If one element could be identified as Atriggering@ the need for new training and the upward spiral of self-governance, however, it would be local manage ment of viable economic activities. There should be nothing surprising in this, considering that the alphabet itself was invented in response to the challenges of managing large-scale hydro-agricultural schemes in the Fertile Crescent over 4,000 years ago .

But in fact, the self-governance effort can also begin with cultural or institutional initiatives, on the sole condition that it incorporate or soon generate possibilities of local self-financing and permit its initiators to combine pri mary, secondary and tertiary sector activities in a comprehensive strategy.

In spite of the dynamism of this movement for local assumption of development responsibility, such initiatives are still in their infancy and face numerous obstacles.

Only half of the sites selected for the intensive phase of the survey proved actually to have made major progress in the direction of overall self-governance at the time of the study. Even in these sites, the Alateral@ distribution of knowledge and functions to new strata of local society continues to pose a problem.

Moreover, in places where the development of training was not accompanied by new investments requiring technical and managerial capabilities, a paradoxical problem of Aover-literacy@ or Aover-training@ frequently arose.

The geographical spread of the movement also remains limited, despite centers of intensive activity. And although they are often part of broader networks, local associations C with the exception of a few leading cases C have not secured full representation in decision-making at higher levels.

Of the forty sites visited across the five countries surveyed, twenty were launched by external parties, eleven were principally the work of the local actors themselves, and nine were of Amixed@ origin, i.e., generated by the interaction of internal and external initiatives.

In reality, what these examples clearly show is that, with very few exceptions, there are elements of both external intervention and internal impulse in every successful initiative. Even in half of the cases identified as purely Alocal@, the impetus was actually provided by a returned émigré or an association of community members living elsewhere. It seems wiser therefore to speak of the Aingredients@ crucial to the success of these experiments than to attribute everything to their origins. The study identifies four such ingredients, already well known to de velopment personnel:

How does one move beyond the vague feeling that there are remarkable achievements in some places and sparse success in others? How do we evaluate the precise degree of assumption of responsibility in the different sites v isited? And how can one make an accurate diagnosis of the situation B that is, identify the obstacles that such local initiative must overcome, as well as the influences that favor it?

Many factors come into play in the assumption of new development responsibilities at the local level. The research team decided to aggregate those observed most frequently in the course of the surveys into five categories representing f ive interdependent dimensions of the accumulation, reinvestment and husbanding of resources necessary to ensure the sustainability of local initiative.

The interdependence of these dimensions of accumulation and local self-sufficiency was confirmed many times in the course of the survey.

The same principles are unfortunately demonstrated in reverse by the failures of numerous projects that have emphasized one or the other of these factors without Aboxing the compass@, or without at least consolidating links to the related functions in local society.

Without introducing the technology of writing and effective literacyCin whatever language or script it may be, and acquired by any available type of educationCtraining and assumption of new development functions both tend to remain stuck at the most rudimentary level of technical skill and the most incomplete forms of participation.

In this domain, it appears to be more a question of removing the obstacles (economic, political, technical) up- and downstream from local capitalization efforts B obstacles to which the actors themselves rarely have access -- than of directly intervening in the field. From the outset, it is essential to lay groundwork for the financial autonomy of the activity, and to respect the dignity of the beneficiary, by providing sup port only upon request and against payment, even if payment is only partial in the beginning.

The second series of observations in the PADLOS-Education Study concerns the strategies used by local associations, enterprises and communities to acquire or mobilize the skills required by new local governance opportunities. A summ ary of these observations is followed by an analysis of the dynamics of skill mobilization and capacity construction at the local level, and of the role of the different sources of training presently available Aon the ground.@

Associations on the road to self-sufficiency tend to develop and make use of the whole range of competencies available at the local level. There is a melange of types of instruction at the survey sites. Primary school is most wi despread in Ghana and nonformal education most common elsewhere; but these two institutions compose only a part of the picture.

The communities and groups visited during this study tend to call upon all of these resources, in different combinations and in eclectic manner, in order to mobilize the competency required for the assumption of new development responsi bilities and functions.

