Introduction
From mission trips to Red Cross donations to foreign aid from the World Bank, international development is often perceived as flowing unilaterally from the Global North to the Global South. Arguably more than any other region on the planet, Africa is often conceptualized as the endpoint of this international development cycle. But considering how 40 years of so-called “development” aid from international lenders have only spurred more tumult, what if Africa was recognized for its own creation, not reception, of progress? This form of indigenously-generated progress in Africa is often called to mind with the phrase grassroots development.
Definitions and Terminology
Also known as community-led development, grassroots development is a bottom-up process by which a community defines its own socio-politico-economic needs and implements strategies to achieve them at the local, regional, national, or international level. Grassroots development can involve various sectors such as agriculture, education, infrastructure, and healthcare. However, the term “grassroots development” exists against a backdrop of controversy concerning the eurocentric implications of “development” as a concept. “Development” emerged as a common theory in Western foreign policy discourse in the mid-1900s, as a product of Modernization theory and the Truman Doctrine. Today, many scholars and activists see “development” as a culturally-imperialist conjecture. They believe it absolves the West of its role in creating the “underdevelopment” it sees as an inherent feature of the global south while suggesting that the success of nations could be accurately gauged by Western measures like GDP.
Because of this, there exists a push amongst some African grassroots activists to erase the word “development” from social progress discourse because it ignores the political nature of “underdevelopment.” The term obscures colonialism’s long history of forced impoverishment, political destabilization, and cultural erasure, expecting African nations to simply “develop” from it. For many grassroots changemakers in Africa, however, the challenge is not development but emancipation.
On the other hand, some African scholars divorce the term from Western imperialist concepts of modernity yet still use the term to describe the fight for socio-political progress. Whether it is referred to as emancipation, participatory development, grassroots development, or another name, the bottom-up paradigm remains the same. For Africa in particular, this bottom-up strategy represents a shift away from Western concepts of “modernity” and dependence on foreign aid to self-reliant, pluralistic, and Pan-Africanist strategies of progress.
History of Grassroots Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa
While grassroots development has become a buzzword in global affairs, it is not a novel concept in Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, popular activism has served as the foundation for successful independence movements and anti-corruption uprisings across the continent for more than a century.
Anti-colonial uprisings from the 1880s through the 1950s provide early examples of grassroots organizing in Africa. In the Matabeleland Rebellion of 1896, a local spiritual leader galvanized the people of Southern Rhodesia (presently Zimbabwe) to rise up against the British South Africa company. Over 50 years later, trade unionists, women, and students formed grassroots movements that pushed Guinea’s Sékou Touré to reject a constricting French constitution and instead declare independence in 1958.
However, immediately after the era of independence, increasing national power led to the suppression and integration of grassroots organizations into national parties from the 1960s to the 1970s. In this period, Sub-Saharan Africa saw the rise of centralized national ruling parties, many of which epitomized nationalist beliefs by claiming a monopoly on national progress and perceiving grassroots movements as threats to the independent governments they helped create. Grassroots movements were pacified or integrated into national systems. For example, preexisting peasant unions were dissolved by Mali’s first post-colonial ruling party, and popular resistance to this dissolution was violently repressed by the state.
As OPEC oil price hikes in the early 1970s exacerbated the financial crises of several Sub-Saharan nations, an era of national debt and structural adjustment emerged and continued until the early 1990s. This period saw an immense increase in grassroots activity for two reasons. First, the erosion of state power under structural adjustment programs (SAPs) decreased previous state suppression of grassroots movements. Second, the deleterious effects of SAPs on already-marginalized communities such as the rural poor, working-class, and women galvanized those populations to protest top-down development models that increased their poverty. This era marked the first time that local grassroots movements partnered with international NGOs.
The 1990s brought a process of “NGOization” to Sub-Saharan Africa, in which the number of registered formal nonprofit organizations skyrocketed. The wave of pro-democracy movements in the 1990s and 2000s led to a preference for highly professionalized and bureaucratized transnational agencies over less formal grassroots organizations. Thus, private donations and public funds flowed to the formal nonprofit sector.
