The Harambe Social Development Model

The harambee model of social development takes society itself as its starting point. This is a defining feature of the model: activity can happen at any level, individual and family, community, or society, but it only counts as harambee if its purpose is the benefit or development of society as a whole. A project that begins at the community level is not automatically excluded, but it must be shown to serve, connect to, or advance the whole of society to qualify.

For an action, initiative or policy to qualify as harambee, it must meet all three of the following tests.

First, it contributes at the societal level. It strengthens the fabric of society as a whole, not just a segment, group or sector.

Second, it is carried out at the societal level. It mobilises members of society collectively, beyond the individual, the family, or any immediate group.

Third, it develops society as a whole. Its outcome advances the common good and moves the whole of society forward, leaving no part of society behind.

Alongside these three tests sits a disqualifier. An action is not harambee if it stops short of society. If an action benefits only an individual, a family or a specific group, however good or worthy, it does not meet the threshold of harambee. Harambee begins where the whole of society is both the agent of action and the measure of success.

This test has real consequences for how we evaluate development work. A well-run community project can be excellent social work without being harambee. Recognising this difference helps practitioners be honest about the scale of what they are doing, and helps them identify when a community level success needs to be connected upward into a societal level structure in order to become genuine social development.

Real examples of interventions at the societal level include the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Africa Continental Free Trade Area, the development and use of the Africa Disability Protocol, a borderless and passportless SADC, ECOWAS or EAC, national land return programmes aimed at decolonisation, national reform to decolonise primary, secondary and tertiary education, anti-corruption laws, committees and enforcement, umuganda as a national mandatory community service day, a global or national slavery reparations framework, and the adoption of harambee itself as a national motto, as in the Kenyan example.

Other examples operate at a slightly narrower but still societal scope, including a kingdom level survey on drug and substance related social crisis, mobilising every village, not one or two, to develop a livelihoods project addressing hunger and malnutrition, a national pension or social security programme for disability or health insurance, Indigenous peoples securing their own constitutional, parliamentary, municipal or kingdom level recognition and voice, and a gacaca or national reconciliation programme.

Summary of the model

• Society is the starting point. Activity at any level only counts as harambee if its purpose is the benefit or development of society as a whole.
• Uses an Ubuntu based systems view with five levels: individual and family (including clan and tribe), community, society (including Indigenous leadership and laws), environment, and spirit.
• Tested against three requirements: it contributes at the societal level, it is carried out at the societal level, and it develops society as a whole.
• Carries a disqualifier: an initiative that benefits only an individual, a family or a specific group does not qualify, however worthy it is.
• Economic growth is treated as flowing from economic justice and collective effort, such as land reform and the empowerment of women, rather than as a separate input.
• Originated in orature, carried through proverbs, praise poetry and communal performance, before being structured into an academic model.
• Rooted in Ubuntu, alongside the values of ukama, ujamaa, umvelo and uroho.