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21. Transforming Pastoralist Mobility in West Darfur: Understanding Continuity and Change

Author:
Hussein Sulieman and Helen Young
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Feinstein International Center, Tufts University
Abstract:
Earlier studies have shown that pastoralist mobility offers significant advantages in drylands by enabling herds to access the best-quality grazing over the course of a year. These patterns of mobility face many challenges and are changing. This study focuses on livestock movement in West Darfur, Sudan. It uses GPS tracking to illustrate mobility during the hot dry season and the rainy season. We find that compared with the past, grazing zones are retracting closer to home areas. The report proposes a typology of livestock movements and describes the ways in which herders are responding to challenges related to pasture, water, and conflict and also to livelihood activities. We present provisional recommendations to serve as the basis for further discussion.
Topic:
Mobility, Pastorialism, and Rural
Political Geography:
Africa and Sudan

22. Supporting Business Opportunities for Rural Women in East and Southern Africa: A Case Study of Uganda

Author:
Susan Namirembe Kavuma, Florence K. Muhanguzi, George Bogere, Kiran Cunningham, and Irene Achola
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE)
Abstract:
The project on Supporting Business Opportunities for Rural Women in East and Southern Africa was implemented in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Kenya as a collaborative and cross-country project by three institutions. In Zimbabwe, project was implemented by The Institute of Environment Studies (IES), in Uganda by Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) and the Collaborative Centre for Gender and Development (CCGD) in Kenya. The overall aim of the project was to support the economic empowerment of rural women in value addition businesses through identifcation and Sromotion of YiaEle Eusiness enterSrises tKat lead to tKe creation of decent and sustainaEle MoEs 6Secifcall\ tKe SroMect sougKt to i e[amine tKe structural barriers that constrain women from becoming more innovative and their ability to take advantage of the opportunities available for business development; ii) Identify and explore the opportunities that exist off-farm for rural women, including activities that tend to be male-dominated and of higher value; iii) Contribute to evidence based policy advocacy on designing innovative interventions to empower rural women in business enterprises; iv) Build and enhance the entrepreneurial capacity of women owned/managed small and medium enterprises in selected rural areas; and v) Document and disseminate best practices for empowering rural women to participate in business enterprises.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Gender Issues, Budget, Women, Business, and Rural
Political Geography:
Uganda and Africa

23. Postwar Nakba: A Microhistory of the Depopulation of Zakariyya, 1950

Author:
Dan Tsahor
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This study follows the events that caused the depopulation of the village of Zakariyya, south of the Jaffa-Jerusalem road, during the summer of 1950. Using documents from state and military archives, the article constructs the story of the villagers’ expulsion and explores the role of the little-known Transfer Committee in initiating and promoting postwar expulsions of Palestinians from the newly established State of Israel. A close reading of the actions of individual committee members over the course of events uncovers both the Transfer Committee’s modus operandi and the ostensible rationale for the postwar depopulation of the village. The article argues that by packing the committee with representatives of major Israeli power centers, Chair Yosef Weitz in effect laid the groundwork for the continuing expulsion of Palestinians from Israel after the establishment of the state.
Topic:
Migration, Population, Rural, Settler Colonialism, and Nation-State
Political Geography:
United States, Israel, and Palestine

24. Girls Leading: From Rural Economies to Global Solutions

Author:
Catherine Bertini
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Chicago Council on Global Affairs
Abstract:
An estimated 3 billion of the world’s 6.9 billion people live in rural areas of the developing world. More than 60 percent of them live in poverty. Poverty affects women and girls disproportionately; rural girls face the triple challenges to their empowerment and well-being by virtue of their youth, gender, and location. Investing in rural girls’ health and safety, as well as their personal and professional development, has the potential to transform rural economies. Girls Leading: From Rural Economies to Global Solutions—available as both a fully online digital experience and as a PDF—is a collection of diverse perspectives from 20 authors around the world. The authors share their research and stories of personal struggle and triumph to highlight the needs of rural girls and solutions to the challenges they face. The report also includes recommendations, arranged by age group, for critical moments in a girl’s life where both small and large actions can make a huge difference. Many of the most pressing global issues—climate change, economic development, health, and education—demand that we consider rural girls. The world changes as their lives change. Join the conversation at #GirlsLeading.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Education, Gender Issues, Health, Poverty, Children, Women, Economy, Youth, and Rural
Political Geography:
Global Focus

25. Who Are the World’s Poor? A New Profile of Global Multidimensional Poverty

Author:
Gisela Robles Aguilar and Andy Sumner
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Who are the world’s poor? This paper presents a new global profile of multidimensional poverty using three specifications of multidimensional poverty. The paper draws comparisons with the global monetary poverty profile and with the new World Bank measure of combined monetary and non-monetary poverty; discusses how global poverty differs by specification, the extent of multidimensionality, and presents a set of estimates of the disaggregated characteristics of global multidimensional poverty in 2015. We find the following: (i) at an aggregate level, the overall characteristics of global multidimensional poverty are similar to those of global monetary poverty at $1.90 per day; (ii) at a disaggregated level, we find that poverty in rural areas tends to be characterized by overlapping deprivations in education and access to decent infrastructure (water, sanitation, electricity, and housing) and counterintuitively, given the proximity, in principle, to better health care and economic opportunities, it is child mortality and malnutrition that is more frequently observed within urban poverty; and (iii) the extent of the multidimensionality of poverty differs substantially by region; moreover, some deprivations frequently overlap while others do not.
Topic:
Poverty, World Bank, Inequality, and Rural
Political Geography:
Global Focus

