Development Aid Programs Research Articles

Review of Irish Overseas Development Aid Programme 2021–22

Review of Irish Overseas Development Aid Programme 2021–22

Review of Irish Overseas Development Aid Programme 2021–22

Review of Irish Overseas Development Aid Programme 2021–22

Sustainable Development Goals and Islamic Social Finance: From Policy Divide to Policy Coherence and Convergence

This study aims to show how Islamic social finance (ISF) instruments can contribute to achieving SDGs and to filling the gaps in pressing humanitarian crises, such as refugee protection. ISF institutions enjoy sufficient financial capacity to bridge the gaps and realize the most relevant and urgent SDGs. However, due to policies and other constraints, their participation in international development aid programs is limited. Accordingly, this study explores the existing policy divide between Western and Islamic countries regarding the use of Faith-Based funds in international humanitarian and development aid programs. Through case studies, this study demonstrates that ISF instruments have the potential at national and international levels to mobilize resources to support marginalized groups in society in various countries. The analysis indicates the need to develop a framework that helps to build cooperation among local and international actors to mobilize ISF funds for cross-country development and humanitarian aid, which accelerates the achievement of the SDGs. This paper studies ongoing dialogues among various stakeholders to create policy convergence and to use ISF instruments towards SDGs. This study suggests that the dialogue should be more inclusive by including all potential stakeholders, including Muslim leaders, policymakers and Shariah Scholars, to narrow policy gaps and to draw policy coherence for using ISF tools in the duality aid programs and for creating synergies towards achieving the SDGs.

Delivering an off-grid transition to sustainable energy in Ethiopia and Mozambique

BackgroundOff-grid and decentralized energy systems have emerged as an alternative to facilitate energy access and resilience in a flexible, adaptable way, particularly for communities that do not have reliable access to centralized energy networks both in rural and urban areas. Much research to date on community energy systems has focused on their deployment in Europe and North America. This paper advances these debates by looking at how community energy systems can support energy transitions in Africa. Specifically, it asks: what role can community energy systems play in the energy transition in East and Southern Africa?ResultsThis article investigates the potential for community energy to foster sustainable and just energy transitions in two countries in East and Southern Africa, namely Ethiopia and Mozambique. To do so, it explores transformations in Ethiopia and Mozambique’s energy systems through the lens of energy landscapes. This concept enables us to situate energy transitions within recent developments in energy governance and to understand current and future possibilities for change through the involvement of communities that currently lack access to reliable and clean energy. Our results show that when countries face the prospects of lucrative energy investments in natural gas or large hydropower, renewables are often deprioritized. Their suitability to address energy challenges and access gaps is de-emphasized, even though there is little evidence that investment in large-scale generation can handle the energy needs of the most disadvantaged groups. Initiatives and policies supporting community-focused renewable energy have remained limited in both countries. They tend to be designed from the top-down and focused on rural areas when they exist.ConclusionsEnergy transitions in Ethiopia and Mozambique, and many other countries with significant gaps in access to centralized energy systems, require putting inclusivity at the forefront to ensure that energy policies and infrastructure support the well-being of society as a whole. As long as investments in off-grid energy continue to depend on international organizations’ goodwill or development aid programs outside the ambit of national energy plans, energy access gaps will remain unaddressed, and there will not be a genuine and just transition to sustainable energy.

Interregional inequality in Africa, convergence, and multiple equilibria: Evidence from nighttime light data

AbstractUnderstanding the dynamics of interregional inequality in Africa is important when formulating development policies. In this paper, we investigate the convergence pattern of regional inequality within 49 African countries over the period 1992–2012 using satellite night‐light‐based inequality proxies. We find evidence of multiple equilibria in regional income inequality. Countries belonging to clubs with high regional inequality level do not show any tendency to converge toward the clubs with low regional inequality, indicating that these countries are indeed stuck in regional income inequality traps. The idea of regional income inequality traps is also confirmed by a distributional dynamic analysis that uncovered evidence of regional income inequality persistence with a limited degree of mobility between convergence clubs. From the convergence analysis, we found that the initial conditions in the economic development, natural resource rent, urbanization, political institutions, development aid programs, and infrastructure are very important determinants of regional income inequality. Our findings provide policy makers some direction for future economic policies.

