R4D Ghana

Something old or something new? Social health insurance in Ghana

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:59:00 GMT

Miscellaneous S. Witter and B. Garshong 2009 BMC International Health and Human Rights (2009) 9: 20 [doi: 10.1186/1472-698X-9-20] There is considerable interest at present in exploring the potential of social health insurance to increase access to and affordability of health care in Africa. A number of countries are currently experimenting with different approaches. Ghana's National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was passed into law in 2003 but fully implemented from late 2005. It has already reached impressive coverage levels. This article aims to provide a preliminary assessment of the NHIS to date. This can inform the development of the NHIS itself but also other innovations in the region.

It is concluded that some trade-offs will be necessary between the existing wide benefits package of the NHIS and the laudable desire to reach universal coverage. The overall resource envelope for health is likely to be stable rather than increasing over the medium-term. In the longer term, the investment costs in the NHIS will only be justified if it is able to increase the cost-effectiveness of purchasing and the responsiveness of the system as a whole.

Confidential inquiries into maternal deaths: Modifications and adaptations in Ghana and Indonesia

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:35:00 GMT

Miscellaneous J. Hussein, L. D'Ambruoso, M. Armar-Klemesu, E. Achadi, D. Arhinful, Y. Izati and J. Ansong-Tornui 2009 International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics (2009) 106 (1) 80-84 [doi:10.1016/j.ijgo.2009.04.007] Objective: Factors contributing to the limited use of confidential inquiries into maternal deaths include the negative focus and demotivating effect of such inquiries, perceptions of unavailability of sufficient documentation of events, and lack of time and resources. To ascertain whether these problems can be overcome, variations to confidential inquiries into maternal deaths were introduced in Ghana and Indonesia.

Methods: Clinical review panels were set up as part of the usual process of confidential inquiries, and modifications to the confidential inquiries were introduced. In Ghana, the traditional confidential inquiry process focusing on health facility care was modified to introduce the assessment of positive factors. In addition to the assessment of positive factors, adaptations in Indonesia consisted of including cases of obstetric complications, as well as deaths, and the use of interview testimonials as data sources. Information about resource and time needs for conducting confidential inquiries was collected.

Results: The introduction of positive aspects to the process provided a balanced and more motivating setting for the inquiry. The data obtained from case notes in district hospitals and interview testimonials provided sufficient information to assess why maternal deaths and severe complications occurred. The costs of conducting the inquiries ranged from US $4000 to US $11 000 (per study), and the estimated time required for a panel member to review each case was more than 3 hours.

Conclusion: This study introduced practical ways to encourage the implementation of maternal death reviews, inquiries, and audits that are context specific and, therefore, acceptable to local practitioners.

Fighting The Battle Against Disease - Leeds Researchers Take On The World

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:52:00 GMT

Miscellaneous 2006 Medical News Today, 02 Mar 2006 This news reports the start of the COMDIS programme fighting malaria, TB and HIV.

COMDIS Bulletin 1

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:46:00 GMT

Miscellaneous L. Brehmer 2009 COMDIS Bulletin 1, Autumn 2009. 6 pp. The aim of this bulletin is to allow COMDIS partners to share updates with each other. It contains information on events, activities and new projects in the COMDIS programme.

COMDIS Brochure

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:14:00 GMT

Miscellaneous 2009 2 pp. This updated brochure introduces the COMDIS programme on HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.

Development Research Centre for the Future State (Research Scheme R8490) Annual Report 1 July 2008 30 June 2009

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:40:00 GMT

Miscellaneous Institute of Development Studies 2009 73 pp.

Progress on the 3 programmes is reported:

1.Public Action and Private Investment
Progress has been steady. Key activities/achievements have included the PAPI 2009 cross cutting workshop attended by representatives of all the major projects. This workshop was also attended by Max Everest Phillips (DfID) and representatives from the Africa Power and Politics RPC and the Institutions for Pro Poor Growth RPC. Closer ties with these RPCs which carry out research in similar themes have been highlighted as having great potential to deepen the research and analysis and vastly improve quality through knowledge sharing activities.

The field research on the 'China's investment in Africa' project was completed and work has now entered a new phase. This project has received a lot of attention from the academic and policy making community. Jing Gu the lead researcher has been highly active in presenting her work and publications are being finalised. Additional funding for this project was recently obtained for the work to continue.

