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(Journal Article) Value chain financing: evidence from Zambia on smallholder access to finance for mechanization
01.03.2017
Smallholder farmers in Zambia comprise 85 per cent of the farmers’ population. Such farmers are regarded as not creditworthy and furthermore their agricultural productivity could be improved. The aim of this paper is to present recent evidence on value chain financing (VCF) as a framework to increase access to agricultural finance for Zambian smallholder farmers. Such financing will act as an enabler to mechanize and, in turn, might improve productivity. Qualitative data collection techniques were followed to provide the results as presented in three illustrative case studies. Each case study highlights the benefits of financing, using the value chain framework, but also emphasizes certain challenges and risks associated with the approach. The Zambian case is not perfect, but provides recent evidence of how various roleplayers in Zambia’s agricultural sector have applied the VCF framework to coordinate the actions of various chain actors, and by doing so allow smallholders access to finance within the local and country-specific context. Although two of the three VCF programmes have been discontinued, they still provide useful learning points: for instance, commercial banks should assign more resources to manage the VCF products; and the risk should be shared between all the VCF participants. -
(Journal Article) Development impact bonds: learning from the Asháninka cocoa and coffee case in Peru
01.03.2017
Impact bonds effectively allow the risk of implementing social development activities to be shared with private sector investors. Social or development impact bonds replace the upfront financing of charitable activities with a pay-for-success contract. Four actors together agree upon the outcomes and their indicators: outcome sponsor, investor, project implementers, and verifier. Under such a contract, a charitable donor or government (‘outcome sponsor’) takes the obligation to pay the ‘investor’ an amount determined by a set of objective indicators reflecting the outcome desired by the donor. The investor, expecting contract-based future payout, can recruit and pre-finance project implementers (‘service provider’) to achieve the agreed results. The achievements of the outcome indicators are assessed by an independent verifier to conclude the payout from donor to investor according to the contract. The structure allows charitable donors to transfer a significant share of risk to investors and/or financial markets. The Common Fund for Commodities (CFC), the Schmidt Family Foundation (SFF), Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK), and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) were the first to apply the model in the agricultural sector in an emerging economy. The main objective of the impact bond was to increase productivity and market sales of cocoa and coffee produced by the Asháninka people, an indigenous community living in the Peruvian Amazon. This pilot provides valuable lessons learned to contribute to the development of the mechanism. -
(Journal Article) Value chain development with the extremely poor: evidence and lessons from CARE, Save the Children, and World Vision
01.03.2017
CARE, Save the Children, and World Vision are combining value chain development (VCD) with gender and nutrition programming to alleviate poverty and food insecurity among the extremely poor. We explore what is unique about VCD with the extremely poor and how specific levers enhance productivity and profitability, equity, and empowerment. We offer evidence to date and lessons learned. -
(Book) Technology Justice and Faecal Sludge Management
While globally rates of access to improved sanitation remain woefully low, Bangladesh stands out as a country that has made remarkable progress in eliminating the scourge of open defecation. However, across the country’s growing urban centres, this success has created a so-called ‘second-generation’...
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(Book) Putting Knowledge to Work
Producing knowledge that is relevant and can be acted upon is essential for international development. There is a renewed urgency for knowledge from the civil society sector, particularly non-academic organizations, to be acknowledged and recorded, to be distilled and leveraged, in order to help the...
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(Book) What Works for Africa's Poorest
David Lawson, David Hulme, Lawrence K. Ado-Kofie
Although great strides have been made, Africa still lags behind other parts of the world in the reduction of poverty. We now know that the poorest people rarely benefit from poverty reduction programmes, and this is especially true in some countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Microfinance programmes, fo...
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(Book) Panorama energético de los pobres 2016
¿Qué necesidades energéticas señalan los pobres de los países en desarrollo como las más acuciantes? ¿Iluminación eléctrica? ¿Cocinas no contaminantes y modernas? ¿Energía para los centros de salud? Aprovechando la información obtenida en las exhaustivas consultas realizadas a las comunidades que vi...
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(Book) Perspectives énergétiques des populations pauvres 2016
Si on donnait la parole aux populations pauvres des pays en développement, quels besoins en matière d’énergie identifieraient-elles comme les plus urgents ? L’éclairage électrique ? Des fourneaux de cuisine propres et modernes ? De l’électricité pour les cliniques médicales ? En s’appuyant sur une c...
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(Journal Article) Can and should sanitation and hygiene programmes be expected to achieve health impacts?
