Rural development programs have been around since the 1950s but the concept was brought to the…

Tracing the Origins of Rural Development

Rural development programs have been around since the 1950s but the concept was brought to the forefront of development in the 1970s by Robert McNamara, then President of the World Bank. During a speech to the Bank's Board of Governors in 1973 in Nairobi. The World Bank vigorously championed the cause of rural development in the 1970s defining rural development as "a strategy designed to improve the economic and social life of a specific group of people- the rural poor. It involves extending the benefits of development to the poorest among those who seek a livelihood in the rural areas. The group includes small-scale farmers, tenants and landless" (World Bank, 1975). This essay seeks to trace the origins of the concept of rural development bringing out the key proponents and theories involved with the approach since the 1950s. The 1950s and the 1960's are associated with modernization approaches emphasizing technology transfer, 1970's are associated with large scale state development interventions and integrated rural development programs, 1980's are associated with market liberalization and attempts to roll back the state 1990's are characterized as being strongly process focused with an emphasis on participation and empowerment within a context of diversifying rural livelihood opportunities. By the end of the 1990s a more balanced approach had started to emerge but there remained no agreement worldwide on how to get the right mix. The 2000's have a focus of poverty eradication, reinvigoration of small holder agriculture, sustainable farming systems and the location of producers within global value chains.

Starting in the 1950s, the key ideas informing approaches to rural development revolved around the need to modernize rural areas with the idea that the small scale subsistence sector had little potential for improved productivity or growth and that agriculture development could only be stimulated by investment in large scale monocrop estates and plantations. Community development approaches that aimed to mobilize rural communities for development were prevalent. According to Kwame Bar-Dommoh (2016) ,Much rural development thinking was premised on the notion of the need to change the work ethic of the small peasant whose 'backward attitudes' were regarded as the primary obstacle to rural development. The earliest interventions in the agricultural sectors in Africa focused on commodity, or "export crop" projects aimed to increase the production of export crops by smallholders, and were financed by European commercial companies, development corporations and/or national governments. In a climate of cold war with the Communist East, practical concern to promote growth in post-war Europe and the colonies and ex-colonies led to the emergence of an entirely different model of development.

It was based on the definition of development as economic growth that is, growth in national output, consumption and material living standards. Such growth would lead developing countries out of poverty and allow them to catch up with the developed world. Progress in this model was — and to a large extent, continues to be measured in terms of growth in per capita income/GDP, which, although not a perfect indicator, was, and is, the most widely available one. Development as economic growth was the earliest model in 'development theory', which in the 1950s was becoming a distinct body of academic research that was largely dominated by the work of economists and economic historians, such as W Arthur Lewis (1954) and Walt W Rostow (1960). Early development models reflected the belief that capital accumulation was the key to economic growth. Although the models of the 1950s and early 1960s varied in their analysis of precisely how growth in underdeveloped economies takes place, they were generally united in emphasising the need for large-scale investment in the modern sector.

The 1960s saw high expectations of the promise of technology with a focus on technology transfer focused on large scale, input intensive agriculture based on packages of higher yielding hybrid seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, mechanization and post-harvest technologies which came to be known as the Green Revolution in Asia. The period was also characterized by methods to try to get rural farmers to adopt new technologies and farming practices through stepped up efforts in agricultural extension. (Ellis and Biggs 2001) suggest that the approach to extension however largely ignored local and indigenous knowledge, farming systems and tenure arrangements and also targeted mostly men overlooking the fact that much agricultural work was done by women. There is need to understand that during this period, sociologists and political scientists from America in the 1960s responded to some of the weaknesses of early development models by developing the concept of modernization. They believed that traditional societies could be transformed structurally into modern societies through the active diffusion within developing countries of the modern values, institutions and technologies found in the developed countries. It is this structural transformation of society as a whole (its social as well as its economic dimensions) which constitutes 'development' in this model. Modernisation theory's goals could be achieved through education, technology transfer and technical assistance. Development policy has been, and remains, heavily influenced by this approach .

