Africans communicate in a circular way

[Ditshego]

My sister, Nyeleti works for an NGO that specialises in water resources management. She works with communities in Limpopo and Mpumalanga. She once shared with me that her experience is that Africans communicate in circular way as opposed to a linear manner. Click here for the difference between linear and circular models of....

The point she was making was that often development practitioners have a tendency of going to rural communities with flip charts, finalised agendas with items such as opening, introduction etc. She gave an example that if you are in a village and you ask people to introduce themselves, often there will be one person who will start by elaborating on issues of concern to them. This can be an old man who tells you about the dying of his livestock due to drought in the community.

She was emphasising that as a development practitioner, your challenge will be finding the message that the communicator wants to send accross with his story.

My respond to her was that I think the challenge faced by development practitioners is to acknowledge the role of community members as equal partners during the communication process. The practitioner who does not see herself or himself as an equal partner would probably dismiss the old man, telling him to stick to the agenda.

What do you think?

[Mpho]

This matter is interesting. How can a development practitioner start seeing himself/herself as an equal partner with a local community with all his/her education. This an intersting local case my the dynamics play themself at a global level too. Do IMF experts listen careful to local people when they want to bail a country from economic quagmire? The answer is a simple no? This is based on the fact that the power between these partners is so heavily skewed to the one coming with some "help" for the local and ofetn illiterate folks. The fact is that developers have an implicit arrogant attitude based on the fact that they see themselves as the messiahs for local communities. In fact there is an assumption that local people cannot do much for themselves forgetting the fact that the development issues that developers want to engage with are issues that local folks engage with on a daily basis. This view is not aimed at undermining the significance of independent ideas brought by the developer. But the fact remains: There must be synergy between the developer and the ocal community if sustainable development is the goal.

By the way, New African magazine once noted that there is no country that has got assistance from the IMF that has managed to get itself out of its economic woes with its highly esteemed expertise. The examples in Africa are many, i.e. Ghana, etc. Is this not something to ponder in the local community - developer relationship debate?

[Ditshego]

Unfortunately, reality points out that development practitioners fail to listen to local people as they consider themselves to be experts. Prof. Chris Kamlongera, Director of the SADC Centre for communication for development shared a case study of an international organisation that was based in Zimbabwe, aiming to improve mealies that was produced by farmers. He indicated that scientist spend years in laboratory trying to come up with the best solution. Their challenge was that none of their interventions worked as the women ignored the new product. In the laboratory there was a man who worked as a lab assistant. One day he suggested to the expert that, why don't we go out to the village to find out what type of mealies do they want? Luckily the experts agreed. The man went out to the village to interview women and find out why they don't use the new mealies that is provided to them for free. The women told the lab assistant that we want mealies that we can be able to pound. The lab assistant went back to the experts with the findings. Based on the findings the experts were able to come up with a product that could be pounded by the women. The case study was publicised as one of the best practices, but guess what the lab assistant did not get the credit.

Development and arrogance don't go hand in hand. We need development practitioners who will be able to listen to the locals and appreciate that knowledge does exist in communities.