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This report examines the legal, administrative, and regulatory barriers that are preventing women in Kenya from contributing fully to the Kenyan economy. Building on the 2004 Foreign Investment and Advisory Service (FIAS) report, “Improving the Commercial Legal Framework and Removing Administrative and Regulatory Barriers to Investment,” this study looks at the bureaucratic barriers facing women in Kenya through a gender lens. The report makes specific recommendations to address...

This section presents the main results of the CIVICUS Civil Society Index (CSI) research project in Mozambique conducted between March and December 2007. The project was implemented by the Community Development Foundation (FDC) in close collaboration with CIVICUS (World Alliance for citizen participation) and with financial support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Aga Kahn Foundation and the European Union. The CSI project is an integrated research effort involving...

Two types of models are dominant in the current resource curse literature. One type of model studies the selection of entrepreneurs into rent-seeking versus productive activities. The other type analyses the use of patronage by politicians seeking re-election. The policy implications of the two models are quite different. The first model suggests that institutions governing the private sector ought to be improved. The second model suggests that institutions governing the public sector should...

SDC has been implementing projects in support to decentralisation and local governance for about 15 years. Today, arounf 2/3 of SDC's country programmes include a support to local governance and/or decentralisation. For this reason, an independent evaluation of  SDC’s achievements on “Decentralisation  and local governance” took place in 2006‐2007. One of the recommendations of this evaluation  was to  carry out  a capitalisation of SDC’s experiences in this field. SDC’s  Governance ...

This report presents findings from the Social Sector Performance Qualitative Study (SSPQS). The SSPQS was designed as a follow-up to the Social Sector Performance Surveys (SSPS), which were public expenditure tracking surveys undertaken in the primary and secondary education and government health and family planning systems between 2004 and 2006. In many respects, the SSPS findings were positive, documenting that systems of health and education service provision were functioning. While there...

This is the second in a series of six participatory and qualitative studies of poverty in Mozambique, done with the objective of supporting the government in monitoring and evaluating the ongoing Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty, PARPA II (GdM 2005). The first report looked into social relations of rural poverty in northern Mozambique, with special reference to the District of Murrupula in the Nampula province (Tvedten, Paulo and Rosário 2006). This report will analyse...

In 2001, Indonesia embarked on a decentralization process that has had a dramatic impact on the local political landscape, especially in relation to taxation and administrative processes. Rules and procedures that govern licensing, registration, some taxes and user charges have largely been devolved to local governments. A significant number of new licenses and charges have been created at the local level, and most licenses are issued through a complicated system of procedures and agencies....

Power analysis can help donors understand underlying structural factors impeding poverty reduction as well as incentives and disincentives for pro-poor development. Such analysis may point to i.a. why resources and authority are not transferred to lower levels of government in spite of decentralisation reforms, why women are not allowed to inherit land, and why poor people’s human rights, in particular, tend to be neglected – and what could be done about such expressions of politics of...

The present report integrates the main conclusions of the three PPFD projects evaluation: PPFDNorth, PPFD-Centre and PRODER, establishing the articulation with the evolution of the political and administrative evolution and relevant for the decentralization process. Based on this analysis the report proposes the architecture of a single National PPFD Program and its main components. This report is based on the main conclusions of an extensive field work covering various provinces and...

Market-oriented policy agendas have enjoyed a remarkable influence in Indonesia for almost four decades. Yet, attempts to impose these agendas in any systematic fashion have proven uncertain and inconclusive. This is not simply a case of successful resistance to reform by entrenched interests. Rather, the deepening of market capitalism and global integration has, in many instances, appeared to consolidate authoritarian politics and predatory economic relationships. Even in the wake of...

Since its emergence from a brutal, 17-year civil war, Mozambique’s process of political reform has faced a number of challenges. The first has been to empower ordinary Mozambicans by allowing them to participate in a democratic system and enabling them to voice their demands to the state and hold it accountable. The second has been to rebuild a state with the capacity to respond to citizen demands effectively. And given the long history of violent division, a third challenge has been to...

Despite high infant and maternal mortality rates, many Mozambican women with access to prenatal services delay prenatal clinic consultations, limiting opportunity for prevention and treatment of preventable pregnancy complications. Ethnographic research, interviews with health providers and longitudinal pregnancy case studies with 83 women were conducted in Central Mozambique to examine pregnant women's underutilization of clinic-based prenatal services. The study found that pregnancy...

Information on the Swedish support to the private sector related to agriculture in Niassa, Mozambique 2003.

This paper brings together gender analysis, small scale enterprise analysis, and gender budget analysis in a development context. The paper demonstrates that gender matters not only to the ownership of an SME, but also to its most likely principal activity, the stock of the assets that it possesses, the labour that it utilizes, the costs that it faces, the revenues that it generates, and the profits that it earns. In particular, lower earnings for female-owned SMEs can be attributed to the...

This case study has attempted to show that the implementation of a policy mechanism like PSP in water and sanitation in a context like Niassa is highly unlikely to achieve the development impacts intended. It appears that the concept “PSP” itself is erroneous; it assumes that there is a private sector wishing to participate, and that public sector delivery is the key obstacle to private involvement. Equally erroneous is the idea that the private sector can just emerge from market mechanisms...

The papers and discussions included in this collection are the product of a workshop, “Discovering Normality in Health and the Reproductive Body,” held in March, 2001 at Northwestern University's Program of African Studies. The idea for the workshop stemmed from a history of collaborations among Caroline Bledsoe, Jane Guyer, and Kuate Defo Barthélemy on topics of fertility, health, and research methodology. The workshop itself grew out of a commitment to continue that conversation and to...

This article presents results from a study on the use and appropriation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in Mozambique with a focus on the health sector. The three provinces of Gaza, Inhambane and Niassa were surveyed and two questionnaires addressing 1) computer users and their ability to manage ICT, and 2) health workers and their handling of health information, were used. Based on this study appropriate strategies for developing an ICT-infrastructure with the needs of...

More and more, development organizations are under pressure to demonstrate that their programs result in significant and lasting changes in the well-being of their intended beneficiaries. However, such "impacts" are often the product of a confluence of events for which no single agency or group of agencies can realistically claim full credit. As a result, assessing development impacts is problematic, yet many organizations continue to struggle to measure results far beyond the reach of their...

In mid-1998, a World Bank study grimly noted that "Indonesia is in deep economic crisis. A country that achieved decades of rapid growth, stability, and poverty reduction is now near economic collapse . . . no country in recent history, let alone one the size of Indonesia, has ever suffered such a dramatic reversal of fortune." There is bitter irony in Indonesia's fall from grace. Long hailed as a model of successful economic development, it was widely predicted to escape the fate of...

The IDS Participation and Health and Social Change Groups convened a workshop in October 1999 to share experience with the use of participatory approaches in enhancing accountability in the health sector, and to explore some of these challenges. The articles in this bulletin reflect some of the richness of experience on the ground in building effective participation, as well as some of the many issues that arise in moving towards more active citizen engagement with service provision. They...