Community development paradigms: the Bhahumono age-grade perspective

Government-led socio-economic initiatives and infrastructural development have frequently fallen short in many developing economies, especially in rural areas. This persistent failure has resulted in widespread poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and limited access to essential services, forcing grassroots communities to adopt or re-engage with traditional mechanisms for sustainable development. The nine communities in the Bhahumono tribe share a comparable experiential trajectory. This qualitative case study, grounded in the place-building theory, examines how the age-grade system has been leveraged to mobilise financial resources for Indigenous community infrastructural projects in the face of civic misgovernance in post-colonial Africa, using Usumutong, one of the Bhahumono’s communities, as a reference point. The findings highlight the resilience of rural communities in devising self-sustaining development models and how critical it is to integrate Indigenous knowledge systems to achieve comprehensive and lasting socio-economic progress.