There has been good progress in the Egypt project with a number of publications in the final stages of writing or publication. The projects in Indonesia and Brazil have now been completed with outputs coming from both. The work on particularistic property rights regimes in China is nearing completion. There has been fair progress in the Vietnam project; research partners have been formally identified. With regret the research in Pakistan cannot be completed.

A new project due for completion in March 2010 will attempt to bring some of the key findings of the programme into two publications to answer the core question.

2.Collective Action around Service Delivery (Social Accountability)
Despite good performance as reported in last year's report Modes of Service Delivery in Brazil, India and Mexico (BIM) has experienced some setbacks. It has been formally agreed that Mexico can no longer form part of the project as no researcher of suitable ability could be identified who would be willing to finish the work. There have been some problems with writing up from some of the India researchers, many of whom are younger academics in their early careers. This has led to some delays. Brazil continues to perform well. Despite these setbacks there have been some major achievements especially in the communication of research findings at conferences.

3.State Capacity, Financing the State and Informal Local Governance
Comprising three key research themes (State Capacity, Financing the State and Informal Local Governance), programme three has progressed well over the last year.

There have been some major movements in the taxation work, mainly in communication efforts. The multi country study into the resource curse in Andean countries started and is now nearing completion.

Work into Informal Local Governance institutions has progressed adequately and there is possibility of funding one further stage of work. The multi-country study into donor proliferation in Africa was completed and a research proposal submitted to other funders for follow up work.

Africa Power & Politics. Annual Report 2 (2008-9)

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:44:00 GMT

Miscellaneous 2009 38 pp.

Progress is being made in all 4 areas of the programme:

Research

the empirical scope of the programme has been refined and the work has been organised in six firmly led 'research streams';
initial thinking about research approaches (concepts, methods) has been carried into the streams, so that it frames the empirical work;
fieldwork has begun, in teams of various sizes, in 11 African countries;
the programme has started engaging actively with researchers working on cognate topics in other research programmes.

Research-training

research training of five fully-funded fieldwork-based PhD candidates has been overseen;
a number of additional doctoral students have been associated with the programme; and
tailor-made short practical training exercises and/or 'collective enquiries' (preliminary joint fieldwork exercises which serve training objectives) have been mounted.

Organisational capacity strengthening

staff and associates of all member organisations drawn into a relatively high-grade discussion about how to link empirical enquiry, theoretical innovation and policy implications;
this has been applied in specific research streams, with African researchers participating to some extent in training and research activities in countries other than their own;
relevant and accessible library and information resources have been provided to the Southern organisations; and
major investments have been made in the communications and policy engagement capacities of two Southern partner organisations.

Policy influence and policy development.
The APPP's approach to policy influence and policy development has been developed in a revised updated Communication and Policy Engagement Strategy, key elements of which were implemented in Year 2. They include:

a reinforced communications team with clearer roles and responsibilities;
training sessions, workshops and investment in technical equipment;
construction of an 'APPP friends' database;
engagement with key stakeholders to prepare the ground for adoption of policy lessons based on research findings; and
development of the APPP website to provide improved access to the programme's web-published papers, news and events.

Duration of Protection against Malaria and Anaemia Provided by Intermittent Preventive Treatment in Infants in Navrongo, Ghana

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:51:00 GMT

Miscellaneous M. Cairns, I. Carneiro, P. Milligan, S. Owusu-Agyei, T. Awine, R. Gosling, B. Greenwood, and D. l. Chandramohan 2008 PLoS One (2008) 3( 5): e2227 [doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002227] Background: Intermittent preventive treatment for malaria in Infants (IPTi) has been shown to give effective and safe protection against malaria. It has been suggested that IPTi might have long-lasting beneficial effects but, in most settings, the protection provided by IPTi appears to be short-lived. Knowledge of the duration of protection given by IPTi would help interpret the results of existing trials and suggest optimal delivery schedules for IPTi. This study investigated how the protective efficacy of IPTi against malaria and anaemia changes over time.

