Decentralisation in Africa: Scope, Motivations and Impact on Service Delivery and Poverty

This paper reviews the literature on decentralisation in Africa, with a focus on impact on service delivery and poverty reduction. It notes decentralisation is not necessarily good or bad, but success depends on the details of policy design and context, particularly the political motivations of ruling elites and its relations with local power bases and constituencies. In Africa, decentralisation is widespread but not deep. Driven largely by political motivations, decentralisation experiences in the region have consisted mostly of deconcentration of administrative functions, rather than true devolution of powers. Although there is limited evidence available, the impact of decentralisation on service delivery is probably limited, judging by its impact on intermediate variables such as access to information, locus of power, administrative performance and accountability relations. The propoor character of decentralisation is also questionable. Available evidence does not confirm that decentralised governments perform better in delivering services to the poor, despite the fact they ofter are their largest constituency. In Africa, decentralisation has been essentially used to consolidate alliances with local elites and thereby reinforce central power, rather than to pursue pro-poor policies. Institutional weaknesses and fiscal constraints have also limited the success of decentralisation in Africa. Therefore, as an overarching governance process, decentralisation may have limited chances of success without a more structural transformation in African societies which reduces the polarisation of power and gives the median voter greater agency.DfI

Inclusive Land Governance in Mozambique: Good Law, Bad Politics?

This paper analyses inclusive land governance in Mozambique. It focuses on the country’s legal framework and the DUAT, the right to use and benefit from the land. The DUAT is a distinctive element of the Mozambican legislation that has land as the property of the state but recognises land use rights for occupants and users on the basis of a unitary system of tenure. The challenges of putting in practice what is thought to be one of Africa’s most progressive legal frameworks are discussed. These are set against a context where despite land abundance there are concerns over land grabbing and dispossession of rural communities, which constitute over 70 per cent of the country’s population. The law may be progressive but government politics are not, as an increasingly hegemonic elite controls Mozambique’s political system and resources

New Development Encounters: China and Brazil in African Agriculture

There is currently much talk of the role of the ‘rising powers’ in Africa, and whether their engagements represent a ‘new paradigm’ in development cooperation. This article introduces this IDS Bulletin and examines Brazilian and Chinese agricultural development cooperation in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. A wide variety of forms of support are seen, involving different financial modalities, including aid, concessional loans, trade deals and commercial investment. Our focus is on the ‘encounters’ that occur during negotiations and the intersection of wider framing discourses with practices on the ground in particular projects. Brazilian and Chinese domestic political dynamics, competing social imaginaries and histories of agrarian change all shape development cooperation. Meanwhile, African governments are not just passive recipients; they exert agency in negotiations, trading off different players. Outcomes depend on the particular context, and the new aid and investment scene in African agriculture is highly varied, presenting opportunities as well as challenges for the future

Priests, technicians and traders: actors, interests and discursive politics in Brazil’s agricultural development cooperation programmes with Mozambique

This research is about Brazil’s international development cooperation in agriculture. I take two cooperation programmes carried out by the Brazilian government in Mozambique – ProSAVANA and More Food International (MFI) – to analyse the processes whereby cooperation policy is formed and transformed. I ask how Brazil’s domestic politics interact with international affairs to shape agricultural cooperation with Mozambique. I consider the ‘priests, technicians and traders’ of Brazilian cooperation, following a caricature used by one respondent to characterise disputes in ProSAVANA. This triadic portrayal captures the diversity of actors, interests and discourse of Brazilian cooperation. It is also analytically useful to investigate how actors relate to one another and how alliances, networks or coalitions, held together on the basis of convenience, shared beliefs or common narratives, emerge and evolve over time. My analytical approach places actors and interests in the context of institutional processes, but also against policy narratives that are the product of history, state-society interactions and class-based struggles in Brazil. The latter are, in turn, at the root of those institutional processes and actors’ identities. Narratives may be used to pursue certain agendas but they also construct the agendas and the identity of the actors that articulate them. My research also emphasises the inter-spatial or travelling dimension of cooperation policy, with flows of influence occurring forwards and backwards. Brazilian actors, interests and discourse travel from Brazil to Mozambique, get interpreted and absorbed selectively and this has repercussions back to the point of origin. Finally, I argue that Brazil’s development encounters in Mozambique proved harder to manage than suggested by the presumed affinities and claims about horizontal relations in Brazilian cooperation. The experiences of ProSAVANA and MFI illustrate the challenges facing the Brazilian cooperation narrative and its governing principles. I discuss implications for the Brazilian ‘model’ and for the South-South paradigm

