New directions for pastoral development in Africa

The last few years have seen a major rethinking of some of the hallowed assumptions of range ecology and range-management practice. The usefulness of terms such as ‘vegetation succession?s, ‘carrying capacity?s, and ‘desertification?s is being reassessed, particularly for the dry rangelands which are dominated by highly variable rainfall and episodic, chance events such as drought. This article examines the management and policy implications of this thinking for pastoral development in dryland areas. It briefly examines the consequences of environmental variability for pastoral development planning, range and fodder management, drought responses, livestock marketing, resource tenure, institutional development, and pastoral administration. By offering new directions for development workers, researchers, and policy planners, the article illustrates, in practical terms, a future for pastoral development in dryland Africa that recognises both the importance of pastoral livelihoods and the significance of environmental variability.     

Health programmes for the disadvantaged

The implementation of health programmes by external health professionals (‘givers?s) in disadvantaged communities (‘receivers?s) faces a variety of interactional barriers, some of which can be appreciated within the framework of the doctor-patient relationship. This article identifies the problems of cultural dissonance, unrealistic expectations, hostility, and non-cooperation that sometimes arise within the giver-receiver relationship, and outlines strategies to deal with them. The recognition and resolution of these issues are important to ensure the success of health programmes.     

Modelling learning programmes

This brief paper describes one attempt to update the programme logic models to incorporate organisational learning. It begins with a brief review of learning concepts, describes the traditional Logical Framework Analysis, and concludes with a sketch of an alternative programme model, entitled the Temporal Logic Model.     

Women's empowerment and micro-finance programmes: strategies for increasing impact

This study summarizes findings from a pilot project that distributed information and ran workshops in Ethiopia, Ghana, and India, on women's empowerment and microfinance. The project was funded by the British Small Enterprise Development Fund of the Department of International Development. Links between microfinance and women's empowerment are viewed as optimistic, limited by design, cost effective in eliminating poverty, and a misplaced diversion of resources. Microfinance programs range from small scale self-help groups to large poverty-targeted banks. One model may vary in delivery, group functions and structures, and complementary services. This project identified 3 contrasting approaches to microfinance and women's empowerment: the financial sustainability approach, the integrated community development approach, and the feminist empowerment approach. However, program evaluations revealed the need to question the assumptions underlying all 3 approaches. In most programs, women benefited to a limited degree. Many women did not control the loan use. Most women were engaged in low paid, traditionally female activities, and increases in income were small. Resources and time invested in economic activity were limited by responsibility for household consumption and unpaid domestic work. Microfinance programs sometimes created domestic tension between spouses and loss of spousal income and support. Group repayment pressures sometimes created pressures between women. Many women focused on personal rather than social objectives. The author proposes a gender strategy for microfinance and sets priorities for further research.     

Qualitative methods for assessing conditional cash-transfer programmes: the case of Panama

Governments in Latin America and elsewhere have implemented conditional cash-transfer programmes to improve standards of living in populations defined as vulnerable and excluded from the benefits of development, in order to improve access to education and health services, and to improve human capital. Qualitative research conducted among three indigenous groups in Panama provides lessons for assessing these programmes on the basis of the perceptions and culturally informed beliefs and practices of potential beneficiaries. This article shows that required co-responsibilities should be matched with high-quality services that are consistently available and socially, culturally, and linguistically appropriate.     

No more adoption rates! Looking for empowerment in agricultural development programmes

The debate on empowerment encompasses an older discourse about the intrinsic value of empowerment, and a newer discourse about the instrumental benefits of empowerment; the concept of agency is useful in understanding this distinction. In agricultural development, empowerment efforts are often instrumentalist, viewed as an advanced form of participation that will improve project effectiveness, with adoption rates that promote compliance rather than intrinsic empowerment. Nevertheless, it is possible for projects to enhance the means for – and facilitate the process of – intrinsic empowerment. With regard to process, research and extension can make use of a constructivist rather than the behaviourist approach to support changes in knowledge, behaviour, and social relationships. In assessing empowerment, both developers and ‘developees’ need to look for evidence that people are taking control of their lives. Case studies – such as those used by the Indonesian Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Programme – will help to capture context and chronology, with unplanned behaviours being particularly useful indicators.     