Methods and Findings: A secondary analysis of data from a cluster-randomised, placebo-controlled trial of IPTi using sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) in Ghana was conducted. In this trial IPTi was given to 2485 infants at 3, 4, 9 and 12 months of age; children remained in follow-up until two years of age. Poisson regression with a random effect to adjust for the cluster-randomised design was used to determine protective efficacy of IPTi against clinical malaria and anaemia in defined time strata following administration of IPTi. Analysis of first-or-only clinical malaria episode following the individual IPTi doses showed that some protection against malaria lasted between 4 to 6 weeks. A similar pattern was seen when the incidence of all malaria episodes up to 2 years of age was analysed in relation to the most recent IPT, by pooling the incidence of malaria after the individual IPTi doses. Protective efficacy within four weeks of IPTi was 75.2% (95% CI: 6682) against malaria, 78.9% (95% CI: 6986) against high parasite density malaria, and 93.8% (95% CI: 7399) against anaemia. Protection against these outcomes was short-lived, with evidence of any effect lasting for only 6, 6 and 4 weeks respectively. Protection in children who were parasitaemic when receiving IPTi appeared to be of shorter duration than in uninfected children. There was no evidence of any benefit of IPTi after the immediate period following the IPTi doses.

Conclusions: Intermittent preventive treatment provides considerable protection against malaria and anaemia for short periods, even in an area of intense seasonal transmission. Due to the relatively short duration of protection provided by each dose of IPTi, this treatment will be of most benefit when delivered at the time of peak malaria incidence.

Mapping the Likelihood of Introduction and Spread of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Virus H5N1 in Africa, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria using Multicriteria Decision Modelling

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:22:00 GMT

Miscellaneous K. B. Stevens, S. Costard, R. Métras, and D. U. Pfeiffer 2009 Working Paper No. 20, 32 pp. The objective of this study was to describe the spatial variation in the likelihood of (i) introduction and (ii) spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIV) subtype H5N1 on a continental scale in Africa. This report describes the methods used to produce likelihood maps illustrating the likelihood of introduction and subsequent spread of HPAIV H5N1 at both the continental and country level (Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Ghana; targeted countries of the DfID project), and highlights limitations associated with the maps.

Potential Impact of HPAI on Ghana: A Multi-Market Model Analysis

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:54:00 GMT

Miscellaneous C. Schmitz and Devesh Roy 2009 HPAI Research Brief No. 14, 2009. 7 pp. This brief suggests that although income from poultry production is affected significantly by supply and demand shocks, effects on household income are limited due to the low share of poultry in households total income. Poultry-related supply and demand shocks, however, can result in income effects beyond poultry production through changes in incomes from maize and other food crops, and from labor involved in the poultry supply chain. With the high poultry imports to Ghana, supply and demand shocks on the domestic poultry sector are significant if the imports will be non-substitutes to the domestic poultry.

Training lifts the poorest out of poverty in Ghana

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:00:00 GMT

Private-funded apprenticeships in Ghana are best at helping lift the poorest out of poverty according to the DFID-funded Research Consortium on Education Outcomes and Poverty

'Give a child a birthday' - tracking age of school enrolment in Ghana

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 01:00:00 GMT

Late enrolment to primary schools in Ghana reduces the chances of completing education. CREATE is tracking enrolment and progress to determine the relationship between age in grade and educational performance.

Farmers help to identify how to adapt to climate change

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:00:00 GMT

Farmers in Africa are helping to identify alternative farming techniques which will help them adapt to climate change. This participatory research is being conducted as part of the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa programme

Agriculture on-air

Thu, 21 May 2009 01:00:00 GMT

Recorded by Africans for Africans, the DFID-funded AGFAX monthly radio service, now in its 15th year, provides the latest information on agricultural and rural development to agricultural broadcasters and, through them, to millions of listeners across Africa

The nature, extent and eradication of homelessness in developing countries

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:34:00 GMT

Completed An in-depth study of homelessness in nine developing countries (Bangladesh, South Africa, China, Zimbabwe, India, Indonesia, Egypt, Ghana and Peru) was conducted. The nine countries chosen for the study presented a range of housing and homelessness situation and degrees of poverty. They gave a range of different cultural experiences and understanding of housing and homelessness. To establish the nature and extent of homelessness in developing countries; to formulate workable definitions of homelessness suitable for developing country situations; to identify innovative practice in eradicating homelessness, in ameliorating its effects and in getting people off the streets; to disseminate findings through electronic and paper means. This will be done in relation to children as well as adults. The international conference on 'Homelessness: A Global Perspective', India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India, 9-13 January 2006 was developed to disseminate the current findings and to identify ways to take the work forward.

Does the Media Help or Harm in Potentially Divisive Elections?

