Civil Society Groups and the Role of Nonformal Adult Education Gary P
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2005 Building Capacity for Decentralized Local Development in Chad: Civil Society Groups and the Role of Nonformal Adult Education Gary P. Liebert Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF EDUCATION BUILDING CAPACITY FOR DECENTRALIZED LOCAL DEVELOPMENT IN CHAD: CIVIL SOCIETY GROUPS AND THE ROLE OF NONFORMAL ADULT EDUCATION By GARY P. LIEBERT A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded Fall Semester, 2005 Copyright 2005 Gary P. Liebert All rights reserved The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Gary P. Liebert, defended on August 4, 2005. _______________________________ Peter B. Easton Professor Directing Dissertation _______________________________ John K. Mayo Outside Committee Member _______________________________ Emanuel Shargel Committee Member _______________________________ James H. Cobbe Committee Member Approved: ________________________________________ Joseph Beckham, Chair, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the many people who have helped me on this journey to complete my dissertation. I benefited greatly from the following people (all of whom live outside of Tallahassee) who provided assistance and advice as well as leads for research: Jim Bingen, Jim Alrutz, Richard Maclure, Thea Hilhorst, Trisha Long, Brook Johnson, Suzanne Gervais, Joshua Muskin and Jon Lauglo. I also want to thank the key informants of my research, who were invaluable to the research process. Most of them live in Africa, and I only met a few in person! Nevertheless, they were very generous with their time and attention, and I hope to somehow pay them back someday. They are (in no particular order): Pere Antoine Berilengar, Allahta Ngariban, Maman Sidikou, Cheickna Toure, Abdoulaye Ndiaye, Amadou Matar Diouf, René Lemarchand, Bobbi L. Gray, Mohamed Ag Akératane, Doug Lehman, Timothée Coulibaly, Woulimata Thiao and Nestor Bongo. My friends and colleagues have provided me with support, advice and activities to help cope with the day-to-day stresses of writing a dissertation. Several fellow students and I started a support group which was invaluable. In retrospect I can say: it certainly has taken a village for me to finish! I cite several fellow students and colleagues here whose support was invaluable: Mwenene Mukweso, Diane Leiva, Ragas Nang-Yad, Sumedi Nugraha, Pade Zuokemefa, Pat Moran, and Jenny Grill. My committee members – John Mayo, Jim Cobbe and Manny Shargel – have been helpful and supportive throughout the long process of my dissertation. Manny in particular has been especially supportive and sympathetic. My major professor, Peter Easton, has been a great inspiration and mentor to me for the last six years. I depended on his support, ideas, encouragement, and humor. I especially appreciate Peter supporting me on a Research Assistantship for several years, which allowed me to accomplish much more than I could have, because the work that we did together often related directly to my dissertation. Working on Peter’s projects over the years gave me experience in research and evaluation, an enjoyable work atmosphere, and the occasional trip to Africa. iii Several other people at FSU have been very helpful to me, especially in the College of Education, including, Jimmy Pastrano, Amy McKnight, Gwen Johnson and Barbara Palmer (who served on my original prospectus committee). I wish to especially thank my family for their unending support and interest in my research over the last several years, their encouragement when I needed it, and their financial and emotional contributions to my extended education. I want to thank my father, Gilbert A. Liebert, and my sister, Ann P. Thompson, for their undying support. There are the other members of my extended family, and my good friend Greg Thompson, who were also encouraging and (mostly) interested. Although they all may not often understand exactly what I’m doing, or why, I appreciate that they remained supportive and interested in my studies and research. Finally I want thank my “coach,” Denise Dion. Denise was there when it really counted, starting in 2004, providing encouragement and expertise to help me through the process. Thanks also to Kathleen Smith who originally put me in touch with Denise. Denise provided a strong mentoring spirit that was missing from a previous coaching arrangement. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures......................................................................................................................................vi Abstract...............................................................................................................................................vii 1. INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................1 2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK................................................18 3. METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................................................62 4. CASE STUDIES – CHAD............................................................................................................75 5. CASE STUDIES – MALI.............................................................................................................115 6. CASE STUDIES – SENEGAL .....................................................................................................146 7. RESEARCH FINDINGS: PRESENTATION OF POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS AND ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES FOR LOCAL CAPACITY BUILDING.....................................171 CONCLUSIONS ...............................................................................................................................195 APPENDICES....................................................................................................................................203 REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................................207 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH...............................................................................................................221 v LIST OF FIGURES 1. Varieties of Decentralization.............................................................................................................25 2. Varieties of Devolution.....................................................................................................................27 vi ABSTRACT Despite an era of progress and prosperity in many developing areas around the world, poverty persists as an important challenge to Africa. The UN Economic Commission for Africa (2000) reported that four in ten Africans live in absolute poverty, citing evidence that poverty on the continent is increasing, not decreasing. While this is discouraging, policymakers and other observers hold out hope that Africa can look forward to the future. The challenges created by economic crisis, government decentralization and the emergence of civil society institutions are evident in the Republic of Chad, a large, mostly arid, landlocked country in the heart of the Africa. Chad has had to face several unique problems after independence in 1960: Civil war, three decades of ethnic warfare, rebel movements and invasions before peace was established; drought and famine; etc. In the 1990s, Chad started to take steps to establish democracy, and a World Bank-financed project to exploit oil reserves have brought new development hopes. 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. vii 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