Creating the climate for conflict resolution in communities

Book reviewed in this article:
Roger Fisher and Scott Brown , Getting Together: Building Relationships that Get to YES
Susan L. Carpenter and W.J. D. Kennedy , Managing Public Disputes: A Practical Guide to Handling Conflict and reaching Agreements
Lawrence Susskind and Jeffrey Cruikshank , Breaking the Impasse: Consensual Approaches to Resolving Public Disputes     

Financial sustainability in savings and credit programmes

This article provides a framework for determining, justifying, and improving financial sustainability of savings and credit programs. Credit programs have income from interest and fees. Income must pay for the cost of funds, loan write-offs, operating costs, and inflation. Reference is made to Otero and Rhyne's four levels of self-sufficiency in credit programs. The Grameen Bank is an example of Level 3 and most credit unions are level 4. Nongovernmental groups in the United Kingdom are level 1 or 2. Experience has shown that removal of subsidies did not affect the quality of services or shift benefits away from the poor. Success in serving poorer people better is attributed 1) to more money being available for lending under tighter management practices, 2) to greater openness to a variety of clients from removal of subsidy restrictions, 3) to a shift to higher interest rates that eliminate richer borrowers, and 4) to a shift to serious collection of loans which is a disincentive to more privileged borrowers. Percentages of loan loss, administration costs, cost of funds, and inflation are useful in measuring the sustainability of credit programs. Interest and fee income must also be measured. Fee repayment rates do not have a common definition of arrears, default, and write-off. A simple measure is the percentage of total costs covered by income. The World Bank recommends the Subsidy Dependence Index. Women tend to be better at repaying loans. Loan size should be related to borrowers' ability to handle the amount of the loan. Low and subsidized interest rates deter depositors and attract richer borrowers. Poorer borrowers are attracted by access to credit and not the cost of credit. Interest rates should be based on market rates. The loan payment should be no longer than necessary. Small groups of borrowers can guarantee each others loans. Group-based loan schemes work best. NGOs must project an image of being serious about loan collections and must take action immediately when a payment is missed. Good repayers should be rewarded with quick repeat loans.     

Using community indicators for evaluating research and development programmes: experiences from Malawi

Evaluations involving stakeholders include collaborative evaluation, participatory evaluation, development evaluation, and empowerment evaluation – distinguished by the degree and depth of involvement of local stakeholders or programme participants in the evaluation process. In community participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E), communities agree programme objectives and develop local indicators for tracking and evaluating change. PM&E is not without limitations, one being that community indicators are highly specific and localised, which limits wide application of common community indicators for evaluating programmes that span social and geographic space. We developed community indicators with six farming communities in Malawi to evaluate a community development project. To apply the indicators across the six communities, we aggregated them and used a Likert scale and scores to assess communities' perceptions of the extent to which the project had achieved its objectives. We analysed the data using a comparison of means to compare indicators across communities and by gender.     

Critical Incidents in emergency relief work

The ethos of technical assistance in emergency relief work has emphasised the importance of recruiting people with appropriate professional and technical skills to work under the difficult circumstances of disasters. The authors used the Critical Incident Technique to assess jobrelated skills that were seen to be crucial for the achievement of the objectives towards which emergency relief personnel were working. Fifteen Irish nurses, working predominantly in refugee camps, identified over 60 different work objectives and 54 distinct job-related skills. It is argued that greater account should be taken of the variety of objectives which motivates such fieldworkers. The job-related skills identified were primarily process- rather than outcome-oriented skills, and the authors hold that a greater emphasis should be placed on the development of fluid as opposed to crystallised skills. The possibilities of using the Critical Incident Technique as a mechanism for feeding back authentic field experience and operationalising effective process skills are discussed.     

The political consequences of reintegration programmes in current peace-building: a framework for analysis

This article demonstrates how democracy and peace-building can interlink at the micro-level, as demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) programmes feed into democratisation via their rarely studied political impact among individual ex-combatants. Using the reintegration experiences of ex-combatants in Liberia and the literature on policy feedback, this article demonstrates the varying impacts of current peace-building on the politics of ex-combatants, and develops a framework to analyse this relationship further in other cases. This theoretical framework offers a tool to grapple with and make sense of the political consequences of DDR, thereby clarifying how reintegration programmes structure and condition the ex-combatants' continued political voice. In particular, it is suggested that reintegration programmes influence the politics of ex-combatants either through resources obtained in the programmes, enabling access to politics in a different way, or through their institutional design and procedural traits, offering cognitive cues that either emphasise democratic norms or promote conflict in politics at large.     

EU and Asian countries policies and programmes for the diffusion of sustainable energy technologies

The Asian region accounts for already over 40% of the global economy, and is becoming the world’s main manufacturing hub. Unprecedented changes in economic growth and trade in the last couple of decades have resulted in severe degradation of the regional, as well as the global environment that could offset the advantages that economic growth has brought to the countries and their populations. In this framework the need to deploy sustainable energy technologies is a key concern for the global community. This paper gives an overview of EU programmes and policies to develop sustainable energy technologies and the common barriers faced to technology implementation in EU and Asian countries. Following that, the approaches and mechanisms that are used internationally for overcoming the barriers to technology transfer and implementation are presented. After having assessed barriers to technology implementation and possible ways and programmes to help overcome them, the paper provides specific examples of success stories of how government policies and programmes, in combination with involvement of the private sector, can be effective in sustainable energy technology transfer and implementation in both EU and Asian countries. Finally, the opportunity that has recently arisen to enhance the introduction of sustainable energy technologies in developing countries through the development of programmes of related activities as CDM projects is presented and indicative mutual benefits for the strengthening of the EU Asian partnership are highlighted.

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The human organisation: challenges in NGOs and development programmes

It is frequently contended that NGOs and the wider context of development are intrinsically different from other organisational settings within which Human Resource Development (HRD) is believed to play an important role. The author outlines the basic concepts underpinning human development within organisations, and organisational development, and sets out the arguments for greater investment in people. While this can raise ethical and practical issues in organisations that depend on external funds rather than generating their own income, the failure to develop the staff on whom a development organisation ultimately depends carries far greater risks. Management and specifically HRD are not desk-bound activities that can be pursued through the application of protocols and sanctions, but require vision, leadership, and hands-on engagement.     

Evaluating HIV/AIDS education programmes in Ugandan secondary schools

Although not part of the national curriculum until 2004, HIV/AIDS education has been taught for some time in Ugandan secondary schools through a variety of extracurricular means, including the media, youth groups, drama, music, and Parent–Teacher Associations. This article identifies and evaluates the integration of HIV/AIDS information into the national curriculum in Ugandan secondary schools between 2002 and 2004, based on the viewpoints of administrators, teachers, and students from 76 schools. While most schools did not include HIV/AIDS as part of the formal national curriculum at this time, the information was disseminated through a range of alternative means. The authors identify the most effective of these, discuss the perceived reactions of various stakeholders regarding HIV/AIDS being taught in secondary schools, and make recommendations for curricular reform.     

Assessing civil society impact for democracy programmes: Using an advocacy scale in Indonesia and the Philippines

Democracy assistance programmes have always been notoriously difficult to measure in terms of outcome, but the need to show their impact (or lack of it) remains critical. This article represents part of a continuing endeavour to develop a tool for measuring civil society programme impact in the form of an advocacy scale encompassing democracy's critical components of participation, accountability and contestation. The scale is tested in the context of USAID-assisted initiatives in the Philippines and Indonesia, where it demonstrates a capacity both to monitor donor assistance outcomes and to suggest future programme initiatives.     

The politics of war and debt relief in Uganda

This article analyses the politics behind Uganda's relations with its multilateral creditors, particularly the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in the context of the country's military intervention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Ugandan officials exploit the anxieties of creditors, which want the country to be considered a successful case of debt relief and reform to justify similar policies in other states around the world. In reality, however, multilateral creditors help to sustain patronage politics that is increasingly based on access to plunder in a neighbouring state. Positive economic-growth figures and social indicators mask the underlying vulnerability of Ugandan state institutions, as the country's military officers pursue private interests. As a result, creditors face real dilemmas in deepening their support for the regime of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, which is increasingly reliant on its external backers. Creditors are indirectly subsidising a patronage-based political strategy and the war in the DRC. Alternatively, if they decide to abandon Uganda, they may have to accept a dramatic rise in internal instability.     

Introducing computers into development programmes: Some problems and suggested solutions

The article identifies some of the problems encountered in using information technology in developing countries. It is based on field research into the use of computers in health programmes in East Africa and Nepal. The visits were part of an ODA-funded project to design guidelines on the selection, use, and maintenance of computers in a developing country. The article suggests reasons for the problems experienced, and offers some practical solutions.     

Children and development assistance: The need to re-orient priorities and programmes

This article argues that if children were the focus of more deliberate attention on the part of donors, it could result in more effective use of the resources available for poverty reduction. Instead, development assistance neglects some of children's most pressing needs, and fails to take advantage of the long-term benefits to be gained by ensuring their physical and psychosocial welfare. The article focuses especially on the living environments of children in poverty, an area which receives little attention, but which is integral to poverty reduction.