Civil Society Organisations, Applied Research and Rural Development

Abstract

This research deals with the position of civil society organisation in sustaining rural growth through applied research. This is subsisting with the conclusion that the realisation of a successful rural development stratagem calls for a combined effort among all key stakeholders including the civil society. After all, the operational field for those organisations to bud and impact the livelihoods of their target communities is significant. The research further indicates that, however, owing to underperformance in the echelons of applied research and precision, civil society organisations do not seem to have taken full advantage of the prospects that their working environment presents, with the consequence that they have rolled out to be less industrious. Given that probability, by means of content examination and decisive scrutiny, the research discloses whether civil society organisations have attempted to carry out and gain from an open rural mass, accessible to them in most of East Africa, through applied research and thus turn out to be one of the feasible means of progress. Consequently, the research seeks to address three major concerns: Civil society organisations (background, operations, contribution, and achievements registered); Applied research (rational, strategic interventions, prospects, the missing link, and readiness versus capacity); and, Rural development (and the associated rural-urban divide).