Received: 2025-02-02  |  Accepted: 2025-05-09  |  Published: 2025-06-30

Title

Community development paradigms: the Bhahumono age-grade perspective


Abstract

Government-led socio-economic initiatives and infrastructural development have frequently fallen short in many developing economies, especially in rural areas. This persistent failure has resulted in widespread poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and limited access to essential services, forcing grassroots communities to adopt or re-engage with traditional mechanisms for sustainable development. The nine communities in the Bhahumono tribe share a comparable experiential trajectory. This qualitative case study, grounded in the place-building theory, examines how the age-grade system has been leveraged to mobilise financial resources for Indigenous community infrastructural projects in the face of civic misgovernance in post-colonial Africa, using Usumutong, one of the Bhahumono’s communities, as a reference point. The findings highlight the resilience of rural communities in devising self-sustaining development models and how critical it is to integrate Indigenous knowledge systems to achieve comprehensive and lasting socio-economic progress.


Keywords

age-grade system, community resilience, finance mobilisation, ill governance, inclusive economic development


JEL classifications

I31 , A14 , Q01


URI

http://jssidoi.org/ird/article/193


DOI


Pages

10-29


Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Reference: PSTD23032988088).

This is an open access issue and all published articles are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Authors

Iwara, Ishmael Obaeko
University of Venda, Thohoyandou, South Africa https://www.univen.ac.za
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Kilonzo, Beata
University of Venda, Thohoyandou, South Africa https://www.univen.ac.za
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Iwara, Victor Obaeko
University of Calabar, Calabar, Nigeria http://www.unical.edu.ng
Articles by this author in: CrossRef |  Google Scholar

Bassey, Rofem Inyang
University of Venda, Thohoyandou, South Africa https://www.univen.ac.za
Articles by this author in: CrossRef |  Google Scholar

Journal title

Insights into Regional Development

Volume

7


Number

2


Issue date

June 2025


Issue DOI


ISSN

ISSN 2345-0282 (online)


Publisher

VšĮ Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center, Vilnius, Lithuania

Cited

Google Scholar

Article views & downloads

HTML views: 921  |  PDF downloads: 384

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