The decade also saw a re-evaluation of the contribution of small scale agriculture to economic growth with a number of people arguing that small scale agriculture could in fact be the engine for economic development in developing countries. Ellis and Biggs further highlight that farming systems research during this period began to portray small scale farmers as rational managers of risk and change rather than being "lazy" as they had hitherto been perceived. Towards the end of the decade however, there were beginning to be concerns raised about the success and sustainability of the 'green revolution' as well as concerns about its impact on smallholder farmers and on the environment. In Africa however it was apparent that, despite large investments in crop research and production (particularly the introduction of high yielding and fast-maturing varieties), there was little improvement in the productivity and incomes of the majority of subsistence and low-income farmers. World Bank (1975). Furthermore, there is evidence that developments in crop production in Africa had mainly been on export oriented crops and food crop production had not benefited as much and hence a number of families had been unable to gain acceptable livelihoods in the rural areas .World Bank (1970) . Some integrated rural development projects were therefore started in the late 1960s financed principally by donor agencies with autonomous project units and planned and implemented to a large extent by expatriates.

Going to the 1970s, evidence suggests that that despite more than a decade of rapid growth in underdeveloped countries, there had been little or no benefit to most of the poor who were being bypassed. Bar-Dommoh (2016) suggests that, A number of Africa's agricultural sectors were characterized as dual economy structures with the parallel operations of a relatively advanced export crop sector and a relatively backward subsistence sector. Development practitioners then proposed a shift of emphasis to ways in which resources could be transferred to poorer groups in society either by direct transfer or through targeted investments in agriculture, education and health that would increase the productive capacity, production and incomes of the poorer groups. Basic needs approach representing a shift of emphasis towards social services and transfer payments, designed to help the poor gained ascendancy. There is need to appreciate that Gunder Frank amongst other scholars challenged modernisation theory on the grounds that it ignored the external structural constraints to development that arose from the nature of the relationship between developed and developing countries.

Writing in what is called the 'structuralist' tradition, and heavily influenced by Marx, these writers accounted for under development in terms of an international system of political and economic structures which favoured certain countries or regions (the core) against others (the periphery). Dependency theory, as this became known, enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the 1970s, inspiring academic research and a concern for equitable development. Dependency theory can be seen broadly as the left wing challenge to a more right wing modernisation theory. It is also an alternative theory of development, in which the key to development involves altering international political and economic structures. As part of this process, this period was also characterized by large scale, complex, state led, top down, blueprint approaches to rural development. These placed emphasis on the development of interlocking national policies and institutions to guide and regulate development planning and support, generally referred to as integrated rural development projects. The World Bank (2007) highlights that during the period , most policies were state driven and farmers got a lot of support for extension, input supply, and for marketing of outputs. These were provided through parastatals in the form of controlled floor prices and subsidized inputs which protected local producers and stimulated production. Extension services during this period continued to be provided by the parastatals or other government agencies, but now started to incorporate new approaches which were more gender sensitive and which built on local knowledge. Robert Chambers (1989) claims that the top-down approach to setting agendas and developing agricultural technology, traditionally practised by the international research and development community, simply does not benefit the poor farmer. One of the arguments against this model of agricultural development is that the conditions that poor farmers operate within put limits on the extent to which they can benefit from the transfer of modern technologies, such as those associated with the green revolution.

The 1980s saw the advent of the international debt crisis caused by the steep oil price rise of the 1970s.Another school of thought rose to prominence, again led by economists. Neo-liberalism, as it has been called, promoted the free market and reduced government intervention as the agent of development. This marked a radical shift in thinking away from the notion of state-led intervention, and it proved massively influential in policy-making during the 1980s and 1990s. It justified itself, in part, on the grounds of corruption within the state institutions of many developing countries which clearly did not have development interests at their heart. However, it was also to a large extent ideologically inspired, reflecting the pro-market and small government philosophy of the New Right, and driven by the vision of unified global capitalism. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank played a central role in promoting neo-liberal policies in developing countries. This was largely due to the 1980s debt crisis in which many developing countries found themselves unable to meet their international debt obligations and were struggling to finance essential imports This forced developing countries to increase the levels of their borrowing with very dim prospects for repayment. International development agencies led by the Bretton Woods Institutions (International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WP)) introduced the structural adjustment programs. The WB shifted the bulk of its lending to focus on stabilization and to support economic and structural reforms. These reforms, based on deregulation, liberalization and fiscal discipline, were designed to engineer a policy environment which would be conducive to the private sector, economic growth and development. The SAPs advocated the progressive removal of price and wage controls and the reduction in government expenditure on social services. This led to a shrinking state in development especially in Africa with very significant impact on Government involvement in rural development. The structural reforms led to the dismantling of a large number of parastatals and marketing agencies, input subsidies were cut, and the hitherto free extension services were scaled down or became subject to cost recovery.

