Big sugar in southern Africa : rural development and the perverted potential of sugar/ethanol exports

This paper asks how investment in large-scale sugar cane production has contributed, and will contribute, to rural development in southern Africa. Taking a case study of the South African company Illovo in Zambia, the argument is made that the potential for greater tax revenue, domestic competition, access to resources and wealth distribution from sugar/ethanol production have all been perverted and with relatively little payoff in wage labour opportunities in return. If the benefits of agro-exports cannot be so easily assumed, then the prospective 'balance sheet' of biofuels needs to be re-examined. In this light, the paper advocates smaller-scale agrarian initiatives

Flagships and tumbleweed: A history of the politics of gender justice work in Oxfam GB 1986–2015

This article contributes to scholarship on the political nature of feminists’ work in international development NGOs. The case study of Oxfam GB (OGB) is contemporary history, based on compiling a brief history of gender justice work between 1986 and 2014 and 18 months of part-time participant-observation fieldwork during 2014–15. I describe funding pressures and imperatives, contestations of meaning and power struggles within OGB and argue that gender justice becomes entangled in both internal and the external politics of international development. This is part of a wider research programme about how ideas on gender equality norms travel between and around development organizations, so I finally draw conclusions about how norms are contested and embodied. The shapeshifting political nature of feminist work challenges prevailing theories about how norms and ideas travel and take hold within organizations

Analysis of multi drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) financial protection policy : MDR-TB health insurance schemes, in Chhattisgarh state, India

INTRODUCTION: There are significant financial barriers to access treatment for multi drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in India. To address these challenges, Chhattisgarh state in India has established a MDR-TB financial protection policy by creating MDR-TB benefit packages as part of the universal health insurance scheme that the state has rolled out in their effort towards attaining Universal Health Coverage for all its residents. In these schemes the state purchases health insurance against set packages of services from third party health insurance agencies on behalf of all its residents. Provider payment reform by strategic purchasing through output based payments (lump sum fee is reimbursed as per the MDR-TB benefit package rates) to the providers - both public and private health facilities empanelled under the insurance scheme was the key intervention. AIM: To understand the implementation gap between policy and practice of the benefit packages with respect to equity in utilization of package claims by the poor patients in public and private sector. METHODS: Data from primary health insurance claims from January 2013 to December 2015, were analysed using an extension of 'Kingdon's multiple streams for policy implementation framework' to explain the implementation gap between policy and practice of the MDR-TB benefit packages. RESULTS: The total number of claims for MDR-TB benefit packages increased over the study period mainly from poor patients treated in public facilities, particularly for the pre-treatment evaluation and hospital stay packages. Variations and inequities in utilizing the packages were observed between poor and non-poor beneficiaries in public and private sector. Private providers participation in the new MDR-TB financial protection mechanism through the universal health insurance scheme was observed to be much lower than might be expected given their share of healthcare provision overall in India. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that there may be an implementation gap due to weak coupling between the problem and the policy streams, reflecting weak coordination between state nodal agency and the state TB department. There is a pressing need to build strong institutional capacity of the public and private sector for improving service delivery to MDR-TB patients through this new health insurance mechanism

Perspectives on Enabling Education for Indigenous Students at Three Comprehensive Universities in Regional Australia

Daniels, CR ORCiD: 0000-0002-0672-0450Indigenous students, particularly those from regional and remote areas, are under-represented in both higher education and vocational education in Australia. Enabling programs seek to address this under-representation. They offer pathways to higher education, are important in lifting participation rates and potentially encourage mobility between the sectors. However, strategic development of enabling programs is based on little evidence about student or staff experiences. This chapter presents a qualitative research project underpinned by the strengths-based approach of conscientisation, exploring how Indigenous learning journeys via enabling programs can respect and grow cultural identity, while simultaneously developing study skills. The research considered interpretations of ‘success’ from the perspectives of students and teachers participating in enabling courses. The research found that enabling programs were an ‘important’ and ‘exciting journey’ for students that brought about transformation of the inner self through the building of ‘resilience’, ‘strength’, ‘confidence’, ‘self-esteem’, ‘self-worth’, ‘cultural understanding’ and ‘identity’. Success was experienced across multiple dimensions of students’ lived experience including ‘cultural identity’, ‘voice’, self-realisation, self-acceptance and ‘pride’. Staff suggested that enabling programs imparted an ‘underlying layer’ of skills. Recognition of Indigenous people as ‘yarners’ and ‘story tellers’, along with ways of incorporating ‘both-ways’ methodologies, need to be considered when developing the curriculum. This chapter reports on research which will be used to inform the development of a best-practice framework for Indigenous education enabling programs in Australia, particularly in regional and comprehensive education settings

