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Dissertação de mestrado em Ciências da Educação (área de especialização em Tecnologias Educativas), A presente dissertação buscou identificar, quais são os desafios que os professores que trabalham nos Cursos Técnicos, Eixo Gestão e Negócios, na modalidade de Educação a Distância se deparam constantemente, e quais são as principais competências que permeiam, e se fazem necessárias, para que o docente desenvolva seu papel em sala de aula. Inicialmente obteve-se, as características da Região, posteriormente o contexto educacional, assim como a organização educativa, profissão docente, mudanças e tecnologias, formação continuada e as competências. Afim constatar quais seriam as percepções dos docentes, diretores e alunos, realizou-se a entrevista com professores e diretores, contudo, por ter uma quantidade de alunos elevado, aos alunos houve a necessidade da aplicação de um questionário. As entrevistas realizadas, forneceram informações, bastante significativas quanto às percepções, as competências são essencialmente importantes, tanto sob a ótica do docente, quanto direção e aluno, todos possuem a mesma assimilação sobre este contexto. Entre os desafios, nem todos os docentes compartilham dos mesmos entendimentos, mas a divergência de percepções acerca de desafios, certamente, está relacionada ao fato, de alguns professores trabalharem menos horas, e outros terem uma grande carga horária de trabalho semanal. A seleção do referencial teórico, serviu como norteador para o desenvolvimento da dissertação e ao mesmo tempo, relaciona-la com o estudo empírico., The present research looked for the challenges of teachers that work in the Technical Courses, Management and Business Axis, in the modality of Distance Education, are constantly faced, and what are the main competences that permeate, and are necessary, in order to develop his/her role in the classroom. Initially the study took the characteristics of the Region, the educational context, the educational organization, the teaching profession, changes and technologies, ongoing formation and the competences. In order to verify teachers', directors' and students' perceptions, the interview was conducted with teachers and principals, however, due to the high number of students, the students had to apply a questionnaire. The interviews provided quite significant information, considering the perceptions; the competences are essentially important, both from the perspective of the teacher, as well as the school staff and student, all of them have the same assimilation on this context. Among the challenges, not all teachers share the same understanding, but the divergence of perceptions about challenges is certainly related to the fact that some teachers work fewer hours and others have a large weekly workload. The selection of the theoretical reference, served as a guide for the development of the dissertation and, at the same time, relates it to the empirical study.

Rapid and consistent economic growth of Ethiopia over the past decade has contributed to reducing the number of people living in poverty. The Government of Ethiopia has created the growth and transformation plan (GTP), focusing on two overarching themes: fostering competitiveness and employment, and enhancing resilience and reducing vulnerabilities. This plan recognizes that for poverty reduction and economic growth to be sustainable, the Ethiopian economic structure will have to undergo a fundamental transformation. In accordance with a focus on poverty reduction and economic growth, the GTP has identified five main levers for change: public sector investment in infrastructure to lay the ground for private sector development, enhancement of policies and regulations to provide an environment conducive to competitiveness and productivity, expanding access to credit for small and medium size enterprises, provision of training and education to augment the supply of skilled labor, and improved access to land. Technological adoption and innovation will play a crucial role in delivering the goals laid out in the GTP. Participation in foreign markets also induces firms to become more innovative, a phenomenon known as learning through exporting, as observed among Ethiopian leather exporters. Another vital determinant of innovative activity is the accumulation of human capital and the skill level of the workforce. This study seeks: (i) to empirically analyze the extent of innovative activities that formal firms are undertaking in Ethiopia; (ii) to conduct a review of the existing innovation landscape; and (iii) to identify opportunities to foster innovations at the base of the pyramid (BoP) in Ethiopia. This study is structured as follows: chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two provides a detailed overview of the characteristics of growth and innovation, by providing key insights based on the enterprise survey analysis on the characteristics, motivations, operational and market environment and constraints of the innovators in Ethiopia. Chapter three assesses the innovation landscape in Ethiopia, by looking at the governmental and private agencies responsible to promote innovation, as well as active programs, and donor initiatives which may play a role in promoting firm level and pro-poor innovations. Chapter four provides policy recommendations to promote innovation in Ethiopia both at the firm level and in the form of pro-poor initiatives.

The World Bank’s Africa region gender innovation lab (GIL) conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) impact evaluation of the women in agribusiness leadership network (WALN), a transformational project implemented in Ethiopia by agricultural cooperative development international (ACDI) and volunteers in overseas cooperative assistance (VOCA), and supported by United States Agency for International Development (USAID). WALN, as a project, aims to increase participants’ business skills and self-confidence, enabling them to be community leaders and change makers. WALN also seeks to improve agribusiness outcomes by addressing gender differences in productivity, profitability, participation, and leadership in the sector. The ongoing impact evaluation is assessing the impact of participating in WALN activities on the overall performance of the selected high-potential women leaders in the agribusiness sector. In order to assess and interpret the impact evaluation outcomes, it is important to understand the specific business environment, as well as the needs and constraints faced by local entrepreneurs. Outcome data for this impact evaluation is being collected through survey instruments, administrative data, intensive qualitative interviews, and implicit association tests (IATs).