This hidden Ahuman resource systems@ has several key components:

The array of human resources available at the local level is thus very diverse and far from impoverished. These varied types of training, however, are not well linked to each other. Episodic relationships and exchange mask a general lac k of communication. But the constituent material needed to build new competencies manifestly exists, as do the beginnings of systems or approaches that would make it possible to coordinate and refine that potential. It nonetheless remains, for the most pa rt, a hidden resource.

Given the diversity of human resources available at the local level, associations seeking self-sufficiency are confronted with a considerable problem of retraining, harmonizing, and integrating the available Alabor pool@. The solution most frequently adopted has been to use adult literacy or nonformal education programs as a Amainstreaming@ or Arecycling@ mechanism. In a good number of associations, literacy in the national language of the area is now a condition of candidacy for o fficial positions, and numerous Koranic students or school dropouts attend the literacy courses to brush up their skills and qualify for new responsibilities.

At the same time, as these training activities expand, enrollments are getting younger. A number of communities are beginning to transform literacy training into a form of self-schooling for children.

All Sahelian languages of wide or medium usage have by this time been transcribed and are endowed with a growing literature. Their usefulness as a means of communication and self-management in decentralization stra tegies must increasingly be acknowledged. Moreover, the transition between African and international languages of communication (e.g. French and English) is now much better understood and pedagogically developed, opening the way to new modes of transition from one to the other.

The multilingualism of Africa is, from this point of view, as much a resource as it is a constraint. The achievement of literacy in these languages poses few technical problems, but their adoption by the media and administration as a me ans of written communication has proved much more problematic.

Supporters of effective decentralization and local self-governance have every reason therefore to help surmount these problems and political reticence. The mastery of some written system constitutes, in any case, an essential condition for progress in the self-sufficiency of local associations.

The key element of a successful local self-governance strategy lies in the close and careful coupling of training and productive investment. The fact is demonstrated by the numerous sites where unilateral interventions floundere d until these two forms of capitalization were at last joined. Furthermore, it is most often training which serves to weld financial capital to an institutional base broad enough to ensure the perpetuation of the enterprise, and which provides a vehicle f or cultural adaptation of the intervention model.

What can we learn about the dynamics of local capacity creation and the prognosis for self-sufficiency efforts from this appraisal of efforts of the performance and results of the various parallel training Asystems@ in place at the local level?

Observations at the forty sites strongly suggest that teaching literacy and becoming literate in one=s own language or a familiar tongue, and acquiring new knowledge on this basis, ar e not terribly difficult provided the application of the new knowledge is clear, and the pedagogy progressive and participatory.

Several factors seem to explain this fact:

The training necessary to support self-governance initiatives is not, of course, limited to literacy instructionCfar from it. But if the Atool of writin g@ constitutes a threshold of effectiveness in the management of local institutions, mastery of this code is equally important as a means of magnifying the scope and the impact of training.

While our surveys were focused on the ins and outs of local self-governance efforts, they also provide some insight into the conditions for success of related training efforts.

Training initiatives which are not at least partially linked with real outlets and possibilities of increased capitalization have little chance of success. The challenges of generating and managing new collective resources mo st often trigger the need for training, constitute its most solid starting point, and furnish its most immediate field of practical application.

A good alternation between learning and application seems to be the second key to success for this type of training. AApplication@ can, of course, s ignify many things besides the management of income-generating activities. The criterion is obviously the use or uses valued by the beneficiary group.

The big challenge, however, lies in adapting the program of instruction to the contours and requirements of the new powers or functions to be exercised, and in modeling those functions themselves into a gentle pyramid of competencies an d tasks which the trainee can scale over time as he or she masters the related lessons.

The element of Aconscientization@, or culturally innovative and critical learning, is a key ingredient in the formula, insofar as it can transform t raining, however slightly, into a movement that revitalizes and awakens the surrounding culture. But it is difficult to reproduce such approaches in a large-scale cascading manner without a good methodology to associate beneficiaries in its conception and development.

