1. 1
Local Development Model.
1. Production and
transformation capacity 7. Access to basic social services
2. Technical Capacity
0. Transformative
listening
8. Environnemental
Protection and
management
3. Organizational
and management
capacity
5. Access to 6. New Information technologies and 4. Source
Financial communication of energy
Resources
9. Participation and Appropriation
By: Pr. Chirume Mendo A.
Aristarque_Chirume@abtassoc.com
mchirume@hotmail.fr
mchirume775@gmail.com
+1 202 751 0758 mobile
+243 8170 90 202 mobile.
Men, Women, Youth, Chidren and the Elderly
 Land,
 Forets,
 Rivers,
 Swamps,
 Sub-soil,
 Air.
LOCAL COMMUNITY

2. 2
INTRODUCTION
Every community settles around a set of material goods that can support its existence. There is
the potential held by the immediate environmental context, including mainly its natural
resources. Generally a community on the move in search of a favorable biosphere will install
itself around a water source as prerequisite for the sustainability of life, and then it will seek
access to an energy source such as firewood, a forest or possibly a grove.
But paramount is the soil quality in terms of food production potential and to this end a number
of criteria were applied, namely the type of natural vegetation cover that has the soil in question.
The subsoil was superficially scraped in order to seek the iron, the tin used in making
instruments for soil exploitation, instruments for hunting or defense in case of aggression or
combat.
Community looking for an implantation site after such a site-scanning will resolve to settle
following the satisfaction of previously laid out and accepted criteria by its most influential
members and decision makers for everyone's wellbeing.
At such an instance, it is more a matter of meeting the most basic survival requirements
water, food, energy understood here as a source of heat and temperature and not as a force for
any transformation
These village communities have undergone the effects of modernity and they are still aspiring to
it to date.
But having experienced slavery, colonization, evangelization missions, capitalist exploitation,
racial segregation, single parties, dictatorship, the effects of structural adjustment policies and
subsequently the social sectors (WB) structural adjustment, they have lost most of their strong
dynamism.
They have been undermined from within, decapitated and muzzled.
Therefore they need to be healed, restored and cleaned out. They must get back their right to
speak.
It is this role that should compel African intellectuals first. This is a return to motherland (the
land) to remake it, insuring care taking of its deep wounds, getting it back on its feet. And, it is
not yet too late!
Indeed, it is out of the dialogue between the old and the new that will come out a track for
Africa revival.
It is through the provision of modern technical capacity (source of modern scientific
knowledge) to these communities (custodians of popular and traditional knowledge) who
remained essentially conservative through a challenging and constructive dialogue that
community diagnosis can actually take place.
Here it will not be a top down relationship of one another but rather a mutual rapport of give
and take.
This relationship is so delicate and precious it is best expressed when compared to that between
the pregnant woman and the midwife.
Indeed, the community composed of men, women, young and old men, as mentioned above, has
limited its living framework that consists of swamps, rivers and streams, wildlife and the
surrounding flora, soil and subsoil (because it is the land and resources from the earth that
provide unique assets on which rural communities can build their socio-economic development).
Natural resources, land, landownership ... remain the essential reference for local rural
development dynamics.

