Industrial policies, as tools for economic advancement, disrupt established systems and practices, leading to disputes. The Nigerian Sugar Master Plan (2013–2024) is just such a case. The Plan proposed to stimulate domestic sugar growing and refining, by restricting imports and providing incentives for investors in sugar estates and refining mills.
This study examines the impact of industrial policies on different groups, identifying the origins and impacts of subsequent disputes. Specifically, it explores how the failure to anticipate opposition caused the Nigerian Sugar Master Plan to largely fail.
Informed by the framework of political settlements, we divide disputes into general (public) and specific (individual), exploring the nuances of each through qualitative analysis. Empirical data from case studies, particularly focusing on disputes over land use and trade in sugar, are used to unravel the layered repercussions of policy-induced disputes.
Unaddressed disputes, both broader societal and individual, have stymied the objectives of the Nigerian Sugar Master Plan.
Land allocations to investors in large-scale sugar estates have been disputed by dispossessed farmers, preventing establishment of several estates: production targets for sugar growing have been missed.
Importers of refined sugar could not legally continue their trade; instead, some reverted to smuggling in refined sugar, driving down the local prices—and cutting the profits of companies growing and refining sugar.
Opposition to the Sugar Plan, despite media campaigns to convince the public to accept it, has caused the Plan to fail in large part.
Industrial policies need to address the concerns of those potentially losing their businesses, jobs, and land to the policies. If not, opposition by losing parties is likely to cause the policies to fail.
Through a Fiji case analysis, this article elaborates on how well-intentioned foreign aid initiatives can result in maladaptation for local communities. When most well-intentioned foreign aid institutions become aware of development problems in the Pacific Island Countries, they start planning development interventions. However, maladaptation can occur where there is insufficient community input, creating conditions that worsen situations and make communities more vulnerable.
The study highlights a way to improve the sustainability and effectiveness of development projects with local communities by analysing two case studies. One is a community project driven by a civil society organization (CSO) and the other is community-driven development (CDD) project in Fiji.
The researcher engaged in community field studies while working as a civil servant in Fiji for 12 years and has continued these studies as a researcher for five years. The data used in this article are both experiential and research-based. Action research took place when the author supported CDD programmes based on traditional farming. This study provides a longitudinal view that includes critical auto-ethnography and talanoa.
This study finds that the CSO did not appreciate community aspirations and local knowledge, leading to community maladaptation in response to their programme intervention. By contrast, CDD in the same locale saw community members take control of strategizing, carrying out development activities, and monitoring. This directly contributed to community resilience and collective well-being, in addition to making the CDD activities more sustainable than those dependent on donor funding.
This article showcases the value of CDD for Pacific communities and the importance of accounting for local aspirations and worldviews. Thus, policies in Pacific Island Countries should ensure that any community development programmes respect people's culture and understand their notions of well-being and resilience, and so contribute to more self-determined development.
Bangladesh's economic growth rate over the past three decades has been one of the highest in the world. This success is difficult to reconcile with a single macroeconomic explanation of development.
Previous studies have investigated individual aspects that can explain Bangladesh's successful development. But a consistent account of how individual factors contributed to growth is currently missing. Can factors that correlate with growth in other countries explain the outstanding growth performance of Bangladesh? Or is the country's experience unique?
We construct a panel data set for 149 countries since 1970 and combine growth regression techniques with a peer group comparison. Different specifications, subsamples, and estimation techniques are considered.
Factors correlating with growth in other countries can well explain the growth experience of Bangladesh. But two features are specific to the country. First, a combination of “good enough” policies led to considerable growth impulses between 1990 and 2005: the country's improvements in typical correlates of growth during this period were among the global top 5% for any 15-year period investigated. Second, despite the absence of major reforms after 2005, Bangladesh defied the mean reversion in growth rates experienced by most fast-growing economies and peer countries.
Our results support the idea that a combination of “good enough” policies can jump-start high growth in low-income countries. Our findings further demonstrate that a stable macroeconomic and institutional environment helps when it comes to reaping the benefits of structural improvements in the long run.
Domestic abuse of women, despite being illegal, is common in India: on average, every 4.4 minutes a woman suffers abuse. During the pandemic, owing to curfew and lockdowns, women had additional caring responsibilities, but they lacked social support. A legal system made lethargic by lockdowns, lack of safety protocols for dealing with cases of domestic violence during the pandemic, extended delays in processing cases, and limited protection for victims—all combined to increase domestic violence nationwide.
What was the response of the Indian government to domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic? We evaluate policies and interventions through the lens of intersectional feminism and social equity.
We review publicly available documents and scholarly journals published between 2018 and 2022. We identify the national anti-domestic violence and state-specific programmes offered to women in India. We critically evaluate the country's anti-domestic violence campaign. The policy analysis draws on the cultural knowledge and professional expertise of the authors.