A Review of Irish Overseas Development Aid Program 2020

A Review of Irish Overseas Development Aid Program 2020

A Review of Irish Overseas Development Aid Program 2020

A Review of Irish Overseas Development Aid Program 2020

A purchasing portfolio model for humanitarian supply chain resilience: perspectives from a development aid context

PurposeThe impact of supply disruptions from unplanned events can cause goods shortage, limited responsiveness and high opportunity cost thus compromising development aid programmes' achievement targets. These situations force humanitarian aid agencies to develop new strategies for effectively managing their supplies. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the foundation of humanitarian supply chain resilience through the development of an adapted Kraljic portfolio model.Design/methodology/approachAction research was used to adapt and validate the Kraljic portfolio model to the development aid context. The research team worked with a humanitarian aid agency in developing criterions and used Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) in weighting those key criterions.FindingsThe adapted portfolio model was able to evaluate purchases done by the aid agency by incorporating different perspectives related to the strategic importance of purchase and supply vulnerability. In particular, development aid programmes require large supplies annually. Better classification offers improved visualisation of purchases, leading to a more precise adoption of mitigation strategies and policies to minimise supply disruption risks.Research limitations/implicationsAdapting the Kraljic portfolio model is a stepping-stone to building humanitarian supply chain resilience. The proposed humanitarian supply chain resilience framework is based on the foundation that current humanitarian supply chain needs to be re-engineered. In order to re-engineer, the supply base strategy must first be revisited.Practical implicationsMany aid agencies do not have a holistic view on their purchases and commonly apply a transactional classification of purchases that only considers the consumption values. Purchasing strategies mostly focus on cost minimisation, whereas risk mitigations have been disregarded. The proposed portfolio model overcomes these drawbacks. Societal impact may be limited but development aid agencies will be able to offer more reliable aid delivery as part of their mandate.Originality/valueThe proposed portfolio model is among the first tool to guide humanitarian aid agencies to develop procurement strategies to alleviate supply disruptions and increase development aid programmes resilience.

Kanne Lobal: A conceptual framework relating education and leadership partnerships in the Marshall Islands

Kanne Lobal: A conceptual framework relating education and leadership partnerships in the Marshall Islands

The UK Fleming Fund: Developing microbiology laboratory capacity for AMR surveillance

Background: The Fleming Fund is a UK Overseas Development Aid programme aiming to improve Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) surveillance in low-and middle-income countries in Africa and Asia. The Fund has placed Country Grants in over 20 countries, to support implementation of the surveillance component of country AMR National Action Plans. Grants provide funding and technical assistance to develop AMR governance systems, and to improve country capacity for bacteriology diagnostics, AMR reporting and data analysis. In rolling out the programme, we have accumulated a substantial dataset on clinical microbiology capacity across a broad range of settings. Methods and materials: A standardised questionnaire was developed to assess the key laboratory components for bacterial culture, identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. The questionnaire addressed infrastructure, equipment, staff capacity, clinical reporting, and reporting into the National Surveillance System. The questionnaire was administered in laboratories to be supported by the Fleming Fund Country Grant programme. Results: Over 100 laboratories were assessed. The most common factors hindering delivery of diagnostic service were a lack of reliable power supply, unreliable consumable/reagent supply chains, budget constraints (either due to limited country budget for healthcare, or lack of dedicated laboratory budget within hospital funding mechanisms), and a lack of laboratory staff with specific microbiology training. We also identified a universal lack of clinical engagement with laboratory services, resulting in poor use of laboratories and a predominantly syndromic approach to management even where laboratory services were judged to be adequate. Conclusion: Clinical microbiology laboratory capacity was extremely limited across the sites and countries assessed, meaning that most cases of infection in these countries are managed in the absence of any reliable microbiology data to inform individual treatment or empiric guidelines. The Fleming Fund aims to improve capacity through the Grant programme, but additional solutions are needed to ensure that efforts to improve use of antimicrobials as part of the global response to AMR are supported by adequate laboratory services. Clinician engagement is urgently needed to drive demand for better services and data, in conjunction with laboratory investment to break the vicious spiral of unreliable results, poor trust, reduced sample throughput and further lowering of quality.

