Social Networks and Food Security in the Urban Fringe by Stephen Morse & The Reverend Sister Nora MacNamara

Author:Stephen Morse & The Reverend Sister Nora MacNamara
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030463595
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The chapter will outline the social groups in the Federal Capital Territory that were engaged via the projects summarised in the previous chapter. This chapter begins with an outline of the ‘landscape’ of the social groups , designed to illustrate the types of group, their history and various characteristics (age, membership , mission statement, rules etc.). Of especial interest in this chapter was the engagement , if any, of the groups with Abuja , did they make the best use of their geographical proximity to it or not? What were the characteristics of the groups that successfully acquired the benefits from this proximity to Abuja compared to those that did not? If groups did try to lever benefits, then what did they try to gain?

As noted in Chap. 4, there are many social groups in the Federal Capital Territory and indeed throughout Nigeria , such as the Esusu . The various projects engaged with the social groups in a number of ways, and indeed the MDG project attempted to setup their own bespoke social groups rather than attempting to work primarily via existing ones. The bespoke groups were adapted towards the delivery of project outcomes , and many of them have continued to exist even after the MDG project officially ended in 2014. The MDG project worked primarily through extension staff already employed via the ADP and Area Councils , so people often saw ADP and MDG , in particular, as being one and the same outfit. Hence the social groups in FCT , as for Nigeria as a whole, represents a complex tapestry . While the projects worked through many groups, and successfully so, unfortunately the time-defined nature of ‘top down ’ projects as set out in Chap. 4 does impose a limitation.

In this chapter little will be said about how projects attempted to lever social groups as that will be covered in Chap. 6. Instead, the focus will be upon setting out the broad landscape of the social groups and how the groups attempted to lever (or not) their own wider social networks . Many of the points covered in Chap. 2 will come into play, such as the role of ‘leaders’ and champions both within and outside of the groups and the issue of trust . As noted in Chap. 2, the leveraging of resources from the wider network is part of the social capital of the groups.

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