Development communication: an alternative growth and development measurement tool

Abstract

Sustainable development discourse arose to point us to the indiscrete use of earth’s resources. Focusing on stemming the tide away from so-called developments that are short-term and reactive without recourse to the long-run implications of them. The use of GDP as the universal standard for assessing the overall progress of a nation, when it does not measure the welfare and social well-being of a nation’s population is indicative of the era when sustainable development had not yet entered the development dictum. Scholars insist that Gross domestic product was not originally designed to measure overall national progress and well-being but only economic activities. Hence this has given birth to the Beyond GDP scholars crossing disciplinary boundaries who insist that the time for a substitute measurement tool is now. Development communication came to be due to a reverse turn in development initiatives by Official development actors ODA which was without consideration to involve those who would be the beneficiaries of those projects and as such most of the projects were a failure. Now development communication would point us tot he right approach to development. This study focuses on taking the lessons provided by the turn by development actors to engage in participatory communication for development as evidence to propose a new direction for measuring national progress as against the overall GDP instrument. An interdisciplinary approach to more accurate measurement tools, to which the development communication discipline makes an ample contribution.