Women’s empowerment, land and donor-driven agricultural interventions in Eastern Zambia

Nowadays Western development agencies invariably include gender in their programme and project designs, primarily to promote women empowerment. However, empirical evidence seems to suggest otherwise. We use case studies from conservation agriculture and cotton production supported by Norwegian and Chinese development aid to answer the two research questions: (i) To what extent do rural Zambian women feel empowered? (ii) Is gender mainstreaming in development aid modalities a panacea for women empowerment in agricultural development interventions in Zambia? A household survey was conducted with 235 randomly selected households between October and November 2015. Of these households, 159 and 76 were participating in Norwegian and Chinese intervention projects, respectively. The survey was later complemented by six focus group discussions (FGDs) and 12 key informant interviews in August 2016. A triple-stream approach for focus discussions was used i.e., women-only FGDs, men-only FGDs and FGDs with both women and men. We find that despite differences in project modalities, with the Chinese aid programme not having any explicit women empowerment goals while the Norwegian programmes claimed to mainstream gender, both modalities resulted in increased access and control over productive resources by women farmers. We conclude that gender mainstreaming in development aid programme and project design may not be a panacea for women empowerment and that interventions that do not demand any capital outlay from smallholders are more likely to engender women empowerment than those that do. It appears that women empowerment may take place as much as an indirect consequence of interventions as a consequence of interventions specifically addressing gender equality. It may also be the result of broader societal changes.

Development aid and the governance of global value chains the case of the Bangladesh accord on fire and building safety

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relevance and contradictions of development aid in crafting governance responses for enabling long term social upgrading in global garment value chains. Since governance responses are multilevel, we propose to analyse the interrelation between the global and the local level through the case study of a private regulatory initiative of a new type: the Accord on Fire and Building Security in Bangladesh, operationally run like a development aid programme. We aim at explaining the reasons why it has been banned from operating in the country. Design/methodology/approach We use the framework of the Global Value Chain (GVC) approach since it is operationally used in development aid and has broadened its focus to investigating the link between economic and social upgrading. It further helps to understand multilevel and multiactor governance responses. Using multiple secondary sources we describe the context in which the Accord emerged, explore its provisions and operations, and analyse the contestation pertaining to its termination. We analyse the Accord both as a global governance tool and a field-level development aid actor that addresses social issues in GVCs. Findings As an ILO led operational programme, the Accord, since its inception, has proven globally effective at improving workplace safety for many workers. However it has been resented for being hegemonic and, as a governance tool, it has neither succeeded in addressing the flaws of private regulatory initiatives nor changed existing power relationships in GVCs. Originality/value The early termination of the Accord has not yet been analysed. In light of this, we propose new insights on the rising role of development aid in private governance responses.

Three-stage quantitative approach of understanding household adaptation decisions in rural Cambodia