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:00:00 GMT

The BBC World Service Trust has launched a new unit for policy advisors to help understand the role that the press can have during elections as the role of media in elections - sometimes negative, sometimes positive - is becoming an increasingly key governance issue

Better Science Reporting - Training for West African Journalists

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:00:00 GMT

A DFID-funded training course for West African Journalists held at IITA in Ibadan, Nigeria earlier this month seems to be already bearing fruit according to course evaluations

Using Art for Social Change

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:00:00 GMT

The Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research Programme is putting the arts at the centre of their research and communications work.

Finance and formalisation as mechanisms for poverty reduction in Africa

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:01:00 GMT

Current The project is designed to establish how far credit and formalisation at the level of the individual can impact on poverty either directly by raising consumption or indirectly by increasing the productivity of employment opportunities available to the poor. We propose to research this question by extending existing data sets and by investigating two interventions in Ghana and Tanzania. The proposed project will use, and extend, data which has been collected for three years in both Tanzania and Ghana at the individual level seeking to compare the incomes of wage earners and the self-employed in urban areas. These data sets are based on a random sample of those working in urban areas in both countries and are panel so the same individual can be followed over time. From them we can know how incomes of the self-employed compare with wage earners and the factors affecting these earnings. We propose to evaluate how access to micro-finance and processes of formalisation can impact on poverty by investigating two policies in Ghana and Tanzania. The first is the expansion of micro-credit services into randomly selected communities by several partner NGOs. The second is the implications of a process of formalising business structures currently underway in Tanzania. A three year panel of workers in the urban areas of both Ghana and Tanzania has already been created so a base line exists with which to compare the outcomes. It is proposed to re-survey the individuals in this panel in both countries to show how these changes have impacted on their livelihoods. Both interventions provide a unique opportunity to measure the causal impact of particular interventions on poverty. A common factor across the activities of the poor whether it be those who own micro firms, those who work on farms or the self-employed is the problems they face in being able to increase the scale of their activities. In this project we propose to ask how far micro-credit and processes of formalisation enable the scope of such enterprises to be expanded.

Poverty and maternal health in Ghana: A spatial analysis of exclusion from care

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:06:00 GMT

Current Improving maternal health has been established as a key development priority and is associated, through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with the eradication of poverty. Ghana is a country with a high level of maternal mortality that is currently undergoing substantial efforts to scale up the provision of maternal health services. Exclusion from maternal health services in Ghana represents a serious constraint to the attainment of both better maternal health and lower infant mortality and is known to be driven in part by poor availability and physical inaccessibility of these services. The overall aim of this project is to quantify the spatial links between poverty and poor utilisation of maternal health services in Ghana. This project builds on previous work in a range of African countries which showed that individual and community characteristics alone do not go far towards explaining service use at childbirth, especially in West African countries. However, previous analyses did not use poverty map estimations of local deprivation, nor did they control for varying geographical accessibility to services via facility mapping and analysis of realistic ground distances using modern geographical information system (GIS) techniques. The specific aim of this project is, therefore, to establish whether there is a relationship between the level of deprivation within communities and the use of health services during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period after controlling for other factors such as the type and quality of services available, physical access, and characteristics of the woman herself. By investigating factors related to both physical accessibility and availability of health services, the research will facilitate an understanding of the effect of poverty on patterns of spatial variation in service use. The results will, for the first time, provide policymakers with spatially explicit explanations for exclusion from care throughout Ghana through nationwide maps of causative factors. 1) To prepare spatial data on use of maternal health services, poverty and physical accessibility at various levels of aggregation by:
*creating maternal health service utilisation maps derived from Demographic and Health Survey data (2003) at individual and district levels for pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum services in Ghana.
*creating a district level welfare poverty map of Ghana using census data and the Ghana Living Standards Survey 2003
*estimating the distance to services based on digital facility maps which include information on maternity provision in health centres and hospitals throughout the country.

2. To identify, by linking all three data sources listed above spatially in a regression analyses, the key factors determining service exclusion throughout Ghana.

3. To provide a more precise understanding of maternal health service utilisation in three case study districts of Ghana.

4. To interpret the findings of regression analyses and case studies based on local and national understandings of using maternal health services in Ghana / by interviewing national and district level health service managers, health facility staff and women who are pregnant or have recently given birth. The project also seeks to establish a methodological approach to producing linked poverty, health access and physical availability maps which can be applied in other data-rich contexts.

