Community development has been hijacked

Abstract

Community development lacks a proper theory. This paper postulates that the reason for this intolerable state being that community development has been hijacked by charity organizations and politicians with ‘do good’ intentions, simply because it lacks proper scientific theory that offers some element of prediction in the outcome. Current development approaches are revisited and the basic needs theory proposed as a useful theory that takes community development beyond just various ‘approaches’. It merges the c…