Technical Notes

These Notes are based on research carried out as part of a World Bank/World Food Programme study into food aid in Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors use economic analyses to establish a framework for considering the cost-effectiveness of food aid compared to financial aid, and they apply this framework to the Wollaita food aid project. Food aid is shown to be less cost-effective than financial aid if the cost/benefit analysis is confined to monetary considerations.

NGOs are receiving and distributing increasing funding for projects attempting to help traumatised victims of political violence. The author argues that many of these projects are ill conceived, failing to recognise that one aim of modern warfare is the dissolution of the social fabric and that survivors will be trying to manage their distress in damaged social environments. Also, the Western conception of mental trauma does not provide an adequate model for understanding the complex and evolving experiences of those in war-affected areas.

Rapid population growth and its effect on the environment is one of the main concerns of development practitioners. Computer modelling tools have been used to explore the effects of proposed interventions, allowing agencies to quickly see where methods might be incompatible or have adverse or unexpected effects. The GIS is one such system, and is open to abuse if used to legitimise existing policy.

The use of the `development limited liability company' (LLC) is expanding. There are important differences between the broad social goals of development and the narrow economic ones of the LLC: they are concerned with people and profit respectively. The author discusses the problems likely to arise when NGOs attempt to use LLCs directly, as part of their administrative or funding arrangements.

This article is based on research commissioned by Save the Children Fund (SCF) into five family-tracing programmes in five African countries. The author describes the stages involved in tracing the families of children, and highlights the efforts that must be made at each stage to ensure the interests of each child are paramount, and are being considered on an individual, case-by-case basis. This article also appears in Development in States of War.

Institutional care for children separated from their family (for whatever reason) continues to be the first choice of governments of developing countries. The long-term consequences of institutionalisation can be severe and in 1991, Save the Children Fund (UK) (SCFUK) initiated a research programme to examine the experience SCF and its partners have had of working with such children throughout Africa and Asia. The author cautiously advocates adoption, where possible, as a viable alternative to residential care.

In real development, information can sometimes be more important than funding, but has to be accessible and appropriate for it to work. Field-level development can be frustrating and difficult; the mass of information may be overwhelming as well as limited in practical detail or real application. There is often a limited institutional memory and therefore a lack of history. This article seeks ways of dealing with the problem and examines information flows to the south and suggests that they should be traded rather than given as overseas aid.

Cooperatives in general are considered to be in crisis, dominated by self-centered and short-sighted outsiders seeking power. The Primary Agricultural Cooperatives (PACs) in India, which were considered to be the nucleus of rural life, have lost their values and character and appear to have nothing to do with the people whom they were intended to benefit. This is due to: the PACs' failure to recycle credit effectively; their failure to become self-supporting; and intervention and interference in the form of State partnership. The three factors are closely interrelated.

The author reports on a workshop on `Construction sans Bois' (woodless construction) jointly run by Development Workshop and IUCN (The World Conservation Union) and held in Agadez, northern Niger, in December 1991. After giving a brief history of these `Nubian' vault-and-dome architectural techniques, the author charts the growth in the use of woodless construction in the Sahel over the last 15 years.

The main purpose of extension work is to assist and encourage learning, and current thinking on the way adults learn suggests that the social context in which the learning takes place and the attitudes of the target group are as integral to their learning capacity as effective communication. The importance of learners' capacity for engagement with the subject matter, and the ability to draw out this capacity, should be more prominent when training extension workers.