Making meaning of empowerment and development in rural Malawi—International individualism meets local communalism

Abstract

Empowerment is a prominent concept in psychology, and for decades, it has been a key term in global development policy, theory, and practice. However, in line with similar turns toward individualism in psychology, the prevalent understanding of the concept centers on individual capacity to change circumstances, with less focus on empowerment as a context-dependent or communal approach. In this article, adopting decolonial feminist psychology as a lens, we analyze how rural Malawians make meaning of the overarching empowerment and development approach of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in their villages, and how they perceive the approaches as fitting with local contexts. When development implementers largely ignore Malawi’s communal lifestyle, individualized empowerment initiatives can lead to individual and communal disempowerment and distress. Given psychology’s large influence on other arenas, and psychology’s implication with the individualized gender-development-empowerment nexus, we argue that it is imperative to explore the effects and experiences of this empowerment approach in different contexts. A more context-appropriate understanding of empowerment—as with most other psychological concepts—is needed.

The involvement of Non-Governmental Organizations activities in Household Poverty reduction in Oyam District, Uganda

“…The dominance of women in this study resonates with national statistics, which show that Uganda has more of the female population (51.7%) than the male population (48.3%) as reported by (UBOS, 2019). Notwithstanding, this study was dominated by the female because most of the NGO activities tends to focus on female due to their vulnerability than male counterparts (Adolfsson & Moss, 2021;Human Rights Careers, 2020). Also, 45% of the participants were men and women of the age (18-34) years and constituted the majority.…”