3. 3
We must therefore say that having all of these resources and property under its management, the
community is pregnant of her own development.
She is about to experience childbirth pains of her fate.
In our humble opinion, it is at this level that stumbles all interventionist approaches in
development.
The development agent should play the role of a midwife and that is where he should be initiated
to the first steps of his profession.
In clear terms, training a development officer should begin in a delivery room.
Indeed, it is the pregnant woman who carries the pregnancy; she is the one under pressure.
She depends, in a narrow measure on the midwife who sees progress unfolding, the degree of the
expansion of the output channel of the fetus as well as about all the warning signs to success.
It is this midwife that stimulates, encourages, gives appropriate advice and at the end receives
the baby to administer its first aid before returning to the happy new mother.
This depicts what should be the relationship between the assisted community and technical
expertise.
External expertise at the disposal of the community provides support to accompany initiatives
and strengthen the capacity of the population.
THE CYCLE OF LOCAL DEVELOPMENT
Such as in a birthing process, it is the pregnant woman who shows signs that call for the midwife
assistance, the same way the community (0) has the right to be listened to without interest,
without preconceived goal or project. It is transformative listening.
The baby passing from the community into the multi disciplinary group hands called here (2)
"technical capacity" is nothing other than this highlighting of (1) production potential that
holds the immediate environment over which the community presides, a potential once coupled
with (4) an energy source can be used to (1) transform the raw material to reach a wider local
market, a distant domestic market and an ever suspected international market with products that
can stand the test of transportation, handling, and climatic variations (weather).
Allowing communities to possess valuable resources motivates them to effectively organize
and community institutions to evolve.
This whole process can only be achieved if the community has access to (5) the financial
resources enabling to acquire the necessary tools to transform raw materials produced out usual
farming and thus add more value.
For some, the problems of financing local development should be analyzed less so in terms of
lack of resources rather than in terms of efficient and transparent use of available resources.
In fact, it becomes more and more clear that even the poor have something and so if all poor pull
together all their assets, the means at their disposal can attract other capital.
Once the community has succeeded in transforming its raw product, it will face the , marketing
issues that is to say, identifying markets. This requires access (6) to information technology
and communication channels.
Once all the production and transformation processes are implemented, the community will need
to develop its internal (3) managerial and organizational capacity.
This capacity should be developed early and gradually to become intrinsic to the same
community. It is in fact, the implementation of principles that represent a combined effort of
ecologists, economists, development engineers, agronomists, hydrologists, and social scientists
to gather concepts of decentralization, local governance and sustainable rural development and
thus make a program for people, the environment and development.
To be effective, socio-economic actors that are members of local communities must come
together and organize to achieve all their objectives taking into account the identified priorities

4. 4
It is not the economic that is the primary objective, but man, which requires a shift from
consumer to actor, from collectivity to community.
Women and men are the essential wealth of local development: their participation, common will,
their solidarity, their intelligence and creativity are the essential elements.
But often in African studies, this basic data is untapped and reflection on means often slides to
the research or the mobilization of external resources.
This is about the dynamic in search of (9) participation and ownership.
Then in view of increased resources (indeed, by the creation of activities and income, there will
be possibility to pay taxes) in families and within the community in general, it will be able to
take care of its own (7) basic services such as a school or school system as required and
according to the size of the community to be served, as a health system, water and sanitation.
Indeed, this is when local communities are experimenting with tangible economic benefits from
local natural resources they most appreciate their value to their own lives and they will
accordingly make efforts, sacrifices and take the necessary initiatives to protect (managing) for
their own long-term benefits.
Experience has shown that it is through the combination of policies seeking to grant powers to
communities and increase the value of resources that provided the necessary incentives for better
management.
Improved management will prove through:
 The development of motivated commonly owned institutions;
 Planning of land use and improved management of community heritage;
 Yields of improved resources uses (pasture, water);
 Social infrastructure, welfare, food safety and that of foyers
Since production is the result of the entire community (all of its components), the methods used
must preserve the material substrate on which this production is based, it is the (8) protection
and management environment in its entirety.
Finally, this process must be in conjunction with the state public services namely local
government whose role will be to ensure (9) participation and ownership by the concerned
community and (9) coaching and rallying the overall development efforts in the region.
In this respect the local administration to be added the birth attendant technical capacity, the role
of matching and quality control according to recognized norms and standards.
We must face the facts that many NGOs were initiatives of social entrepreneurs often unrelated
to the communities they claim to serve.
Indeed, many NGOs have emerged without the one who should be the OWNER being consulted
nor asked. As a debonair leader he let it go, while it is in his name and supposedly for his benefit
that everything was being conducted.
So from here emerges the need to define in a common agreement a joint perspective with
beneficiaries, partners and stakeholders from the outset in order to ensure their effective
participation and ownership, the basis for a durable action.
The idea is therefore to move towards a partnership of 3 in a triangular framework whose top
vertex is occupied by the community's quality of OWNER, the left corner of the triangle up to
the NGOs as IMPLEMENTNG PARTNER receiving the mandate and direction from the top
sponsor and finally the right side of the triangle where are the public services as a supervisor
ensuring the QUALITY CONTROL of services to the community.

