Abstract
The study investigated community development strategies for enhancing
human capital development in rural areas of Anambra State, Nigeria.
Specifically, it identified strategies related to education, communication
and mobilization. The study was a descriptive survey. Three research
questions and three hypotheses guided the study. Population of the study
comprised all the 1,701 executive members of the 189 registered
Autonomous Community Based Organizations (ACBOs) in the area of the
study. Multi stage sampling procedure was used to select 351
respondents. Questionnaire was used for data collection. Data were
analyzed using mean and analysis of variance (ANOVA)at 0.05 level of
significance. Results reveal nine education-related strategies for
enhancing human capital development in rural areas. These include
provision of literacy education (X = 3.14), skill acquisition (X = 3.05) and
health education programmes (X = 3.63), among others. Other findings
are 15 communication-related strategies. These include, among others,
provision of mass media (X = 3.10), establishment of group action (X =
3.26) and provision of social media as communication skills (X = 2.95).
Also, 10 mobilization- related strategies for enhancing human capacity
development in rural areas were identified. They include, involvement of
community members in project processes (X = 3.04), formation of
community-based organizations (X = 2.98) and the use of NGOs (X = 3.03)
among others. Based on the findings, three recommendations were made,
including, creating more awareness among community members on
variety of adult education programmes available to them.