Comparative Analysis of Development Aid Modalities and Institutional Architecture between the North-South and South-South Development Cooperation-Perspectives from Donor Recipients

The modalities of development cooperation saw drastic changes over the last decades when fast-emerging economies of the global south entered the business. Therefore, aid no longer rests solely on the global north with the global south being the recipient. In this light, authors compared the modalities of development aid of the north-south with the emerging South-South development cooperation (SSDC) based on the perspective of donor recipients. The seminar is titled “China-Africa Agricultural Cooperation Policy & African Agricultural Technology Extension and Transfer Mechanisms”, held in Beijing, China. Delegates argued that donor support from the SSDC and NSDC (North South Development Cooperation) comes with varied features and similarities; Firstly, the NSDC is monetarists and characterized with stringent conditionality of fiscal discipline, thus maintaining and sustaining macroeconomic stability in a given country, whereas the emerging SSDC aid is without strings and conditionalities, therefore, SSDC supports small schemes of social productive sectors in the area of health, education, infrastructure, agriculture without strings of macroeconomic performance. Also, aid from NSDC is channeled through institutions such as the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), UN, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nation Development program (UNDP), whereas aid from the SSDC is received by the government ministries. Secondly, the study acknowledged the leading role played by China as an aid donor among the BRICS. China provides various forms of aids to developing world especially African countries in the form of concessional loans, grants, technology transfer, and capacity building among others. Its trade and investment projects are not without strings and conditionalities nor does it pursue a neo-colonialism interest, unlike the NSDC, which uses transparency, good governance, microeconomic as basis for the qualification or otherwise for aid. However, both the NSDC and SSDC puts premium as regards to proper use of funds by recipients, thus strict mechanisms for proper monitoring and evaluation. Non-interference in recipient’s political and domestic issues is not a condition for Aid for SSDC, it’s a mutual business and friendship that author’s found as an important consideration. Finally, the SSDC is expected to emulate the positive side of the NSDC since has a lot to learn from how aid and grants are disbursed. Keywords: South-South, Development, Cooperation, North-South Development, Aid, Perspectiv

Socioeconomic Benefits of Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy Case of Ilalasimba Village, Iringa District - Tanzania

Ilalasimba village of Iringa district in Tanzania was the site of this study. It assessed the socioeconomic benefits accrued to the residents of the village after having issued with the Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCROs), which are legally certified evidence of customary land ownership. The study was largely qualitative in nature but with some amount of quantitative data which were collected parallel to the qualitative information. Key Informant Interviews (KIIs), Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and Semi-structured questionnaires were used to collect qualitative and quantitative data. Households with CCROs in the village constituted the target population of the study, from which a representative sample of 60 household respondents was systematically chosen.Despite overemphasis of the use of CCROs as collateral in accessing loans from various financial institutions which is done by some development partners who facilitate land use planning processes in the rural areas, CCROs also generate some other benefits. They enable owners in precisely knowing boundaries of the land possessed because the land parcels are mapped and geo-referenced; they are tools for area protection to avoid its loss without recompense; eliminate land use conflicts with others; improve security of land; restore lost respect from others of the land area possessed and enable owners to have good land maps of the area after specifications of the land boundaries shown clearly. Moreover, these certificates allow some owners engage in some land transactions on commercial agreements. However, rural areas in Tanzania still lag behind in terms of connections to various means of communication such as road facilities, railways, electricity, internet connections and mobile phones applications. Most of the rural areas also possess poor market infrastructures, inadequate water, hygiene, sanitation and health services as well as poor developed recreation facilities. Absence of these basic necessities make value of land in the rural areas to be low and become unattractive for investments projects in various sectors of the economy which could alternatively be pursued with rural people as joint partners who own land which is potential resource without which investments projects remain meaningless. The government is hereby called upon to speed up the supply of basic services in rural areas so as to make them better places to live and to invest, and equally important, uplift the value of the rural land which will in turn make CCROs more beneficial to all those owning them. Keywords: Socioeconomic benefits, Customary Rights, Occupancy, CCROs, Land ownership, Rural area

Women Participation in Land Use Planning and Its Impact to Land Ownership Through Customary Tenure Case of Ilalasimba village in Iringa, Tanzania