PurposeA better understanding of the processes that shape households’ adaptation decisions is essential for developing pertinent policies locally, thereby enabling better adaptation across scales and multiple stakeholders. This paper aims to examine the determinants of household decisions to adapt, it is also possible to target factors that facilitate or constrain adaptation. This helps to identify key components of current adaptive capacity, which leads to important insights into households’ competence to adapt in the future.Design/methodology/approachThis paper takes a full-pledged approach examining factors and processes that shape households’ climate adaptation decision-making in rural Cambodia at three levels: adaptation status, adaptation intensity and choices of adaptation strategy. The three-stage analyses are materialized by applying the double hurdle model and multivariate probit model, which provides a potential way to systematically assess household adaptation decision-making in rural settings.FindingsResults show a high level of involvement in adaptation among local households who are facing multiple stressors including climatic risks. The findings suggest that perceived climate change influence households’ decisions in both adaptation status and intensity. Access to financial credit, farmland size, water availability and physical asset holdings are identified as key factors promoting the adoption of more adaptation measures. To facilitate adaptation, collective effort and support at community level is important in providing knowledge based climate information dissemination and early warning systems. Public sector support and development aid programs should focus on positive triggers for targeted community and household adaptation.Originality/valueThe study, to the authors’ best knowledge, is one of the first studies to investigate the determinants of local adaptation decision-making systematically in Cambodia. It also provides a comprehensive approach to improve understanding of adaptation decision-making processes by exploring how various capital assets are associated with different stages of adaptation decisions. The findings contribute to policy implications enlightening adaptation planning at multi-scales with knowledge of key factors, which enhance local adaptive capacity to reduce climate change vulnerability.

Democracy and Aid Donorship

Almost half of the world’s states provide bilateral development assistance. While previous research takes the set of donor countries as exogenous, this article is the first to explore the determinants of aid donorship. We hypothesize that democratic institutions reduce poor countries’ likelihood to initiate aid giving. On the contrary, the leadership of poor authoritarian regimes face fewer constraints that would hinder these governments to reap the benefits of a development aid program despite popular opposition. To test our expectations, we build a new global dataset on aid donorship since 1945 and apply an instrumental-variables strategy that exploits exogenous variation in regional waves of democratization. Our results confirm that the likelihood of a democratic country to start aid giving is more responsive to income than it is the case for authoritarian countries. Overall, democracies are — if anything — less rather than more likely to engage in aid giving.

Psychological Measurement of Motivation in Development Aid Programs: Findings and Challenges from a Farmer Training Program in Madagascar

Psychological Measurement of Motivation in Development Aid Programs: Findings and Challenges from a Farmer Training Program in Madagascar

Foreign‐Funded Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa: Mirroring Administrative Traditions or Traditions of Administrative Blueprinting?

AbstractClimate change impacts are most severe in developing countries with limited adaptive capacity. Accordingly, in Africa, climate change adaptation has become an issue of international funding and practice. As suggested in the Introduction to this special issue, administrative traditions could play a role in how adaptation plays out. This, however, raises questions about how foreign funding regimes coincide with recipients' administrative traditions, especially on the African continent where administrative traditions are often meagerly established. To address these questions, this article takes an explorative approach. From a literature review of African state governance and development aid approaches, we take colonial legacy as the most distinctive factor responsible for African administrative traditions. In addition, we define three ways in which foreign aid programs have dealt with African administration: (1) aligning with donor administration, (2) blueprinting administration, and (3) ignoring administration. Using 34 African countries' National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs), we analyze how African governments actually frame adaptation as a governance challenge. We contrast these frames with: (1) administrative traditions based on colonial legacy and (2) the ways in which development aid programs have historically dealt with recipient African administrations. Our findings indicate that NAPAs only meagerly refer to the administrative tradition that could be expected based on colonial legacy, but extensively refer to blueprint ideas common among international donors, or ignore administration altogether. We discuss the implications for adaptation to climate change.

The Rural Development Policy in Extremadura (SW Spain): Spatial Location Analysis of Leader Projects

Since the 1990s, a series of rural development aid programs (LEADER Approach) has been implemented in European rural areas, including Extremadura, in order to solve the demographic, social, and economic problems that rural areas experience. The main objective of these programs is to diversify the economy to reverse these problems. The purpose of this present paper is to study the distribution of the investments committed during the period of 2000–2013 in Extremadura according to the geolocation and to perform the analysis of clusters through Local Moran’s I, Getis-Ord Gi*, and Kernel Density in order to determine whether the results are related to the demographic and economic behavior of each territory of action and if these act as location factors for investments. We found that most dynamic towns receive more investments, leaving out the more physically, economically, and demographically disadvantaged ones.

