The experience drawn from development programmes, has shown that the translation of
policy and theory into workable action programmes, is an art form that is little understood
and seldom practised successfully, Within the development context, Sbapiero (1984)
argues that “no where is the gap between theory and useful action more apparent than in
the fielu of economic development” (Shapiero,1984;14). Past top-down exogenous
economic development strategies have failed to achieve their objectives, and
communities have traditionally lacked the means by which to initiate development.
Structural changes in the global arena have also made it difficult for governments to
protect their local markets because of competition in the global arena. This means that
economic growth in each local area can follow only from the development of a new
capacity to respond to global economic changes. Recently, more bottom-up endogenous
approaches, to economic development, have been formulated. LED is viewed as a
mechanism which could help fill the void which exists, through the effective mobilisation
o f community resources. LED could thus enable the poor and structurally unemployed to
participate in the economy, by focusing on Human Resource Development,
Entrepreneuralism which is geared towards Community Development. New legislation
and policy changes have led to more pragmatic and supportive environments which foster
LED, LED is in effect a local response which ideally relies on local initiatives, and the
communities taking ownership of the development process. This dissertation cannot be
comprehensive, Instead it suggests a general framework to problem solving in the field
of LED. The Thusanang Training Centre is thus promoted as a synthetic instrument with
which to provide a general economic development mechanism at the local level. Training
Centres represent areas with interesting and innovative initiatives, that may serve as
indicators of ‘good practice* for LED within communities. However when a commitment
is made to engage h LED strategies, organisations need to consider the ramifications of
their actions on the entire community.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/14762 |
| Date | 12 June 2014 |
| Creators | Moosa, Raazia |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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