Successful efforts at Afivefold capitalization@ seem to offer the best basis for the self-financing of training. The most striking example of th is phenomenon is probably found in Chad, where under conditions of a prolonged civil war and near-total incapacity of the state, communities forced to assume responsibilty for their own affairs created schools and provided 28 times as many classroo m places as the government over the past decade. But similar approaches appear everywhere training is taken over by a collectivity or association because it is considered an essential instrument of its own growth and self-governance.

The more training is incorporated into the very process of organizational development, the more successful the activity and the faster self-financing is achieved.

A wide gulf continues to separate the two groups of actors who hold the key to capitalization at the local level.

If the situation seems to have improved somewhat over the last decade, it is thanks in large part to the appearance on the scene of new NGOs and local associations. Many of them have quickly recognized, or learned from experience, that even the smallest effort of sustainable local development requires blending interventions in different domains--domains pertaining to distinct Ministries and services in the traditional administrative Aorganigramm e@. They have learned, in other words, that unless institutional development is linked to financial accumulation, to the acquisition of new knowledge and technical competencies and to opportunities for cultural ap propriation, these development efforts are likely to fail.

What are the implications of the results of the PADLOS-Education study for the intervention or partnership strategies of government services, NGOs and aid agencies in the West African context?

The launching and management of income-generating activities constitute the driving force of this strategy, but are not necessarily its first element. Capitalization can also begin with cultural renewal, or with confrontation of ecological or demographic challenges. The secret obviously lies in close interweaving of the five kinds of action proposed, and thus among the different sorts of support to be provided.

Whatever the order of intervention, the image of fivefold capitalization at least serves to recall the necessary strategic Aingredients@ and to emphasiz e the importance of reciprocal linkages. It seems fair to say that no external investment or intervention program in local development should henceforth be conceived without incorporating a strategy of capacity building which enables the beneficiar ies to take charge of the activity in appropriate and mutually-negotiated phases.

Learning how to develop such a joint strategy of development, training and actual assumption of responsibility constitutes the real challenge for agency and aid personnel.

Better coordination among development actors is an eternal refrain, but an objective achieved only very partially and occasionally. The movement considered here presents real possibilities for better coordination Afrom the grassroots@, a situation in which the beneficiaries or clients of the activity themselves demand a minimum of harmony among the interventions of external agents.

This form of integration promises to be more solid and lasting than one solely imposed from above. It can be reinforced by different means:

in short, a collection of strategies resembling the classically recommended means for improving the operation of a market and guarding against its excesses and inequities.

It is critically important to ensure that the two movements now under way B top-down and bottom-up -- are not at loggerheads. Local municipalities seem to constitute the critical junctio n between the two phenomena.

The local municipality, serving as the site of arbitration, training and exchange, can greatly facilitate the considerable task of harmonizing the two movements. Exchanges between small cities and the countryside are already char acterized more by a bidirectional flow than one-way emigration. This recomposition of the space around numerous pivotal small cities and large towns holds promise for the future, but risks provoking the sort of stampede of donors that only a broad-based m ovement could hold in check.

This generally means African languages transcribed in Roman characters, though other alternatives exist and still others will emerge. In the present situation, it seems essential to

The future seems sure to be multilingual, the natural state of a good proportion of humankind and a particular asset of African peoples. We must begin to think in terms of a functional trilingualism (bilingual in major centers, where ma ny of the population will nonetheless wish to master a third code): local language, African lingua franca and international language, each having its own uses as well as shared areas of deployment.

In any event, to deny African languages Acitizenship@ as legitimate means of economic, intellectual, political and administrative expression is to depri ve the whole societyCand the new associations, communities and local enterprises in particularCof a very powerful tool of internal development, as well as a resource that can serve to mobilize many others.

To judge by the numerous women=s or Amixed@ associations visited during the study, initiatives on thei r behalf need to ensure at least three critical elements: the opportunity to come together to evaluate their situation, adequate credit, and access to training-on-demand in literacy, administration and management.

Supply of credit for productive investments -- ones which yield sufficient returns to repay the debt, help make ends meet in the household, and increase initial capital -- appears to be a key measure for unshackling women=s energies. They themselves very rapidly perceive the great importance of supporting the activity with relevant training and literacy instruction and securing access to solid technical assistance, as needed.

