Masihlumisane (let’s grow together) is a community based project in a small rural community of Glenmore situated to the south of the Great Fish River Nature Reserve (GFRNR) and half way between Grahamstown and Peddie in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. This rural community was established as a resettlement center during pre-1994 South African government forced removals (Hallett, 1994). Glenmore is economically and socially impoverished as there are few businesses, little economic activity and minimal social tradition in the settlement (Murray, 1989). This village is characterised by an out migration of people of an economically active age, high unemployment amongst residents, dysfunctional families due to parents living elsewhere in order to earn a living, and a youthful population desperate to obtain skills and experiences that will benefit them when they leave Glenmore in the future.

The decline of sustainable farming in the past twenty years in the villages of Amahlathi Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape Province is a cause for concern as this has resulted in reduced food security and increased levels of poverty and unemployment in the villages. As this decline continues to escalate even to date, this study was intended to investigate the role that could be played by the Dohne Agricultural Research Institute in the reduction of poverty through sustainable agricultural activities in these villages. Using a case study of Kubusi village in Amahlathi Local Municiplality, data was gathered through interviewing farming and non-farming households as well as the extension officer for Kubusi village and Dohne officials in order to understand the reasons for and the nature of the decline in farming activities in the villages. The study was conducted against the background of sustainable liveIihood (SL) theory. Important findings revealed that economic factors, primarily lack of money to buy fence and hire tractors to plough are primary causes for the decline, this followed by the effects of global warming and the lack of interest by the young generation to participate in crop farming. The study recommends that the government of the Eastern Cape should intervene through the Dohne Agricultural Research Institute in reskilling rural people in modern farming methods and assisting rural farmers with inputs, primarily fence, tractors and irrigation systems.

No description available.

Poverty alleviation by means of rural development has become a priority among developing countries. In turn, rural development may be significantly enhanced and supported by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), the use of which is highlighted by the emerging importance of information and knowledge as key strategic resources for social and economic development. An analysis of rural case studies where ICTs have been introduced, suggests that there are a number of barriers and constraints that are faced when taking advantage of these technologies. These include access to infrastructure, limited formal education, insufficient training and capacity building, financial and political constraints, and social and cultural challenges. These challenges threaten the success and sustainability of rural ICT projects. Sustainability is key to the effectiveness of a rural ICT project; therefore it is important to understand the concept and categories associated with ICT project sustainability in rural areas. The categories of sustainability which include social and cultural, institutional, economic, political, and technological, reveal critical success factors that need to be considered in the implementation and management of rural ICT projects. The project management discipline acknowledges the importance of understanding the project’s environment, particularly environmental factors associated with rural communities. The complexity of the environment therefore implies the need for a project to be undertaken in phases comprising the project life cycle. Project management practice for rural ICT project sustainability can therefore be examined, adapting the traditional project life cycle to a rural ICT project. A Rural ICT Project Life Cycle (RICT-PLC) that is sensitive to the critical success factors of sustainability is therefore proposed. In order to further investigate the phases of the life cycle of a rural ICT project, two case study investigations are explored: the Dwesa ICT community project, and the Rhodes University Mathematics Education Project (RUMEP) (MathsNet). A multiple case study analysis confirms the practices associated with the RICT-PLC model, and identifies additional characteristics, phases and practices associated with rural ICT projects. Finally, an enhanced RICT-PLC model is developed, that sets sustainability guidelines for ICT project management in rural areas and identifies the people, environments, technologies, systems, and requirements for ICTs to support rural development activities.