This study was conducted in Ilalasimba village located in Iringa district, southern highlands of Tanzania. It assessed the land use planning process in the village and its ultimate end; that is, issuing Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCROs) to the community members. The assessment was done from the perspectives of women inclusion and participation so as to determine their position in the process. A mixed method approach was adopted and both qualitative and quantitative data were simultaneously collected and later converged during analysis in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of the questions requiring answers from the study. Semi-structured questionnaires, Key informant interviews (KIIs) and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) were used during data collection. Systematic sampling technique which has precision equivalent to random sampling was engaged to obtain a sample of 60 household respondents from the village.Considerable engagement and participation of women in the land use planning process, especially in the open discussions on women land rights, training sessions on the importance of land use plans as well as the right to own land which were conducted in the village at the time of undergoing land use planning process, motivated women to claim for their rights to equally own land. Moreover, women inclusion in various organs of decision making such as the village Council (VC) and the Village Land Council (VLC) strengthened their leadership capabilities and ensured women land rights is an important agenda in the decisions made by those bodies.  As a result of these initiatives there has been a significant proportion of women with certificates of land ownership under single occupancy, co-occupancy, probate administration and guardian – minor. However, women participation was not very promising in the public meetings especially village assembly due to household responsibilities. It is imperative for other village land use planning processes to take women inclusion and participation as an integral part. This will allow for interaction between actors and enable participants make the land use planning a process of high legal and social value to the community through designing, assimilating, adopting and implementing sustainable mechanisms, ways and modalities of exercising land ownership rights that will be beneficial, equal and fair to all members of the society and that will not proceed at the expense of women who when given the rights to own land, the benefits multiply to greater part of the society. Keywords: Participation, Land Use Planning, Land Ownership, Customary Tenure, Certificate of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCROs)

Challenges and Prospects of Women Participation in Local Governance - Evidence from Jirapa District, Upper West Region, Ghana

Women’s role in community development has become crucial and critical in contemporary times. It is in the light of this that women’s involvement in governance and decision-making is paramount to the realization of this social objective. Despite the benefits that communities stand to gain if women were incorporated into local governance and decision-making, women still face a barrage of discrimination at various levels of social and political discourse. Traditional social structures have tendered to place women in the subservient position in relation to men and hence making such societies patriarchal in nature. Even though women generally outnumbered men in Ghana (PHC, 2010), their numerical strength does not transform their power positions as they themselves have come to accept their traditional placements without question. This led to the deep institutionalization of women’s role at the margin of society. The  monopoly of men in  the  political discourse in  Ghana  and  in  the  Jirapa  District  in  particular, thus  resulting  in the  relegation  of  women  to  the  background, this neglect according to the study is  attributable to; lack formal education among women, inaccessible to community resources leading high rate of poverty, inferiority complex due to inadequate exposure and many more culminating into women not been active participants but passive ones in critical decision-making, implementation and evaluation, even  issues  that  affect  their  own  welfare. Many other varied reasons accounted for this unfortunate situation in political circles in the given District. These range from cultural, educational, economical and even politically. Society considers women as the property of men and property cannot be part of decision-making. A good number of women have a low level of formal education and can neither read nor write in order to understand many social and cultural issues of concern especially those that enlightens them. The absence of independence coupled with societal perception makes it extremely difficult for women to actively participate in local governance process let alone put themselves to be elected into positions of responsibilities. The study revealed that culture and religion despise women for the reason of monthly menstrual flow, and therefore regarded as impure during those moments to occupy leadership positions. Women have always remained in the shadows of men in all spheres of life within the Jirapa District. Keywords: Women Participation, Patriarch, Local Governance, Empowerment, Jirapa District DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/9-2-0

Teaching Practice Experience for Undergraduate Student Teachers: A Case Study of the Department of Education at Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania

Education is the key to development; however, it is impossible to think the quality of education without having academically qualified and professional responsible teachers. The main objective of this study was to examine the perspectives of undergraduate student teachers toward teaching practice experience as a tool of learning to teach. A qualitative research methods approach using semi - structure questionnaires was carried out to 351 second and third year undergraduate student teachers in the department of education of the Faculty of Science at Sokoine University of Agriculture. The findings indicate that the student teachers perceived teaching practice as an important tool of learning to teach because it promoted the development of teaching experience and prepared them for the real world of work. The results also revealed that teaching practice is sufficiently emphasised and lack of financial support and the mismatch of the teaching practice period with local secondary school calendar were the main challenges. The study recommends provision of adequate fund on time, close supervision, building strong university partnership with the local secondary schools need interventions if not be improved and given its due attention. Keywords: Practicum experience, Undergraduate, Education students,  Morogoro, Tanzania

An Augmented Discrete-Time Approach for Human-Robot Collaboration

Human-robot collaboration (HRC) is a key feature to distinguish the new generation of robots from conventional robots. Relevant HRC topics have been extensively investigated recently in academic institutes and companies to improve human and robot interactive performance. Generally, human motor control regulates human motion adaptively to the external environment with safety, compliance, stability, and efficiency. Inspired by this, we propose an augmented approach to make a robot understand human motion behaviors based on human kinematics and human postural impedance adaptation. Human kinematics is identified by geometry kinematics approach to map human arm configuration as well as stiffness index controlled by hand gesture to anthropomorphic arm. While human arm postural stiffness is estimated and calibrated within robot empirical stability region, human motion is captured by employing a geometry vector approach based on Kinect. A biomimetic controller in discrete-time is employed to make Baxter robot arm imitate human arm behaviors based on Baxter robot dynamics. An object moving task is implemented to validate the performance of proposed methods based on Baxter robot simulator. Results show that the proposed approach to HRC is intuitive, stable, efficient, and compliant, which may have various applications in human-robot collaboration scenarios