UNIVERSITY OF ZIMBABWE

Faculty: SOCIAL STUDIES Department: RURAL & URBAN PLANNING

Course Title and Code: RURAL PLANNING, SOCIETY AND ECOLOGY

RUP 211

Student Name: MANANA KUDAKWASHE STANISLUS

Registration Number: R165928H

Lecturer: MR CHIYAKA O

Assignment 1: Due Date: 03 APRIL 2017

Question: THE HOUSEHOLD HAS BEEN DESCRIBED AS A UNIT

OF CONSUMPTION, PRODUCTION AND REPRODUCTION. DESCRIBE THE USEFULNESS
OF THE RURAL HOUSEHOLD AS A UNIT OF ANALYSIS AND THE LIMITATIONS IN
RURAL DEVELOPMENT.

Marks:

Comments:
Development is for the households and the households are the consumers of the
services set based on the needs they demanded. The key issue of the question is that,
yes it accepted the principles of reproduction and production as the life style of the
households. However, this questions calls for an assessment on how and why the
households are regarded as the grass root of development information. The kind of
information extracted from the household is analyzed identifying the gap needed to the
developed in rural areas. Analysis will help the planners or researcher to coin that the
information they researched is useful or it has some leakages and the gap left to make
a successful development in rural areas. Some factors are to be considered for the
unsuccessful developments taking an analysis right collected for the households.
Engaging the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) is the most and greatest way of
collecting information for analysis for any development.

With regard to rural development, participation merges the people's involvement in

decision-making processes for development, in implementing programs, their sharing in
the benefits of development programs and their involvement in efforts to assess such
programs, (Cohen and Uphoff, 1977). Participation is a process through which residents
influence and share control over development initiatives and the decisions and
resources which affect them, (World Bank, 1994). The essence of participation is
exercising voice and choice and developing the human, organizational and management
capacity to solve problems as they arise in order to sustain the improvements (Saxena,
1998). The aim of rural development is for enabling the standard of living, good health,
better sanitation, and services distribution. Tossing the coin, we may find that these
developments cannot be done without household participation. Culture, religion,
behavior and educations are major causes of limitations on household as a unit of
analysis. So, in this case factors types information extracted right for the rural
households should be discussed in this essay and thus where one can pick an
advantage per each factor, same applies to the limitations, what the one call sources of
sources of household grass root failure to development activities.

By consulting the household for giving the information about the migration flow locally
and internationally will be a great benefit in decision making for growth point
development rating to the flows of the mobile groups searching for employment. Taking
note the views of Chambers, (1994), that when searching such information one should
consult the households with at least fifteen years and above living in the area so as to
sap better statistics because there is a limitation saying the rural residents might
provide generalized information with too much exaggeration some times.

Participatory approaches facilitate training and skill diffusion, and contribute to the
socio-economic development and strengthening of confidence of vulnerable groups
such as poor women. Participatory processes are built on the idea of a multiplicity of
world views about any given problem, as problem-situations are a matter of perspective
and interpretation that is; different actors within a given context, for example, women
and men, make different evaluations of a situation, which lead to different actions. By
seeking out and making divergent views on problem explicit, they become subject to
dialogue, which in turn forms the basis for better informed negotiation that can lead to
reaching consensus about what collective actions should be taken, (Jiggins, 1997).

Households views can provide information about the income they consumed per day
and the sources of income mainly agriculture is the common. About 14% of the children
in the sampled households were not in school mostly due to financial constraints.
Government and its development partners should develop policies and intensify efforts
to better resource programmes such as BEAM to ensure universal access to primary
education for both boys and girls. Priority in this regard should be given to the
Matabeleland districts where the highest proportion of children was not in school. Given
that rural households incomes were found to be generally low and derived from a
limited range of unreliable income sources dominated by casual employment, measures
to increase and stabilize rural households incomes should be critical elements of all
policies and programmes whose central thrust is poverty alleviation, because income is
the key to survive, Sibanda, (2015).

Furthermore, gathering information from the households in an aim of developing the

rural areas is of great importance in identifying the area which is legged behind for
example, twenty four percent of sampled households reported to having access to
community irrigation schemes and approximately thirty five percent of these households
reported their schemes were not functioning, ZimVAC, (2015). This implies most of our
agriculture is rain fed and prone to rainfall season quality fluctuations. There is
therefore an urgent need to equip farmers with technologies and approaches that will
help mitigate the adverse effects of unreliable rainfall patterns, such as repairing the
machinery and cloud seeding for agriculture. Commercial agriculture should be enabled
to the rural farms so as to mobilise the issue of income and food. Companies such as
the British American Tobacco (BAT), to provide the inputs in form of assets loan
fertilisers in areas Manicaland, Rugoyi rural in Makoni Districts a good area where there
are better climates and fertile soils. Many farm lands are abandoned by the peasant
farmer because of the lack of inputs. A total of seventy percent of Zimbabwean rural
households respectively were deemed poor in 2011-2012 according to the Total
Consumption Poverty Line (includes food and non-food basics). Extreme poverty is
more prevalent in rural areas where twenty three percent of households typically do not
have enough resources to meet their minimum food needs, ZimVAC, (2015).