In general the SAPs had a devastating impact on the integrated rural development programs and came with high social costs. In spite of these major shortfall however, the SAPs pro-poor impact appears to have been positive. A World Bank OED study (OED Précis 1995) concludes that "countries that successfully implemented the adjustment policies agreed with the Bank achieved growth in per capita income and reduced the proportion of their populations in poverty". Other development approaches that emerged during the 1980s included: the emergence of non-state actors such as international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as important actors in rural development in the context of a shrinking state; emphasis on participatory approaches and an increasing awareness of the value of indigenous technical knowledge; research on mixed farming systems to better understand the interdependence and complexity of the different programs farmers were involved in. Gender and development emerged as an alternative to the women-in development approach in the previous decade. In this period, drought in Africa was perceived to be a primary cause of food insecurity and this led to new interventions to promote drought mitigation, natural resource management, and household food security. It was also during this decade that the issue of environment was reframed from purely ecological dimensions to a more holistic, if vague, concept of sustainable development.

The 1990s was still subsumed under the structural adjustment programs which peaked during this period. There was a strong focus on institutions and public sector management in the 1990s, and the notion of good governance in the management of public resources was introduced in the allocation of aid resources. The failure of agricultural credit schemes as part of earlier integrated rural development and even as stand-alone operations in the 1970s and 1980s and the perceived success of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh led to a global reappraisal of microcredit schemes to help in poverty alleviation. The approach that relied on mutual trust between group members led to the introduction of mutualist credit schemes in several countries accompanied by voluntary or compulsory savings programs. The 1990s also saw a heavy emphasis on agricultural policy reform. A number of adjustment operations were funded by donors, led by the World Bank that sought to get Governments to move away from public production and state administration to adopt policies that would supposedly promote private sector replacement for the withdrawing Government. Unfortunately this did not happen as envisaged in Africa. As world-wide calls for debt forgiveness for poor countries increased during the second half of the decade, the World Bank and the IMF introduced Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) as a new framework to enhance domestic accountability for poverty reduction reform efforts and a means of ensuring that resources freed through debt reduction would be used to support.

The period starting around the year 2000 had a strong focus on the millennium development goals (MDG) with the start of the decade marked by the dominance of broader livelihoods approaches. The sustainable livelihoods (SL) approach led by institutions such as IFAD, DFID, and other bilateral challenged fundamentally single-sector approaches to solving complex rural development problems and recognized the different livelihood sources of the poor, including agriculture, wage employment, farm labour, small-scale enterprise, and highlighted shocks and stresses which impact on these livelihood sources and the enabling factors which enhance them. Most donors subscribed to the objectives of the MDGs and the key aim to halve extreme poverty in all its forms by 2015 .The Millennium Development Goals have much in common with the basic needs approach, and the challenge of how to meet the basic needs of the poor remains as urgent as ever. As with basic needs in the 1970s, achieving the MDGs is seen by many to depend at least in part on aid from rich countries. 2005 was a year in which aid and the MDGs gained a particularly high international profile, and spurred on by the United Nations's Millennium Development Project and the much-publicised 'Make Poverty History' campaign, rich countries committed themselves to substantial increases in development aid. The key approach to rural development was governed then by the Millennium Development Goals, country ownership and good governance, considered as a new approach to lending and aid agreements. (Bebbington 1999). From this perspective therefore, aid effectiveness would require that recipient countries be able to develop a coherent rural development vision and build the institutions capable of supporting and/or implementing this vision. The good governance approach of the 2000s has been accompanied by calls for decentralization, aimed at strengthening local institutions, improving the quality of local decision making, incorporating local knowledge in project/program design and implementation, and improving accountability. Since about 1990, decentralization has advanced in Africa with many African central governments initiating and deepening processes to transfer authority, power, responsibilities, and resources to sub-national levels. A 2010 USAID study confirms other studies that the key problem that decentralization has faced in practice is that political and administrative decentralization has not been accompanied by fiscal decentralization.

