Community development through empowerment

Community development in Nigeria 

Akassa: 

Community development through empowerment

Terseer adamu (Review)

StatoilHydro is supporting a community development project in Akassa in Nigeria to help abolish poverty and build local capacity.

Our long-term presence and success in Nigeria depends on the security, stability, development and growth of our own operations and the communities in which we operate. To this end, we have been supporting a community development project in Akassa in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta region since 1997, which entails substantial local involvement and participation in the planning and operation of the project.

The project supports the following five activities that are deemed to be essential to underpinning our licence to operate in the area and the broader region: the abolition of poverty, building local capacity, the environment, the infrastructure and institutional capacity development.

Why Akassa?

Our first contact with the community was in 1997. The Akassa clan was chosen because an Environmental Impact Assessment identified Akassa as the community most likely to be affected by any oil accidentally spilt from exploration wells in Statoil's offshore blocks 128 and 129 (previously OPLs 217 and 218) located in deep water off the coast of Nigeria.

Being aware of the conditions in the Niger Delta, we decided to adopt a new approach by using an innovative participatory development model. In accordance with our principles for sustainable community work, we partnered with the non-governmental charitable organisation Pro

- Pro

“Projects”

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Natura International, which initiated and facilitated the community development project.

Akassa is a remote coastal Ijaw community in the extreme south of Nigeria in the outer Niger Delta. The clan's 30,000 members are spread between 19 villages, are of Ijaw origin and speak the Akaha dialect.

Mainly fisher folk, most Akaha people live sandwiched between the salt water of the ocean and the brackish water of the world's largest mangrove swamps, on sand barrier islands that lie only 1.5 metres above sea level. There is no road system, no electricity supply and no clean drinking water.

The Akassa Model - a process

The Akassa model is a process that enables communities to plan together using participatory methodologies to produce a development plan that, in this case, involves all 19 communities. The process began by bringing all the communities together into a corporate community-based organisation called the Akassa Development Foundation (ADF).

Existing community groups such as youth, women, the Council of Chiefs and others send representatives to sit on the General Assembly of the ADF. Representation on the General Assembly is gender balanced. In this way, all stakeholders in Akassa have a voice and say in the management of the ADF. Additionally, all members of the General Assembly must be resident in Akassa to ensure decisions are made by those who are most marginalised geographically and politically and therefore most affected by poverty in Akassa Development Area.

New institutions have also been mobilised to meet the objectives of the development plan, including institutions for education, health, natural resource management and training and capacity building.

The ADF also has a Board of Trustees and is registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission, which ensures that the ADF is a legal and accountable institution.

The development plan

Each year, the ADF facilitates the adoption of a development plan for the Akassa Development Area, which should be in line with the Millennium Development Goals.

The plan ensures a range of projects spread across the development area through a prioritisation process. This process brings together representatives (a balance of men and women) from institutions and communities to decide which community projects shall have the highest priority.

It forces community members to think about the whole development area rather than just their own community, removing the potential for powerful so-called benefit captors to allocate funds to projects in their own community. This is an innovative approach to producing development plans for a geographical region.

The type of projects that are prioritised depends on the perceived needs in a given year, but projects generally fall into the following categories:

• Health facilities (identified by health institutions in Akassa)
• Educational support (identified by schools and PTAs in Akassa)
• Women in development projects (identified by women)
• Youth in development projects (identified by youth)
• Natural resource management programmes
• Micro credit schemes, capacity building programmes for various institutions including the Council of Chiefs, and infrastructure projects
• The development plan also has a budget attached. The budget includes recurring costs and capital costs to run the ADF secretariat.

Chosen projects are then implemented by the relevant institution affiliated to the ADF. Each institution must submit a technically correct, fundable proposal to the ADF outlining how it will implement the project. The ADF secretariat helps the institution to manage the project through Project Management Committees.

In the case of infrastructure, the Project Management Committee will put the work out to tender and assess both financial and technical aspects of the work. The Project Management Committee, with support from the ADF, then monitors the chosen contractor (normally a local artisan) who carries out the work.

Replicating the Akassa model across the Delta?

StatoilHydro believes this innovative approach can be replicated across the Niger Delta by applying the following lessons learned from Akassa:

• Partner with whole communities in line with political-administrative boundaries (in this case, we partnered with all the communities in the Akassa Development Area) rather than with host communities, which are exclusive and which will contribute to conflict.
• Establish a corporate community-based organisation (CBO), registered with Local and State Government initially and finally with the Corporate Affairs Commission. This is facilitated by NGOs, which can represent a whole development area in line with political-administrative boundaries. Multiple stakeholder support can then be found for the CBO.
• Promote a long-term process of Participatory Rural Appraisal and Development Planning
• Create a process for Development Plans to feed into Local and State Government planning to support bottom up planning and the Millennium Development Goals.
• Long-term capacity building to ensure communities develop competence in prioritising, planning, managing and monitoring development projects and programmes
• We believe this process is worth replicating. The process promotes community empowerment and increases local participation in decision-making. It ensures that even the most marginalised people can have a stake in development decisions and not just the powerful members of a community.

The process is transparent: ADF publishes accounts and expenditure reports monthly in the community and quarterly in local newspapers. Accounts are also audited annually by external auditors.

Decision-making is also transparent, and this enables community members to understand why certain projects were prioritised and why others were not. We believe this goes a long way to reducing conflict in a region where there is much mistrust and little confidence in decision makers. 

External recognition of the Akassa model

StatoilHydro Nigeria has received considerable praise for the Akassa project. In 2005, the project received the prestigious World Petroleum Congress Excellence Award in the Social Responsibility category and, in 2006, it received the CWC Excellence Award for Sustainable Development.

Key Achievements of the Akassa Development Foundation

Fundraising and advocacy: ADF is now taking further steps towards sustainability by advocating closer partnership with government. When ADF was formed, the communities were completely marginalised in relation to government and decision making processes. Now, through the capacity building programme, ADF and the Akassa community as a whole are more confident in approaching government for support for projects in their development plan. In particular:

• ADF has been successful in advocating support from State Government and its Honourable House of Assembly Member for roads in the Community Development Plan. In particular, the Government has supported the Kongho - Bekekiri Road.
• In addition to roads, the State Government has also supported other CDP projects, including: World Environment Day, the Youth Turtle Club Observation Centre and the Football Team.
• NDDC is supporting the Akassa Clan Women Association in building another school in Minibie. This work commenced in 2007 and was completed in 2008.
• ADF have provided training, through the "living university" for staff of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Affairs and NDDC Bayelsa Staff.
• The Ministry of Agriculture has made the micro-credit and savings system used by the ADF (the Akassa Savings Scheme) a central part of the Food and Security Programme for Bayelsa State.

• ADF also makes regular visits to government ministries to generate support for the activities identified in the Community Development Plan. The visits have increased in number in 2008. Before, it would not have had the confidence to do this. It takes the Development Plan to meetings as an advocacy tool, and it has built their confidence in negotiations.

Projects: ADF has continued to implement projects according to the Development Plan despite restrictions caused by security problems on the waterways. Apart from the road projects, ADF has also completed pier latrines for improved sanitation in remote communities, supported school renovations and even started constructing a Town Hall for the entire area. The Akassa Savings Scheme now has N 5.4 million in circulation, with loan repayments still very high.

source:
http://www.statoil.com/AnnualReport2008/en/Sustainability/Society/Pages/5-6-3-3-3_CommunityDevelopmentInNigeria.aspx