Innovation is the main driver of long-term economic growth. The accumulation of capital, whether in the form of physical assets such as plants and equipment, or through better human capital, cannot indefinitely sustain growth unless new products, services, processes, and/or business models are developed and implemented. This paper describes the actors involved and the types of funding available at different stages of the innovation process, the rationales for public intervention, and the advantages and disadvantages of some of the most commonly used policy instruments. Innovation activities are more difficult to finance than other types of investment for several reasons. Innovation produces an intangible asset that does not typically constitute accepted collateral to obtain external funding. Also, the technological and market uncertainty of innovation activities makes the returns to investment highly uncertain, creating significant problems for the standard risk adjustment methods used by providers of funds. This paper uses a streamlined version of an innovation process with three stages to categorize the different sources of finance available; in reality, considerable crossover takes places among instruments because innovation processes are not discrete.

There has long been a keen interest from countries around the world in Australia's experience in creating an evaluation system to support evidence-based decision making and performance-based budgeting. Australia's evaluation system lasted from 1987 to 1997, and during that time it was used to systematically evaluate all government programs every three to five years; these evaluation findings were used heavily by officials, ministers and the cabinet in the annual budget process. The uses of these findings included the policy advice prepared by departments including the preparation of ministers' new policy proposals and departments' savings options submitted to the cabinet for its consideration. More importantly, these findings were highly influential on the cabinet's ultimate policy decisions. Finally, evaluation findings were also used widely within line departments in support of their ongoing management. This paper updates two previous World Bank papers that reviewed the Australian experience with monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and other performance-related initiatives. These papers (Mackay 1998, 2004) focused on the first two time periods addressed in this paper.

The report is structured as follows. The next section introduces the theoretical notion of a 'virtual economy' and explains how it is distinct from other Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-related economic activities. The following sections describe in detail the main areas of the virtual economy, their economic impact, business models and value chains. The two major areas of the existing virtual economy are identified as: 1) third party gaming services and 2) microwork. This report will focus largely on these two distinct but conceptually related areas. Gaming services is an established industry that provides a rich set of evidence for analysis, while microwork is an emerging industry with apparently significant development potential. Other existing activities within the virtual economy are categorized as: 3) marketing related paid-for connections in social media ('cherry blossoming') and 4) user-created virtual goods in virtual environments. These are not covered in detail due to their limited development potential, at least at present. The sixth section analyzes the development potential of the virtual economy. Development potential is here understood as the ability to provide income to local economies through employment and entrepreneurial opportunities. Both short-run opportunities and long-run income development are considered. Development potential also includes the ability to support the development of local ICT infrastructure. In the final section, the report summarizes the key findings, identifies important gaps in current knowledge, and sketches out the scope for possible donor or Non-Governmental Organization (NGO)-led interventions towards maximizing the development potential of the virtual economy.

For the purposes of this project, the East African countries included in the study were Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. The focus for this project was Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) as for-profit or nonprofit organizations with less than 50 employees and not exceeding USD 1,000,000 in annual revenues/turnover. The main output of this project was a proposed program of interventions to drive transformational change. To succeed in this ambitious endeavor, the project articulated clear objectives and designed a blueprint for implementation including levels of resourcing, budget and monitoring metrics. Over the course of the project the team conducted brief surveys with over 90 entrepreneurs, over 50 percent of who had 3-10 years of experience in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector and primarily worked at companies with 5 employees or less.

An inspection is an official examination or review. The term 'onsite' means that the inspection takes place wherever the subject of the inspection happens to be located. In the insurance sector, supervisory authorities perform onsite inspections of insurers and intermediaries. Inspections sometimes extend to other entities that can affect the operations of insurers and intermediaries, such as affiliated companies and providers of outsourced services. A full-scale onsite inspection is a wide-ranging look at the finances and operations of an insurer. It can greatly assist the supervisory authority in arriving at a comprehensive assessment of the insurer's risk profile, viability, and compliance with requirements. Full-scale inspections can consume a lot of supervisory resources. A focused inspection looks at selected aspects of an insurer's finances or operations. They can often be performed more quickly and with fewer resources than a full-scale inspection, which is particular important if a specific supervisory concern has arisen and needs to be investigated. The flexibility to use both full-scale and focused inspections, as the situation may require, enables a supervisory authority to use available resources effectively and efficiently.