What do communities feel about community-driven development? Learning from investigations in rural Malawi

Calls for bottom-up or community-driven development initiatives have been justified on the grounds that, compared to outsiders, rural communities are in better positions to determine their own priorities, utilize resources effectively, and underwrite benefits sustainably. But are communities in poorer parts of the world able and willing to take on these responsibilities? Or is the project an outsider’s aspiration? We, a mixed team of scholars and practitioners, inquire about these questions within nine rural Malawi communities, finding that community leaders share sophisticated understandings of what community-led development entails, and they consider it the only viable mode of local development – “orphan projects” result when outsiders manage local development. Communities aspire to become self-developing communities by building stronger local institutions and gaining technical and managerial capacities. Commonly, community groups asked for outside assistance to help with capacity building, including the capacity for evaluation and self-assessment.