The government's efforts to address domestic violence during the pandemic were limited. Pre-existing vulnerabilities such as economic hardship, the gender-based digital divide, and strict gender roles were exacerbated by the pandemic. Although the government tried to address domestic violence, through helplines, keeping shelters open and offering virtual court sessions, it also released convicted abusers from prison, increasing women's vulnerability. Government and non-governmental organization interventions were not scaled up to meet demand. Many programmes had little oversight and quality control, resulting in differential results that often further victimized victims of domestic violence among vulnerable populations.
Our findings highlight the importance of services and policies on domestic violence being explicit and sensitive to the culture and context in disaster preparedness and public health emergency planning.
The political progress has been slow. The patriarchal clan traditions perpetuate gender discrimination, bestowing absolute priority upon all men for public affairs, while clan women remain voiceless, voteless, and restricted to private (household) affairs.
To better understand why, despite the minimal formal constraints on women's participation in political life, informal institutions and customs determine the social, economic, and cultural constraints on women such that they are often poorly equipped and/or reluctant to participate in public political activity.
Based on secondary literature, the article seeks to explain how the influences of the clan patriarchal system exert a negative impact on the political participation of Somali women. It identifies four structural categories, cultural, social, economic, and political, by which patriarchy has persistently impeded the participation of Somali women in the nation's politics.
Although women have contested the patriarchal system in Somalia through their participation in public decision-making processes in different sectors and their participation in politics, including an increasingly higher level of education and more participation in the labour force, their numbers are still insufficient compared to men.
Given that patriarchy has been identified throughout the world as one of the main obstacles to women's participation in political and socioeconomic processes, there is a need for official quotas for women's representation in politics to balance severe gender inequalities, achieve full realization of human rights and influence the issues raised and how political policies are shaped. There is also a need for political representation to imprint their competence as decision makers. The article sets out recommendations for tackling the four main structural barriers to achieving this, so that women can fully contribute to the development of Somalia, on a par with men.
As in much of the Pacific, Samoans understand their culture through Western religious lenses. Christianity and fa'a-Samoa (culture and practices) are entangled; they determine Samoa's daily reality of governance, society, and economic development. To discuss Samoa's development over the past two centuries without addressing Samoan agency in maintaining the Christian mantle to navigate their worldviews would be to misrepresent modern Samoa. Policy and investment for economic development, especially foreign aid, is largely determined at national level. Samoa's most vital communities to effect change, however, are local: church congregations and their leaders.
I examine the intersections of religiosity and Samoa's development. Should foreign aid donors consider Samoa's religious communities to implement effective education, poverty, and development programmes if religion is regarded as a cultural entity?
I used talanoa to collect data from discussions with directors of two leading aid donors in Samoa, the United Nations (UN) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the Aid Coordinator for the Government of Samoa. Talanoa is a face-to-face dialogue often used in Pacific communities.
Religion plays a significant role in Samoan society. Samoans view economic development, the improvement of the lives of ordinary citizens, job stability, and education as part of the manuia (blessings) of Samoa's religious and political status and community tapuaiga (prayers). That said, religion is not considered in formal discussions of aid and development. The interviewees agree that aid donors should understand the role of religion in daily society.
Perhaps it is time for aid donors and Christian Pacific Island countries to use these unorthodox methods for positive economic and social changes. As stated in Samoa's World Summit on Sustainable Development Assessment Report, “the potential influential standing and the extensive outreach of the church within the community makes it a valuable vehicle to drive pro-harmony strategies” (Government of Samoa, 2000).
Digital technologies can enable development, but they risk further entrenching inequalities in society, such as through the digital gender divide. The divide can not only slow development, but also slow progress towards gender equality. As digital technologies become increasingly used by governments for economic development, the gendered aspects of digital technologies need to be considered.
This study aims to investigate how Ethiopia's current national policies involving digital technologies consider the digital gender divide. It asks the following research questions: (1) how do Ethiopian government policies relating to engagement with digital technologies consider gender and gendered issues? And (2) how do Ethiopian government policies capture the causes of the digital gender divide?
I critically analyse Ethiopian policies using an intersectional feminist lens, adapted from the work of Kanenberg et al. (2019). I applied this to the Ten Years Development Plan (10YP), Digital Ethiopia 2025, Ethiopian Education Roadmap 2018–2030 (EEDR), and Education Sector Development Programme VI (ESDP VI).
The four policies show little consideration of gender and gendered dimensions of digital technologies. They rarely address the causes of the digital gender divide. Above all, they do not consider the underlying sociocultural barriers women face if they want to engage with digital technologies. The policies are thus unlikely to help close the digital gender divide. Ethiopia's integrationist approach to gender, as well as the patriarchal structures within which the policies are designed, probably explain these findings.
A transformational gender policy paradigm, one designed to position women and men to challenge the patriarchal structures they live within, is suggested as a means of capturing and confronting the barriers women face to engaging with digital technologies in the long term.
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