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Summary Past research by one of the authors of this paper has identified four key institutional challenges that community-driven initiatives to improve sanitation in deprived urban settlements face: the collective action challenge of improving community sanitation; the coproduction challenge of working with formal service providers to dispose of the sanitary waste safely; the affordability challenge of reconciling the affordable with what is acceptable to both users and local authorities; and the tenure challenge of preventing housing insecurity from undermining residents’ willingness to commit to sanitary improvement. In this article we examine how two well-documented, relatively successful and longstanding initiatives, the Orangi Pilot Project and an Alliance of Indian partners, met these challenges. They were met through social innovation, but also through the choice and development of sanitation technologies (simplified sewers for OPP and community toilet blocks for the Indian Alliance) that provided traction for the social innovations. We also explore more recent efforts by civil society partnerships in four African cities, demonstrating some of the difficulties they have faced in trying to overcome these challenges. No equivalent models have emerged, though there has been considerable progress against particular challenges in particular places. These findings confirm the importance of the challenges, and indicate that these are not just challenges for social organization, but also for technology design and choice. For example, the problem with household pit latrines is not that they cannot physically be improved to sufficiently, but that they are not well-suited to the social, economic and political challenges of sanitary improvement at scale. The findings also indicate that a low economic status and a tendency to treat sanitation as a private good not suitable for public support also makes the sanitation challenges difficult to overcome.

Summary The rise of new powers in development has generated much debate on the extent to which South–South Cooperation (SSC) constitutes a new paradigm of development more relevant to African needs or a disguise for a new form of imperialism. This paper critically examines the rise of Chinese and Brazilian technical and economic cooperation in African agriculture with two cases drawn from Ghana and Mozambique. Using a historical framework, policy documents, case studies, and an analysis of the political economy of agrarian development, we trace the role of agricultural development in the relations of China and Brazil in Africa, and the extents to which recent developments in agribusiness and structural neoliberal reforms of African economies have influenced Brazilian and Chinese contemporary engagements with African agriculture. We examine the extent to which the different policy frameworks, political interests in agriculture, and institutional frameworks influence and impede the outcomes of Chinese and Brazilian development intents. We find that China and Brazil have different histories of experience within African agriculture, which influences the nature of their technical and development cooperation. Although they have distinct agrarian structures, the development of agribusiness and commercial seed, input and machinery sectors in China and Brazil influence engagements within Africa. These are often variants of the same interests that underlie the programs of northern donors, and frequently the two rising powers engage in trilateral arrangements with other donors and international agencies, particularly in the case of Brazil.

SummaryGenetically modified (GM) crop technologies have made great strides since its first introduction in 1996. Although there is an extensive and growing body of literature on the economic impact of the adoption of GM crops in both developing and developed economies, there is only scant evidence that the technology has had any specific and distinguishable impact among female and male farmers. In economies where female farmers and female household members have a significant and often differentiated role in agriculture production, it is crucial to be able to answer this question. This paper presents quantitative and qualitative results from a study of the gender-specific adoption and performance effects of insect resistant (Bt) and herbicide-tolerant (HT) maize produced by smallholder farmers in the Kwa Zulu Natal province in South Africa. The findings indicate that women farmers value the labor-saving benefit of HT maize alongside the stacked varieties which offer both insect control and labor saving. Higher yields are the main reason behind male adoption, while female farmers tend to favor other aspects like taste, quality, and the ease of farming herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops. Women farmers (and also children) saved significant time because less weeding is required, an activity that has traditionally been the responsibility of female farmers. The newer stacked varieties were preferred by both male and female farmers and seemed to be in high demand by both groups. However, lack of GM seed availability in the region and poor market access were possible limitations to the adoption and spread of the technology.

Summary Households face many collective action situations, with members working together to produce livelihoods and allocate goods. But neither unitary nor bargaining models of the household provide frameworks to analyze the conditions under which households work collectively and when they fail to do so. Drawing on the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework based in the natural resource management literature, this paper explores the factors that encourage and inhibit collective action and provides insights into how to understand collective action problems within the household as dynamic, multi-actor situations with outcomes that can be evaluated by multiple criteria, not just efficiency.

Summary This paper examines whether education empowers women. We exploit an exogenous variation in education induced by a longer school year in Indonesia in 1978, which fits a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. We find education reduces the number of live births, increases contraceptive use, and promotes reproductive health practices. However, except for a few outcome measures, we do not find evidence that education improves women’s decision-making authority within households, asset ownership, or community participation. These results suggest that, to some extent, education does empower women in middle-income countries like Indonesia.

Summary Value chains are an increasingly popular approach to understanding complex policy challenges in agricultural development. However, value chain research and development has often been too narrowly focused on the structural elements of production, resulting in lack of adaptive capacity. Drawing on the concept of communities of practice, this paper seeks to operationalize an understanding of how the social relations that underpin smallholder-related value chains can be better supported to enhance resilience. Case studies from the Caribbean are then used to illustrate how a community of practice approach to value chain development might facilitate the formation of social capital.

Summary. — This paper analyses the determinants of export upgrading using a cross-country panel dataset over the 1992–2006 period. The results suggest that the export sophistication of countries is enhanced by capital deepening, engagement in knowledge creation, transfers via investment in education and R&D and foreign direct investment and imports. Institutional quality also facilitates the export upgrading of countries. The effect of natural resources on the structural upgrading of exports appears to be complex and mixed and is dependent upon the type of resources involved. The effects of these determinants vary between low, middle, and high income country groups.