Tropical forests in poverty alleviation: from household data to global-comparative analysis

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:53:00 GMT

Current Forests are important to the rural livelihoods of poor people in developing countries. But due to the paucity of quality data on rural household economies in the tropics and sub-tropics, we know very little about just how important forests are, for what specific purposes they primarily serve, and for how many people forests are vital assets. This impedes the design of effective strategies for forest-based poverty alleviation. This project aims to fill these serious empirical gaps by using a uniform methodology to gather high-quality primary household data in about 25 sites with tropics-wide coverage. The global data bank (5-6000 households) with complete annualized income information and other economic and non-economic data will be used for a global-comparative analysis of forest-poverty linkages in rural household economies. Our goal is to analyse the general importance of various forest types in different aspects of rural livelihoods, identify major causes of geographical variation, and point to tangible options for interventions that actively enhance forest-based poverty alleviation. Specifically, we will test for hypotheses related to the alleged pro-poor role of market integration and of collective forest mangement at the local level. The data will also enable tests of broader microeconomic hypotheses regarding the role of natural resources in rural livelihoods, e.g. to what extent natural resources serve as seasonal gap-fillers, as safety nets in response to shocks, and as means of accumulating assets that eventually can lift people out of poverty. The project is integrated into the Poverty and Environment Network (PEN), coordinated by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). PEN is an ongoing collaborative research effort between CIFOR, a network of PhD students, and external experts from ten universities including the University of East Anglia. PEN data collection is already advanced; we thus seek financial support over a three-year period mainly to establish a global data bank, to undertake the global-comparative data analysis, and to carry out synthesis & dissemination work. Research results will be communicated through a variety of media to the main intended beneficiaries that include academia, donors, multilaterals, and policy makers at different levels. The primary project objective is:
I. To undertake a comprehensive global-comparative analysis of the role of forests and environmental income in preventing and reducing rural poverty, built on a centrally coordinated pan-tropical data bank with high-quality primary household and village data collected though PEN (research outputs);
The secondary project objectives are:
II. To elaborate recommendations for tangible forest-poverty interventions, and feed them into national and global policy processes (policy impacts);
III. To enhance the ability of project partners in using best-practice methods for conducting income-accounting rural household surveys, and to suggest improved research methodologies for future studies of environmental incomes and rural livelihoods (capacity building and methodological innovation).

Do taxes help make better governments?

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:00:00 GMT

Are there connections between how states obtain money and the quality of their governance? If governments are not dependent on taxes for their finance, new research suggests they are less accountable and responsive to their citizens and taxpayers

Improved treatment for sleeping sickness

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:00:00 GMT

A new combination of drugs has been successfully trailed by the DFID-funded Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative as a treatment in Sub-Saharan Africa

Supporting science journalism in Africa and the Middle East

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:00:00 GMT

A dozen new teams of science journalists from different countries across Africa and the Middle East trained through the DFID-funded SjCOOP Programme are collaborating on science related stories

CREATE seeks nominations for Commonwealth Scholarships

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 01:00:00 GMT

The Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity (CREATE) has been asked to nominate two suitable candidates for the Commonwealth Scholarship scheme to pursue studies in educational access

Changing Lives: Making Research Real

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Changing Lives, a collaborative project between DFID Research and InterPress Service (IPS), a press agency that covers the global South, uncovers a hotbed of the kind of exciting stories that the media are itching to tell

Child migrants find their way home

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Research suggests most children who migrate from Northern Ghana looking for work will return home of their own volition

Boost for African science

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:00:00 GMT

African science has received a boost with the announcement of a £3.3 million partnership between the Leverhulme Trust and the Royal Society to fund collaborations between scientists in Ghana, Tanzania and the UK

Chronic Poverty is 'a global emergency that we cannot afford to ignore'

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:00:00 GMT

The Chronic Poverty Report 2008-09: New solutions to escape poverty traps reminds us that 'alleviating chronic poverty is not merely a question of economics. It is a moral imperative' according to UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown

Research Into Use: African Innovation Challenge Fund

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:00:00 GMT

The second Research Into Use (RIU) call for proposals is for the African Innovation Challenge Fund

Improved utilisation of Tamarind and Baobab: manuals for non-literate farmers

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:45:00 GMT

Completed Training manuals were prepared to help provide non-literate and semi-literate farmers in Ghana and Malawi with new skills in the utilisation, processing and marketing of fruit and leaves from two important local tree species, Tamarind (Tamarindus indica) and Baobab (Adansonia digitata). This project relates to R6072 and R7187.

