At the individual farm level, depending on the control technique or combination of techniques in use, livestock farmers will be most impressed and interested by direct tangible, personal benefits such as those realized by using chemotherapy, pour-on treatments and trypanotolerant breeds. Use of chemotherapy, and chemoprophylaxis in particular, has still to constitute an important component in any future T&T control activities if the community is to participate actively. Availability and affordability, associated direct benefits and awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of different T&T control methods will be the major factors affecting individual farmers’ willingness to adopt the methods and contribute to the community efforts. Where schemes for traps and targets are contemplated, cost-recovery issues must be anticipated by learning from local experiences, community institutions and other existing mechanisms whereby farmers pay for delivery of services. Community T&T control programmes have not been successful because a lack of community involvement is often attributable to insufficient individual incentives to participate.
Community participation has often revolved around the willingness of individual members to make financial and other contributions towards an activity that has a large benefit to the public good. The guiding principle in achieving sustainability of T&T control operations is thus based on the ability of people to sustain their interest over time and the willingness of community members to make their contributions in a situation where free-riders can benefit.
Although there is evidence of free-riding in T&T control operations, Barrett and Okali (1998a) have concluded that this has not been to the exclusion of voluntary collective action for improving people’s well-being.
Empowerment in health-care provision and decision-making gained recognition in the 1970s when some international organizations (e.g. the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund) incorporated the ideals of community-based approaches and community empowerment into mainstream health-care systems. Ssennyonga (1998) discussed three conflicting interpretations of this notion by researchers and planners:
1. a top-down or target-oriented perspective in which professionals identify a health problem, design an intervention and implement it, then persuade the beneficiaries to accept the intervention;
2. a bottom-up or empowerment orientation in which the community recognizes a problem, articulates its demand and initiates remedial action by approaching outside agencies for assistance;
3. an orientation that brings together aspects of the two first approaches and where success is measured in terms of both the change in the health conditions and the capabilities of beneficiaries to embark on and sustain self-help action.
The third approach was taken in the Lambwe Valley community-managed tsetse project.
Following Ssennyonga (1998), capacity building and empowerment entail addressing four issues:
1. the community should gain a scientific understanding of the biology and ecology of tsetse, trypanosomiasis and related problems;
2. the beneficiaries should be aware of the advantages, strengths and weaknesses of the various T&T control technologies, including those being promoted;
3. assessment of the impacts of T&T control should be an important part of the education programme;
4. organizational and management skills should be strengthened and should receive equal consideration to that placed on capital and technology.
Prospective action in the management and organization of T&T control needs to be addressed with respect to the type of organization to put in place, i.e. whether the programme will control T&T alone or pursue other developments and social objectives. Thus, in planning T&T control activities, it is important to address the possibilities of linking control operations and other development programmes. It is necessary to devise community structures and institutions that can effectively support the management of common natural resources. Despite the fact that community participation in the management of T&T control operations has been reported since the mid-1980s (Dransfield, Williams and Brightwell, 1991; Laveissière et al., 1994), scant attention has been given to the dynamics of participation (Ssennyonga, 1998). Early discussions must turn around the notions and questions of:
who forms the organization of T&T control;
whether T&T will be controlled within existing organizations or new ones to be created;
whether the system will work effectively as either a decentralized or centralized structure, or as a formal or informal organization.
In order to address some of these problems, it has become increasingly important to include social scientists as part of the multidisciplinary team involved in planning T&T control strategies.
Equity and gender issues need to be anticipated. Plans need to be worked out for a fair sharing of expected benefits from T&T control from the start of the operation. Careful identification of the role of women in programmes implemented with support at the household level is critical. Mwangi, Swallow and Roderick (1998) report that in the Busia District of Kenya, women participated in making traps, took a lead part in dramatic role-play and were elected as treasurers on several committees. The results of their study also showed that a higher proportion of female heads of household contributed more money for trap purchase than their male counterparts. Thus knowledge of the leadership and social status and the role of women in the management of family resources are also prerequisites for the design and proper implementation of T&T control programmes including those aimed at tsetse eradication.
Depending on the situation, the expected benefits from T&T control will accrue to different types and groups of beneficiaries, for example individuals in their own right, social groups as identified at the beginning of control operations, households when they represent the base unit of work, and sedentary and transhumant farmers who often have conflicting interests.
Monitoring and evaluation of T&T control projects are necessary tasks that have often depended on the external initiatives of funding agencies. There is a need to develop at an early stage an approach for assessing community participation in the research, development and management of T&T that should go along with the implementation of projects. The original formulation of this methodology was developed by Ssennyonga (1998; 2001) based on a large-scale study of all participating members of the Kisabe community engaged in tsetse control (using targets and traps) in Lambwe Valley, Kenya. The methodology entails the performance of four major tasks:
1. determination of the unit of analysis;
2. operationalization of participation (management of the organization, mobilization and control of resources, performance of trap deployment tasks and impact assessment);
3. identification of factors influencing participation;
4. data collection and selection.
The approach requires the use of both qualitative and quantitative data and appropriate analytical (statistical and econometric) tools, and at least two years of data collection while T&T control activities are being implemented.
