The Akassa Development Foundation.
For the last 8 years, the Akassa Kingdom has been realising its own development goals. With the assistance of Statoil Nigeria and Pro-Natura (Nigeria), the Akassa Kingdom has become a model of participatory development, peace and stability in a volatile region.
With institutional structures established by the Akassa community and facilitated by Pro-Natura (Nigeria), the people of Akassa Kingdom are now able to effectively manage and realise their own development goals.
Developing local capacity to solve and manage development problems is the overall goal of the ADF and its nine associated institutions.
Constraining community development in a majority of rural communities in the Niger Delta is the lack of individuals, associations and institutions that are accountable, capable, committed, democratic, equitable and responsible enough to plan, implement and own development programmes in a sustainable way. The ADF has addressed these problems head on, facilitated by Pro-Natura Nigeria, the people of Akassa Kingdom are now able to effectively mage and realise their own development goals.
Akassa Development Foundation is essentially another way to describe the Akassa people. It features:
- An overseeing General Assembly with equal representation from all 19 Akassa communities
- A Board of Trustees and Steering Committee; elected from the General Assembly. These two committees monitor the day to day work of the ADF.
- A Secretariat and nine ADF institutions, which embrace the whole Kingdom.
These videos look at how the programme seeks to address the- following local concerns:
 Poverty (3.6mb)
Education (4.6mb)
Health (3.6mb)
Declining Natural Resources (4.3mb)
Infrastructure
Roll over to view completed bridge.
 The ADF also disburses funding to each of the 19 communities that make up the Akassa Kingdom for community micro-projects. In each of these 19 communities, the ADF and Akassa Clan Development Council conducts participatory appraisal to identify priority micro-projects. The average cost of each project in 2004 was N 250,000. In addition, communities provide up to 25% local contribution through the provision of materials, labour and when necessary, land. Each community appoints a 5-7 member Project Implementation Committee, which oversees the project from the planning phase through to completion. All Project Implementation Committees are provided with support and technical assistance from ADF programme staff.
ADF also makes provision for larger micro-projects and the entire clan decides the priority and location of these projects, which generally cost over N 1,000,000. The decision is taken at an annual Akassa National Development Planning meeting, with representatives from the 19 communities. Proposed ‘clan’ projects are prioritised during this meeting. Chosen community and clan projects then form the basis of the Akassa National Development Plan.
Background information on the Akassa Project is available
Click to read more...
Click on the villages below to see a brief description of their projects. |
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Interactive Map
click on the map to view some of ADFs projects completed in 2004
Akassa 'living university':
The Akassa Model has become so successful that it is now a 'living university': the community are proud to be a showcase for "bottom-up" community driven development and take the responsibility of promoting their model to other communities in Nigeria very seriously.
Click here for further details...
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Akassa Institutions:
- Akassa National Council of Chiefs
- Akassa Clan Women Association
- Akassa Clan Youth Association
- Akassa Clan Development Council Akassa National Education Consultative Committee
- Akassa National Health Consultative Committee Akassa National Savings Association
- Akassa Natural Resources Unit
- Akassa National Skills Training and Resource Centre Committee
Click to see how communities participate in ADF Institutions |
Pacific Leatherback Sea turtle threatened with extinction
The ADF has added its voice to an international request for urgent action to save the Pacific Leatherback Sea turtle. It is urging the UN to ban long-line and gill net fishing in the Pacific ocean. Unregulated trawling threatens sea turtles and other marine wildlife and seriously threatens the livelihoods of many fisherman in coastal communities.
Read the full letter...
The International call... |
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