Market survey of plant-based fragrances in Ghana and Grenada

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:37:00 GMT

Completed This market survey aimed to investigate the feasibility of a proposal to promote and monitor the production of novel fragrances by the rural poor in Ghana and Grenada. A market assessment of the products that incorporate synthetic and natural fragrance chemicals was carried out. Conclusive data were not produced.

African Community Access Programme (AFCAP)

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:49:00 GMT

Current AFCAP funds applied research to rural access problems, communicates the research outcomes to stakeholders, and supports the mainstreaming of the research results into practice. A six-month inception phase was completed in December; projects are now in operation or in planning in several sub-Saharan African countries.

Programme Goal: Sustained economic development, poverty reduction and improved livelihoods of the rural poor through more effective, efficient and equitable access to socio-economic opportunities (employment, healthcare, education, etc.).

Programme Purpose: To create sustainable access for rural communities to external opportunities and services (including health, education, employment, markets and social and political networks).

Best practice on Rural Roads Technology mainstreamed in Africa
Evidence of impact of appropriate rural road technology disseminated
Sustainable ownership mechanisms for construction and maintenance of local road systems
Knowledge and research capacity in Africa improved and key knowledge disseminated and adopted
Status of improving access to basic infrastructure for poor in Africa reviewed and further developed

AFCAP has made substantial progress in establishing a robust research programme for the rural transport sector in Africa. National co-ordinators have been appointed in Mozambique, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi and Kenya, national steering groups have been identified, initial projects have been developed, and contractors for these projects are being procured.

Discussed with International Institute of Water and Environment Engineering of Ouagadougou University possible development of a short course for rural road engineering. There is potential to collaborate with KNUST in Ghana and the opportunity to offer course material across the French West African region.

Letters of Agreement have now been secured with the governments of Mozambique, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi and Kenya. AFCAP is supporting study tours for the Ethiopian Road Authority and a strategic planning workshop in Tanzania.

Pathways of Women's Empowerment

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:47:00 GMT

Current

Pathways of Womens Empowerment is an international research and communications programme established in 2006 which links academics with activists and practitioners to find out what works to enhance womens empowerment. The aim is to make these pathways of change visible and to build on them to inspire a radical shift in policy and practice. By involving policy actors and practitioners directly in the research and learning, they hope the work will be in itself a catalyst for change.

The programme investigates what enables women, individually and collectively, to empower themselves, how they can sustain these changes, and how development agencies' policies support or hinder this process in order to make such changes visible and to build on them to inspire a radical shift in policy and practice. The key areas of focus are:

Locating empowerment in women's everyday lives, applying a range of methodological and analytical strategies to gain a better understanding of how positive change happens in women's lives.
Tracing policy processes that seek to promote women's empowerment in order to understand the enabling conditions, strategies and tactics for achieving policy change.
Understanding strategies for change, seeking to reveal the factors for success and asking what works and what is specific to particular contexts, and what more generic lessons can be drawn.

Research strategy implemented for systematic identification of pathways of women's empowerment in four thematic areas.

Four centres of regional excellence in applied research strengthened CEGENSA, NEIM, SRC/AUC and BRAC University with capacity to implement and support policy research on womens empowerment within their regions.

Associated global institutions UNIFEM, DFID and other donors, IDS strengthened in their capacity to make use of innovative and critical research.

Communications strategy achieved, having influenced key stakeholders to take RPC research findings into account in policy practice.

Consortium governance and management system achieved horizontal working practices and power sharing.

The Mid Term Review of 2009 found that most of the outputs have either been achieved or are in the pipeline and nearing completion. Some of the real successes highlighted include:

Knowledge outputs of extremely high academic quality, the consistency of the quality is remarkable for a consortium comprising such diverse locations, the outputs are diverse in form, content and style.
A significant number of policy-advocacy and public education oriented communications materials have also been produced and used in the form of pod casts, photo exhibitions, films and videos.
Capacity of the research partners enhanced. There is some variation, in relation to the increased capacity of individual and teams compared to improved institutional capacity.
Communications is not an "end of pipe" activity but a central part of the programme.
Some stunning examples of creative communications work across all hubs: Stories for Change (Bangladesh), a pilot TV drama on mythical stories of Nigerian women, the Changing Times, Changing Lives photography course and exhibition (Bangladesh), work with Ghanaian Foundation for Female Photojournalists.
The programme created a transparent, democratic, egalitarian and effective system of managing the multiple partnerships and relationships within its structure.

