Building the capacity of communities through the community driven development approach

Abstract

Communities across the world have a wealth of assets that can be used by development agencies to improve the quality of their lives. These assets, which in this context are termed as community resources occur in various forms. These include common gathering places; commonly used natural resources like forest and water; businesses that provide employment opportunities and access to essential products, among others. One of the most widely used and popular approaches through which international development agencies involve communities in sustainable development is the community-driven development (CDD) model. This model directly hands over the control of the development process, investment resources, and planning decisions to the target community. CDD includes the use of community-level participatory methods as well as capacity building, social cohesion, transparency, accountability, and collective responsibility for both investment plans and benefits sharing from the project. CDD is based on the premise that when individuals within a community and community groups are engaged in defining their common or shared needs and are given the necessary resources and technical support, it is possible to work together and achieve development goals which enhance community commitment and ownership. It has been found that the CDD's participatory processes can empower communities, therefore, increasing the capacity for local development, improved governance and social cohesion among community members. Several CDD modeled projects have been implemented in Kenya through World Bank (WB) financed projects such as Western Kenya Community Driven Development (WKCDD); Lake Victoria Environmental Management Programme (LVEMP) and Kenya Coastal Development Project (KCDP) among others. Of these, however, the KCDP presents some of the most uniquely structured Government of Kenya (GoK)- WB funded projects with both multi-institutional and multi-sectoral complexities. Therefore, this chapter attempts to highlight the CDD approach in the Coast region of Kenya, its implementation and achievement of community projects supported through the WB-KCDP financing. It also discusses the experience, challenges, and lessons learned from implementing such projects for the first time among quite diversely multi-cultural communities in six coastal Counties of Mombasa, Kwale, Taita Taveta, Kilifi, Lamu and Tana River. According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) records (KNBS, 2010), both land area and size of human inhabitant populations in the coastal Counties vary considerably. The estimated human population in all the coastal Counties is 3.3 million and has an estimated growth rate of 3%. This population is culturally heterogeneous, comprising seven major ethnic groups which are; Mijikenda; Taita Taveta; Pokomo; Bajuni; Orma; Sagola and the famous Swahili. The Mijikenda ethnic group is the most widely spread with nine sub-ethnic groups, namely; Giriama, Digo, RabaL Duruma, Kauma, Chonvi. Kambe, Ribe and Jibana. Other ethnic groups also include the less known marginalized communities of the Munyoyaya, Wallwana (Malakote), Waatha, Aweer (Boni), Sanye, WakifundL and Wachwaka. In addition, the proportion of coast residents also comprise large migrant populations of diverse ethnic and racial origins, and these are mostly concentrated in urban areas.