The purpose of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) program is to identify existing talents among Diaspora business and organizational leadership and strengthening the capacity as a catalyst to reverse Africa’s dependency on foreign sources. In effect, ABCD is citizen-driven and discourages ideas that rely on external solution.
Rather, the approach energizes change and development from within – the leadership and individuals in the community. The process is aligned with sustainable development. An important characteristic is that it is focused on strength of the Diaspora community to deliver solutions; not discussions of needs and problems – that are known.
Participants will showcase how to self-manage Diaspora projects, other forms of capacity building, leading public-private partnerships, collaboration in the private sector, harmonized leadership, and collaborative engagement of African leaders, active engagements in the AU ECOSOCC Third General Assembly, among solutions to Africa’s self-mastery.
The format is community-based participatory research, which is suitable for the program. It is also called action (or change) and research (or understanding) at the same time because it generates research about a social system while simultaneously aiming to change the system while a conventional approach simply produces knowledge about the systems.