Rural development can be supported by information and knowledge which are key strategic resources for socio economic development. ICTs enable the facilitation and communication of information between remotely dispersed individuals or groups and more developed regions. While it has become common place that ICTs possess capabilities to potentially support rural development, the concept of ICT for development (ICT4D) is still fraught with challenges and barriers, which impede the success and sustainability of ICT4D projects. It is therefore essential to evaluate rural ICT projects, as such an analysis may aid in revealing information related to the need, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability of these projects. This research seeks to further the implementation and exploration of the Rural ICT Comprehensive Evaluation Framework (RICT-CEF), through the application of the Process Assessment domain in a real life rural ICT project environment. The RICT-CEF framework consisting of 7 evaluation domains has the primary objective of evaluating rural ICT projects from their inception stages to post implementation. A process assessment seeks to determine whether or not a rural ICT project is operating to implement its intended functions in the intended way specified in the projects plan. Such an assessment is invaluable to a comprehensive evaluation. Evaluation questions for a process assessment are centred around critical themes of project performance. Critical themes are aspects of a programme or projects implementation which must be enacted in order to achieve desired project outcomes. This research study is aimed at identifying critical themes of process assessment relevant to rural ICT4D projects. To identify critical themes, assessment approaches on social programme process assessments, evaluation of information systems in use, and rural ICT4D project evaluation case studies are comparatively analysed. Fourteen assessment approaches from these three categories are selected based on criteria. To analyse selected assessment approaches, a template is created based on the research questions, foundational literature on process assessment and identified challenges applicable to process assessments of rural ICT4D projects. Comparing and contrasting critical themes from these assessment approaches highlight critical themes essential to assess in the iterative implementation phase of rural ICT projects. Accentuated critical themes include, service utilization, organizational function and external project factors. These themes, along with suggested guiding principles from literature for conducting process assessments enable the creation of a framework for conducting process assessments of rural ICT projects. The framework is labelled "the Rural ICT Project Process Assessment Framework (RICTP-PAF)". The application of the RICTP-PAF in a real life rural ICT project through a design science case study provides lessons learned (suitability and shortcomings) from applying the framework. This essentially demonstrates the sensitivity of the RICTP-PAF to rural contexts in which it is implemented in. For instance, the implemented prototype of the RICTP-PAF reveals that the framework places a great deal of emphasis on rural beneficiary perspectives. A practice which has been lacking in such evaluation exercises. Furthermore, the guiding principles elucidated, bring to mind best practices to deal with issues such as stakeholder conflict, unreliable data elicitation and unethical assessment practices. The RICTP-PAF represents a fundamental tool for process assessments of rural ICT projects, and may be adopted and customized to various rural ICT project contexts in developing countries.

No description available.

D.Litt.et Phil. / The Chief Directorate: Population Development which is responsible for the implementation of the Population Development Programme and the Rural Foundation, regard the community development strategy as one of the most important means of improving the quality of life of the population and especially of the farm worker. Against the above-mentioned background this study firstly draws a comparison between the levels of development of Third World inhabitants, the Third World component in South Africa and farm workers. In this regard it is concluded that the level of development of farm workers corresponds with that of Third World inhabitants, and that they are even worse off than the rest of the third World component in South Africa. Secondly, the community development strategy, which forms part of South Africa's official development policy, is being evaluated with regard to other existing international development strategies. It is concluded that the community development strategy is a potentially useful tool for the furthering of development. Lastly, a synthesis is made between the theory and practice of the community development approach, within a suggested implementation model. The implementation model (see Diagrams 1 to 4) is developed incrementally in this study according to the following three schools of thought most commonly applied in practice: Endogenous initiative,where the community acts solely on its own initiative; Exogenous initiative, where the community's latent initiative is stimulated by an outside catalyst; and Concerted initiative, where the community does have its own initiative, but needs help from outside and consequently invites the help of (for instance) a community developer.

Thesis (M.Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2013 / The study was conducted to examine the impact of the implementation of the comprehensive rural development programme, President Zuma referred to it as the integrated rural develooment in is presidential inaugural speech in 2009. The researcher went to Muyexe village to conduct the research as well as to observe what took place. The researcher interviewed community members as well as community leadership who indicated how the community has been transformed to what it was, which they described a squalor living condition to what it is today, a community that meets the most basic needs required for sustainable livelihood. The people of Muyexe owe their changed fortunes to the government’s Comprehensive Rural Development Programme developed and coordinated by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform. Sector departments and other development agencies were mobilised to work together towards a common goal to improve the lives of rural people. The intervention brought numerous changes to the community of Muyexe village. The lives of the community has been improved, through the intervention the community now have access to health care, early child hood development centre, community multi community centre, and so forth. The community spoke fondly of the reduction in crime and the killings of their cattle by wild animals; the reduction is caused by the establishment of the police station and the fencing around of the village. Despite what had been achieved by the intervention, Government should regard what happened as an initial intervention to focus on meeting people’s basic needs, especially food security. The next step should be the entrepreneurial stage and large scale infrastructure development.