The Impact of Foreign Aid in Sustainable Development in Africa: A Case Study of Ethiopia

Foreign Development Aid Policy for the “underdeveloped areas” (Third World Countries) was announced by the former United States President Harry S. Truman on January 20, 1949. The overriding goal of this Foreign Development Aid Policy was supposed to “help people help themselves”, i.e. help to self-help. But the practice or the reality on the ground of this Foreign Development Aid Policy shows clearly the opposite of help to self-help. Since this proclamation of the Foreign Development Aid Policy, thousands of Foreign Governmental and Non-Governmental Organizations are still engaged in “Development Aid Programs” in the Third World Countries for instance in the African countries like Ethiopia. Foreign Aid means, transfer of goods or services from one country to another country directly or indirectly for example bilateral from the United States of America to Ethiopia or through multi-lateral organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations Organizations and many others. There are three different types of Foreign Aid. These are: 1) Military Aid, 2) Humanitarian Aid and 3) Official Development Assistance (ODA). ODA is the most common aid to Africa and it is more powerful economically than the other two. Therefore, the author of this research paper wants to investigate the impact of “Official Development Assistance” (ODA) in Sustainable Development in Africa: The Case of Ethiopia. However, there are three groups who argue pros and cons (“pro et contra”) on the impact of the Foreign Aid in Sustainable Development in the Third World Countries in general and in Africa in particular, in the case of Ethiopia. Therefore, this Research Paper is interested to find out scientific evidences behind the controversial debates and discussions on the impact of the Foreign Development Aid Policy for Africa, in the case of Ethiopia.

Taiwan's Foreign Aid in Transition: From ODA to Civil Society Approaches

AbstractSince the 1950s, Taiwan and China have utilized foreign aid as an instrument of foreign policy. After Taiwan's forced withdrawal from the United Nations in 1971, diplomatic and aid-giving competition with China became more intense. As a result, Taiwan's and China's struggles to gain supporters have been reflected in foreign aid strategies. Taiwan's bid for the UN and the WHO, and the issue of diplomatic recognition empirically demonstrate the utilization of aid to obtain diplomatic support from recipient countries, and, frequently, any decisions are heavily influenced by the competition it experiences with China. Theoretically, this highlights an importantrelationalframework for analyzing foreign aid decisions – particularly the management of foreign relations of small states or middle powers simultaneously influenced by greater powers and aid recipient states.Using data from ICDF and related reports, we observe geographically concentrated patterns in the distribution of Taiwan's aid recipients from 1988 to 1997 – mostly in Latin America and Southeast Asia. In contrast to China's foreign aid which emphasizes infrastructural development, the spirit of Taiwan's economic development aid programs often took the form of technical cooperation. However, a high percentage of aid went to countries with diplomatic ties to Taiwan. With civil society development and increased international activities of Taiwanese NGOs in humanitarian relief and development projects after 2000, we find a new emerging set of geographical aid distribution patterns that expand beyond countries that recognize Taiwan. In addition, while the process of incorporating civil society into foreign aid work was initiated by the ICDF the following decade, Taiwanese NGOs have increasingly demonstrated autonomous international agendas, funding, and direction, as well as the formation of civil society alliances that work on common international development issues.

German development aid and the politics of pre-emption

Forty years ago, development aid programmes in the ‘Third World’, if colonial in thrust and often imperial in economic purpose, were at least usually recognisably different from war, conflict and internal repression. And the respective roles of metropolitan governmental departments and private companies, national governments and international NGOs were clearly delineated. But today, with neoliberalism breaking down the distinctions between the public and private, the war on terror conflating risk into security and pushing towards a pre-emptive geopolitics, the shape of development is changing. Innovation in areas such as border control and transportation systems, still marketed as development, are better analysed in terms of biopolitics (as conceptualised by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and others). Using this framework and that of pre-emptive securitisation the author unpicks some of the ‘aid’ programmes of one German agency – the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and South Africa over the last fifteen years.