Community-driven development decision tools for rural - IFAD

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Dealing with excess demandThese partnership conditions often meet with resistance. Community spokesmen try to bargain forreducing or eliminating the effort required from them on the grounds that they do not have theresources, particularly cash. This claim is often supported by government and PCU staff. It isimportant to resist claims that may stem from the desire of government or project staff to retain thepower of selecting beneficiary communities in a subjective way rather than through a system basedon objective criteria which significantly cuts opportunities for rent-seeking and patronage.As long as the effective demand of eligible communities that are ready to pay their partnership feeexceeds the capacity of the project to supply, giving in to these requests for bargains would lead to aninequitable use of project funds. Doing so would create unjustified privileged positions and wouldreduce the resources available for serving equally poor communities that show stakeholders’commitment and understand the concept of partnership.Insisting upon a cash down payment generally reduces the effective demand from the level itwould be if based purely on “felt needs”. Nevertheless, the effective demand may still be in excess ofavailable resources. This can be a welcome result that sets in motion a number of favorabledynamics. For an external donor, it would accelerate disbursement of its own commitment in thearea. For the service providers that assist the communities, it would generate pressure to seekadditional funding from private donors and other development agencies. Government may be hardpressed to come up with incremental local counterpart funds to match the accelerated disbursementof external loans. However, this may not be a serious problem in very poor countries, particularly inAfrica, where the government contribution is often only the forfeited tax revenue on projectexpenditure. In less poor countries, where government is committed to invest some real resources inCDD projects, the political pressure that will result may help shift resources from lower priorityservices or increase revenue collection.Deepening the focus within a poor community:exclusion vs. non-exclusionAnother question is whether targeting poor communities is sufficient, or whether targeting should beextended to specific social strata within a community. The conventional interpretation of IFAD’smandate is that specific social strata should be targeted, which raises the related question of whoshould be excluded and of how to deal with exclusion.If a group were to be excluded, it would be the community elite, which consists of relativelywealthy households that are not part of IFAD’s target group. The concern is that these people mayinfluence community decisions about development priorities in such a way as to obtain adisproportionate share of project benefits for themselves and that their role would tend to excludemarginalized social strata (e.g. women, youth, landless) from decisions regarding developmentaffairs. The issue has different connotations depending on the type of development activities theproject supports. However, excluding the dominant group from the project will generally havenegative effects on the community’s response and on its social cohesion.Many IFAD CDD projects are designed using non-exclusion principles, in an attempt to mobilizethe dominant elite’s potentially positive role in the community. To reach the desired social stratawithin the community, self-targeting mechanisms aimed at proactive inclusiveness are used.Experience in Western Africa shows that non-exclusion helps mobilize people and facilitates theformation and operation of CBOs. The importance of beneficiaries’ involvement in project designand execution is well highlighted by the 2006 IFAD “Annual Report on Project Result and Impact”,which states that the highest project performance was recorded in a CDD project in Colombia, wherebeneficiaries’ participation was very active. The worst performance was in Mali, where beneficiaries’participation was marginal.27
Risk of elite captureNon-exclusion carries the risk of elite capture of project benefits. CDD projects may be subject toseveral types of elite capture:• elite capture at the community level;• elite capture by project bureaucrats and service providers;• elite capture by local, professional, political intermediaries.Elite capture at the community level can be defined as either1. the appropriation, by people who enjoy a dominant position in a community, of a share ofthe benefits of a collective action significantly larger than their contribution to the collectiveaction; or2. the exclusion of collective actions from expressed community preferences that are specificallyor particularly beneficial to the poor members of the community.The risk of elite capture at the community level is generally low when community preferences are forprojects that generate non-privatizable benefits (i.e. the “public goods”). On the other hand, the riskis real with community preferences for projects that produce private goods, since dominant membersmay become