The Report also concludes that sub-national autonomy remains quite restricted by several top-down forces, especially the control exercised by state authorities. While the decentralization process requires new representative institutions at the local level with powers to make and implement meaningful decisions, they have not and will not be successful unless adequate provision is made to finance the devolved or decentralized responsibilities. Another major evolution in the new millennium is the introduction of the notion of Sector Wide development approaches (SWA) to agriculture and rural development. This has been preferred by donors as a natural evolution from the Paris declaration and based on shifts in donor thinking emphasizing the importance of 'country ownership' of donor-financed programs. The focus on sectoral approaches has however been limited by the absence of effective institutions in the recipient countries, and the ability of the approach to deal effectively with the cross sectoral nature of rural development. To be successful the sector program should have six clear components: (i) a clear sector policy and strategy; (ii) a sectoral medium term expenditure program, based on a comprehensive action plan; (iii) a performance monitoring system; (iv) a formalized process of donor co-ordination; (v) an agreed process for moving towards harmonized systems for reporting, budgeting, financial management and procurement; and (vi) a systematic mechanism of consultation with clients and beneficiaries of government services and with non-government providers of those services. (HLSP Institute, 2005).

Other issues that have come to the fore in the 2000s include social protection that seeks to help people to manage risk and vulnerability and to enable the very poor to share in the benefits of economic growth since many will not be reached by "trickle-down" of growth. While poverty eradication has been part of the emphasis on rural development over time, the UN through the MDGs, set the target to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty by one half by 2015 as MDG number one. Linked with this MDG, was the reinvigoration of smallholder agriculture, which once again attained prominence, on the assumption that improving the productivity of agriculture in general and the competitiveness of smallholders and marginalized groups as well as by creating employment among poor rural people and making food available to consumers everywhere, can make a meaningful impact on poverty. There have been increasing discussion on the use of ICT (Information, Communication and Technology) on promoting pro-poor development. There has been an increasing awareness of the impact of climate change and its impacts on poor and vulnerable households and discussions on the consequences of a globalizing agriculture and fair trade. This period also saw the African Union, in conjunction with the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), develop the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Program (CAADP) through which African heads of state committed to increase spending on agriculture (from levels generally less than 4 percent of public budgets to 10 percent).

A healthy and dynamic agricultural sector is an important foundation of rural development, generating strong linkages to other economic sectors. Rural livelihoods are enhanced through effective participation of rural people and rural communities in the management of their own social, economic and environmental objectives by empowering people in rural areas, particularly women and youth, including through organizations such as local cooperatives and by applying the bottom-up approach.(Scoones 1996) highlights that close economic integration of rural areas with neighbouring urban areas and the creation of rural off-farm employment can narrow rural-urban disparities, expand opportunities and encourage the retention of skilled people, including youth, in rural areas. There is considerable potential for rural job creation not only in farming, agro processing and rural industry but also in building rural infrastructure, in the sustainable management of natural resources, waste and residues. Rural communities in developing countries are still faced with challenges related to access to basic services, economic opportunities and some degree of incoherence with regard to planning related to rural-urban divide. Investments in environmental protection, rural infrastructure and in rural health and education are critical to sustainable rural development and can enhance national well-being. Beyond meeting basic needs, investments must be linked to the potential to raise productivity and income.

To conclude, it can be noted that governments and donors saw rural development as a strategy to improve the economic and social life of people in the rural areas, specifically the rural poor. Rural development has therefore been expected to extend the benefits of development to all those seeking a livelihood in rural areas including smallholders, tenants and the landless. Since rural development's basic intention is to reduce poverty and to strengthen human wellbeing in rural areas, it must clearly be designed not only to promote production and raise productivity to increase food availability and incomes, but also to improve basic services such as health and education as well as infrastructure. The concept of a rural development program therefore is seen as extending beyond any particular activity or single sector. A program of rural development, whether at the area, regional or national level is expected to include a mix of activities including projects or programs to increase agricultural productivity and production, provide employment, improve health, education and infrastructure, expand communications and improve housing.

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