Leaving no-one behind? Informal economies, economic inclusion, and Islamic extremism in Nigeria

This article examines how the Post-2015 commitment to economic inclusion affects informal economic actors in developing countries. It highlights the selective dynamics of inclusive market models which generate new processes of exclusion in which the most vulnerable continue to be left behind. The case of Nigeria reveals how inclusive market initiatives reinforce parallel processes of informalization, poverty and Islamic extremism in the north of the country. Fieldwork in northern Nigeria shows that inclusive initiatives are intensifying competitive struggles within the informal economy in which stronger actors are crowding out poorer, less educated and migrant actors, exacerbating disaffection and vulnerability to radicalization

Dynamics and Adaptive Benefits of Protein Domain Emergence and Arrangements during Plant Genome Evolution

Plant genomes are generally very large, mostly paleopolyploid, and have numerous gene duplicates and complex genomic features such as repeats and transposable elements. Many of these features have been hypothesized to enable plants, which cannot easily escape environmental challenges, to rapidly adapt. Another mechanism, which has recently been well described as a major facilitator of rapid adaptation in bacteria, animals, and fungi but not yet for plants, is modular rearrangement of protein-coding genes. Due to the high precision of profile-based methods, rearrangements can be well captured at the protein level by characterizing the emergence, loss, and rearrangements of protein domains, their structural, functional, and evolutionary building blocks. Here, we study the dynamics of domain rearrangements and explore their adaptive benefit in 27 plant and 3 algal genomes. We use a phylogenomic approach by which we can explain the formation of 88% of all arrangements by single-step events, such as fusion, fission, and terminal loss of domains. We find many domains are lost along every lineage, but at least 500 domains are novel, that is, they are unique to green plants and emerged more or less recently. These novel domains duplicate and rearrange more readily within their genomes than ancient domains and are overproportionally involved in stress response and developmental innovations. Novel domains more often affect regulatory proteins and show a higher degree of structural disorder than ancient domains. Whereas a relatively large and well-conserved core set of single-domain proteins exists, long multi-domain arrangements tend to be species-specific. We find that duplicated genes are more often involved in rearrangements. Although fission events typically impact metabolic proteins, fusion events often create new signaling proteins essential for environmental sensing. Taken together, the high volatility of single domains and complex arrangements in plant genomes demonstrate the importance of modularity for environmental adaptability of plants

Repurposing NGO data for better research outcomes: A scoping review of the use and secondary analysis of NGO data in health policy and systems research

Background Non-government organisations (NGOs) collect and generate vast amounts of potentially rich data, most of which are not used for research purposes. Secondary analysis of NGO data (their use and analysis in a study for which they were not originally collected) presents an important but largely unrealised opportunity to provide new research insights in critical areas including the evaluation of health policy and programmes. Methods A scoping review of the published literature was performed to identify the extent to which secondary analysis of NGO data has been used in health policy and systems research (HPSR). A tiered analytic approach provided a comprehensive overview and descriptive analyses of the studies which: 1) used data produced or collected by or about NGOs; 2) performed secondary analysis of the NGO data (beyond use of an NGO report as a supporting reference); 3) used NGO-collected clinical data. Results Of the 156 studies which performed secondary analysis of NGO-produced or collected data, 64% (n=100) used NGO-produced reports (e.g. to critique NGO activities and as a contextual reference) and 8% (n=13) analysed NGO-collected clinical data.. Of the studies, 55% investigated service delivery research topics, with 48% undertaken in developing countries and 17% in both developing and developed. NGO-collected clinical data enabled HPSR within marginalised groups (e.g. migrants, people in conflict-affected areas), with some limitations such as inconsistencies and missing data. Conclusion We found evidence that NGO-collected and produced data are most commonly perceived as a source of supporting evidence for HPSR and not as primary source data. However, these data can facilitate research in under-researched marginalised groups and in contexts that are hard to reach by academics, such as conflict-affected areas. NGO–academic collaboration could help address issues of NGO data quality to facilitate their more widespread use in research. Their use could enable relevant and timely research in the areas of health policy, programme evaluation and advocacy to improve health and reduce health inequalities, especially in marginalised groups and developing countries

It’s Not Only Rents: Explaining the Persistence and Change of Neopatrimonialism in Indonesia

Indonesia has long been associated with neopatrimonialism, corruption, collusion, and nepotism as the main modi operandi of politics, economics and public administration. Despite various measures and initiatives to fight these practises, little evidence for a significant decline can be found over the years. Rather, longitudinal analysis points to changes in the character of neopatrimonialism. Based on more than 60 in-depth interviews, focus-group discussions, and the analysis of both primary and secondary data, the aim of this article is, first, to describe the changes that have taken place, and, second, to investigate what accounts for these changes. Political economy concepts posit the amount and development of economic rents as the explanatory factor for the persistence and change of neopatrimonialism. This study's findings, however, indicate that rents alone cannot explain what has taken place in Indonesia. Democratisation and decentralisation exert a stronger impact

Tracking the Propensity of Financial Institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean to Finance Small and Medium Enterprises

The Inter-American Investment Corporation (IIC), MIF and the Latin American Federation of Banks (FELABAN) conducted an initial survey in December 2004 of 111 Latin American financial institutions, the purpose of which was to identify the propensity of Latin American and Caribbean banks to finance small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In 2006, the study's second survey was conducted to research the SME funding situation. The present report presents the results of the study's third survey conducted in 2008.SME

Tracking the Propensity of Financial Institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean to Finance Small and Medium Enterprises

The Inter-American Investment Corporation (IIC), MIF and the Latin American Federation of Banks (FELABAN) conducted an initial survey in December 2004 of 111 Latin American financial institutions, the purpose of which was to identify the propensity of Latin American and Caribbean banks to finance small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In 2006, the study's second survey was conducted to research the SME funding situation. The present report presents the results of the study's third survey conducted in 2008

Growth, History or Institutions: What Explains State Fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa?

This paper explores the empirical determinants of state fragility in sub-Saharan Africa over the1992–2007 period. Our dataset includes those sub-Saharan countries for which we have informationon the distribution by quintiles of the World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment(CPIA) ratings. We evaluate the potential influence on fragility of a wide range of economic,institutional, and historical variables. Among economic factors, we consider per-capita GDP, bothin levels and growth rates, investment, natural resources, and schooling. We also consider economicpolicy variables such as government expenditures, trade openness, and inflation. Demographicforces are accounted for through the fertility rate, life expectancy, and the youth bulge. Institutionalfactors are captured by measures of ethnic fractionalization, civil liberties, revolutions, andconflicts, as well as governance indicators. Moreover, we select historical variables that reflect thecolonial experience of the region, namely the national identity of the colonizers and the politicalstatus during the colonial period. Finally, we account for geographic factors such as latitude, accessto sea, and the presence of fragile neighbors. Our central findings is that institutions are the maindeterminants of fragility: even after controlling for reverse causality and omitted variable bias, theprobability for a country to be fragile increases with restrictions of civil liberties and with thenumber of revolutions. Before controlling for endogeneity, economic factors such as per-capitaGDP growth and investment show some explanatory power, but economic prosperity displays acontradictory net impact since growth reduces fragility while investment facilitates it. Moreover,instrumental variables estimates show that per-capita GDP growth is no longer a significant factor.Colonial variables display a marginal residual influence: after controlling for all other factorsformer colonies are actually associated with a lower probability of being fragile