아프리카ㆍ중동

Saemaul movement was a new village development initiative started in 1970 under the order of Korea’s former President, Park Chung Hee. The movement is seen as a brainchild of rural enlightenment campaign of 1930s- 40s, and Canaan farm school of 1960s. Ideally, this movement was an effort to upgrade quality of life in rural areas through Community Development. The movement operated on the spirit of diligence, collaboration and Self help that were pursued through dedicated efforts of able leaders and government support.

The globalization of Saemaul is an initiative to spread the spirit and principles of Saemaul movement to other countries. The focus is mainly on developing countries, some of which are thought of as sharing in the predicaments of Korea Society in the 1960s in terms of poverty and development. Its key aspects that may be applicable to developing countries are Citizen Empowerment, Decentralized Approach, Good Governance, Participatory Development, Capacity Building and Institution Building. Today, some Developing countries are already bench marking Korea as a development model.

Saemaul movement’s major contributions include imparting a sense of ownership through people’s participation in decision making and implementation of projects. It nurtured the spirit of volunteerism and changed people’s mindset. The results of the movement were overwhelming. For example, Munsung-Ri, Gigye-myun, the birthplace of Saemaul, was designated as ‘Green Village number 1’ and recognized as the model for green villages. Its greening and beautification program saw people come out in numbers during charity event to plant trees in Pohang city transforming it into a beautiful city. It also fostered law and order and efficiency, love and respect in the work place.

Some development experts have argued that the circumstances under which Saemaul succeeded in Korea and the challenges facing Africa are quite dissimilar. Others pointed out that the movement is not replicable in African countries especially those governed by democracy. The latter group believe that Saemaul could only succeed in Korea because of President Park Jung Hee’s leadership, which is said, was dictatorship.

Despite these critics, there is no doubt that the spirit and principles of Saemaul movement advanced if adopted can salvage Africa. In fact some aspects of the movement already exist in African countries. First, the movement should be seen as a partnership strategy for development between the government and the local community, in which the government first contributed bags of cement and steel, while the community contributed free labour.

One of the most startling aspects of Saemaul is the spirit of volunteerism and collaboration. The spirit of volunteerism has also existed in African continent in different forms. In Kenya for example in 2008, the Global Peace Festival (GPF), an initiative started by Dr. Hyun Jin Moon mobilised thousands of volunteers to clean up River Nairobi which had been seriously intoxicated by industrial wastes. Based on grassroots support GPF helped to reclaim a river that provides water to millions in the city. In another occasion, Kenya demonstrated the power of volunteering for a charity course through Kenyans for Kenya initiative, when it mobilised voluntary contributions to ameliorate rural communities North Eastern Kenya from the biting effects of hunger and drought. This initiative mobilised $ 11 million through mobile money transfer in less than six months. But even before this, it was a common practice in Kenya for people to volunteer to help each other out. This was seen the form of helping out in farms, or when a community member is building a new home in the rural setting. In most communities people also volunteered to renovate homes for the weak and old, or to construct and maintain community roads and bridges. In most cases the spirit of volunteerism and collaboration was maintained through strong social and cultural bond that prized good neighbourliness. This neighbourliness was measured by one’s voluntary participation in joint community initiatives.

Whilst this spirit still exists in some communities, it has largely disappeared as people commercialized all activities and started to demand payment in return. In Kenya specifically, most roads and bridges that were maintained by communities have been neglected. This has been deepened by cultural erosion and new forms of social dynamics in Africa. Individualism has certainly robbed many African communities of the sense of community and volunteerism. Unfortunately this trend has been perpetuated by development experts who emphasise individualism and commercialisation of labour more than communalism. The slow disappearance of volunteerism can also be seen to be a result of lack of institutionalization of the spirit in African. In Korea for example, this practice was spearheaded by Saemaul movement which provided institutional framework for the safeguard and recognition of the practice, under full support of President Park. In that way volunteerism became a highly regarded activity with increased visibility, in which everyone could participate including public officers. In Africa, Rwanda has adopted this Korean type institutionalised approach. Rwanda has set aside one day every month for voluntary activities. This spirit is propagated for community clean up or construction works in the neighbourhood. It is not uncommon to see President Kagame participating in such voluntary community exercises.

Similarly, the spirit of collaboration which complimented volunteerism cannot be overemphasised within Korean society. The practice was premised on bridging resource constraints by pulling together scarce resources to speed up development in rural communities. This has is also a shared thread between Korea and some communities in Africa. Kenya for example, was founded on the philosophy of ‘Harambeee’ which means pulling together of scarce resources for quick development of both urban and rural communities and was spearheaded by the President Kenyatta. Many community schools, hospitals and other social amenities were built in Kenya through this movement immediately after independence. Nonetheless, the spirit of ‘Harambee’ became too politicised in Kenya and has been used by politicians especially during electioneering period to manipulate the rural poor for votes. Thus it has had less developmental impact in the latter years.

At the local level in Kenya, the idea of ‘merry go round’ enabled people in the community to collaborate to uplift the standard of living for community members. But the success of ‘merry go round’ was hampered by lack of enforcement mechanism on defaulting members who would free ride and fail to honour their obligations.

However, today the idea of collaboration in the rural communities is being reinvented in the form of table banking in some rural communities in Kenya. Introduced in Kenya by Resource Oriented Development (ROD) initiatives in 2006, the practice is most common in central Kenya and Rift valley. The concept helps in mobilising local resources to help group members to implement their dream projects and involves building capacity of the community members to use their resources in more sustainable ways. Operating as a revolving fund, this initiative also enables poor community members to accumulate shares and take loans at low interest rates. The advantage with such a group is that social capital becomes the collateral for receiving the loans. This improves access to capital by rural poor women who often lack collateral get loans from formal banking sector.

The activities of ROD have been scaled up to Community Livelihood Improvement Group (CLIG). Similar to Saemaul movement, ROD encourages the spirit of self help by advocating a savings culture to enhance self reliance with little external support. It cannot be forgotten that Korea, during its economic take off had a strong savings culture which made funds available for investment. ROD also aims to build capacity of community members in natural resource management, sustainable agriculture, production of high value agricultural commodities and providing training on skills for value addition and appropriate technology among the community members. Having noted that many African communities exhibit a shortfall of appropriate technology and value addition among predominantly agricultural communities, efforts to tackle these challenges should be supported.

Another critical aspect of Saemaul movement is local capacity building and local participation, a problem that runs across many communities in Africa. This deficiency has had detrimental effects on development. It is worrisome that in many communities depletion of natural resources like forests is very high. This is because communities lack ownership and user rights in community resources. This has resulted in continued logging and deforestation, in some cases threatening water catchment areas and endangering rare wildlife and bird species. It also provides opportunity for corruption and entrenches inefficiency. In Uganda, lack of capacity by local marginalised Batwa community to negotiate a legal access to Echuya forest led to unprecedented destruction of the forest. However, Nature Uganda, a conservation organisation successfully brought together over one thousand households to conserve one of the largest forests in the country. As a collaborative agreement between Uganda’s national Forest Authority and the local communities, the initiative allows the local community legal access to the forest, while in return they undertake to conserve it. Furthermore, the community was successfully mobilised and educated to plant more trees around the forest and reduce the demand for wood products. Therefore community initiatives should be accompanied by public education and sensitisation to change people’s mindsets, which were key tenets of Saemaul movement.