Sub-Saharan Africa

Within current neo-liberal approaches to development, models of community-driven development assume that community-based workers (CBWs) are key actors in improved and accessible service delivery. We argue that use of CBWs is under-theorised and seems to be based largely on untested assumptions about community participation and responsibility. Drawing on case studies on potable-water management and home-based care for HIV/AIDS patients in Tanzania and South Africa, the article explores issues of accountability, professionalism, and personal motivations in systems involving CBWs.

A growing concern about the limited impact of agricultural research and development on natural-resources management (NRM) and livelihoods in the highlands of East and Central Africa led to the establishment in 1995 of the African Highlands Initiative, with a mandate to develop methodologies for integrated NRM and institutionalise them in partner organisations. Emerging lessons show that a combination of innovative approaches is necessary for enhanced uptake of NRM practices.

Many agricultural research and development projects seek to achieve pro-poor outcomes through policy change. However, policy processes are complex, and a strategic approach to enhancing impact at policy level is often not applied. This article describes two case studies of actual policy change – on dairy marketing in Kenya, and on urban agriculture in Kampala – with analysis of the policy-change processes.

An ‘Outcome Mapping’ approach was applied retrospectively to five diverse, highly collaborative research projects aimed at poverty reduction. Designed to help plan for, clarify, and document intended and actual changes in behaviour, actions, and relationships of groups and organisations that directly influence a project’s intended beneficiaries, Outcome Mapping enabled us to identify and describe the strategies and actions that played important roles in the innovations achieved.

This article reports on a research project intended to develop systematic ways of managing downward accountability in an international NGO. Innovative tools were developed and trialled in six countries. The tools comprised a framework, defining downward accountability in practical terms, and three management processes.

This article develops the ‘safety–emotion–power’ nexus and highlights the role of emotion in research by politicising the unequal power relationships between researchers and NGO staff members in defining danger and negotiating safety in their fieldwork. Drawing on the author’s research experiences in Bangladesh and Ghana, it argues that research touching on emotion-laden topics can inflict stress and pain on NGO staff members and their families.

Traffic crashes kill 1.2 million people annually, and the number is growing fast, particularly in developing countries. Although child road-safety education is widely considered important, few programmes have resulted in demonstrated improvements in safety. We review road-safety education in Ethiopia and conclude that it is often locally inappropriate and impractical. Such programmes are frequently based on dominant but ineffective educational models imported from other contexts.

The Kenyan government introduced free primary education in 2003 in order to universalise access to primary education. Although the policy allows universal coverage, it ought to benefit the poor most as they are the ones who were excluded from the education sector before the policy was introduced. Using household-survey data collected in Nairobi, this contribution assesses the impact of the policy on schooling outcomes of the poor. The findings reveal that the free primary-education policy in Kenya still excludes the poorest of the poor.

Relations between states and non-state providers in fragile states occur within specific complex political and economic contexts. Moreover, donor approaches to specific fragile states shape the flow and priorities of aid resources. In the health sector, fragile states have dramatically poor health outcomes, with higher mortality and morbidity rates than other low-income, relatively stable states.

Between 1995-06 and 2005-06, more than 85,000 children between the ages of 8 and 14 years participated in a complementary education programme in rural areas of northern Ghana. School for Life, a non-profit organisation, provides nine months of instruction in the children's spoken language. An impact assessment of the programme demonstrates that complementary education programmes are able to help children attain basic literacy in their mother tongue within a shorter timeframe and more cost-effectively than formal state primary-school systems can.