The Mental Health and Poverty Project: Mental health policy development and implementation in four African countries.

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:27:00 GMT

Current The research programme consortium aims to provide new knowledge regarding comprehensive multi-sectoral approaches to breaking the negative cycle of poverty and mental ill-health. The programme will undertake an analysis of existing mental health policies in African countries, provide interventions to assist in the development and implementation of mental health policies in those countries, and evaluate the policy implementation over a 5-year period. 1. Conducted the first large-scale situation analysis of mental health systems in 4 African countries: Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia. These studies highlighted the neglect of mental health in current policies, the meagre resources available for mental health, lack of data for mental health service provision and widespread stigma against the mentally ill.

2. Established partnerships between research teams and Ministries of Health in all four countries and built capacity for mental health research and policy development through training workshops, exchanges and supervision.

3. Currently conducting and evaluating interventions that are having a significant impact on policy and practice in the four countries, including:

Ghana: reform of mental health legislation and establishment of mental health information systems for routine service monitoring.
South Africa: development of a strategic plan for mental health in the Northern Cape and development of mental health information systems in Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
Uganda: development of a national mental health policy, national strategic plan and reform of mental health legislation.
Zambia: reform of the mental health legislation.

4. Establishing models of best practice for the integration of mental health into primary health care, through demonstration projects in all 4 countries.

5. Conducted the first systematic literature review of the relationship between mental health and poverty in low and middle income countries. From this process and our engagement in the four African countries we have identified a range of interventions that have the potential to address the vicious cycle of poverty and mental ill-health.

The contribution of post-basic education and training to poverty reduction: evidence from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:28:00 GMT

Current

For 25 years within the World Bank, and increasingly within other multilateral and bilateral agencies, education and particularly primary education have been held to have a powerful relationship with many other development outcomes, and, through these, with the reduction of poverty more generally. This primacy of primary education is symbolised in its position as a Millennium Development Goal (MDG), and hence within DFID as an element in their Public Service Agreement (PSA).

The present research builds directly on this foundation role for basic education, but extends it to examine in what ways and under what conditions post basic education and training (PBET) can also be expected to contribute to poverty reduction. It considers the extent to which PBET can provide skills and knowledge necessary for countries to develop capacity to reduce poverty and to ensure that the full benefits of basic education can be harnessed.

To synthesize state-of-the-art research on the potential contribution of post-basic education (secondary, tertiary and skills development) to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and poverty reduction.

Dissemination of project outputs will be promoted throughout the project's lifecycle, and beyond.
Outline the project ideas to an international meeting on capacity development in JICA, Tokyo.
Present the findings of the first data collection phase to the annual meeting of the Working Group on International Co-operation of Skills Development.
Use the Centre of African Studies Occasional Paper series to publicise findings from all the teams.
A special project meeting will be organised end-on to the major Oxford Conference to review a preliminary result from both phases and to feed selected papers into the main conference. Project dissemination will occur.
A special issue of Norrag News will be published (and aid policy bulletin) on the theme of learning capacity and poverty reduction.
Encourage submission of articles by junior team members to some of the following journals with which they are closely associated: Compare, IJED, Journal of Modern African Studies, BOLESWANA Educational Research Journal, African Affairs and NIEPA Journal.
At the end of the project, the main DFID report will be submitted and it is expected that the project would also feature as part of the DFID Education Papers.

