More People, More Trees

William Critchley

Over 20 years ago, concerned famers’ groups in Kenya and Burkina Faso began to adopt new measures to conserve soil and water and to re-establish trees in their fields. Two videos, Looking after our Land and Building on Traditions, recorded the new participatory approaches for land conservation being...

Shit Matters

Lyla Mehta, Synne Movik

Sanitation remains one of the biggest development challenges of our time, and a long neglected issue associated with taboos and stigma. Despite growing attention and efforts, many top-down approaches to sanitation have failed, reflecting that simply providing people with a toilet does not necessaril...

Practitioners handbook for establishing community based early warning systems

This Practitioner's Handbook on Community Based Early Warning System is an effort to put together the early warning learning experiences from the field and communities in Nepal for wider uses for establishment of community based Early Warning Systems (EWS) in flood prone areas of Nepal.

Technical Guidelines for Gravity Goods Ropeway

A rope based transport system for mountainous regions.

The Construction of Timberless House Model

The conflict in Darfur, which most analysts judge to have started in 2003 has had a devastating effect on the region. Many of the internally displaced people (IDPs) who were forced to flee their homes have ended up living in make-shift camps around the major cities such as Alfashir, Algenenina and N...

Seed Multiplication of Improved Open-Pollinated Varieties

Community-based seed multiplication of open-pollinated varieties (OPV) can mitigate against hybrid seed unavailability and its soaring cost thereby increasing access to standard seed for communal areas, especially in drought prone areas.

Wheelbarrow

Engineering drawings detailing how to make a wheelbarrow.

Deconstructing Development Discourse

Andrea Cornwall, Deborah Eade

Writing from diverse locations, contributors critically examine some of the key terms in current development discourse. Why should language matter to those who are doing development? Surely, there are more urgent things to do than sit around mulling over semantics? But language does matter. Whether...

How Africa Works

Deborah Bryceson

Occupational change is generally assumed to accompany ‘development’ and to be a necessary part of achieving improved standards of living. But occupational change goes beyond individuals’ economic activities and income-earning to redefine their social identity and contribute fundamentally to the reco...

Seeds and Synergies

Yiching Song, Ronnie Vernooy

Farmers and researchers too often live and work in different realities. Researchers breed plant hybrids in the laboratory that are successful only under ideal conditions, requiring just the right inputs of water, fertilizer, and pesticides. For resource-poor farmers, however, such conditions simply...