26. Enhancing Young Children’s Language Acquisition through Parent-Child Book-Sharing: A Randomized Trial in Rural Kenya

Author:
Heather A. Knauer, Pamela Jakiela, Owen Ozier, Frances Aboud, and Lia C.H. Fernald
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Worldwide, 250 million children under five (43 percent) are not meeting their developmental potential because they lack adequate nutrition and cognitive stimulation in early childhood. Several parent support programs have shown significant benefits for children’s development, but the programs are often expensive and resource intensive. The objective of this study was to test several variants of a potentially scalable, cost-effective intervention to increase cognitive stimulation by parents and improve emergent literacy skills in children. The intervention was a modified dialogic reading training program that used culturally and linguistically appropriate books adapted for a low-literacy population. We used a cluster randomized controlled trial with four intervention arms and one control arm in a sample of caregivers (n = 357) and their 24- to 83-month-old children (n = 510) in rural Kenya. The first treatment group received storybooks, while the other treatment arms received storybooks paired with varying quantities of modified dialogic reading training for parents. Main effects of each arm of the trial were examined, and tests of heterogeneity were conducted to examine differential effects among children of illiterate vs. literate caregivers. Parent training paired with the provision of culturally appropriate children’s books increased reading frequency and improved the quality of caregiver-child reading interactions among preschool-aged children. Treatments involving training improved storybook-specific expressive vocabulary. The children of illiterate caregivers benefited at least as much as the children of literate caregivers. For some outcomes, effects were comparable; for other outcomes, there were differentially larger effects for children of illiterate caregivers.
Topic:
Children, Language, Rural, Parenting, and Reading
Political Geography:
Kenya

27. Midline Effects of a Randomized Controlled Trial to Increase the Utilization of Financial Services by Women Business Owners in Rural Indonesia

Author:
James C. Knowles
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
This is the report of a midline evaluation of a randomized controlled trial to increase the utilization of saving and other financial services by women business owners in Indonesia. The trial was motivated by a recent law in Indonesia supporting the development of branchless banking services for a large unbanked rural population and by the results of several studies suggesting that it is possible to stimulate savings and improve a range of downstream outcomes with suitable interventions targeted to under-banked rural populations. The trial was conducted in 400 purposively selected rural and semi-urban villages in five districts of East Java province in which branchless banking services (including basic savings accounts accessible through mobile phones) were available. The randomized interventions supported by this trial include both supply-side treatments (higher agent incentives) and demand-side treatments (training and mentoring of female business owners). The data analyzed include both baseline and midline survey data on female and male business owners and branchless banking agents. Implementation of the trial was delayed due to difficulties in recruiting suitable agents in all 400 trial villages. Numerous supply-side problems, both technical and logistical, were also reported in the monitoring data. However, the midline results indicate that the interventions were successfully delivered, resulting in significant positive effects on key intermediate outcomes, including knowledge and use of mobile banking services and initial take up of a mobile basic savings account. Downstream effects indicate that the supply- and demand-side interventions, particularly in combination, increased women business owners’ savings, empowerment, self-confidence, and economic welfare.
Topic:
Women, Finance, Rural, and Financial Services
Political Geography:
Indonesia and Indo-Pacific

28. Where Do Internally Displaced People Live and What Does that Mean for Their Economic Integration?

Author:
Cindy Huang and Jimmy Graham
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
There are over 68.5 million forcibly displaced people in the world, including about 40 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who have moved because of conflict, including political, communal, and criminal violence.[i] There are millions more IDPs who have been displaced by other drivers, including disasters, economic instability, and development projects such as infrastructure construction. These IDPs, 99 percent of whom are in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), face severe economic challenges as a result of displacement.[1] To help them overcome these challenges, policymakers should focus on helping IDPs achieve greater self-reliance. The best approach to doing so will depend in large part upon the context—particularly the extent to which IDP populations are based in urban or rural areas. Our analysis shows that about half of IDPs in LMICs are in urban areas, that the composition varies significantly across countries, and that there is a substantial lack of IDP location data.
Topic:
Displacement, Urban, Rural, Internal Displacement, and Economic Integration
Political Geography:
Global Focus

29. Is Poverty a binding constraint on Agricultural Growth in Rural Malawi?

Author:
Mirriam Muhome-Matita and Ephraim Wadonda Chirwa
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)
Abstract:
Agriculture remains the most important sector in sub-Saharan Africa and is a dominant form of livelihood for a majority of the population that resides in the rural areas. In Malawi, agriculture accounts for 35 percent of GDP and generates more than 80 percent of foreign exchange. In addition, agriculture is the most important occupation for 71 percent of the rural population in which crop production accounts for 74 percent of all rural incomes. However, agriculture has failed to get Africa out of poverty, and most countries are experiencing low agricultural growth, rapid population growth, weak foreign exchange earnings and high transaction costs (World Bank, 2008).
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, Political Economy, Poverty, World Bank, Economic growth, and Rural
Political Geography:
Africa and Malawi

30. Census Towns in India - Current Patterns and Future Discourses

Author:
Shamindra Nath Roy and Jaya Prakash Pradhan
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
The surge in census towns (CTs) during Census 2011 has drawn a lot of attention to the ongoing and future dynamics of these in-situ urban settlements in India. Using the village level information from the previous and current censuses, the present study attempts to identify the villages that can be classified as a census town in 2021. While the prevailing dataset bears some obstacles for a neat identification of such settlements, it can be observed that a fairly high number of rural areas may be classified as CTs in future, which currently accommodates a population of 17.9 million. While the current nature of regional distribution of these areas may not vary much over the future, their areal characteristics over time portray multiple spatial processes undergirding India’s urban trajectory. A lot of these prospective CTs are also relatively prosperous than their current rural neighbourhoods, which reinforces the persistence of similar pattern of urban transformation in future.
Topic:
Demographics, Development, Urbanization, Census, and Rural
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia