THE INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR DEVELOPMENT AFFAIRS, ICDA.
In the 1960's, development meant a process of modernization modeled on the industrialized societies of the North. The measure of progress in this direction was economic growth. Industrialization and cash crop agriculture were the means to achieve it. Programs and projects were as interventions in the economic and social structures of the South which in themselves were considered inimical to development. In this period, the paramount paradigm was knowledge transfer and rural people were considered ignorant, conservative, and even intransigent.
Over the years approaches to development have changed, as it emerged that many initiatives were not making the impact expected of them. It became clear that there had been an over-reliance on so-called transfer of technology to bring about development. Coupled with this phenomenon has been the tendency to over simplify development problems, and not to take sufficiently into account the traditions, values and cultures of the people.
International Center for Development Affairs, ICDA, evolved from a planned and deliberate drive to place more attention toward approaches to development that would involve people more in the planning and implementation of the development activities aimed at helping them. In this regard, ICDA has become crucial as governments year in year out have only succeeded in paying lip service to development problems in Africa generally.
ICDA is a private effort at development. We are continuously looking for (and identifying) improved and appropriate methods of helping people acquire knowledge and skills, involved in development interventions. The Center is a simple setting. We provide consultancy, training and advising that help formulate, operate and evaluate development projects and programs. We have a structure that has been developed through years of work on various development programs and projects.
Manned by well-constituted Governing Council from the best academic and professional environments within and outside the country, ICDA is operated in Units, which are coordinated by specialist Program officers. The day to day running of the Center rests in the hands of a Director who is on the Governing Council.
1. Educational Development Unit
As we prepare for the next decade, we must match our visions of making current diversities in education work for us by using strategies that will involve enlarged structures that will contain future challenges. At ICDA, what matters supremely is not the precise amount of factual knowledge people acquire at a given age, but whether they are leaving schools with alert brains and un-blunted curiosity, responsive to excellence of every kind and are possessed of such an abiding interest in the things of the mind as will keep them learning and wanting to learn all life long. This does not stop at teaching people to know what they do not know; it goes further to teaching them to behave as they do not behave. So, we work towards making educated people the capital of our society. We are doing more than just evolving the teaching-learning experience. We are putting education in the foremost area of competition for leadership and even for survival.
2. Community Development Unit
Community Development is a well-misunderstood area of development affairs. Too often, so called community development workers, tell the communities what they must do instead of inviting them to participate in the formulation and carrying out what they perceive as crucial development priorities in their communities. We understand this key ingredient in development at ICDA. The Center believes in initiating discussions and eliciting consensus among the people as to key problems in the community and action needed to solve them. This provides the two-way information link between a supporting body and the community as the project unfolds and most importantly, it focuses at and records participatory evaluation at the termination of the project. The result is a greater involvement in community decision-making, stronger motivation to carry a project through, and more commitment to sustain development.
3. Development Communication Unit
Development support communication has become of prime importance with the current emphasis on creating development programs that will respond to people's felt needs and will thereby elicit their participation. ICDA understands that though development communication started out with a strong emphasis on the use of media, it is more of a social process designed to seek a common understanding or consensus among all participants of a development initiative and so, create a basis for concerted action. We use the media’s useful tools to bring about this process and more importantly to assist in learning because we do not see media use as an end in itself. We make inter personal communication play a major role. This informs our tremendous success in the use of Development Support Communication in population and health education programs.
4. Edutourism & Cultural Development Unit
The commitment and contributions of ICDA to the development of tourism, culture and performing arts has gone beyond arts and ecotravels, ethnictourism and cultural management and promotions. The Center has integrated performing arts competence with development support communication thus making some impacting contribution in the future of cultural development in Nigeria (and Africa). ICDA in coordinating national and international edutourism and cultural activities has produced a balanced program of eco- and heritage-tourism with emphasis on African traditional culture and experiments. We are currently carrying out researches on the influences of foreign incursions on traditional African science, arts and culture, and the possibilities of cultural exports in the near future. The results of these empirical studies we shall publish in book form for posterity.
