A tale from the Bunduni woods: Part 1—The Bunduni national rural development project

This paper is an account of a typical, integrated rural development project. Beginning on a small scale in a remote part of Bunduni with the intervention of some Swiss volunteers, the pilot project successfully improved the beneficiaries' living conditions by the introduction of anti-erosion measures, a water supply and an informal credit scheme. Attracted by this success, the World Bank supported the Bunduni Government in incorporating the same features into a national rural development project. On this scale, the project made slow progress: the original concept had to be reformulated after three years, some elements had to be dropped, and the project period had to be extended. While most of the project targets in terms of physical infrastructure were met, the improvements in the living standards of the project beneficiaries were negligible, and, after the project ended, conditions reverted to the way they had been before the project.