How does war affect the capacity for collective action in rural communities? This World Bank Social Development Paper analyses and evaluates how social capital (defined as collective action) functions in rural communities recovering from war in Sierra Leone. The objective is to better understand poverty and vulnerability to strengthen the National Social Action Project (NSAP) – a mechanism for funding direct community action for post-war recovery and poverty alleviation. It concludes by identifying the institutional and technical factors that need to be addressed to provide poor people with the opportunities to acquire and exercise their rights.
The study comprises four parts. Part I is an account of social capital in Sierra Leone, describing and analysing the processes of collective action in the countryside. Part II discusses the impact of governance – both internal, and interventions by development agencies – on local processes of post-war collective action. Part III discusses the nature of ‘community’ in Sierra Leone, and analyses the main sources of poverty and vulnerability. The final part of the study presents key conclusions, with some specific actions addressed to Sierra Leone’s National Commission for Social Action.
The study concludes that agrarian crisis was a major cause of rural poverty and war and there remains a lack of true cohesion within rural communities to support community-driven development (CDD).
- The root causes of the 1991 were the poverty and instability of large numbers of rural young people who rejected village society because of elders’ control. Re-absorption of these young people will require a more open rural opportunity structure and revision of land allocation and marriage rules.
- Elders’ control over marriage systems and men’s labour remains a strong factor in the decision of many young men to leave the rural areas. The outflow has a negative impact on CDD because projects often rely on their labour.
- Ad hoc village committees appointed by relief agencies have further entrenched divisions between rural elites and the majority poor and there are many allegations of corruption. The collapse of chiefdom governance was a cause of the war, and there is great value restoring chiefdom administration.
- Some rural institutions still work and are respected. Gender based groups provide resources for community restructuring and dissemination of health information. Membership has increased as a result of war and displacement, cuts across ruling/dependent lineage divides, and is increasingly forming around new associational lines (sport, religion).
- Trade and craft-based union activity is of rising importance, although incorporating this into CDD is problematic because it is not residentially based.
- Women, youth and strangers (to village communities) have been politically marginalised.
Young people marginalised in the demobilisation process now face slipping back into servitude (thinly disguised as marriage or labouring). This major potential source of conflict must be addressed through a more open opportunity structure, with emphasis on tenant-farmer livelihoods and practical assistance to help the poor to exercise their rights. Further conclusions are:
- The agrarian crisis is institutional (the rights of landowners are over-protected, those of rural labourers under-protected) and technical (there is a weak opportunity structure due to inadequate markets, roads, credit, training, and technology policy).
- There is evidence of extensive change in social attitudes to marginalised groups in the countryside, which must be understood and built upon.
- CDD is threatened by fraud, undemocratic procedures, villagers’ lack of rights awareness and poor local capacity to handle project input.
- CDD requires local and international partners developing new roles and skills, and to respect local culture in the spirit of “do no harm”.
