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Globalisation opens up new economic opportunities if poor women producers and workers are enabled to take advantage of them. The need for assistance differs between independent producers on the one hand and wage workers in export industries on the other. In the former case, the need mainly is for increased access to global markets. In the latter case, the need mainly is for better organising so as to bargain for better wages and working conditions. This edited volume brings together six case...

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.

What can political economy analysis contribute to humanitarian aid interventions? How can agencies undertake such analysis in difficult environments? This chapter introduces the findings of a study (2001-2002) of four cases: Afghanistan, the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sierra Leone and the Casamance in Senegal. Political economy analysis is best conducted alongside existing humanitarian operational activities via integration into existing analytical tools.

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...

Published as part of the working paper series of the Italian Cooperation. Discusses the dynamics of industrialization in the early stages of large FDI boom in Mozambique, as well as challenges ahead,

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 process of decentralization in Indonesia was initiated after a long period of autocratic rule. Despite the political imperatives, there is a need to carefully sequence the fiscal decentralization to ensure that financing follows the assignment of functions. The functions should be commensurate with the capacity to provide public services. The paper argues for the proper sequencing to avoid jeopardizing macroeconomic stability or the effective delivery of public services.

This paper identifies key causal factors behind farmers’ marketing decisions in Mozambique. A two-step decision making process is outlined. Farmers decide, first, whether or not to participate in the market. Next, they decide how much to sell. The model is estimated using a Heckman switching regression approach. The key importance of non-price factors such as risk, technology and transport infrastructure come out clearly. Marginal effects are calculated for poor and nonpoor households and...

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...

The health sector in Mozambique has made significant progress in terms of increasing coverage of services. However, health remains a major concern in the area of poverty reduction. The study describes the health status of the population, especially of the poor, and how the sector responds to the needs. Huge inequalities continue to exist with regards to resource allocation, deployment of staff and availability of services among various geographic areas, between the urban and rural...

A multi-centre study in four African countries was undertaken to test the acceptability and effectiveness of Health Workers for Change, a methodology to explore provider–client relations within a gender-sensitive context. This intervention addresses the interpersonal component of quality of care. The methodology, consisting of six workshops, was implemented by research teams in Zambia, Senegal, Mozambique and Uganda. It was found to be acceptable within in a range of cultural and primary...

This article reconstructs key aspects of the evolving relationship between state institutions and former regulos (Portuguese‐appointed chiefs), in Nampula Province, Mozambique during the first 12 years of independence. In doing so, it simultaneously draws on and critiques two opposing interpretations of revolution and counterrevolution which have dominated scholarly production on post‐independence Mozambique and have polarized Mozambican studies in recent years. Against both sets of...

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...

It is now part of received wisdom that humanitarian assistance in conflict and post-conflict situations may be ineffective or even counterproductive in the absence of an informed understanding of the broader political context in which so-called ‘complex political emergencies’ (CPEs) occur. Though recognising that specific cases have to be understood in their own terms, this article offers a framework for incorporating political analysis in policy design. It is based on a programme of...