Village Planning

The African society is highly communal. This presents both an opportunity and a threat to economic development. Advantages of a highly communal society are many. Collective education and information sharing is possible by utilizing existing informal leadership structures. On the other hand, highly communal societies can become a liability especially where structural differentiation is not possible and community subunits are not organized for mutual benefit through functional specialization and interdependence.

Africa Mission Alliance creates inter-village linkages to foster productivity, differentiation and specialization. Our system looks at an economy as a sum-total of individual specialized units. Unlike other economic interventions,  our system puts the responsibility of, and resources for, development into the hands of villagers who manage their resources through collective responsibility. AMA intervenes in villages of between 500 and 1,000 houses to create wealth by  fostering technical expertise using existing structural/cultural arrangements, creating economic activity through providing access to external market linkages between neighboring villages, fostering cross-village communication by expanding general social norms, and creating functional and responsible democratic associations.

In the last few years, we have been able to create small accountability groups in the village of Butare, Rwanda. This is our first step towards the creation of a fully functional village. Women groups made up of especially widows have received goats, sewing machines, and small business loans.  Some of the women that have received sewing machines are already running profitable sewing businesses.

Our first sustainable village is called Hope Village built within the neighborhood of our 300 program recipients. The village is made up of 100 households divided into two communes. Each commune of 50 houses constitutes a competing economic unit. Each commune is empowered to produce goods and services that can be exchanged or sold to the other group, and vice versa.

In addition to market creation, the two communes have shared responsibilities in their social services which  include a primary school, a medical clinic, a water well, and a community building. AMA facilitates the villages to have access to these social services.