User:RedHead102/Rural development

The role of NGOs/non-profits in developing countries
Because decentralization policies made development problems the responsibility of local governments, it also opened the door for non-governmental organizations (NGOs), nonprofits, and other foreign actors to become more involved in the approach to these issues. For example, the elimination of statist approaches to development caused an exponential increase in the number of NGOs active in Africa, and additionally caused them to take on increasingly important roles. Consequently, nonprofits and NGOs are also greatly involved in the provisioning of needs in developing countries and they play an increasingly large role in supporting rural development.

These organizations are often criticized for taking over responsibilities that are traditionally carried out by the state, causing governments to become ineffective in handling these responsibilities over time. Within Africa, NGOs carry out the majority of sustainable building and construction through donor-funded, low-income housing projects. Furthermore, they are often faulted for being easily controlled by donor money and oriented to serve the needs of local elites above the rest of the population. As a result of this critique, many NGOs have started to include strategies in their projects that promote community participation.

Many scholars argue that NGOs are an insufficient solution to a lack of development leadership as a result of decentralization policies. Human rights expert Susan Dicklitch points to the historical context of colonialism, organization-specific limitations, and regime restraints as hindrances to the promises of NGOs. She notes that “NGOs are increasingly relegated to service provision and gap-filling activities by the retreating state, but those supportive functions are not matched with increased political efficacy”.

'''Conversely, however, several academic studies of the role played by NGOs in facilitating rural development projects have offered a more positive assessment of their results. For example, during the 1970s and 1980s, successive governments in India funded and heavily promoted local grassroots organizations whose core mission objective was improving the economic welfare of rural women. One such organization, the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), proved to be one of the most prolific. Based in the Indian state of Gujarat, SEWA is credited with having enhanced the economic productivity of working women, as well as increasing their bargaining power in the context of manager-worker relationships, through the use of both formal and informal village-level meeting programs. If anything, the experience of NGOs in India illustrates that decentralization processes, rather than burden or handicap their endeavors, have instead enabled them to successfully foster rural development through joint reliance on community participation and state funding.'''

'''Additionally, NGOs have shown themselves capable of acting as mediators between disadvantaged rural communities and government actors in what constitutes another consequence of decentralization. According to scholar Analiese Richard, who conducted extensive field research on NGOs operating in Mexico in the 1990s and early 2000s, "The ability of NGOs to negotiate with the state on behalf of particular groups, like poor farmers, was not the result of a unified state strategy...but came about as a result of the reduction of authoritarian capacity."  Nevertheless, Richard was careful to note that these NGOs continue to face obstacles, most notably inconsistent funding from international aid organizations for their development advocacy efforts.'''

Case Study: Rural development in China
'''Rural development initiatives in China suffered from many of the same problems in Uganda, at least in their initial stage. In the late 1970s, the Chinese government declared the eradication of poverty in hundreds of rural counties (hosting close to 80 million people) to be a national development goal and thus the government's financial ministry began extending relief loans to local county governments. However, corruption and mismanagement at the county level caused these loans to be diverted from educational and food security projects to industrial projects whose returning benefits only existed in the short-term.'''

'''Consequently, in 1993 the Chinese government launched the "Seven-Year Poverty Eradication Plan" with an end goal of eliminating rural poverty in the affected counties by the year 2000. As part of this updated initiative, the national government created the Agricultural Development Bank, a single policy bank designed to coordinate and monitor the extending of relief loans. Additionally, loans provided by the Bank were to be coupled with matching loans from regional and provincial governments. Thus, the Chinese government sought to combat the corruption and mismanagement that had plagued earlier poverty alleviation campaigns by enlisting the active participation of governmental entities at all levels, rather than passing the bulk of the duties and responsibilities to county governments.'''