While the 1990s and 2000s constricted space for grassroots activity in Sub-Saharan Africa, the 2010s have seen a reawakening of grassroots priorities. Younger generations born in post-independence Africa are actively protesting authoritarian national governments and Western imperialism without the influence of donor agendas. Students have organized notable grassroots movements for the decolonization of education in South Africa, against authoritarianism in Angola and Zimbabwe, and for gender equality in Namibia. Even corporate NGOs have adopted more grassroots-friendly stances, although some remark that the use of buzzwords like “grassroots,” “human-centered,” and “community partnerships” has done little to change the top-down approaches of large transnational NGOs.
Relative Benefits of Grassroots Organizations
Despite their tumultuous history in Sub-Saharan Africa, grassroots development organizations offer several benefits relative to both state-led development programs and large transnational NGOs.
Compared to many African national governments, grassroots movements may be more accessible and efficient in their efforts to reduce poverty and promote equality. Due to a long history of colonialism and structural adjustment causing the typical African state to grow separately from society and its wills, many national governments have been forced to focus on meeting loan conditions rather than listening to constituents. Even barring a preoccupation with loan conditionalities, national governments are often inaccessible to the most vulnerable populations who “live far from international conference halls and capital cities.” Conversely, grassroots movements are more accessible to locals who might not have the education or wealth to pursue careers in government. With their heightened sensitivity to human rights abuses on the ground, they can also fill key gaps in human rights protection left unfilled by national governments.
Compared to larger transnational NGOs, grassroots organizations feature several unique strengths. From the Red Cross to Oxfam, several large NGOs have come under fire for violence towards the local populations they purport to serve. The bureaucratized nature of many such organizations makes it difficult for local communities to have a say in their strategies, resulting in “band-aid” solutions that are divorced from local cultural and economic contexts. Even when local activists offer their input, many large nonprofits—even those who preach grassroots partnerships—end up predicating decisions on the opinions of major donors and elite political interests rather than the people they purport to serve. On top of this, there is a more philosophical drawback to transnational, Western-based NGOs with all-White boards purporting to save the Global South from problems that were largely created by Western colonialism. Grassroots movements remedy many of these drawbacks. As organizations created by members of a community for their community, they are inherently people-centered and thus more in tune with nuanced local dynamics. This is significant seeing as alignment with community goals is a predictor of nonprofit success.
While grassroots organizations certainly provide a host of advantages, it is important to note that grassroots movements cannot effectively operate in a vacuum. Rather, effective strategies for change often emerge when grassroots movements partner with other institutions such as local governments to make progress.
Challenges for Grassroots Organizations
While the international community is gradually becoming more aware of the important role that grassroots organizations play in African development, grassroots organizers still face myriad obstacles. Broadly, the biggest barrier for grassroots organizations is the dominance of large, corporatized NGOs that have turned charity into a lucrative industry. Both public and private donors are more likely to give funds to more familiar or formal organizations, leaving grassroots movements with few paths to substantive funding except being integrated into the business models of larger NGOs. When they do try to get involved with larger NGOs or departments of their national government, grassroots organizers are required to complete substantial legal paperwork. This makes it more likely for people with experience in the formal sector or with higher levels of education—predominantly men—to be able to partner with larger institutions when they want to, placing the most vulnerable at even more of a disadvantage when it comes to making their voices heard.
Conclusion
Grassroots organizations and community-led activism are embedded in the cultural and political history of Africa. They proved key in securing liberation from formal colonialism, and despite barriers to success, African grassroots movements are on the rise again. Overall, grassroots movements truly embody the struggle for emancipation. They resist the influence of Western elite donors while protesting the remnants of structural adjustment programs and other imperialist policies. They are grounded in the ideas and innovation of African people, subverting the sentiment that Africa is the recipient or “endpoint” of development initiatives. In this sense, grassroots participatory organizations are a true symbol of the oft-revered mantra “African solutions to African problems.”
