Written By: Ejike Anyaduba

With access to improved social and natural resource infrastructure as the new community development focus of many states in Nigeria, the Anambra state government, in partnership with the World Bank, has seized the initiative to make a lot of positive interventions in communities around Anambra.

Under the auspice of the Community and Social Development Agency (CSDA), it was able to determine, using the State Poverty Map, twelve focal local government councils of Awka North, Anambra East, Anambra West, Ayamelum, Orumba North, Dunukofia, Orumba South, Anaocha, Oyi, Ogbaru, Idemili North and Ihiala and positively altered development in 53 communities and among 16 vulnerable groups within them.

Led by the traditional ruler of Nteje, Igwe Rowland Odegbo and managed by Mr. Chudi Mojekwu, the Agency has made appreciable impact in improving development in the focal communities. It has, with its pro-poor intervention projects in the select communities, successfully reduced poverty in those places and empowered the people.

Perhaps, the Agency is able to navigate the process of community development and achieved as much as it has done because its activities are in sync with the Community-Choose-Your-Project program of the Obiano administration. The Obiano’s development model, which is novel in concept and unique on impact, encourages the work of the Agency and allows for ease of intervention.

So far, the Community and Social Development Agency has made far reaching interventions in many communities within the focal local council areas. These interventions are made in about seven key sectors of the economy like education, environment, health, water resources, rural transportation, rural electrification, and socio-economic activities.

However, no intervention is made without recourse to the communities which reserve the right of choice of projects they host. The Agency empowers the communities by giving them resources and the authority to use them responsibly. The communities plan, part-finance, implement, monitor, and maintain sustainable and socially inclusive multi-sectoral micro projects.

Apart from its pro-poor intervention projects and the empowerments it has made, the Agency has approved forty-one Community Development Plans, sixteen Group Development Plans, containing about two hundred and three Micro projects from the seven approved sectors. It is expected that these plans may come in handy for use by the state in her effort to improve lives in the rural communities.

The Agency has also completed a hundred and sixty-nine micro projects with about two million, five hundred and fifty-nine thousand, four hundred and forty beneficiaries. By the same token, about five hundred and forty temporal jobs, direct and indirect, were created by the Agency.

To the credit of the Obiano government, keying into the World Bank assisted projects has redefined development of some critical sectors of the rural economies. It has also given the communities, hitherto without opportunities, access to improved social and economic infrastructure. Those without access roads, clean water supply, electricity, skill acquisition centres, health centres, schools, markets, flood control etc have since been provided them. Social responsibility did not receive less attention from the Community and Social Development Agency.

Sensitization on protocols observation for the Covid-19 pandemic was not left out and is being carried on in the communities with as much commitment as the empowerment program. The Agency is not without a few challenges. Funding of the projects has slowed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic which compelled a stay-at-home regime. There is also the issue of managing the huge number of expression of interest from the communities without commensurate funding because of budgetary and time constraints. Implementations are also faced with threat of rains and flooding.

Regardless, a synergy between the Community and Social Development Agency and the Community-Choose-Your-Projects Initiative of the Obiano administration promises to obliterate traces of poverty in virtually all the poor communities in Anambra state.

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