Contemporary planners found it great to consult the households such as chiefs and
headmen towards the development of rural areas. When developing the layouts of rural
growth points for better offering of services but a familiarisation toll on observations
can leave a gap which the households can fill in providing the information about the
physical environment, sacred places should be discovered getting information from the
rural authorities, such as chiefs and headmen but there are households at the same
time. In short there are some of the households which provide the extra details rather
than the common living style of a household. Also chief would be the voices of the
household views again for the proper planning and designing of growth points. (UNDP,
1977)

The traditional problem of draft power shortage in the rural community should continue
to receive due attention as part of a comprehensive strategy for improving crop
production. The issue of tobacco growing in rural areas is causing massive deforestation
leading to the shortage. Rural households participation in providing information to the
researchers will give an analysis on the best strategy to use, such as groups for fund
raising in order to insert electricity in rural area. Hence the standards of living rise.
Schools are getting electrified by the government and there are converted to small
catchment because children are travelling long distances to school, Sibanda, (2015).

Development priorities identified by all surveyed communities were similar to those that
came out in the ZimVAC series of rural livelihoods assessment. These included; water
development, improved water and sanitation interventions and transport and
communication infrastructure development. Government and its development partners
development interventions need to be informed by these priorities. An advantage is that
the rural households provided the information about the shortages and challenges there
are facing in their lifestyle. Some schools are located at the out a distant from the
homes. No proper sanitation at their homes since climate are changing there are
suffering water supply. People are using bushes as their toilets due to insufficient capital
for purchasing the raw materials for proper Blair toilets; hence the government is
providing the raw materials to rural areas such as in Gandanzara community raw
materials have been provided as a result of serious participation of the community
people. Boreholes to a greater extent have been distributed spatially in the area,
Samushonga, (2014).
Household participation can also be done in an advantage of identifying the activities,
constraints and technology needs of women in farm production, post-harvest
processing and household production hence make an analysis for the advanced inputs
for the modification of the farms, (green revolution). To identify the technologies that is
responsive to their needs. To identify the strategies that would improve womens access
to technology sources and to enable rural women to engage in income generating
activities, this is an important means towards their empowerment, self-respect and
confidence. To make gender responsive policy recommendations to alleviate poverty in
rural households, for example, the farmer champion program like those held in Makoni
District rural. Inputs such as fertilizers where provided to the subsistence farmers for
agricultural growth, ZimVAC, (2012).

Be as it may, it could be a nave to close up this essay without scrutinizing the

limitations of the household as the grass root of rural development information sources.
Household participation can lead to the long term decision and analysis because they
tend to tell more problems and their living style. So it will be difficult for the planners to
analyze the complex challenges set in pool. So some of the developments might not be
achieved due to dynamic changes of the life style and some of the Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs) operated during the decision marking by the researchers,
resulting in invalid developments late or unachieved goals set, this is common in rural
clinics such as Sangano clinic and Makoni Rural hospital in Makoni district, where some
of the researchers carry researches for different organizations hence organization will
come for the implementation stages the focused site is already taken over by other
organization which only focuses on the Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA), rather than the
Participatory Analysis, Ganesh, (2010)

Conflicts maybe arise as the households provided the information for rural development
between the rural households and the authority sometimes if their demand does not
met. Rural household participation coupled by lack of education, planning and decision
making might be a bit tough to the planners because some of the rural residents
demand more without considering and knowing the resource quantity. So, whenever
coming another researchers with another issue the response might be different due to
the past fallacy action. (Chambers, 1994)

Household behavior is also a factor contributing to the information loss for the
development of rural society. Behavior and reaction to cover cultural relief such as in
Marange where people are of the religious believers and not practicing the
immunization of the children. So, the approach of rural development information saving
is hard because they have another way of thinking different from the common people.
So, rating to the population, some areas are still lagged behind due to cultures religious
or even traditional hence mortality rate is always high. (World Bank, 1994)

To sum up the essay, a collection of the appraisals discussed above will give a high
quality information without gaps. Forgetting the limitations posed by the rural
households because its their ordinary nature of the rural household to give the
information yes without limits. It is good to collect fool details so that the analysis will
be based on the choice of the first need. Planners for today should not to do long
periodical information collection but the visa is true short period information collection is
good in order to see the wave of changes in the area for quick attendance to the
problems that may arise.
 References

Chambers, (1994), Origins and Practice of Participatory Rural Appraisal, Britain; 22.7;pp
963-969.

Cohen and Uphoff, (1977), Empowering people a guide participation, UNDP;

Washington

Ganesh C, (2010), Participatory Rural Appraisal: National Regional Centre; Assan

Bulleting 163.

Rural livelihood report (2012), Food and Nutrition: (FNC), SIRDC, Hatcliffe.

Sibanda, (2012), Understanding Poverty, Promoting Well being and Sustainable

Development.

Zimbabwe vulnerable assessment committee, (2012-2015), market report assessment,

ZimVAC, HARARE.