Socio-cultural and governance foundations of successful income-generating groups in pastoral societies: Evidence from northern Kenya

ABSTRACT

Many community groups in rural Africa malfunction or collapse after external support has ended. The use of non-consultative and non-contextual approaches in the establishment and evaluation of community groups has been associated with limited understanding of group functionality. This paper uses the perspectives of group members to identify social and governance factors contributing to the performance of pastoral income-generating groups. Self-assessment of performance was done with 153 groups followed by 18 semi-structured and 10 to 18 in-depth interviews with well-functioning groups.

The results explain and contextualize the importance of specific member characteristics with regard to combining capabilities and resources to increase collective action options of the groups. Group members modified externally provided guidelines on group governance to conform them to traditional governance practices. These insights emphasize the importance of knowledge on socio-cultural norms and practices, and the consideration of experiences and perceptions of community members when establishing community groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Northern Kenya
• self-assessment
• socio-cultural embeddedness
• pastoral community groups
• pastoralists

Acknowledgments

The authors are very thankful to Raphael Gudere for assistance in fieldwork and to the pastoral community group officials and members in Marsabit South District for their active participation and commitment in the research. We thank Margareta Lelea and Alexandra zum Felde for proofreading and editing the manuscript. The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this paper for their constructive and encouraging comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest

Notes

1. Defined according to Porter and Lyon (2006) as: “Standard” guidelines for formation and development of community groups as prescribed by external agencies.

2. Fair groups were selected when no better functioning groups were available, this occurred mainly for youth groups.

3. A group is homogeneous in one social factor when it is composed of members with the same expression of a characteristic (i.e. all female gender) while it is heterogeneous when it is composed of members with different expressions of a characteristic (i.e. female and male gender). Groups can be homogeneous in one characteristic and heterogeneous in other characteristics.

4. The registration fee paid by members varied across groups and ranged from Ksh. 200 (USD 2) to Ksh. 1000 (USD 10). Monthly contributions also varied across groups and ranged from Ksh. 50 (USD 0.5) to Ksh. 200 (USD 2). Group members of the poor class particularly widows and separated families often delayed contributing the required amounts as compared to members from the rich and middle classes.

5. These characteristics include age, gender, location, clan, education, wealth, marital status, sex of household head, tribe/ethnicity, religion, main occupation, type of family, and household size.

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted as part of the RELOAD (Reduction of Post-Harvest Losses and Value Addition in East African Food Value Chains) project funded through the initiative for Research on the Global Food Supply (GlobE) by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in cooperation with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) (Grant Number 031A247D).