Organisation of a special panel in the 2004 Conference of the Development Studies Association. This first paper was published, in 2005, in a special issue of the Journal of International Development supported by DFID, appropriately entitled 'Bridging Research and Policy'. Our DFID research chapter will also appear in the book of the same title to be published in the summer of 2006.
Six country studies were all completed in near to final draft by March 2005. It was possible for them all to be available as background papers, by the time of the Centre of African Studies' (CAS) International Conference in Edinburgh in April 2005. This CAS Conference was itself deliberately oriented around the key themes of the DFID project, and hence the published volume from the CAS conference, Revisiting Education, Training and Work in Africa (CAS October 2005) set the DFID research on five African countries within a larger African context.
Workshop (April 2005) with high level policy makers from Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and India in order to get early feedback on the research from these senior members of the policy community.
The individual country studies were versioned into academic papers for the UKFIET's Oxford International Conference on Education and Development, September 2005. This panel was entitled 'Educating and Training out of Poverty', and thus was organised in large part around our DFID research theme. All the DFID country studies that were presented in Oxford were also accepted by the International Journal of Educational Development.
Country studies translated into short, sharp Policy Briefs. These are on the website (http://www.cas.ed.ac.uk/research_and_publications/projects/projects-2006.htm) along with the country studies and the academic versions of the papers. But packages containing the Policy Briefs, the Executive Summaries of our country studies and the country studies themselves have been sent to carefully selected policy makers in each of our research countries. The same package was also sent to the DFID advisors' meeting in Nairobi in early 2006.
It also proved possible for our DFID research to be fed into the main donor agencies concerned with the relationship of skills and poverty reduction. Both in the Working Group for International Cooperation in Skills Development and in the European Training Foundation in November and December of 2005 respectively, major presentations on Skills and Poverty Reduction were made at these agency meetings in Italy. While a little earlier in the year, the results of our DFID work were also presented to a meeting of all of USAID's education advisors in Washington.
The summaries of our six country studies along with many other articles on the Education-Poverty Reduction relationship have been a key element in the Aid Policy Bulletin, NORRAG NEWS NO. 37, which was published in May 2006.
A further opportunity to present the results of the research was in the biennial conference of the African Studies Association of the UK in SOAS in September 2006.
Final synthesis report

Time is money for poor rural travellers too

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 01:00:00 GMT

Travel time savings associated with transport projects in developing countries are often underestimated as benefits to rural economies

FarmLime - sourcing low cost lime for small-scale farming

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 01:00:00 GMT

Agricultural lime is a farming input taken for granted in many countries; however this does not hold true in less-developed regions such as sub-Saharan Africa

Fufu for thought in Ghana

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 01:00:00 GMT

A collaborative food hygiene research project has helped street vendors in Accra, Ghana to attract more customers and earn more money

Strengthening the application of social sciences in malaria control policy, programme development and implementation

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 01:00:00 GMT

Malaria control relies on understanding the interplay of factors that influence the behaviours of both those who suffer from malaria and those who provide health care

R4D Ghana

Something old or something new? Social health insurance in Ghana

Confidential inquiries into maternal deaths: Modifications and adaptations in Ghana and Indonesia

Fighting The Battle Against Disease - Leeds Researchers Take On The World

COMDIS Bulletin 1

COMDIS Brochure

Development Research Centre for the Future State (Research Scheme R8490) Annual Report 1 July 2008  30 June 2009

Africa Power & Politics. Annual Report 2 (2008-9)

Duration of Protection against Malaria and Anaemia Provided by Intermittent Preventive Treatment in Infants in Navrongo, Ghana

Mapping the Likelihood of Introduction and Spread of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Virus H5N1 in Africa, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria using Multicriteria Decision Modelling

Potential Impact of HPAI on Ghana: A Multi-Market Model Analysis

Training lifts the poorest out of poverty in Ghana

'Give a child a birthday' - tracking age of school enrolment in Ghana

Farmers help to identify how to adapt to climate change

Agriculture on-air

The nature, extent and eradication of homelessness in developing countries

Does the Media Help or Harm in Potentially Divisive Elections?

Better Science Reporting - Training for West African Journalists

Using Art for Social Change

Finance and formalisation as mechanisms for poverty reduction in Africa

Poverty and maternal health in Ghana: A spatial analysis of exclusion from care

Tropical forests in poverty alleviation: from household data to global-comparative analysis

Do taxes help make better governments?

Improved treatment for sleeping sickness

Supporting science journalism in Africa and the Middle East

CREATE seeks nominations for Commonwealth Scholarships

Changing Lives: Making Research Real

Child migrants find their way home

Boost for African science

Chronic Poverty is 'a global emergency that we cannot afford to ignore'

Research Into Use: African Innovation Challenge Fund

Improved utilisation of Tamarind and Baobab: manuals for non-literate farmers

Market survey of plant-based fragrances in Ghana and Grenada

African Community Access Programme (AFCAP)

Pathways of Women's Empowerment

The Mental Health and Poverty Project: Mental health policy development and implementation in four African countries.

The contribution of post-basic education and training to poverty reduction: evidence from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa

Time is money for poor rural travellers too

FarmLime - sourcing low cost lime for small-scale farming

Fufu for thought in Ghana

Strengthening the application of social sciences in malaria control policy, programme development and implementation

Development Research Centre for the Future State (Research Scheme R8490) Annual Report 1 July 2008 30 June 2009