Tenderprenuers VS common folks

View of the Somali capital Mogadishu.

By: Prof Osman Warfa 

In order to focus on poverty eradication we need to study objectively our socioeconomic development using community-based participatory research (CBPR) model. Using CBPR for conducting research in the community is desirable and more ethical, than conducting research on a community.

Moreover, CBPR may be referred to as the “second estate” in research as it provides rural communities and poor urban dwellers, and disfranchise minorities a voice and a capacity that they didn’t had in the past as they were used as “laboratories” in research endeavor.

This research model does not countenance conducting research on a community or even in a community, but rather with a community at an equal level in the partnership.

This means there is an equal power relationship between academic researcher and the community in which the research is to be conducted.

The community participates together with the academic research team in every phase of the research. That is first identifying the research problem, defining the research question, developing the protocol, conducting the investigation, collecting and analyzing the data, reporting and research result dissemination.

Thus, the need to relook concepts such as community ownership, community empowerment, community-building, community development and community partnership in the local context.

In the developed counties these terms are used frequently by researchers, funding entities and policy makers. Redefining those constructs are necessary because poor communities are dealing with other sets of paradigms such as poverty, food insecurity, violence, displacements, refugees,  unemployment and underemployment,  poor and or substandard housing, clean water and unsanitary environment. Local communities should seek responses to these social constructs and shouldn’t be viewed only as a group to be research on or intervene upon.

Communities should rather be understood as people capable of participating in the determination of their own priorities and capable of solving their problems.

In addition to underdevelopment and economic deprivation, there are structural factors that impact community’s wellbeing, such as poor governance, waste of public resources, insecurity, terrorism, corruption, nepotism, discrimination, tribalism and clannism.

They are also dealing with socio-environmental factors that affect their health more than it does residents of economically rich countries.

These dynamics contribute to the struggle in transitioning from traditional community setting of collectivism to modern concept of individualism as a result of modernization or economic progress producing semi-illiterate “tenderpreneurs” and “ordinary folks-the poor” or dualism in the local socioeconomic situations. The conflicting noise between the two (the rich and the poor) is getting louder.

Tenderpreneurs and the poor are two contradicting segment of the economy. The traditional or informal sector and the modern sector we inherited from colonialism and mismanaged by post-colonial oppressive regimes.

Hence the two cultures that cuddle diverse beliefs about wealth and upward mobility in our social norms.

As an example, consider how modern sector treat our fellow African refugees who escape violence, civil strife, and political instability in their home countries.

We forget these are our neighbors and who knows we may be refugees in their countries in future.  Did we not have Kenyan refugees in Uganda as a result of villainous 2007 general election?

The two opposing cultures are based on dualistic nature of our two sector economy – that is conflict between rich and poor. Two separate, but symbiotic sets of markets within our national social structure.

The social and cultural distance between the two often results in misunderstandings, distrust, and mutual suspicion. Equally, there is distrust and suspicion between academic researchers and our communities, specially, the poor segment or the common folks.

A partnership between academic researchers and the community could take leadership roles in developing ways to bridge the distance of mistrust.

The modern or the culture of the tenderpreneurs is individualistic, competitive, and organized around individual social mobility primarily through skimming and thieving.

On the other hand, the traditional or common folk’s culture is expected to fit into this mold and assimilate.

The culture of the poor famers subsisting on agriculture, the nomad subsisting on herding in the arid and semi-arid land is collective and cooperative and success is achieved through the family, clan or group identity.

Nomadic communities for instance place emphasis on family and community development rather than individual achievements.

What this means in daily life is that there is a perpetual conflict or tension between modern and traditional or rich and poor – a conflict between individualism and communal attitude. That is why the youth find themselves living in a dualistic world.

They are caught between two conflicting expectations. On the one hand, they are told go to school and study hard to succeed.

On the other hand, they are often confronted with the tenderprenuers consumerism and the modern sector.

At the same time, their poor nomadic parents tell them to eschew tenderprenuers values and behaviors and yet remain loyal and obedient to the family and clan eccentrics.

Tenderprenuer or modern sector strategy is accumulate more wealth by any means, including looting public resources, thieving from the poor, avoiding paying taxes, blundering the natural resources of the county and country. On the other hand, poor or informal sector strategy is feeding the family, adjusting to the new culture and economic reality, working towards family and group progress.

Prof Osman Warfa is researcher, consultant, and author of the book

“Somali Diaspora Organization Development: Implications for HRD”.