Thesis (M.Sc (Agricultural Economics)) --University of Limpopo, 2015 / Agriculture plays an important role in uplifting the economy of South Africa. Small-scale farmers in rural areas are linked with poverty and operate inefficiently due to over or under utilization of some of the factors of production. This study aimed at analysing the technical and allocative efficiency of small-scale maize farmers in Tzaneen municipality. The objectives of the study were: (i) To assess the level of technical and allocative efficiency of small-scale maize farmers in Tzaneen municipality, (ii) To identify socio-economic factors affecting the efficiency of small-scale maize farmers in Tzaneen municipality and (iii) to investigate the areas of improvement with regard to the operational management of the small-scale maize farmers in Tzaneen municipality. The study employed the Cobb-Douglas production function and the logistic regression model to analyse data. The Cobb-Douglas production function results revealed that small-scale maize farmers in Tzaneen municipality are technically efficient in the production of maize with the highest mean technical efficiency value of 0.71%. The study further revealed that farmers were allocatively inefficient with a mean allocative efficiency value of 0.39%. The logistic regression analysis revealed important variables such as the level of education (1.05), experience in farming (2.74), access to irrigation water (0.59), purchase of hybrid seed (0.74), access to credit (2.13) and extension visits (0.85) were positively significant towards the efficiency of farmers. Variables such as gender of the farmer (-1.79) and off-farm income (-2.72) were found to be negatively significant towards the efficiency of small-scale maize farmers in Tzaneen Municipality. The findings obtained in this study could be quite useful to policy makers. This study recommend that there is a need for more visits from the extension officers as well as training on inputs allocation, since variables like Seed (0.41), fertilizer (0.17), capital (0.71) and expenses (-0.204) were found to be inefficiently allocated in the production of maize. The provision of easy, quick and adequate credit deserves to be a top priority on the agenda of policy makers since most small-scale maize farmers in Tzaneen municipality does not receive off-farm income. Small-scale farmers in Tzaneen municipality also need to have access to enough arable land in order to increase production. Small-scale farmers in South Africa and other developing countries contribute to employment creation and food security in the households, therefore, it is important that government fully support such farmers.

This research is an evaluation of labour-based methods and techniques that are used in rural road construction and maintenance. The study places emphasis on the Zibambele rural road maintenance programme in Umbumbulu, which is based on a lengthmen (male or female) system. The research is an attempt to determine how strategies such as Zibambele can be used for the social and economic upliftment of impoverished rural areas as well as contribute to adequate road access for rural communities to address the legacy of apartheid, with special reference to the empowerment of women-headed households. Rural road networks in South Africa are underdeveloped and characterised by its poor state, lack of maintenance and lack of provision, thereby having little impact on the lives of the rural poor Black population. It is evident in the study that development and maintenance of physical infrastructure are keys to rapid economic growth and poverty reduction. The study examined the impacts of labour-based rural road maintenance on accessibility and poverty alleviation in the Umbumbulu community through the use of quantitative methods (specifically a questionnaire survey) and qualitative methods (specifically focus group discussions, ranking exercises, mental mapping and venn/ chapatti diagrams). The_findings of the study indicated that the Zibambele poverty alleviation and rural road maintenance programme impacted positively on the livelihoods of many women-headed households by providing an income, facilitating skills development, and improving their social environment. It was also determined that through the introduction of new programmes such as Zibambele, the transport infrastructure within a community and the quality of life immediately improves, thus alleviating many affects of poverty / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006.