Page 72 - Research Report 2025.1

Retention of Skilled Professionals (Addressing Brain Drain)
Focus group participants also raised concerns about the difficulty of retaining skilled professionals in rural communities due to inadequate facilities and professional opportunities. Participants emphasised the importance of integrating modern research and scientific methods into agriculture to address declining productivity and food insecurity in rural areas. Many farmers are still using outdated practices handed down through generations, but these methods are no longer yielding sufficient harvests.
Focus group Participant
1. Look, part of the problem we are sitting up with is in line with these professionals that are leaving us. The brain drain. Those with big brains are leaving us. Our doctors, they don’t stay. They are leaving us because it’s hard to stay here. Because this is a situation where you can’t bring over your children as a professional. Because it’s not good for bringing up children.
2. Our parents, I think more than 3 years now are unable to get a normal harvest from the mealie fields because of today,
you need you need, I mean, for as fertilizer. You need a soil scientist that will, I mean, assist you to take that kind of soil to a laboratory because the results must be able to tell you what suitable, a fertilizer is suitable for I mean, I mean, I mean, for your piece of, for your actor, if I may. You see, in which crop is suitable for that piece of land. We are still using the old 3, 2, 3, manure our old our grandfather used to. You see? And today, we are unable to harvest the any because we don’t even know, the type of soil suitable for what. There is this climate change coming up with its own, challenges. Yes. But there is no integration as it was mentioned. So I am saying theres this aspect of research so that we are able to withstand. By the current research as 2. You see? Yeah. We don’t know. So I think these 2, the retention aspect in terms of our of professionals. And the research aspect done by the institutions of higher learning in our area.
Simplifying Policies for Better Public Understanding
Participants 5 emphasised that policy documents are often too complex for the general population, particularly in rural areas with lower literacy levels. The findings reveal that policy complexity is a significant barrier to public participation in development initiatives, particularly in rural areas with lower literacy levels. Participants highlighted that many policies are written in technical language and English, making them inaccessible to large segments of the population. This communication gap prevents communities from fully engaging with policies that are intended to benefit them.
Participant 5
“Yeah. I think the literacy level of our people becomes a barrier. Because some of the policies are written in English. You know. Yeah. So a lot needs to be done in unpacking the policies to them, to the native languages of our people so that they can understand. However, when you talk a policy, most of the times, the policy becomes just a high-level document which makes it difficult for our people to understand. Something needs to be done to bring it to the level of our people. We should be having Our professionals who are able to reach out to the people down there, educate them of the meaning and the content of such
policies. We should be trying to bring them to, what should
I say, to simplify the policies, you know, to that level of our people. we should be meeting them halfway by capacitating and powering and equipping them with the information and simplifying it. And, also, us, as government, officials, we should be moving, coming down to their level.
And local government and NGOs should be doing a lot in making sure that they interpret the policies into practicality now because we can have good, policies. But what is the objects of the policy does not transpire practically, then it becomes null and void to me.”
Climate Change Strategy and Disaster Risk Reduction
The results emphasise the need for proactive strategies to address the impacts of climate change and natural disasters on rural development. Participants discussed the importance of climate-resilient infrastructure and disaster preparedness to ensure that communities can recover more quickly from disruptions. The constant redirection of funds from development projects to disaster response has made it difficult for municipalities to achieve long-term growth.
Focus group participants
1. “Furthermore, I think we’ll be talking more about how the impact and the effects of climate change Yes. And disasters are actually crippling development that is already there, which the rural municipality finds difficult, to bounce back from such activities because, funds that were planned for development now needs to be redirected for disaster response and everything. So in terms of policy development, we need to focus on climate resilient, infrastructure. That means that everything that we do is can withstand future disasters when even in the long run. Yeah. For sustainable development. So that we don’t find ourselves having to redirect money responding to disasters. But whatever that is being built at that particular point must be resilient from the word go.”
2. “With these disasters that we experience at the moment. We do try as the municipality to come up with mitigation measures. For example, here in Winnie Madikizela we have a climate change strategy. Whereby we go to your tribal authorities, educate about climate change, and we work together with disaster management, and we do awarenesses with them so that the communities are aware.”
3. “To ensure this integration of disaster risk reduction into continuous integrated developmental planning for the purposes of risk- informed development and sustainability. Because we are a run municipality that is not very economically viable. We need to develop sustainable structures so that the upcoming generation can come back and say, this is what was done, and we are benefiting from this thing. If ever we continue developing in high-risk areas, there is no sustainability in that.”
70 | STUDY OBJECTIVE III