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Policy 5

RURAL LIVELIHOOD DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES: A CRITIC OF UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS ON POLICY REALITIES

Background
Many rural development initiatives and interventions of today are advocated on
the basis of their perceived prospects for improving rural livelihoods. However,
some of the explicit and implicit assumptions underlying these initiatives are not
entirely realistic and are often fraught with problems. To what extent are the
insights derived from such initiatives of practical relevance to the real challenges
of rural development planning?
This policy brief critically explores some of the controversial assumptions made in
the rural development initiatives. Its purpose is to forewarn African policy makers
and local development practitioners of the dangers of wholesome acceptance of
findings from externally conceived development initiatives without recognizing the
imperfect knowledge upon which they are premised.

Objectives and Methods
The policy brief is based on research work and case studies from dry areas of
Zimbabwe. Each contentious assumptions is presented in italics and systematically
discussed.

Implicit Assumptions in Development Initiatives
(a) Most development initiatives do not address the household aversion of risk:
Development initiatives make an implicit assumption that yield gains are more
important than risk management. By not addressing risk concerns of households,
for example it is often assumed that households accumulate cattle for managing
risk, but this is not supported by observations: rural households seldom sell cattle
to smooth hardships related to consumption and livelihood (Kundhlane, 2000).

(b) Households value Agroforestry products regardless of time taken to benefit from
them. In reality poor farmers tend to heavily discount future products (imposing as
much as 50% discount rate) and reward short-run benefits essential for survival
against livelihood insecurity of the present.

(c) Changing from present communal tenure to private tenure is an essential
prerequisite for development. The impacts of the present communal tenure on
livelihoods are not fully known due to many confounding issues. Similarly rural
livelihood outcomes likely to arise from an externally imposed private tenure
system are also uncertain. Institutional transformation arising from within and in
response to internal population pressure and apparent need for greater security
of tenure as land becomes scarce is more likely to produce superior livelihood
outcomes than externally premeditated tenure designs.

(d) Poor agricultural households have surplus labor and hence can readily adopt
such new ventures as Agroforestry: Development initiatives such as Agroforestry
inevitably impose labor demands on rural families which compete with current
productive and social engagements. The belief that initiatives such as
Agroforestry can be integrated without much displacement of current
economic activities is premised on the assumed presence of under-employed
surplus family labor.

In reality, most households suffer from labor bottlenecks during the
f arming season as well as the dry season. For example during the dry season,
Agroforestry management might compete with equally important livelihood
activities such as gathering of firewood, income-generating activities like
thatching, brick moulding, as well as repair and maintenance of the homestead.
Thus assuming presence of surplus labor when it in fact has a high opportunity
cost can render a promising development initiative infeasible. Development
projects must therefore bring to the family either innovations that save or
competitively reward family labor by improving productivity of the agricultural
and livelihood system.

(e) Livelihoods of the rural poor are improved primarily through development of
their poverty-stricken rural areas. Given that 75% of the rural population is
poor, the prospects for self-sustaining development in rural areas are slim.
Intensification, diversification and monetization of dryland rural agricultural
economies is most likely when driven by growth in the industrial urban
economy and not merely by growth in rural population densities as
suggested in some literature.

Rainfall variability translates to rural farm income uncertainty and livelihood
risks which have created income transfer linkages between rural and urban
economies. The volume and stability of remittances from urban workers are
driven by industrial growth and often agricultural and macroeconomic policies
which are more favourable to urban dwellers. African governments continue
to grapple with the policy trade-offs between industrialization and demands
for rural agriculture in development strategies.

Insights and Recommendations for Policy Makers
(a) Understand clearly the fundamental assumptions underlining each
development initiative vis-à-vis the real circumstances of farmers in the rural
areas.
(b) Interrogate sources of rural income and livelihood gains in terms of
sustainability and feasibility from the perspective of the resource-constrained
farmer.
(c) Realize the dynamic and diverse nature of rural livelihood sources and recognize
the sophistication and rationality of existing coping strategies of rural populations.
(d) Define an appropriate role for development initiatives in terms of increasing
livelihood options and alleviating constraints. The initiatives and policy makers
alike must fully recognize the sovereignty of the rural household in making the
challenging and risk-economizing decisions for optimal livelihood strategies for
themselves.
(e) Approach rural development as a learning and searching process in which no
initiative thus far has delivered the whole answer but perhaps only part of the
answer to the rural development challenge. Policy support must facilitate learning
from innovations and must therefore be flexible.
(f) Recognize that some innovations may appear to offer effective solutions to the
rural poverty and livelihood crisis under temporary risk-and cost-offsetting
arrangements of projects but may prove inferior and infeasible under real life
circumstances of the scaling-up phase of development.

Most development initiatives are just beginning to understand realities of the
challenges of rural livelihoods. Reflections from the Agroforestry: Southern
Africa studies confirm the immense complexities of rural development and
sophistication of existing livelihood strategies. Those initiatives that open
themselves to learning from field experiences and adjust their strategies in
line with changing realities become more relevant as dynamic policy tools for
relevant and timely policy insights for sustainable rural development.

References
1. Campbell et al (2002): Household Livelihoods in Semi-Arid Regions: Options
and Constraints, Center for International Forestry Research (book in press)
2. Kundhlande, G(2000a): “Risk and Insurance in Household economy: The
Role of Cattle as Buffer Stock” Pp42-74. In Economic behavior of Developing
Country Farm Households. PhD Thesis, Department of Rural Economy,
University of Alberta, Canada
3. Kundhlande, G (2000b): “Empirical Measures of Individual Rates of Time
Preferences: A Case Study of Communal Lands Households in Zimbabwe”,
pp 10-41 In Economic Behavior of Developing Country Farm Households.
PhD Thesis, Department of Rural Economy, University of Alberta, Canada
4. Kundhlande, G (2000c): “Examining Determinants of Evolutionary Changes
in Landholder Property Rights: Case Study of Communal Land Tenure in
Zimbabwe” Pp42-74. In Economic behavior of Developing Country Farm
Households. PhD Thesis, Department of Rural Economy, University of Alberta, Canada
5. Luckert, MK (2001) “Can We Be Engineers of Property Rights to Natural
Resources? Some Evidence of Difficulties from Rural Areas of Zimbabwe”,
2001 African Studies Quarterly. 5(3) [online]
URL: http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v5/v5i3a5.htm.
6. Zindi (2001): “ Incorporating Risk in Household Behavioral Models of Smallholder Agricultural Production”. PhD Thesis proposal. Department of Rural Economy, University of Alberta, Canada

Acknowledgements
The work was supported under: Agroforestry: Southern Africa Project (AFSA) A Canadian International Development Agency funded Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada Managed project.

For more information contact IES.