Empowering People? World Vision & ‘Transformatory Development’ in Tanzania

Tim Kelsall and Claire Mercer

Review of African Political Economy, 2003, vol. 30, issue 96, 293-304

Abstract: Ideas of participatory development and empowerment have become central to contemporary development discourse. This article identifies two axes of tension within this discourse. First is the disturbing thought that by empowering a ‘community’ a development project can disempower groups or individuals within that community. Second is the paradox whereby external agents are perceived as necessary to install internal desires and capacities for individual and community autonomy. The article presents empirical data from research into two projects by the NGO World Vision in northeast Tanzania. The aim is to show that the dilemmas of development in practice turn around these axis of tension, as the attempts to empower the ‘community’ benefit disproportionately an elite -- the idea of development as ‘empowerment’ inserted into the community from the outside.

Date: 2003
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DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2003.9693501

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Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

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