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Donor Community (donor + community)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences80%

Selected Abstracts

Do No Harm: Aid, Weak Institutions and the Missing Middle in Africa

DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 5 2007
Nancy Birdsall
The implicit assumption of the donor community is that Africa is trapped by its poverty, and that aid is necessary if it is to escape. This article suggests an alternative view: that Africa is caught in an institutional trap, signalled and reinforced by the small share of income of its independent middle strata. Theory and historical experience elsewhere suggest that a robust middle-income group contributes critically to the creation and sustenance of healthy institutions, particularly of the state. The article argues that if external aid is to be helpful for institution-building in Africa's weak and fragile states, donors need to emphasise not providing more aid but minimising the risks more aid poses for this group. [source]

Restructuring Uganda's Coffee Industry: Why Going Back to Basics Matters

DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 4 2006
John Baffes
After experiencing a boom during the mid-1990s, the performance of Uganda's coffee industry has been disappointing. Most existing analysis sees the sector's problems as quality deterioration, a poor marketing position in the global market, a weak regulatory framework, and poor infrastructure. Recommendations range from setting up a coffee auction to increasing the share of specialty coffees. This article concludes that such advice has been largely inconsistent with the stylised facts of the Uganda coffee industry, and it argues that coffee wilt disease and the effectiveness of the coffee replanting programme are the two key issues on which policymakers and the donor community should focus their activities and allocate their resources. [source]

Vocational Education and Training and Human Capital Development: current practice and future options

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, Issue 2 2010
MANFRED WALLENBORN
EU neighbouring countries (partner countries) have made considerable efforts to improve their vocational education and training (VET) systems, with different policies and strategies that take account of country-specific priorities in human capital development. This article addresses the donor community. It analyses the role of partner countries' VET in contributing to human capital development in order to benefit better from the globalised economy. The emerging debate on the role of VET in these countries and among donors is considered in terms of the functional dimensions of employability, productivity and sustainable growth, taking into account the economic, social and ecological dimension of growth and development. Not addressed is the systemic perspective on VET in terms of improving existing curricula, learning arrangements and textbooks. The article focuses, rather, on functional dimensions of VET that are relevant to achieve development goals and makes some recommendations for international cooperation. Given the complexity of multi-stakeholder-driven VET systems, cooperation needs to build on existing VET structures. Moreover, cooperation must contribute to an effective reform implementation. [source]

Fighting governmental corruption: the New World Bank programme evaluated

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2004
Carolien M. Klein Haarhuis
Over the past decade, the international donor community has come up with a range of initiatives to curb governmental corruption in developing countries. Top-down approaches devise administrative and judicial reforms, whereas bottom-up approaches deal with the process of awareness,raising in civil society. The World Bank currently integrates these top-down and bottom-up approaches in a combined anti-corruption programme. In this paper, the most recent version of this World Bank's training programme is reconstructed and assessed. Several core approaches in the programme, such as the strengthening of civil society and the privatisation of parastatals, turn out to have unintended consequences. The empirical support is largely case-specific and turns out to be highly conditional. It is concluded that indicators need to be developed to assess the relevance of national anti-corruption policies to country-specific governance and anti-corruption conditions. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

State Collapse and Fresh Starts: Some Critical Reflections

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2002
Martin Doornbos
In examining the incidence of state collapse, two central themes emerge, one concerned with the search for causalities and the other concerned with appropriate responses. There is often a misplaced tendency to look for single causes and explanations of state collapse, and similarly to propose single, preferably ,quick,fix' solutions. Instead, what seems to be called for is a more nuanced scrutiny which differentiates the factors leading to collapse in specific instances, and a reconsideration, in the light of this scrutiny, of responses and possible external actor involvement. This article addresses these two themes. Firstly, it takes a preliminary look into the complex web of conditioning and facilitating factors that may or may not set in motion a chain reaction eventually leading to state collapse, examining the extent to which any emerging patterns can be identified. Secondly, it looks more closely at the response side to incidences of state collapse, specifically external responses. Whilst external actors, notably the ,donor community', are trying to better prepare themselves for the eventualities of crises of governance and state collapse in various countries, and to design more effective strategies and instruments, it remains to be seen to what extent there is a ,fit' between the determinants and dynamics of state collapse and the responses and solutions for restoration which are offered. [source]