5. 5
TRIANGULAR PARTNERSHIP
At the center of this triangular partnership framework is the place to meet, exchange and making
jointly decisions that is the framework for constructive dialogue (CDC).
Participation is a prerequisite for the sustainability of local development. The inhabitants of a
territory decide to solve their problems together. Participation can express itself through opinions
(in consultation, dialogue and constructive dialogues) through financial means, by human
investment, by the exercise of responsibilities.
DEVELOPPING OTHERWISE
In opposition to the planned development policies primarily implemented by decentralized
representations of various ministries, grassroots development, development of grassroots
communities etc, terms will be used.
This concept covers more or less that of self-promotion. This is to support rural and urban
communities to identify their problems, the solutions to these problems and find the financial and
technical resources to implement them.
The concept of "empowerment" is also important: giving tools to grassroots communities in
order to increase their power to negotiate with other levels of decision making for the
implementation of their development choices.
That of "capacity building" is also important: increasing by training (management, planning,
technical skills) and experience (learning by doing) the capacity of the people to decide and
manage accordingly.
Other conditions of local development can be summarized as:
 Organization of groups from the lowest level to allow them to have a methodological
framework of animation, promotion, management of human resources.
 Proofreading of their community by the people themselves, through a participatory
knowledge.
And resources development passes through:
- Engaging groups in resource-generating job creating activities, anxious to preserve
natural resources, turned at collective interest.
- Creating partnerships to support and not to assist, from what communities want.
On the contrary, presenting the concept of local development ends with evaluation criteria for
local development;
 Micro-local level: quality of life, civic consciousness, forms of participation,
 Macro-local: new logical relationship among actors, forming a new mentality.
Community : decision, orientation,
strategic choice
MAITRED’OUVRAGE
Public Services :
norms, standards,
criteria
Insuring quality le
CONTRÔLE
NGO :
Implementation
agency
CDC

6. 6
This local development will have the effect of;
 Limiting the rural exodus and thus improve the planning effort.
 Educate elected officials to put themselves at the service of local development.
Partnership: it avoids the partitioning of actors. It has been shown that the strongest experiences
are those associated with state, local representatives, NGOs, local communities, local
government technicians, etc...
In terms of evolution, gradually as experiences accumulate and results are recorded, create new
ambitions, new actors are involved etc...
Local development often starts from spontaneous initiatives; actions based initially much more
on a willingness to mobilize for progress than on a scholarly planning.
The project in scholarly terms is not necessary at the beginning of local development dynamics,
but it is important that as progressively, development local initiatives are transformed into local
development initiatives, i.e., a consistent set of actions directed towards specific objectives.
Other elements are visible through some local development initiatives such as the totality of the
actions implemented, the consistency of actions, harmonious relationship with the environment
etc...
All these elements must be reinforced by appropriate tools. There are many tools for local
development: one can take as most relevant tools:
 Awareness raising, animation and training: they allow awakening consciousness.
Local stakeholders as well as external experts should become a community of views.
And external inputs must match the expectations of the local level. Often external
interventions based on sophisticated academic approaches do not find local
counterparts.
 Controls: exercised by the same actors, they allow the verification of the use of
resources in relation to the objectives jointly agreed upon at the outset. Training and
developing monitoring tools in the actor's hands, leads to transparency in management,
but also establishes a climate of confidence. The objective is always not to punish, but
to evaluate and improve management.
 The contractualization: the contract is a tool of transparency and clarity. It sets out the
roles and responsibilities of each actor. Once the contracts signed, the actors have their
hands free and will only reply to a posteriori control effectiveness.
 Diagnosis: actions to be taken should be based on the identification of beneficiary
needs and available resources,
 Self-financing effort: local actors broke with this low challenging practice of financing
actions taken solely by external means or be imposed on projects designed and funded
from outside. Strategies of self-promotion grow alongside private contributions; there
are also human investments and in-kind contributions.
The local development model presented above is based on finding an optimal space to conduct a
proactive "bottom-up "public action, and a self-management type reflection, that is to say in
search for an optimal space for conducting a "bottom up" development project related to social
mobilization.
This view is opposed to the "top-down " state vision (decisions are taken in high places without
consultation with affected communities) challenged for years by many local actors who consider