One major characteristic
of ICDA is to fully satisfy clients by carrying out in-depth studies on
development problems for them. We
emphasize the organizational development approach unless the client
specifically expresses preference for the conventional approach in which case
we enter an organization, carry out a study or research, submit the relevant
report with recommendations, and exit.
By our approach, the
operational mode is client-consultant collaborative effort to resolving
problems. Throughout an assignment, we
feed back authentically generated data to the client system’s incumbents so
that they may interact with us, phase-by-phase, over data interpretations and
their authoritative relevance to organizational realities. This means that before we finally leave the
system, the client may already be applying solutions and developing how to
continue the O.D. approach without future need for consultants. The approach does not mean that ICDA has
ready-made techniques to apply across the board. No, rather techniques depend
on the perception of the type of problems at hand and/or anticipated.
PROGRAMMES FOR STRANGER
GROUPS
By stranger groups, we refer to participants who converge from
different organizations. Our programs are derived from actual empirical surveys
of needs. A result of this operational
mode is that our handouts generally include research reports on the development
area. The reports also contain
recommendations of ameliorative actions and they normally exclude statistical
jargons and complexities.
Customized programs are
specific to the specific client organization that asks for them. They arise from the development needs
analysis conducted for the requesting client. The problems uncovered for the
specific client are designed into exercises for the in-house participants. We normally suggest to potential clients
that before ICDA is assigned to consult in apparently obvious and well-known
“issues”, they should allow the Center to collect internal information on
"issues" before the actual take off.
It is usually said that
people are interested only in “doing” (skills), not in concepts
(theories). ICDA's policy is that
practice (skills, doing, performance) must be balanced with concepts or
theories. The participant becomes
mechanistic if he or she applies skills without fully understanding the “why” of
the skills and the concepts or theories explaining the problems to which the
skills are applied. In any case, our
empirical studies clearly show that, really, while the participant may “mock
theory”, he or she is not only a skills user but also a theorist and a
conceptualizer. This combination is a major basis of professionalism that we
aim at in our programs. In so doing,
our methods are emphatically experiential and highly
participative/collaborative.
ICDA with a team that includes renowned publishers publishes and disseminates development literature - results of empirical studies, occasional papers and books. A Journal of Development Affairs [JDA] is in the making while three book manuscripts (all based on empirical data collected), are ready to go to the printer. The books are, basically, on problems of development innovation in communities, organizations, etc.
ICDA Council members
include:
Osita Aniemeka:
Specializations in Adult Education, Community Development and Communication.
ICDA Chair.
Professor T.A. Umeh:
Canadian-trained
professor of Community Development and currently head of Department of Adult
Education & Community Development, University of Nigeria.
Dr C.C. Okigbo:
Executive
Co-coordinator, African Council For Communication Education, Nairobi, Kenya.
Doctorate Degrees in Journalism and Education and renowned international
communication scholar
Professor C.C. Ifemesia:
Professor Emeritus,
University of Nigeria with specialization in Development History &
Archeology.
Pioneer Council
Chairman.
Professor Inanoya
Imogie:
One time Secretary
(Federal Minister) of Education in Nigeria and professor of Education.
Dr. Eddie Floyd:
Doctor of Sociology and
lecturer at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.
Dr. (Mrs.) Ada Igbo:
Specialist in
Educational Foundations and Administration, lecturer, Enugu State University of
Technology.
Dr Ifechukwude B.
Mmobuosi: One time D-G, Administrative
Staff College of Nigeria, ASCON. Specialization in Organization
Development.
Carmen Latty (Jamaican): Educational Development expert. Currently Executive Director, Corona Schools' Trust Council, Lagos.
Douglas Owen (American):
Social Marketing and Integrated Media expert. Also with specialization in International Law and Diplomacy.
Margaret Bartels (Ghanaian):
Edvertising
Expert. She is a major success story in the application of advertising
techniques to Educational Development in Africa. Ghana International School,
Accra.