Brief Overview of the Akassa Community Development Project.

Knight, et al, 2000

The Akassa Community Development Project (ACDP) is a community development project in Nigeria's oil producing Niger Delta region which has been facilitated by the NGO Pro Natura International (PNI), and funded by Statoil, in alliance with BP since 1997. It is an example of a mineral development company, Statoil, assisting in the development of community capacity. It also shows the nature and extent of work that needs to be done to improve community capacity as well as to ensure community participation in the management of mineral wealth.

The project aimed at development through interactive participation in a community whose main activity is fishing. Statoil's support for the project arose from an EIA it conducted which identified Akassa as the community most likely to be impacted by oil spills from its offshore exploration wells. The community had no access to public services - pipe-borne water, sewage disposal, electricity, telecommunications, transport systems or schools. The medical services that were available were largely those of traditional healers. The remoteness of the Akassa people is said to have been exacerbated by the fact that the influence of local government had hardly been felt since colonial times.

Statoil wished to establish a reputation as a good corporate citizen from the very beginning and to avoid the unrest that had occurred in other areas of the Niger Delta, where deprived communities had taken to kidnapping workers and sabotaging installations. For these reasons it was prepared to take act in a strategic manner and to provide long-term support the project at a time when it had made no decision regarding production.

For PNI, the project offered the opportunity of its testing a development model that some members of the project team had been developing and that involved a participatory rural appraisal and learning through action (PRA and PLA) approach. This has involved a PNI team living with the community and involving them interactively in the planning process. The process involved the different interest groups that were identified by the PRA in appraising the community's human and natural resources and in initiating micro-projects of their own design. The interest groups sent their representatives to participate in decision making at village-level and village representatives were sent to take part in clan-level planning committees. The programme that came into being was an integrated one with four components - poverty alleviation, human resources management, natural resources management and infrastructure - that required institutional development and capacity building for their success.

The community identified insufficient income and the unavailability of credit as key factors in the existence of poverty in the area and so a micro-credit system was designed to help start businesses and to generate more income. The community raised funds for developing the system from their own savings, chose their own leaders for the system and made their own rules and regulations. The success of the project has led to its being identified as a possible UNDP and Bayelsa State micro-credit training and extension agency.

The human resources management component included the development of a primary health care system with the community designing and building 18 community health posts with funding from the project. Health post attendants have been trained and it was expected that traditional birth attendants would be trained to perform the duties of midwives in the year 2000. Other projects that have been developed include adult literacy classes, training in computer skills, sewing and outboard motor maintenance. PNI was said to be exploring the possibility of establishing a cyber cafe to connect the community with the internet. That would offer the possibility of improved communication - lobbying representatives in parliament, keeping in touch with distant family, information on fish prices, downloading books and information and of developing and disseminating a local language newspaper.

New forestry bye-laws for improved management of forest resources and work on improving rice production are some of the projects that have been undertaken under the natural resource management component. Fishing is the community's main activity and the project has allowed them to address some of the problems they face, such as voluntarily giving up the use of small-meshed nets in order to allow fingerlings to live and to grow. Communities, Civil Society Organisations and the Management 10 of Mineral Wealth Among the infrastructure projects that have been undertaken are health posts, the roofing of schools and the construction of bridges, culverts and footpaths and a market place.

PNI sought to ensure the sustainability of the participatory development process by developing existing and new institutions and by building up the capacity of both. This included building on the clan's aspirations for a local government of their own by dividing the clan into ten development areas, each with its own Development Area Council to which representatives were democratically elected by village institutions. These councils plan, implement and manage local micro-projects. Representatives were also elected to an Akassa Clan Development Council which is responsible for projects over the whole of Akassa.

The project appears to have generated a new governance culture in the community in which concepts like democracy, responsibility, transparency, accountability and equity have become important. Its success is evidenced by the fact that neighbouring communities have asked to join while other communities which have kidnapped some of the facilitators have released them promptly when they have discovered that they worked for the project

For PNI, the project has demonstrated that it is only by "meeting and satisfying the locally perceived needs of the angry people who inhabit the villages and fishing ports of the Niger Delta, that the peace and harmony that come with development and prosperity will emerge". They consider that bottom-up development for the Niger Delta, however, depends on top-down support from the oil industry. PNI also sees the project's success as demonstrating that development is possible in the Niger Delta, and that, in the process, conflict can be managed.