Designing an effective New Public Management Framework for Rural Communes: Empowerment Agencies

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Résumé

In rural communities, populations are often unaffected by the institutionalization of central governance environments. This does not consolidate their capacity for action in terms of building meaningful citizenship. The objective of the study is to examine the case of a rural community through observation and data collection on their views on issues related to their empowerment. At the outset of the research, it appears that fragile economic infrastructure is the cause of the limited empowerment of populations in rural communities such as Tin-Akoff. Data collection and observations were carried out in the rural community of Tin-Akoff in the province of Oudalan in the tri-border area between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. Convenience sampling made it possible to reach leaders and the population traveling to sites outside the community through fifty individual interviews and five focus groups. Thematic analysis is used to identify recurring concepts in the wording of open-ended questions in the questionnaire and interview. For the analyses, the responses collected in 2021 are contextualized in each of the resilience characteristics by examining their articulations in bias or evolution in relation to common sense. In examining the data collected and observations with in alignment with theories on empowerment, the study shows that an agency with processes that draw on cognitive and management sciences is necessary for mobilizing individual and collective action. These public management tools have performance modalities in relation to what is observed as failure in the actors' environment and the absence of relevant power to act. It proposes governance through empowerment as a perspective for sustainable development. The study proposes the implementation of an agency that generates empowerment and collective dynamics through the development of passive attributes of the actors.Keywords: resilience, governance, management, public, commune, agency, rural communities

Mots-clés

resilience, governance, management, public, commune, agency, rural communities.