Child Sponsorship as Development Education in the Northern Classroom

This chapter explores the ethical dilemmas, and potential harm done when child sponsorship NGOs market sponsorship to children in school settings. Arguing that child sponsorship functions as a form of development education in the northern classroom, this chapter points to the potential for CS marketing strategies to infantalise and demean the poor, through a well-intentioned lens of paternalism. The chapter calls for greater commitment to global citizenship education in the crowded curriculum of secondary education and provides key questions (after Andreotti, 2012) for NGO marketing staff to consider in their public communication

A perspective on multinational enterprise’s national identity dilemma

This conceptual paper identifies gaps and contributes to the literature on ‘identity’ dilemmas faced by multinational enterprises operating in a globalised world. Various characteristics and business strategies of multinational enterprises are delineated and analysed through the lens of social identity theory and international business concepts such as market and institutional logic. Our analysis, based on multiple cases, and derived from a variety of industries and countries, associates the identity dilemma to informed business strategy. Our findings suggest that while multinational enterprises face identity dilemmas that they sometimes use to their advantage, it also poses several challenges. Through our conceptualisation, we derive five distinct propositions to shape future research directions

Military business and the business of the military

Contrary to dominant approaches that locate the causes for military entrepreneurialism in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo predominantly in criminal military elites, this article highlights the importance of the Congolese military’s (FARDC) civilian context for understanding military revenue-generation. It analyses how the latter is shaped by structures of domination, signification and legitimisation that drive and are driven by the FARDC’s governance, private protection and security practices. It argues that these practices contribute to bestowing a degree of legitimacy on both the FARDC’s position of power and some of its revenue-generation activities. Furthermore, by emphasising that the FARDC’s regulatory and protection practices are partly the product of popular demands and the routine actions of civilians, the article contends that the causes of military revenue-generation are co-located in the military’s civilian environment. In this manner, it offers a more nuanced conceptualisation of military entrepreneurialism, thus opening up new perspectives on policy interventions in this area

The new enclosures: critical perspectives on corporate land deals

The contributions to this collection use the tools of agrarian political economy to explore the rapid growth and complex dynamics of large-scale land deals in recent years, with a special focus on the implications of big land deals for property and labour regimes, labour processes and structures of accumulation. The first part of this introductory essay examines the implications of this agrarian political economy perspective. First we explore the continuities and contrasts between historical and contemporary land grabs, before examining the core underlying debate around large- versus small-scale farming futures. Next, we unpack the diverse contexts and causes of land grabbing today, highlighting six overlapping mechanisms. The following section turns to assessing the crisis narratives that frame the justifications for land deals, and the flaws in the argument around there being excess, empty or idle land available. Next the paper turns to an examination of the impacts of land deals, and the processes of inclusion and exclusion at play, before looking at patterns of resistance and constructions of alternatives. The final section introduces the papers in the collection.ESR

Trust and Quality of Growth: A Note

The transition from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has substantially shifted the policy debate from growth to inclusive growth. In this short note, we revisit the trust-growth nexus by exploiting a dataset on quality of growth (QG), recently made available to the scientific community. The empirical evidence is based on interactive contemporary and non-contemporary quantile regressions. Inequality and human development modifying variables are used as additional controls. The findings broadly support the positive role of trust in QG. In addition, relatively high thresholds of inequality are needed to change this positive trust-QG nexus in some distributions.https://jpconley.wordpress.com/economics-bulletinhb2017Economic