Abstract
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Many African governments no longer provide many services expected of them, due to political and economic events, resulting in functions being devolved to local governments and civil society groups. Under decentralization, Chadians can capitalize on potentials and avoid the dangers by acquiring resources and capacities to manage local-level development functions. Skills needed for development, however, are in short supply, due to historical deficiencies of the educational system in Chad. Unless new ways are found to cultivate competencies of civil society actors, it is unlikely that decentralization will bring benefits or become more than a bail-out of central authority. Capacity building, through nonformal education and training programs, invests in Africa's people, to develop skills needed for local and national development. The approach to research was to analyze the context of the problem situation facing Chad---i.e., lack of capacity to capitalize on economic and political decentralization; to identify and examine alternate strategies for capacity building implemented in Africa; and by analysis, to recommend the approaches that seem likely to promote local capacity development in Chad. The methodology employed was policy research, within a case study framework, with several phases that included: grey literature review; interviews with key informants; and preliminary data analysis disseminated to stakeholders for review ("ground truthing"). Within-case sampling used "snowball" strategies to identify local stakeholder groups in Africa and choose participants from each group for interviews. The key to data analysis was identifying alternative local capacity building (LCB) strategies in Africa, through selected cases in Chad, Mali and Senegal, and then proposing possible approaches for LCB. Worldwide movements for greater participation in political decision making, transparency, accountability, etc., all have local-level counterparts in the grassroots mobilization efforts of NGOs and partner community-based organizations (CBOs). The groups studied for this research---e.g., CEFOD (in Chad), Kafo Jiginew (in Mali), and Popenguine (in Senegal)---all provided exemplary experiences within the spectrum of collaborations between international donor groups, NGOs and CBOs. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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