Founded in February 2005, Community Directed Development Foundation (CDDF) is a non-partisan and non-racial charitable organization, which seeks to improve on the health, environment, education, culture and socio-economic well-being of deprived communities in Africa. CDDF is registered with the Registrar General Department, Ghana (Register. No. G.14, 868).

This CDDF intervention programme seeks to promote sustainable socio-economic development in Ghana and other African countries. The approach is to strengthen the basis for development of society through networking of all identifiable groups (stakeholders) and improvement in organizational capability using innovative strategies that promote the attainment of sustainable improvement in education, disease control, environment, agriculture, industry and social programmes in African countries, whilst promoting socio-economic activities to generate internal local resources to support development. In order to achieve this objective, the program includes a comprehensive stakeholder analysis that utilizes both the ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ approaches to win commitment from local and central government for policy changes and sustainable socio-economic development.

Extensive collaboration with tertiary academic institutions promote more rapid integration of research findings into academic curricula for continuous human resource capacity building whilst the close execution of activities with local communities promotes wider dissemination of key solutions to local problems in rural communities. Whilst publication in international peer-reviewed journals reach the global community, other dissemination efforts (such as radio, television, newspapers, policy briefs, innovative games and cultural activities) target those individuals and institutions that will have the most impact on local and national disease control and development policy.

Generally, the CDD strategy presents an opportunity to integrate diverse development intervention programmes into local society in a unique efficient way that ensures community ownership and long term sustainability. The CDDF approach, therefore, provides the needed solution to the challenge identified by the global view that, the problems to be tackled in Africa are interlocking and must be tackled together in order for the strategies to work.

Communities in targeted local areas in Africa take ownership of development programmes and implement the activities by themselves in an integrated approach, whilst utilizing the organizational linkages created to promote ground-breaking poverty reduction interventions.

To provide training, guidance and critical resources needed for organizational re-arrangements in African societies that would promote efficient and effective linkages between local government, traditional authority, civil society organizations and communities in innovative partnership for sustainable implementation of disease control activities, poverty reduction initiatives and research; to identify and train a new generation of achievement oriented leaders in Africa and cultivate within them the values of life-long learning, concern for others and the courage to think and act in a bold and enterprising way as a means of strengthening the gains of organizational re-arrangements and partnership for socio-economic development.

To bring good health, prosperity and development to Africa.

Organize identifiable groups in socio-geographical development units (project areas) into umbrella community-based organizations also called Community Development Associations (CDA) designed to:

—         recover lost opportunities for African societies, as a result of lack of ownership of intervention programmes, and infections which lead to drastic reductions of individual productivity, and contributions to countries Gross National Product (GNP) across Africa.
Enhance community’s capability for sustainable ownership of development oriented intervention programmes through research support by academia consisting of a network of students, lecturers and research staff in universities, polytechnics and training colleges working in collaboration with community representatives.


Some Priority Areas

To develop and support organizational rearrangements and partnerships that harness the potential of local society for sustainable disease control and socio-economic development.
• To offer consulting services of sociologists, psychologists, philosophists, physicians, lawyers, engineers and other relevant disciplines to assist in solving social problems.
• Provision of specialized medical and technical advisory services to charity medical units and the needy (including children, the aged, adolescents, the girl child and the boy child in disadvantaged communities, pregnant women, homeless people and the unemployed).
• To provide information on the aims and work of the pharmaceutical associations, to obtain financial support for the promotion of health care, preventive and curative medical care project.
• To prepare and send medical and premedical ‘volunteers’, other specialized personnel, as well as community ‘volunteers’ to develop health programmes, training of personnel, and to collaborate with NGOs and other stakeholders to integrate the control of communicable diseases such as malaria, schistosomiasis, trypanosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, intestinal worms, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, as well as non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cancer in the local society.
• Promotion of exchange programmes involving school children, students, teachers and specialized personnel among different local communities, institutions and countries designed to enhance; 1. knowledge and experience sharing, 2. develop intervention programmes, and 3. train personnel and to collaborate with other NGOs.
• Promotion of students (undergraduate and postgraduate) thesis research on local problems identified by the local development organization(s) in target communities.
• To educate communities through developing cooperatives, associations and workshops so as to improve health standards.
• Liaison with organizations working for the protection of the environment and for social justice through dialogue, training, exchange and collaboration in gathering information and fund raising for intervention campaigns.
• Provision of necessary equipment, social amenities and utilization of local resources in agriculture, industry and others to generate income for poverty reduction, and to improve the social standing of vulnerable groups.