why sustainable development is so difficult in rural Africa

Can a community facing grinding poverty and insecurity turn its fortunes around?

There is a lot of debate about how to create sustainable communities, but nowhere is this more difficult to achieve than in poor subsistence farming communities in Africa.

Of course, this is easier said than done. There are multiple reasons for this. One real danger is that development projects create a culture of dependency whereby communities expect things to be given to them and lose sight of their own power to create change.

But equally difficult is the grinding poverty and lack of security faced by the Katine villagers, who are so used to living day by day that it can be a real challenge to think about planning for the future.

If you would like to follow the debate and progress, then I highly recommend that you explore the Katine website. It's a unique project because never before has one development project been monitored so closely and openly in the media, and it gives a real sense of the extraordinary complexity of development.

guardian.co.uk 30 September 2009