Development System Locks Out the Disabled

[Excerpt] That the non government (NGO) industry is a major player in the so called development cannot be over emphasized. That billion of dollars have been channeled into the sector to “wipe out” poverty particularly in poor developing countries is a fact. Almost all the NGOs exist to serve the poorest of the poor, voiceless, the disadvantaged, vulnerable populations so to speak! Their mission statements clearly spell out that they operate to bridge the gap between the rich and poor. The NGOs share those pro-poor beliefs with the United Nations system and are bankrolled by the development partners. But do these partners in poverty alleviation and development consider the disabled as poor? If disabled people are not considered poor, and therefore, a major target for these partners, who then is poor? What is the definition of poor or poverty for that matter

Post-election violence and disabled people in Kenya; issues for reflection and action

[Excerpt] The media has reported widely on the fate of victims of the post-eviolence and relief agencies have performed admirably in building temporary camps where displaced people can receive food, water, shelter and security. However, one group has noticeably received little media coverage and has often been unable to access the aid provided; Kenya’s disabled people

The informal sector and universal health coverage: crucial considerations

http://www.bu.edu/pardee/publications-library/issues-in-brief/issues-in-brief-no-37-june-2019/Published versio

Back to the future: reversing recent trends for food security in Eastern Africa

"Recent trends in agricultural growth and food security in Eastern and Central Africa (ECA) have been discouraging. With very low labor productivity, yields, and growth rates, agriculture is unable to keep up with population growth or achieve the type of pro-poor growth needed to reduce poverty dramatically.Yet agriculture accounts for about half of the region's gross domestic product (GDP) and is the main source of livelihood for the majority of the population. Behind this gloomy picture, however, lies agriculture's potential to be the engine for growth in ECA. What do the ECA countries need to do to effectively exploit the potential of agriculture and meet the needs of their burgeoning populations?" Author's SummaryAgricultural growth, Livelihoods, Poverty reduction,

Institutional economics as a theoretical framework for transformation in agriculture

Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

Fertilizer trade and pricing in Uganda

Liberalized fertilizer markets in eastern Africa typically deliver fertilizer to smallholder farming regions at prices that render its use unprofitable. Simultaneously, faced with little demand for fertilizer in these regions, fertilizer traders appear unwilling to invest in measures that might reduce farm-gate prices. A basic question throughout the region is therefore how to cost-effectively increase smallholders' access to fertilizer, under conditions of liberalized and privatised trade in the input. This paper explores that question for Uganda using data from a wide-ranging study of Uganda's fertilizer sub-sector. The prevailing system of fertilizer procurement and distribution is found to imply a market structure dominated by retail-level trade, high prices, and low net margins. The study concludes that there is no inherent pressures in the extant system of fertilizer procurement and distribution toward development of a wholesaling backbone that might allow capture of scale economies. But with imaginative and sustained investments in institutional innovation and strengthening, there is scope to reduce prices and increase net trading margins.Agribusiness,

BRIDGING RESEARCH, POLICY, AND PRACTICE IN AFRICAN AGRICULTURE

Policy research on African agriculture is long on prescriptions on what needs to be done to reverse negative growth trends but short on how such prescriptions might be implemented in practice. This paper addresses this state of affairs, focusing on the role and impact of research in agricultural policy processes.International Development,

Bridging research, policy, and practice in African agriculture

"Policy research on African agriculture is long on prescriptions for what needs to be done to spur agricultural growth but short on how such prescriptions might be implemented in practice. What explains this state of affairs? What might be done to correct it, and, most important, how? This paper addresses these questions via a comprehensive review and assessment of the literature on the role and impact of research in policy processes. Six major schools of thought are identified: the rational model; pragmatism under bounded rationality; innovation diffusion; knowledge management; impact assessment; and evidence-based-practice. The rational model with its underlying metaphor of a 'policy cycle' comprising problem definition and agenda setting, formal decision making, policy implementation, evaluation, and then back to problem definition and agenda setting, and so on has been criticized as too simplistic and unrealistic. Yet it remains the dominant framework guiding attempts to bridge gaps between researchers and policy makers. Each of the other five schools relaxes certain assumptions embedded within the rational model e.g., wholly rational policy makers, procedural certainty, well-defined research questions, well-defined user groups, welldefined channels of communication. In so doing, they achieve greater realism but at the cost of clarity and tractability. A unified portable framework representing all policy processes and capturing all possible choices and tradeoffs faced in bridging research, policy, and practice does not currently exist and is unlikely ever to emerge. Its absence is a logical outcome of the context-specificity and social embeddedness of knowledge. A fundamental shift in focus from a 'researcher-as-disseminator' paradigm to a 'practitioner-as-learner' paradigm is suggested by the literature, featuring contingent approaches that recognize and respond to context-specificity and social embeddedness. At bottom, the issue is how to promote 'evidence-readiness' among inherently conservative and pragmatic policy makers and practitioners and 'user-readiness' among inherently abstraction-oriented researchers." Author's AbstractPolicy research ,Agriculture Africa ,Agricultural growth ,Research Methodology ,Knowledge management ,evaluation ,

Water, Women, and Local Social Organization in the Western Kenya Highlands

Safe water is widely recognized as both a fundamental human need and a key input into economic activity. Across the developing world, the typical approach to addressing these needs is to segregate supplies of water for domestic use from water for large-scale agricultural production. In that arrangement, the goal of domestic water supply is to provide small amounts of clean safe water for direct consumption, cleaning, bathing and sanitation, while the goal of agricultural water supply is to provide large amounts of lower quality water for irrigated agriculture. A new third use of water is now being given more attention by researchers: small amounts of water employed in selected household enterprises. This third use may be particularly important for women. There is a potential, therefore, that provision of modest amounts of water to smallholder farmers can enhance household economic production, save labor time for women and girls, and improve family health. This paper adds to the emerging literature on the multiple values of improved water supplies -- improved health, time savings, and small-scale production for individual farmers and collectives -- for the case of a rural community in the western highlands of Kenya. With minimum external support, two groups in this community have managed to install and operate systems of spring protection and piped water to their members' homesteads. Members of those households, particularly women, have benefited substantially in terms of time savings, health and small-scale production. The experience of this community also illustrates some of the challenges that must be faced for a community to effectively self-organize the investment and maintenance of a communitybased water scheme. There are challenges of finance, gender relations, and conflict over scarce water supplies, group leadership, enforcement of community bi-laws, and policy. Data from a census of springs in the same area show that successful collective action for water management is unusual, but certainly not unique, in this region of Kenya. Although women emerge as the main beneficiaries of improved water management in the community, their substantial contributions are largely hidden behind social norms regarding gender roles and relations. Research methods need to carefully triangulate information sources in order to clarify the very substantial and active roles performed by women. Kenya's water policy should be modified to better recognize and facilitate small-scale community-based water projects

An Assessment of the Impact of HIV/AIDS on Economic Growth: The Case of Kenya

HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa has been closely associated with adverse economic effects, and could thwart the success of poverty reduction initiatives. HIV/AIDS is fast eroding the health benefits, which Kenya gained in the first two decades of independence. The paper explores the different channels through which HIV/AIDS affects economic growth in a low-income country like Kenya. Within this framework, the paper attempts to analyse the impact of HIV/AIDS on Kenya’s economic growth by way of simulations using a macroeconomic model for the Kenyan economy. Some of the key channels explored are the impact of HIV/AIDS on productivity and labour force supply; asset accumulation of human, physical and social capital; and the gender channel.