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.

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.

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.

The objective of this study is to explore the role of aspirations on changing livelihood strategies of rural households of Ndabakazi villages in the Eastern Cape. A sample of 80 respondents was chosen randomly for the household survey and semi-structured questionnaires were used to collect the data. Focus group discussions were also used to supplement the household survey. The data was descriptively analysed using a triangulation method. The findings show that social grants, mainly pensions and non-farm employment, and child support grants are the major sources of income. The majority of the households own five hectares of land and more, in which they grow crops only in gardens adjacent to their homes. However, 29 percent do not produce any crops at all. Farming contributes a small portion to the household income. The choice of farming is more powerful than the external factors. Interest in farming is minimal and can be related to the declining farming activities; therefore, household aspirations have an influence on changing livelihood aspirations. In the case of the rural areas of Ndabakazi – as indeed in many other parts of South Africa - policies of rural development mostly take a top-down approach; as a result most of these policies do not become effective in achieving the intended outcome. Development practitioners should incorporate beneficiaries when planning so as to tailor the development initiatives with the aspirations of local people for them to be effect and achieve intended goals thus a bottom-up approach. The notion that rural household farming activities have declined because they lack inputs, farming implements other necessary support is not always true. Some households are not interested in farming and they cannot be forced.

This study, evaluating income generating projects was conducted on four projects, of which two are in Middleburg that is forming part of Inxuba Yethemba Local Municipality and another two are in Hofmeyer that is forming part of Tsolwana Local Municipality. Both these municipalities are in Chris Hani District Municipality in the Eastern Cape Province. Two of these projects are bakery projects and the other two are poultry projects. The study was explorative in nature as it was aimed at finding the reasons for the non-sustainability of income generating projects in this district municipality. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were applied. Both the explanatory and a multigroup post-test-only design research designs were used when conducting this study. This was due to the fact that the researcher was interested in evaluating income generating projects with the aim of finding out what leads to their failure, and also of finding out how can they be assisted to be able to sustain themselves. Five respondents from each project were willing to take part in the study and this led to a total of 20 respondents who participated through answering questions that were asked to them by the interviewers guided by the questionnaire which is appendix A of the paper. The results of the study indicated the following factors as the ones that are contributing to the non sustainability of income generating projects: Lack of market for the products; Lack of passion to volunteer from project members; Unnatural causes like storms, that ended up delaying the implementation of the projects; Minimal support from communities by buying their products mostly on credit or not abiding by credit terms when credit is given; Non payment of the project members; Lack of transport for the projects to transport their products to market. The key recommendation that was made was that another study needs to be conducted to verify as to whether these findings can be generalised to other projects in the same district. Additional recommendations are that project members need to be skilled on an ongoing basis, the funders should avail funding for the payment of the beneficiaries, beneficiaries need to be encouraged to volunteer and participate in all the activities of the project, all stakeholders need to ensure the availability of resources before the projects are implemented, and the projects need to have project committees that are made of knowledgeable people who are committed in seeing to it that the projects are sustained.

The fight against poverty is one of South African government priorities and challenges. Despite the large amounts of funds donated by government to poverty alleviation in South Africa almost half of the population still continue to live below the poverty line. There have been many government interventions towards projects. These projects are established in an effort to reduce poverty. However, most of these projects have had a minimal impact on the poverty level of the country. In this study, the researcher illustrated the impact of community development projects on poverty alleviation in Lubala village in Ingquza Hill Local municipality. The research methodology for the study is descriptive, sourced from available literature.

The problem that is researched relates to the tendency of rural people to abandon agriculture in favour of wage employment and non-agricultural informal activities, and the existence of large areas of underutilized arable land in rural communities. This study explored the specific role of agriculture in the rural communities. The need to improve the quality of life of rural households through the promotion of agriculture and industry gave rise to the implementation of the Siyazondla Homestead Food Production Programme. In this strategy it is envisaged that vibrant, equitable and sustainable rural communities and food security for all will be achieved. The main research question underpinning this study relates to the role of rural agriculture in Nkwalini-Bafazi in meeting the set objectives of the project; such as improving household food security; equipping farmers with necessary skills in order to promote agricultural productivity. The research question can further be captured in these two queries: i) other than the reasons already known for the decline of agriculture in rural areas of South Africa (e.g poor extension services, poor soils, lack of market and so forth); what other fundamental reasons may be there for the poor performance of agricultural production in the communal areas? ii) What role, positive or negative has the government and its agencies played in respect to agricultural development in communal areas. The study, through qualitative methodology, sampled households in Nkwalini-Bafazi who are part of the Siyazondla Food Production Programme. The study investigated the role of agriculture in improving the livelihoods of rural people; and what strategies are required to promote agriculture so as to make contributions for future policy directions. Although this programme has been successfully initiated, from the findings of the study it is evident that beneficiaries are facing many challenges. It is crucial for the South African government to implement mechanisms to ensure that farmers will obtain incentives for farming activities, promotion of food security and rural local economic development, in order to redress the imbalances of the former apartheid regime.

Traditional methods of providing public services to disadvantaged rural communities in South Africa have, over the years, proven to be inefficient and in most such communities, simply non-existent. Although the South African government has taken initiatives to make these public services cheaply and conveniently available online at national level, access at local municipal level is still lacking. The goal of this study is to develop a cost-effective e-government system that will contribute to improved provision of public services to the Dwesa area, a rural community in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, by the government. A prototype construction approach was used, to develop a cost-effective four-modular web application. Interviews were conducted in the field, resulting in four e-government system modules, based on open-source software, developed and integrated to form a single, dynamic web component that will act as a one-stop shop for Dwesa community members. These are the Dwesa Online Application Centre (DOAC) to apply for important government documents and grants, the Dwesa Online Reporting Centre (DORC) to report various grievances to the responsible agencies, the Dwesa Forum Corner (DFC), a digital community, and the management back-end module. The Dwesa e-government portal was developed using Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP (LAMP) technology, a Zoop framework to model the individual components and a JQUERY JavaScript library to increase the responsiveness of the user interfaces. The most significant contributions of this thesis have been the development of a cost-effective, integrated e-government functionality, applicable to disadvantaged communities, and the greater understanding this has given of the tools and methodologies that can be used to deliver public services efficiently to citizens. The final evaluation of this e-government system gives significant evidence that the e-government portal provides a solid foundation that will allow e-government implementation to raise the provision of public services to a higher level.