7. 7
the development of a territory must take into account the needs and aspirations of its inhabitants:
the development from below which is advocated by this model and summarizes the logic of
autonomy vis-à-vis decision-making centers, be they political or economic.
Local development is a social, cultural, economic movement, which tends to increase the well-
being of a society. It must start at the local level and spread to the upper level. It must enhance
the resources of a territory and groups who occupy the territory. It should be comprehensive and
multidimensional and thus recomposing sectoral logic.
Local development advocated by this model is characterized by a set of mutually consistent
actions involving local actors wishing to improve their living conditions on their territory.
These actions must be based on the use of local resources (soil, water, energy, and forestry, and
wildlife, climate, human, financial and organizational) and must be managed collectively through
decision-making involving the various categories of local actors.
In other words it consists of:
 a coherent set of actions, that is to say, not just a succession of micro-projects without
any real articulation, but a collective program of the community to make a difference by
performing actions based on a schema, or an overall vision.
 local actors intersect rural organizations, traditional and modern associations, private
operators, the elected representatives of municipalities, state officials, local authorities
Authorities and technical services can play a supporting role (midwife - which requires
a break with the culture of policing and taxation, but accompanying).
 the territory is an area of solidarity in which the people have a common story to which
they are attached collectively and individually.
It is a coherent space for various reasons: ecological, economic, cultural, political, and
linked to migration.
 the development of local resources involves human resources but also the
mobilization of technical, material, local financial resources that will help finance the
development being completed by external resources to the territory.
 local decision-making and management instances are composed of representatives of
the various categories of local actors who control more power exercised in the territory
This approach is consistent with the current policy of decentralization that wants to give more
freedom and responsibility to local communities.
LOCAL DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL
For those who advocate for visibility, impact and scope of their actions, this approach starting
from below seems with no future because its micro orientation limits its impact on the whole of
the national society.
A concern to which we respond with the possibility that there be established a network (a
constellation) of local communities that exchange experiences, mutually enriching each other
and positively contaminating themselves.
In other words, once a given community begins the process of local development, it does not do
so in solo, state technical agents and NGOs present will work so that it is followed by
communities surrounding and even accept that representatives from the latter be involved (as
observers-learners) into consultation and decision-making instances as an entry point in the
learning process through participation.
In our opinion, it is from this grass root level that basic peripheral state services and support
NGOs should learn to construct the set of methods and tools to support and facilitate such a
process at the bottom.
Successively intermediate state structures should then think about the necessary support to
provide to the latter to fulfill their role of midwifery facilitator of local development.

8. 8
Top-down approaches are still being blurred in their path without ever reaching the point of
landing-the-LOCAL COMMUNITY, local development departs from the sought point of
"completion".
This model does not want to spend more time on mutual exclusions between "Collectivism vs.
Individualism."
Conciliation between the two is in a perspective as follows;
In the DRC context, as in many other African countries, moreover, land is traditionally owned by
clans and tribes in other words communities, but under the influence of modernity, individual
land ownership, sometimes familial, has become the most common mode of "land tenure".
Production resulting from the operation of the individual and / or family plot of land is therefore
handled in the same way by the patriarch of the clan and / or the individual owner.
In some certain parts of DRC, it remains true that land transfer by sale remains unthinkable,
while land is still seen as a property of the living and the dead.
This is often a source of conflict between positive law on land management and customary rights
that persist.
This trend for more land private property should be encouraged without depriving communities
and solve land conflicts that grow in our communities and are now the source of wars and clan
and ethnic extermination.
The (solar hydrological, wind ... or LNG) energy source is a property and operation of the local
community and the benefits of which will be managed by the community through the structures
set up for this purpose and by using as much as possible internal human resources to the
community, trained and prepared well in advance for this purpose.
The transformation plant must also be owned and operated by the community.
Finances resulting from all these operations are both in the field of private property and the
community, to the extent that much of the fruit of his labor must be used to meet the basic, social
and relational needs of the producer.
But a percentage has to be allocated to the operation and maintenance of energy production and
processing plants which are community belongings.
An apportionment and allocation formula of these financial resources generated by the
community must be decided and agreed upon by all stakeholders in the EU process.
This is where the community structure of savings mobilization and financial intermediation to
which reference is made on point 5 of the model on the first page and whose fundamental
mission is to facilitate access to financial resources.
Pr. Chirume Mendo Aristarque.
Type/mode Production Energy Transformation Finances
Ownership Individual/
Family
Collective Collective individual/collective
Exploitation
Benefits
Individual/
Family
Individuals/
Families
collective
collective
Collective individual/collective
Collective Individuals/collective