rent seekers, excluding the poor from project support or minimizing benefits to poormembers if they cannot be excluded.The probability of elite capture of benefits at the community level does not necessarily increasewith local economic inequality. The capacity of the poor within a heterogeneous community to buildtheir own social capital is an important factor that can balance the influence of dominant groups andcounter a potential tendency for elite dominance to capture benefits. Whether this will occur is thecentral bet of all pro-poor community development projects. Success will depend on the effectivenessof the measures of external support for the poor.It is necessary to determine what constitutes an acceptable level of elite dominance; that is, what isthe “fair” share of project benefits that remunerates the elite for their function in facilitating projectactivities, beyond which elite capture occurs. IFAD CDD projects should decide what would signalunacceptable levels of elite dominance and undue capture of benefits and install the mechanismsrequired to record such signals so that corrective action can be taken in time.To determine the existence and impact of elite capture that may result from a village managementgroup’s role in handling community microprojects, 383 interviews were conducted with the ruralvillagers targeted by IFAD CDD projects in Mali, Mauritania, Guinea Conakry and Cape Verde.Box 15Subtle forms of elite capture at thecommunity levelThere are many ways in which dominantfamilies can turn external support to theiradvantage. An interesting example of how aproject can generate rent positions withoutintending to do so is the land tenure issue inswamp land reclaimed for irrigation.The traditional institutions of rural Western andCentral Africa attribute a right of use on part ofthe reclaimed land to those who provide thelabor for the reclamation. The balance of theland is confirmed to the family originally entitledto use of the swamp, invariably a wealthyfamily with a consistent herd of cattle.However, the land use rights acquired throughsupplying labor are lost if the labor is actuallypaid for in cash.Project managers’ failure to properly work withthe traditional institutions led to theexpropriation of the labor rights by the familiesoriginally in control of the swamp. Underpressure to disburse funds for swampreclamation, project managers decided to paycash wages to the laborers, ignoring thepossibility that unwillingness to work wascaused by disagreements about land allocationbetween rich and poor villagers.28
Page 1 and 2: Community-driven developmentdecisio
Page 3 and 4: The opinions expressed in this publ
Page 5 and 6: PART B. CDD PROJECT DESIGN DECISION
Page 8: ForewordThe CDD Decision Tools is t
Page 11 and 12: What is CDD?A definition of communi
Page 13 and 14: mechanisms on a list of priority ne
Page 15 and 16: Figure 1Example of decision tree on
Page 17 and 18: ICDD’s emphasis on communitiesand
Page 19 and 20: The answer to the second question i
Page 21 and 22: IICDD and local governanceDefinitio
Page 23 and 24: communities and local governance in
Page 25 and 26: IIIPoverty focus of CDDIFAD’s spe
Page 27: The way that partnership is negotia
Page 31 and 32: Elite capture by local, professiona
Page 33 and 34: Box 17Lessons learned about targeti
Page 35: Poverty and poor resilience against
Page 38 and 39: espect. For the political setting t
Page 40 and 41: IFAD’s CDD projects do not need g
Page 42 and 43: domain of a community or a small cl
Page 44 and 45: Government procedures andprocesses
Page 46 and 47: Part B.CDD project design decisions
Page 48 and 49: To link community development and t
Page 50 and 51: CDD and production and marketing in
Page 52 and 53: Table 2Degrees of CDD in rural fina
Page 54 and 55: Partnership issues in CDD projectsV
Page 56 and 57: eduction when there is government d
Page 58 and 59: The government ideally should inclu
Page 60 and 61: the CBOs (i.e. VDCs and different t
Page 62 and 63: territory that may include several
Page 64 and 65: Implementation arrangementsfor CDD
Page 68 and 69: • conformance with conditions imp
Page 70 and 71: A larger CDD content is achieved by
Page 72 and 73: Sustainable arrangements tofinance
Page 74 and 75: contribution to building a sustaina
Page 76 and 77: Financing projects through CSOs of
Page 78 and 79:
Managing CDD projectsXIMost common
Page 80 and 81:
Managing expectations about paceDur
Page 82 and 83:
management. In many cases, the meth
Page 84:
political or project management int
Page 87 and 88:
A note on fiscal decentralization1.
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to use the money in the way it deci
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Appendix 291
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targeting around 30 per cent of the
Page 96 and 97:
In both Mali and Guinea, the interv
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25. Mansuri, G.; Vijayendra Rao. 20
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CONTACTSMohamed ManssouriCountry Pr
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Community-driven development decision tools for rural - IFAD

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