New Development Encounters: China and Brazil in African Agriculture

There is currently much talk of the role of the ‘rising powers’ in Africa, and whether their engagements represent a ‘new paradigm’ in development cooperation. This article introduces this IDS Bulletin and examines Brazilian and Chinese agricultural development cooperation in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. A wide variety of forms of support are seen, involving different financial modalities, including aid, concessional loans, trade deals and commercial investment. Our focus is on the ‘encounters’ that occur during negotiations and the intersection of wider framing discourses with practices on the ground in particular projects. Brazilian and Chinese domestic political dynamics, competing social imaginaries and histories of agrarian change all shape development cooperation. Meanwhile, African governments are not just passive recipients; they exert agency in negotiations, trading off different players. Outcomes depend on the particular context, and the new aid and investment scene in African agriculture is highly varied, presenting opportunities as well as challenges for the future

Expectativas con respecto a habilidades de alcohol y de autorregulación de los adolescentes

Endereço scielo: http://www.scielo.mec.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1647-21602016000200005CONTEXTO: O consumo de álcool na adolescência está associado a comportamentos de risco, baixo rendimento académico, dificuldades de aprendizagem, baixo nível de desenvolvimento de competências sociais e emocionais. Pode causar alterações no desenvolvimento da personalidade e prejudicar funções como memória e atenção. O desenvolvimento de comportamentos auto-regulados permite ao adolescente o controlo das necessidades mais imediatas (controlo de impulsos) assim como a mobilização de pensamentos, sentimentos e comportamentos para objetivos de saúde a longo prazo. OBJETIVO(S): Analisar a relação entre as expectativas face ao álcool e as competências de auto-regulação em adolescentes. METODOLOGIA: Recorreu-se a um modelo de investigação quantitativo, transversal, analítico, descritivo e correlacional. Participaram 971 estudantes do ensino secundário público e cooperativo. O protocolo de avaliação inclui o questionário sociodemográfico, a Escala de Envolvimento com o Álcool para Adolescentes de Mayer & Filstead (1979) adaptada por Fonte e Alves (1999), o Questionário Reduzido de Auto-regulação (Carey, Neal & Collins, 2004 adaptado por Castillo & Dias, 2009) e o Questionário de Expectativas face ao Álcool para Adolescentes (Pilatti, Godoy & Brussino, 2010). RESULTADOS: Os estudantes com idades compreendidas entre os 14–21 anos, na sua maioria rapazes (50,80%), com idade igual ou inferior a 16 anos (43,40%), residentes em meio rural (66,40%), em coabitação com os pais (77,30%) e inseridos em agregados familiares com um rendimento médio mensal médio - alto ou alto (56,70%). Revelaram-se bebedores habituais sem problemas (75,30%) e com elevadas expectativas face ao álcool (45,10%). A auto-regulação foi influenciada pelo envolvimento com o álcool e pelas expectativas face ao álcool. CONCLUSÃO: O desenvolvimento de competências de auto-regulação revela-se um investimento em saúde uma vez que, o adolescente com um comportamento auto-regulado assume estilos de vida mais saudáveis, revelando um menor envolvimento com o álcool.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Reforming Agricultural Policy: Lessons from Four Countries

Comparing reform of agricultural policy in Bangladesh, Chile, China and New Zealand, this paper derives lessons for countries contemplating reform. In all cases reforms to farm policy were undertaken as part of overall reforms across the whole economy, started in response to a perceived national crisis and usually implemented by new governments with a mandate to make major changes. Political will is, not surprisingly, a necessary condition. In designing reforms and their implementation, much depends on context, including external conditions such as world market prices. The scope for change, and certainly the sequence and pace of reform, may be as much a matter of administrative feasibility as choice. Where outcomes are uncertain and state capacity limited, gradual approaches to reform that allow for learning may be better than swift and comprehensive -‘big bang’ - packages. This working paper presents the first stage of a review of agricultural reform experiences within African countries, specifically Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi. It aims to draw out issues for would-be reformers by examining the experience of four cases of agricultural reform, purposely selected as often being seen as successful.DfI

Perspectives on the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation

The establishment of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC) created the unique opportunity to bring together and explore synergies between South–South cooperation (SSC) and traditional aid, or North–South cooperation. However, the GPEDC lacks support from both sides due to a lack of trust and misconceptions among partner countries. This article discusses the challenges of operationalising the GPEDC as a truly global and inclusive partnership. This is done by analysing differences between North–South and South–South cooperation and the challenges of bringing them closer. Furthermore, the particular reasons of individual SSC providers, the rising powers in particular, for withholding support for the GPEDC are identified and looked at in the context of fundamental differences between SSC and OECD-DAC aid.Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute (JICA