IDS Research Reports最新文献

External support is essential to the development of the African Standby Force (ASF), an African-led mechanism for crisis management and peace consolidation in Africa. This research paper examines external support to the ASF by several bilateral and multinational contributors, assessing its strengths and limits, and attempts to measure the significance of the support to the aspired outcome.

The starting point of the study is an analysis of the fast-evolving ASF project, which has gone through many phases of definition and redefinition since it was conceived in the late 1990s. The ASF, it is argued, is a ‘moving target’, due to the inability of African stakeholders to settle on a clear concept, setting themselves ever more ambitious goals at every stage. Partners simultaneously suffer from, and contribute to this state of affairs. Whilst coordination efforts are undertaken, partners' support too often still responds to national (for bilateral donors) or institutional interests (for multilateral ones), each partner using the leeway created by the conceptual ambiguities of the ASF to press its own priorities. Given the overwhelming role of partners in the conceptual maturation of the ASF, and the impact of their funding decisions, this is turn exacerbates the confusion about the true direction of its development. Said differently, the ASF is burdened by the lack of political, conceptual, and financial ownership on the side of the recipients, who are also its main stakeholders. The result is at best an ambiguous partnership, and at worst a waste of human resources, financial means and political capital.

Attempting to differentiate between degrees of ‘ownership’, the study concludes that it is only if AU member states make a conscious effort to increase their political, conceptual and especially, financial, stake in the ASF that they will credibly demonstrate that it is not an entirely foreign-mastered project, but a real ‘African solution to African problems’.

Spanish aid policy is changing: official development assistance (ODA) doubled between 2004 and 2008 reaching almost €5 billion annually (ODA/GDP 0.45 per cent). At the same time ODA disbursements to United Nations organisations increased 23 times and the Spanish–UNDP Fund was set up to move Millennium Goals forward with €528 million. The Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECID) is now a state agency with more autonomy and a Managerial Contract with measurable objectives, some of them related to aid effectiveness. Moreover, despite the economic crisis, spending on ODA increased slightly in 2009–10, although the Spanish government has announced aid cuts for 2011. What factors explain these changes? Was it just a new foreign policy when the Socialist party won the election in 2004? Was there an agreement within the government to develop a new aid policy? Are factors of change still impacting on aid improvements or have they diminished or even vanished?

This paper tries to answer these and other relevant questions, such as how Spanish aid policy is likely to evolve over the coming years, what changes must Spain carry out to approach or even draw level with the more advanced donors and which lessons might be relevant to other aid donors, especially to the bilateral newcomers and emerging donors.

After a brief reflection on aid effectiveness, the paper analyses the politics of aid in Spain, the changes that have improved Spanish aid effectiveness in recent years and the main dilemmas and challenges which are still waiting to be resolved. It focuses on traditionally selected areas of assessment in development policy and goes beyond, taking into account the political economy of aid, analysing its actors and their different interests.

This research report is a broad-based study that seeks to understand the structural and developmental processes that characterise the security sector in Francophone Africa.

Although each country has a distinct political history and tradition, similarities in the security apparatus, rooted in its inheritance from the colonial and post-colonial periods, can be found between Francophone countries in Africa. In the former French colonies, there are similarities to the French security system which are very strong on the normative side, such as the legal and institutional framework or the defence and security actors. However, even if these Francophone African countries borrow a lot from an originally French security system in terms of the institutional design of their security apparatus, they deviate considerably from it in terms of daily practice.

The issue at stake in this paper is to highlight the kind of institutional framework prevailing in this set of countries and the specific considerations that international assistance will have to take into account. The paper also analyses briefly the difference between Anglophone and Francophone security systems.

Finally, it makes some recommendations that might assist the security sector reform policy agenda and donor and recipient responses to the security challenges faced in Francophone Africa.

Value chain interventions are increasingly popular amongst donors aiming to promote market-oriented growth and poverty reduction. Based on the reflections of the community of practice itself and extensive desk research, this review critically examines the causal models underlying value chain interventions and asks how and to what extent their poverty alleviation impacts have been systematically investigated.

Concentrating on a selection of 30 donor-led value chain interventions, the review finds two main patterns of engagement: (a) one which funnels assistance by partnering with lead firms in the value chain –lead firm projects; and (b) one which works with chains without a lead firm –value chain linkage projects. Targeting of the poor seems more effective in value chain linkage projects and in those lead firm projects where beneficiaries are identified in both the chain's suppliers and distributors.

Controversially, despite a wealth of positive anecdotal evidence, the vast majority of projects did not carry out an impact assessment of their poverty alleviation objectives and it is therefore unclear whether the value chain intervention: (a) is responsible for the improvements observed; (b) benefits the poor disproportionately; and (c) is more cost effective than other alternative approaches. Assessing the poverty alleviation effects of individual interventions in a rigorous way is costly and challenging but necessary to ensure long term effectiveness of the interventions as well as optimising the use of public funds. There is a need to carry out systematic impact assessment at the programme level to develop a strong evidence base.

Finally, this review provides some guidelines for designing and managing value chain interventions, particularly regarding the identification of situations in which the value chain approach is most appropriate and those where other private sector-oriented approaches (such as Business Development Services and Making Markets Work for the Poor) may be more suitable or complementary.

Over the last three decades, outsourcing has had a big influence on the international division of labour. It is clear that it has been a major reason for the enormous build-up of production capabilities in the developing world, in particular in the export platforms of Asia. However, the influence of outsourcing on innovation capabilities is less clear. Recent literature shows that innovation capabilities have emerged in the software cluster of Bangalore in India. This report asks whether and how the adoption of open business models in OECD countries had an influence on the rise of innovative software services in Bangalore. This requires detailed research on both the demand side and the supply side of outsourced software services. On the demand side, this report compares three software buyer segments, exploring the relationship between business models and outsourcing patterns. The study shows that the adoption of open business models in OECD countries has a major influence on the ‘space’ for innovation that accrues to suppliers in the software industry in India. On the supply side, the study investigates the factors that determine whether the new spaces are filled and how advanced innovation capabilities are built. The key feature of this study is that it examines the interaction between demand- and supply-side dynamics. Most studies tend to focus on only one side, but the key is to see them in conjunction. The study shows that their co-evolution over time changes not only the scale of outsourcing but also the ‘quality’ of the contents and the division of labour.