In the communities visited in the course of the survey, women are increasingly responsible for maintaining social stability and managing households. There can thus be no strategy to stimulate the local economy which does not involve the m.

The challenges posed by management of collective resources remains one of the great stimuli of the desire to learn and one of the principal instruments of effective self-governance. Promoting strategies of local investment Aleft, right and center@ is therefore the basic vocation of external sources of support, a vocation which will not be soon exhausted. But technical instruction alone is far from a sufficient strategy for pulling it off.

The democratic challenge of institutional development consists of ensuring that the competencyCand the resourcesCneeded to manage the capitalizat ion effort do not remain the exclusive right of an elite. To judge by the results of our surveys and discussions, this transformation poses two imperatives:

Finally, the effort required to give meaning to the innovations and to adapt them to the basic values of the surrounding culture or improve them by this crossbreeding is an indispensable function of any attempt at the promotion of local self-governance; and training can constitute one effective means to this end.

There is a harmony to be respectedCor createdCbetween the objectives of greater assumption of responsibility and fuller participation assigned t o these training programs and the methods used in developing and conducting them. Participation in the design and evaluation of training, and nurturance of responsibility for learning decisions, are critical approaches, though ones sometimes difficult to follow on a widespread and durable basis. The time of patented and standardized instructional methods seems largely past. Experience shows how important it is to plan for the participation of the users themselves in the development of materials and instru ctional strategy.

The more explicit introduction of training into the self-management movement at the local level offers an opportunity to carry to completion, perhaps more advisedly and under better auspices, the task of rural and urban Aanimation@ (and its equivalents) which was begun in West Africa more than thirty years ago. It boils down to the challenge of giving voice to local actors and helping them to express and analyze their own needs, to find innovative solutions to their own problems, and to define the role which the various training services and aid organizations should play in support of their own initiatives.

Our observations and analyses bring up some fundamental questions:

Such an educational reform Aby the grassroots@ should of course be accompanied by a certain number of checks and guarantees designed to ensure the quali ty of work, as well as the usefulness and convertibility of the results. But is not the first step to breach the conceptual isolation surrounding the educational system and rethink it in the same framework as the new development activities in progress?

This does not mean challenging the importance of basic education, nor even of primary schooling as the principal modality to effect such change -- but rather seeking more effective means for reaching this goal, by reforming the dynamics of educational supply and by benefiting from new opportunities that have opened up in the field.

Such an ambition entails gradually accomplishing two important changes.

The first is achieving a much better horizontal and vertical integration of the educational system. On the vertical axis this implies fluid passage between a broad primary education rooted in African language literacy and a s elective secondary and higher system using international languages to a greater degree. On the horizontal axis, it means promoting exchange, equivalencies and transitional mechanisms between the formal and nonformal segments of the system.

The second change involves crafting a host of new linkages between education and local development. Among the most important are --

External actors can only effectively support a more decentralized style of development by decentralizing their own operations. Several tools may assist in achieving this end:

Approaches like these open new avenues for decentralization for they promote the emergence of new local intermediaries who can greatly amplify the impact of new initiatives.

This role demands both more competence and more Arestraint@ than the hierarchical behavior of traditional administration, an observation which c onfirms a general rule: successful decentralization requires a state which is both technically strong and administratively circumspect.

At the same time, measures must be taken to unfetter and promote the kind of closer collaboration between ministries and services (and therefore among the corresponding divisions of the aid agencies as well) needed to ensu re effective support of local initiatives that are always and inevitably Amultidisciplinary@.

And the coordination of this new style of integrated development should be carried out in large part from the bottom up and under the direction of beneficiaries.

Faced with such imperatives, the question of the proper instruments of aid and the search for effective strategies begin to blend into one. Only by helping African partners to gain mastery of the instrument itself and to develop an increased understanding and finer analysis of the global context surrounding aid will donor agencies be able, in the next phase of development assistance, to ensure truly cost-effective operations.

Two aspects of what might be called the Acode of ethics@ of development cooperation at the dawn of a new century merit a final remark: