Strengthening public health supply chains in Ethiopia: PEPFAR-supported expansion of access and availability

When the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)-supported Supply Chain Management System (SCMS) programme began working in Ethiopia in 2006, the estimated population of people living with HIV exceeded one million, while only 24,000 were on treatment and only 50 treatment sites were in operation. SCMS and other key partners entered into this context to support the Ethiopian government in significantly strengthening the public health supply chain system, with the aim of increasing the availability and accessibility of pharmaceutical products. The country now has 1,047 treatment sites and is nearing complete treatment coverage. This article discusses how priorities were set among many competing challenges from 2006 until 2014, and how the four-step strategy of build, operate, transfer, and optimise has resulted in a successful partnership.     

Queering accounts of “MSM” practitioner agency: recognising collateral benefits

This article demonstrates how donor resources can enable MSM/TG practitioners to exercise agency in diverse ways, which produce collateral benefits for sexuality/gender-diverse communities. By focusing on what Thai MSM/TG practitioners actually do, we illustrate how their practices respond to their own aspirations, not only the demands of donor funding regimes. We position our project as queer in the sense that it interrupts the normative absence of practitioner agency within current “MSM” development literature. We argue that our reading might enable greater recognition and donor support for MSM/TG practitioners who produce collateral benefits through their work.     

Getting ahead of the next disaster: recent preparedness efforts in Indonesia

While there is often a heavy emphasis on disaster response, disaster preparedness and mitigation are, rightfully, receiving more attention. In examining the state of preparedness in Indonesia, this article is divided into three sections. First, it reviews the hazards present in the country, such as conflict, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Second, it considers some of the current efforts underway by the government and international community. Finally, the article contends that the disaster-preparedness process is not yet complete. The main challenges remain: improving co-ordination between different organisations, creating a culture of disaster-risk management, implementing appropriate methods, and maintaining momentum on this issue in the future.     

The Capacity-building Paradox: using friendship to build capacity in the South

This article proposes a theoretical framework, the Capacity-building Paradox, which defines individual relationship work as the basis for capacity building. It explains why capacity building has hitherto been largely unsuccessful. ‘Relationship work’ is central to the functions of practitioners. It consists of both ‘dependent work’ and ‘friendship work’, the latter synonymous with capacity building. To do relationship work, practitioners require power, in order to overcome environmental obstacles. Financial resources emerge as the predominant environmental influence, often prompting practitioners to use dependent work rather than friendship work. This results in a reduction in capacity and does not contribute to sustainable development. Most of the current literature provides organisational and institutional tools for capacity building. While there is an increasing recognition of the centrality of personal relationships in this work, there is as yet no theoretical framework within which to locate it. The article presents original research into people's experiences of capacity-building work in a development context and proposes a conceptual model that may have important implications for capacity-building practice.     

Corruption

This article engages with the ways in which corruption has taken centre stage in much development policy making and rhetoric. It argues that there is a need to destabilise ‘taken for granted’ assumptions about what corruption is and how it operates. This means generating an understanding of how meanings of corruption vary, and how this variation is determined by the social characteristics of those engaged in corruption talk. It also means examination of how discourses of corruption and anti-corruption are translated from international to national and local stages – from the anti-corruption ‘establishment’ to the realities of bureaucratic encounters in diverse contexts.     

Thinking about change for development practice: a case study from Oxfam GB

Development practice is informed by theories of change, but individuals and organisations may not make them explicit. Practitioners may be unaware of the extent to which strategic choices and debates are informed by disparate thinking about how history happens and the role of purposeful intervention for progressive social change. In the past few years, some Oxfam GB staff have been creating processes to debate their theories of change as part of an effort to improve practice. In this context, the authors introduce four sets of ideas about change, with a discussion of how they have been explored in two instances, and some of the challenges emerging from this process. Through explicitly debating theories of change, organisational decision-making processes can be better informed and strategic choices made more transparent.     

关于欺诈客户问题的几点思考

本文通过分析欺诈客户的定义，并针对其严重的社会危害性，提出将其纳入刑法调整范围的立法建议，最后概述欺诈客户的几种行为方式，希望能为立法机关完善刑法、司法机关认定欺诈客户提供参考意见。     

Building synergies in development research: is it time for the Mosaic Approach?

Development research has responded to a number of charges over the past few decades. For example, when traditional research was accused of being ‘top–down’, the response was participatory research, linking the ‘receptors’ to the generators of research. As participatory processes were recognised as producing limited outcomes, the demand-led agenda was born. In response to the alleged failure of research to deliver its products, the ‘joined-up’ model, which links research with the private sector, has become popular. However, using examples from animal-health research, this article demonstrates that all the aforementioned approaches are seriously limited in their attempts to generate outputs to address the multi-faceted problems facing the poor. The article outlines a new approach to research: the Mosaic Model. By combining different knowledge forms, and focusing on existing gaps, the model aims to bridge basic and applied findings to enhance the efficiency and value of research, past, present, and future.     

The ‘Knowledge Exchange Train’: a model for capacity building for participatory governance in the south-western Amazon

National frontiers with ecosystems experiencing rapid changes pose difficult challenges for scientific contributions to democratic processes for environmental governance. We describe an innovative outreach model, the ‘Knowledge Exchange Train’, which combines educational outreach with capacity-building mechanisms to broaden public participation in planning for sustainable development. This involved an international team of scientists and practitioners from conservation and development organisations who travelled across a tri-national frontier area of the south-western Amazon to share recent findings with local leaders and stakeholder constituencies of several municipalities. The Knowledge Exchange Train quickly increased public awareness in many places and provided a means of broadening participation in planning and governance. This model supports planning for sustainable development and can be adapted to other geographic contexts and topics.     

Meaning versus measurement: why do ‘economic’ indicators of poverty still predominate?

It is virtually undisputed that poverty is multi-dimensional. However, ‘economic’ or monetary measures of poverty still maintain a higher status in key development indicators and policy. This article is concerned with the apparent contradiction between the consensus over the meaning of poverty and the choice of methods with which to measure poverty in practice. A brief history of the meaning and measurement of poverty is given, and it is argued that ‘economic’ determinism, while it has gradually retreated from centrality in the meaning of poverty, has continued to dominate the measurement of poverty. This is followed by a section that contrasts the relative merits of ‘economic’ and ‘non-economic’ measures of poverty. The question is posed: why do ‘economic’ measures of poverty still have a higher status than non-economic measures?