better where women have received some education. There is also a
link between female education and lower fertility. All these are desirable for their
own self improvement as well as having their contribution to make to economic
and social transformation of the rural sector.

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 CHAPTER SEVEN

PROBLEMS OF DEVELOPMENT AT THE COMMUNITY LEVEL.

Problem areas.
In community development efforts some problem areas are identified as that
of

 finance,
 personnel,
 politics and leadership,
 community attitude
 intergovernmental relations,
 planning and ideology.

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Finance
Finance has been observed to be the area of focus in any developmental effort.
It is the mainstay of local government, people talk move about finance, about
how the competing needs in a community cannot be effective booked. Too
much money is spent on recurrent budget sometimes up t between 80 –
90% leaving a smaller percentage for social and community services. This is
not helped by the low interval revenue capacity of local government which
amounts to, in average cases, not more than 10% of the local government
revenue. The overdependence on statutory allocation has made the prospect
of economic and social development painfully slow in local government
coupled with this; leadership is slow to explore alternative sources of revenue
in local govt. Despite the low level of finance, massive corruption takes
place in local government. Both administrative and political officials are
involved.
Contracts are issued even to council staff and politicians see council as a place of
rehabilitation and service to the community. Evidence of corruption surfaces from
inspection reports and probe panels, into local government. Money meant for
projects are embezzled.

Personnel and Competence

Surveys have shown that in recent years, the quantum of staff has increased. Also
there has been more quality of staff in administration than the technical and
professional fields in local government. A survey in 1997 by the UNDP shows that
the planning and research unit of local government has been understaffed and staffs
who manage this unit of local government do to receive any special training to
prepare them for such jobs.
One also hardly finds an economist or a statistician or a social scientist in this
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department. Many of the staff in the health offices is community health staff.
Medical doctors are difficult to come by at the community level.
Agriculturalists are largely those who have gone for only an ordinary diploma level
of Education. The import of all these is the fact that planning for development is
handicapped in local government because of the death of appropriate staff. Plans
therefore become an incremental thing, a traditional muddling through, than an
objective and data fed document. Professional advice to politician too suffers as a
result of the quality of intellectual weight brought to bear on the exercise when it
comes to its implementation, it is re……… with the same stories. Targets and
standards in plans may suffer as a result of poverty of professional requirements
and competence. Even where there are qualified staffs to do this, they will still fall
victim of the corruptive influence of society brought to bear by either the
contractor or politician or community pressure. In summary, local government lack
the executive, technical and professionals competence to formulate good plans and
to implement them.

Politics and Leadership

The attitude of politicians to development may not coincide with established ways
to doing community needs assessment by the local government bureaucracy. Some
projects are outrageously cited even without assessing their utility. Political criteria
override data based issues. The political imposes his will partly because of the
impulse driven by his constituency needs and because of his party manifesto more
importantly is his perception of the community and the going-on the other tier of
government.

The Community
The communities often feel marginalized I development. Local government plans

37
and executes them. Even community development efforts are not adequately
supported by local government. Even where the intervention occurs it is not done
in a participatory manner. The net effect of this is that the community feels
marginalized from development programs and efforts. This also affects the
sustainability of projects. The programme and project are community driven and
participatory the more would want to own and sustain the programme. This is a far
cry from what happened at the local level. This is why the community is not
bothered when a health centre is burgled or the roof of a primary school is blown
off. They see themselves removed from the process as the initiative and execution
was all by the governments.
Community attitude also reinforces the corruptive attitude of politicians instead
of demanding for accountability from the politicians who amass lots of
wealth and status symbols while in office, they perceived this as the
ultimate objective of politics. Such polities actors are acclaimed they end up
saying “this is our time” the actor who dies not seize such an opportunity is
branded a “fool” Going into polities means going to cut ones cake from the
government.
the ideology of the plan.

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Since then subsequent plans built their overall objectives around these. However
the implementation of plans since 1974 – 80 has not demonstrated any systematic
effort to achieve these objectives instead plans have become more and more
meaningless because they become mere documents of intentions rather documents
of communications.
This attitude has spilled over too the state and local government. State government
have not demonstrated any leadership planning neither have they showed any
commitments; if plans are the instruments for development , which in reality they
are, the lack of commitment to them means lack of systematized development.
The type of development that takes place at the state and local government levels
are impulsive, haphazard and un-coordinate. The cumulative effects of a plan or
evidence of phased development is yet to be seen.
Rolling plans ids yet to benefit the rural population. The state and local
government are satisfied with the provision of social services and rural
infrastructure. Their hope is that this attempt on their part to intervene in real
economic development. Attempts have stopped in either agriculture or building of
rural markets. Agriculture production is not enough to stimulate the rural economy.
Even then it is faced with many problems. Markets can be seen as mere social and
commercial entities that facilitates trade. The real problem is in the area of
production. Agricultural production alone cannot improve the economic nature
which ought to have been promoted by now so also glaring area like small scale
industries of an agrarian nature and of nature relevant to community resources.
Such direct interventions are lacking and unit more investment is planned in
employment generating ventures in rural communities; the standard of living of the
rural person will not appreciate. This is really the challenges for local government
and other ties of government as they plan for rural development. The capitalist
ideology which operates at the national level must also start penetrating the rural
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areas for concomitant development.

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