Challenges of Saemaul ODA in African region

As Korea’s Saemaul Undong has been recognized as a world-renown community development model to eradicate absolute poverty, many less developed countries intend to initiate Saemaul ODA projects. Existing studies have shown that before exporting Saemaul Undong it is crucial to create “their” model that fits the preexisting conditions in the recipient countries, instead of insisting on “our” framework established by Korea. That said, this research purports to discuss whether Saemaul ODA projects can work in African setting, and, from the discussion, help establish a transferable international development cooperation model by examining and analyzing Saemaul ODA programs in Rwanda. This study is created by analyzing secondary data and conducting semi-structured interviews based on political, economic, socioeconomic and spatial contexts of the two countries. Preliminary results show that the two nations share similarities in term of their political, economic and spatial elements. (The rest omitted)