When communities decide: Governing and rebuilding in the Democratic Republic of Congo
By: The Airbel Impact Lab Staff
Tags: Development, Our Work, Impact, Community, Research

When communities decide: Governing and rebuilding in the Democratic Republic of Congo

By Marie-France Guimond, Advisor Research Systems

Comparing focus group discussion results during a community scorecard activity in Eastern DRC. Photo: IRC.

My favorite aid parody is a Tripp and Tyler video. In this video, two friends have a grand poverty alleviation strategy for rural Africa: donating smoothie machines. It shines a light on the undeniable reality that well-meaning aid workers can fail spectacularly when pushing the wrong solutions for the wrong problems.

What if, instead, communities could decide what they need? One such method is community-driven development (CDD) and at its core, it is about providing money directly to communities for public projects that they choose themselves. CDD became popular in the early 2000s: The World Bank alone provided $1.3 billion in funding per year between 2000 and 2008 for CDD programs. The popularity of the CDD approach, however, raises another critical question: Does it actually work to improve people’s lives?

Following the devastating Congolese wars of the 1990s and early 2000s, the International Rescue Committee launched its largest CDD program in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with funding from the UK government and in partnership with CARE International. Tuungane (“Let’s Unite” in Swahili) was implemented in over 1,000 communities. Its ambitious scale provided an opportunity for the IRC to conduct large impact evaluations with Columbia University (2006–2012) and the World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation (2014–2019).

Tuungane was conducted in two distinct phases. Tuungane 1 (2007–2011) followed a relatively streamlined CDD approach: the IRC helped communities elect village development committees. The committees would convene a general assembly where community members would vote up/down different public project options. Once the choice was made — whether it be a school, health clinic, road or market — the communities received funding and managed the construction.

Tuungane 1 constructed and rehabilitated over 2,000 classrooms and 241 health facilities, as well as hundreds of water and sanitation facilities. This is an impressive tally, and those tangible outputs were just a part of the IRC’s ambition. More important was the act of bringing community members together to make decisions and manage a project. This process was expected to improve local governance and social cohesion. We also hoped that, down the road, the new schools, health facilities, roads and markets would improve education, health, and economic well-being in those communities.

Tuungane 1 was evaluated in 2010, and again in 2018 in a long-term study, both using a randomized control design. What did we find? In short, the Tuungane 1 delivered on the construction high-quality public project infrastructures. That’s good news. However, there is no clear evidence that local governance improved nor that communities were more cohesive (and it turns out they already were quite cohesive before the program started). And yes, schools and health facilities were built, but Tuungane 1 could not address other pervasive issues related to health and education service delivery: teachers and nurses are not always paid or trained properly, and therefore didn’t always show up; school and medical fees are often high; and important materials are lacking, including life-saving pharmaceuticals.

For Tuungane 2 (2010–2014), the IRC made a number of important changes to the program. Like Tuungane 1, Tuungane 2 constructed schools, health and WASH facilities, in numbers rivaling those of Tuungane 1. In addition, the program activities were more targeted and more intensive, for example by developing a community-led service improvement action plan as well as a community scorecard to allow community members and service providers to track progress in health and education service quality.

Did it work? The impact evaluation for Tuungane 2 provided promising evidence that Tuungane 2 indeed improved local governance and quality of services: community members in Tuungane communities were more satisfied with quality of health and education services provided, were more likely to say they can influence leaders’ opinions, and were better informed of by community leaders of key development issues affecting their communities.

We haven’t pinned down the precise mechanisms or activities which caused those positive impacts for Tuungane 2. However, a key lesson for the IRC during the development of Tuungane 2 was to be more precise and humble about identifying who can lead change and under what conditions, and creating specific spaces for these changes to happen. The addition of service improvement plans, for example, created a more specific roadmap for local change. Around 50% the problems identified in the service improvement plans were resolved, including addressing the high cost of school and medical services by negotiating with school administrators and head nurses to reduce fees.

What about the unresolved problems in service provision identified by communities? These were largely problems that required higher levels of government to be involved, like providing regular salary for school teachers. Understanding those limitations is also highly instructive. Not all local problems have local solutions.

The story is not over yet. Over the next two years, the IRC is implementing a new program in the DRC, again with funding from the UK government, called Engaging Sub-national Authorities in Accountable Practices (ESAAP). Building on the latest evidence and lessons learned on how change happens, the project will support 15 teams of local authorities, community leaders, faith-based and civil society organizations representative to use an adaptive and iterative approach to solving problems that matters most to Congolese citizens.