Introduction
The impact of community development is best shaped and determined by its own people. The shaping of the community wealth and wellbeing is best written and forged by communities themselves rather than external development theories or philosophies. It is against this backdrop that rural communities across Africa need to evaluate developmental and empowerment concepts based on their culture, traditions and philosophies. Therefore as development and empowerment discourse is raging on, it is high time communities look inward and find themselves without looking at providers of empowerment options. It then brings us to the idea that empowerment and development should not be externally driven, initiated into communities but rather have communities themselves initiating the development and generational empowerment based on the dictates of their surroundings.
Role of local initiative to community development
When a community starts with a home grown empowerment initiative, program or project the level of ownership and the rate of protecting that which is born out of their sweat is very high. A community should ask themselves a question on whether they exist or go extinct. It then pushes communities to see development through empowerment in the eyes of their next generation. A community driven, resourced, funded and designed empowerment project tends to last and at most becomes successful in the implementation stage as well as its execution. The greatest question should be what can one do for his /her community and how can one change the dynamics of his/her community. Conflict resolution theorists believe that a peaceful society is best designed from internally designed projects that are born out of people’s needs and desires which then fosters cohesion, unity and removes tensions thereby creating a peaceful and prosperous community.
There are those that still believe that the concept of a sustainable society should be empowered by government or donors and other developmental agencies like IMF and World Bank including regional financial institutions in order to empower a society. Some brings the idea of a bottom up approach to development to an empowered society, which is all good but a society that does not chart its own course, ideas, technologies and influence a generational thinking as to empower itself will remain in cycles of poverty and half measures of tending of to leave one another behind, making empowerment greatly individualised. It then makes an African community more capitalistic in nature than it is African.
There is a tendency of looking at or focusing on the change of quality of life more on any empowerment systems on communities in Africa, Zimbabwe included as the end result of its implementation and Evaluation. It is important that community projects are not meant for profit maximisation. It should be more of generational wealth and sustainability in terms of protecting the environment, wealth creation, protecting community identities, cultures and traditions, maintaining a balance on things that make us who we are as Africans.
Issues of profits, getting richer than others in African communities should not be the core business in rural development or community development, it’s about creating a unitary society based on shared values on wealth creation, maintenance of that wealth, environmental sustainability, identity and protecting the Indigenous knowledge systems. Therefore governments should approach empowerment programs focusing on promoting unity, wealth and alleviating poverty through an intergenerational, shared knowledge that keeps and maintains a balance on community identity not in the short run but in a long hall for posterity purposes.
Most of the empowerment programs and projects in African society has missed that concept and tended to look into an individual as an entity that will thrive more on a capitalistic mode of production which then leaves communities broken and at times failing to adapt to their traditional knowledge systems or are forced in the process to embrace the new which then affects their transmission to the next generation.
Conclusion
Conclusively one can say that donors, governments and NGOs have tended to look at community empowerment in terms of reducing community problems, increasing opportunity for growth, providing a sense of belonging, ensuring safety, livelihood provisions and more centrally stimulating economic growth. These concepts leave communities divorced from its life blood and the veins that made them a people from the beginning of its existence runs dry as generational prosperity dwindles in a flicker of individual capitalism.
