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Enhancing Community Participation for Rural Development in Central Ejagham of Cameroon: Challenges and Prospects

International Journal of Community Development

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Title Enhancing Community Participation for Rural Development in Central Ejagham of Cameroon: Challenges and Prospects
 
Creator Kimengsi, Jude Ndzifon; Catholic University of Cameroon (CATUC) Bamenda
Azibo, Balgah Roland; Department of Agribusiness Technology, College of Technology, University of Bamenda, Cameroon
Gwan, Akhere Solange; Department of Sociology & Human Geography University of Oslo, Norway
 
Subject Community participation, rural development, Central Ejagham
 
Description Community participation in rural development is no longer a new terminology in the development lexicon of developing countries. In most developing nations, there exist a great disparity between the rural and the urban centres in terms of socio-economic development. Central Ejagham, an enclaved community in Manyu Division of southwestern Cameroon has, over the years, been faced with a number of development challenges. In response to this, and inline with the government of Cameroon’s policy of supporting self-reliant development, the community engaged in a series of self-defined community development activities in a multiplicity of sectors, on the bases of locally identified abilities and resources. This paper adopts qualitative methods such as interviews, focus group discussions, detailed field observations which were complemented by secondary data sources and content analysis to examine the barriers and indigenous efforts towards enhancing community participation in Central Ejagham. We observe that the level of participation in a majority of the projects falls either within the “tokenism” or the “citizen control” rungs of Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation. In addition, although “tokenism” rung projects in Central Ejagham receive much financial and technical support, although they are saddled with commitment-related challenges. Conversely, projects at the “citizen control” rung are characterized by significant commitment but are hampered by limited (financial and technical)resources. To further enhance community participation, we recommend that projects at the “tokenism” rung which are generally viable in terms of financial and technical capacity be stepped up to the “citizen control” level, inorder to guarantee maximum participation for better results. In addition, we suggest that the legislative arm of the government should introduce a bill on the need to effectively support community developmental efforts. This. We believe, will make “citizen control” rung projects to become more effective. Finally, a platform to guarantee the sustainability of projects and to ensure the adequate dissemination of information on sourcing for external funding to support projects should be introduced.
 
Publisher World Scholars
 
Contributor —
 
Date 2016-05-05
 
Type Peer-reviewed Article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://wscholars.com/index.php/ijcd/article/view/745
10.11634/233028791503745
 
Source International Journal of Community Development; Vol 4, No 1 (2016); 20-32
 
Language en
 
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