01.01.2017
Although the anticipated health benefits are not the only reason for undertaking sanitation and hygiene programmes, they do represent an important part of the justification. Studies and reviews over recent years have shown, however, that the health impacts of sanitation programmes can be quite small or even negligible. They have also provided no solid evidence that integrated (water, sanitation, hygiene) programming has any greater effect than addressing one or two of these components alone. Two questions arise: first, whether a certain level of sanitation usage and hygiene practice within a community is needed in order to achieve a measurable health impact (i.e. whether a minimum percentage of the population should be using safe sanitation); second, whether sanitation and hygiene interventions undertaken without accompanying water supply improvements are likely to have significant health benefits. In this opinion paper some plausible and practically relevant answers to these questions are extracted from the relevant literature. The conclusions are that a high level of sanitation usage (well over 65 per cent) and widespread handwashing practice are necessary to achieve significant health impact; and that in situations where water services are poor, sanitation and hygiene interventions, while valuable for other reasons, are unlikely to have significant health impacts. Sanitation and hygiene programmes may be justifiable even if they do not immediately achieve high levels of compliance and corresponding water supply improvements are not made; however, the justification should not be presented on the grounds of short-term health benefits. -
(Journal Article) Chlorination of drinking water in emergencies: a review of knowledge to develop recommendations for implementation and research needed
01.01.2017
Clean water provision is a critical component of emergency response, and chlorination is widely used in emergencies to treat water. To provide responders with practical, evidence-based recommendations for implementing chlorination programmes and recommend areas for future research, we conducted a literature review of chlorination in emergencies, supplemented with a literature review on chlorination in general. We identified 106 total documents, including 7 with information on technical efficacy, 26 on chlorine dosage, 22 on technical challenges, 21 on product options, 8 on user acceptability, 33 on programmes for emergencies, and 8 on monitoring. We found that: 1) international chlorine dosage recommendations in emergencies are highly inconsistent; 2) high-quality information from the general chlorination literature on challenges of chlorination can be adapted for emergencies; 3) many chlorine products are available for use in point-of-delivery, point-of-source, and point-of-use emergency-response programmes; 4) information on the effectiveness of different chlorination programmes in emergencies varies, ranging from little data available to high-quality data that can inform programming; 5) information on user acceptability of chlorination in emergencies is lacking; and 6) monitoring data on chlorine programme effectiveness in emergencies are lacking. In this manuscript, we provide a summary of knowledge on chlorination in emergencies, recommendations for programme implementation, and recommendations for future research needed to assist communities and agencies responding to the increasing number of natural disasters and outbreaks worldwide. -
(Journal Article) Nuggets from an old book: A Practical Handbook of Water Supply by F. Dixey (1931)
01.01.2017
Frank Dixey’s A Practical Handbook of Water Supply, published in 1931 is briefly reviewed. The text is correlated with current knowledge and experience. It is evident from the book that some of the present challenges in the water supply sector have been around for a long time which leads to the conclusion that effecting a change takes time. Development agencies therefore need to set realistic targets and time frames. Some of the rather old texts should be consulted and reviewed periodically as they may contain very useful information. -
(Book) Smoke Free Nepal
Traditional cooking fires are still used in more than half the households in Nepal. But they are a silent killer, with their smoky fumes responsible for the deaths of nearly 23,000 people every year. The Government of Nepal was one of the first to recognize this problem and has a target to eradicate...
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(Book) Measuring Energy Access in India
This briefing paper reports on the largest energy access survey ever conducted in India, covering a representative sample of the rural poor across six states with interviews in 8,566 households. It adapts the World Bank’s multi-tier framework to measure access to household electricity and clean cook...
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(Book) Poor People's Energy Outlook 2016
What do poor people in the developing world identify as their most pressing energy needs – electric lighting, modern cookstoves, power for health clinics? Drawing on in-depth consultations with selected energy-poor communities in Bangladesh, Kenya and Togo, the PPEO 2016 shines a light on the energy...
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(Journal Article) Urban community-led total sanitation: a potential way forward for co-producing sanitation services
01.10.2016
Community-led total sanitation (CLTS) has been proved to be a successful strategy for tackling the challenge of open defecation in poor rural communities across Africa and Asia. This article explores whether a similar approach can be used in peri-urban and urban areas to help co-produce sanitation facilities and services with inputs from communities, duty bearers, and other sanitation stakeholders. It is argued that an urban CLTS approach does not mean a copy and paste of tools and methods which have proved successful in the rural environment but following a set of similar principles. Based on field experiences different steps are suggested that incorporate these principles and respond to the specific urban sanitation problem. This article helps to articulate and better define urban CLTS as well as giving practical guidance for those wanting to use this kind of approach. -
(Book) Sustainable Sanitation for All
Petra Bongartz, Naomi Vernon, John Fox
Great strides have been made in improving sanitation in many developing countries. Yet, 2.4 billion people worldwide still lack access to adequate sanitation facilities and the poorest and most vulnerable members of society are often not reached and their specific needs are not met. Moreover, sustai...
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(Book) From Risk to Resilience
In 2011 Practical Action published From Vulnerability to Resilience: A Framework for Analysis and Action to Build Community Resilience. This was one of the first attempts by a development NGO to operationalize resilience and it provided project workers with a framework to apply the resilience concep...
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(Book) Delivering Early Warning Systems to the Poorest
Floods are the most common cause of weather-related disasters globally, causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. Flood early warning systems can significantly reduce the devastating impacts of floods on lives and livelihoods for the poorest and mos...
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(Book) Rethink, Retool, Reboot
Technology underpins human development. We need it to provide the very basics of a minimum standard of life – food, water, shelter, health and education. But a significant proportion of the world’s population do not have these basics today. And whilst a fifth of the world’s population lacks access t...
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(Book) Adaptive Management for Resilient Communities
Short-term projects and linear management approaches are often unsuitable for achieving resilient development in the face of volatile complexity. Adaptive management combined with longer-term project funding has the potential to deliver more appropriate development outcomes. This will require develo...