Africa 2000 Network- Zambia and me

I realize that I haven’t actually told people what I’m doing or what I’m working on. So here’s some information on my organization and areas I might be working on.

My organization Africa 2000 Network is involved in localizing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through mapping and profiling of community villages and then coming up with a Community Action Plan which they can then, in turn, turn into project proposals. It sounds fancy which it isn’t but it’s definitely very interesting.

The Millennium Development Goals are goals hoped to be met by 2015. They include goals like ending hunger and child poverty and ending HIV/AIDS etc. However translating those goals to the village level is almost always unsuccessful and is very difficult because it’s imposed by the government or donors on the people through different projects which the people themselves either don’t really need (like just providing food relief which undermines the local farmers produce) or the people just don’t think they need it. It is not a process that they usually initiate themselves, monitor, and control or own. So people are starting to realize that these top down approaches to development just don’t work and for the most part, the most vulnerable and small scale farmers get left behind.

So the question is how do we decentralize development and make goals like the MDGs realistic and attainable at the community level. That’s what Africa 2000 Network is trying to do. A2N in Zambia is using an approach called the Participatory Development Management to bring meaning to decentralization at the local community level. The approach is meant to empower the village to draw up their own development plans which can then be used as building blocks for projects at a higher level.

All that is essentially achieved through the mapping and profiling which is then used to construct their community action plan. So members from the village/community map out their own village which helps them not only recognize key areas of problem but also helps them recognize the assets of their village. They then go out and do the profiling which essentially means that they go to different households of a mapped out village and ask them questions related to the MDGs - what kind of diseases family often suffer from, amount of crops they produce and how much they're able to sell and how long it lasts them, distance to the nearest school etc. Once all that information is collected and compiled it can then be analyzed by the villagers themselves to see the areas of improvement (like for example transportation of crops is too expensive because of the distance of the nearest market) and actions they should/can take to improve their own situation (e.g. form a collective cooperative so that they can come together to sell their goods and all pitch in for transportation). This procedure helps the community recognize their areas of need themselves and helps them take ownership of their own wellbeing instead of being dependent on handouts from NGOs and/or subsidies from the government. Other areas where they need external support they can get by making business proposals which they can give to NGO's or the government.

I've come to realize that there are so many NGO's that have more money than they know what to do with and they want to help but don’t know where to put those resources into. So they end up spending large sums of money on projects which are either not appropriate for the people living there (like for example spending half million dollars on sending a little outdated but fancy medical equipment to a hospital in Africa without taking into consideration if the community actually needed it, if there were people trained to use them and people who could fix them. So the equipments ended up becoming half a million dollar worth of paper weights. Or even building a well in an area that already has four neighbouring wells) or the people reject it (e.g. building a community center without taking into consideration that the community values and/or is structured such that children play together anyway within compounds and people consider old folk to be a part of their responsibility and so the community center was abandoned).
So these project proposals will help the government implement appropriate strategies and policies at the district level and NGO's fund appropriate projects without reinventing the wheel by doing an exact project that another NGO might have worked on already.

So I know this is sounding long winded but I've just had an overload of all this info and come to realize so much over the past 2 months. Anyway so they're trying to implement this project for the first time in Zambia. It has been successful in other parts of Africa like Ghana but is a pilot project in Zambia. Here we are trying this out in two particular districts Mazabuka and Chibombo districts.

So the question is, where do I fit in? I will be facilitating and helping out in the progress in the Chibombo district. So I'm still defining my role but I will most likely be ensuring that the mapping is completed and profiling is done appropriately and help in compiling of the information. Since this is a pilot project a lot of work has to be done and a lot of it has yet to be defined so it’s pretty neat because I feel like I should be able to contribute and help define the project up to a certain extent. I should be able to help facilitate the process in developing the Community Acton Plan by guiding the Village Facilitators in their thought process. The profiling questions need refining and I can help develop the trust of the villagers with A2N. I could also possibly be the contact person for the NGOs in the district like World Vision, Plan etc. So we'll see. I still have to figure things out myself. They're areas I have recognized as potential areas of capacity building. I’ll let you know how it goes as and when I have a chance.