Explore the vast range of titles available.

This article discusses research on action research for community development in a remote district of Papua New Guinea. The authors taught (during site visits) and supported (by mobile phone) five groups of community members to undertake action research. The article discusses how the visits and mobile telephony were deployed to facilitate their action research. It is concluded that action research, with appropriate face-to-face and mobile phone support, was viable and cost-effective for community development in remote districts. Several strengths and weaknesses of the approach were identified to enable improvements for subsequent action research remote community development projects.

International research-for-development initiatives seeking to tackle complex problems present a range of challenges and responsibilities. Meeting standards of ethical research practice is one of these. While practitioners may identify as being committed to ethical practice, the reality is far more complicated. This situation is particularly apparent in agricultural research for development (AR4D). This article reflects on the changing research landscape before using the experiences of a unique partnership to demonstrate how the authors moved beyond compliance-focused tasks towards collective reflection and planning for a broad range of ethical challenges. It concludes with suggestions for integrating ethics into the planning and implementation of development initiatives.

This article investigates the nature of youth perceptions and their influence on youth's intentions of engaging in agripreneurship. The study findings reveal that the youth held positive economic perceptions of the agricultural sector. Along with the provision of secondary school agricultural education and a significant amount of financial support, these perceptions positively influenced their intentions to participate in agripreneurship. The findings affirm the need for improving awareness of the economic opportunities available in the agricultural sector. The study recommends that programmes that aim to encourage agripreneurship target both the socio-economic and cognitive limitations of youths.

Sub-Saharan Africa requires US$30 billion annually for its infrastructure maintenance, with every dollar spent saving the economy about four times that. However, many governments still do not recognise the need for road maintenance, increasing vehicle operating costs - to more than 1% of GDP in some regions. Still, there are too few political economy diagnostics of this problem and policy responses aiming to ring-fence dedicated funds have had mixed results. This article proposes a diagnostic through which to understand the institutional root causes of the problem using the case of Moldova.

On 25 April 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, causing huge damage. Many countries and international organisations such as the United Nations started monitoring the situation and offered support to the Nepali government. This article raises points that must be examined by decision-makers before implementing delegations; these include cost effectiveness, whether it improves morale and resilience, international relations, and experience, and promotes good relationships between the two countries, and assisting their own citizens who were affected by the disaster.

The last decade has seen a growing interest in scaling up innovations to realise wider benefits from development investments. While numerous proven technologies, products and models have been successfully piloted, scaling them up through expansion, adoption and replication has proved challenging, particularly in poor regions of the world. The low uptake of innovations is partially attributed to the design of technologies, in a manner that is not compatible with local farming practices. At the same time, proven innovations fail to generate large impacts at scale because implementing actors have not sufficiently understood or effectively engaged with the scaling process. This article shares lessons from the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund (CIFSRF) that supported applied research to develop, test and scale up promising food and nutrition security innovations. Key lessons include ensuring that innovations are embedded within local socio-ecological systems; engaging end users throughout the research process and enabling participatory decision-making; and considering the investment returns of innovations for end-users.

In rural areas of developing countries, improved access to clean water has been known to lead to reduced workloads for women and girls, and improved health and education. To sustain these benefits, women need to be active participants rather than passive beneficiaries in community projects. This article presents findings from a rural water supply programme in Ghana that actively promoted greater women's involvement. It found that training women technicians did more to galvanise their leadership potential, showcase their capabilities and make them more active participants in managing their respective village water facilities than simply including them on water management committees.

Farmer-to-farmer extension (FFE) is playing a complementary role to formal extension services in facilitating the spread of agricultural technologies and improving farmers' capacities. The effectiveness and sustainability of such programmes depend on volunteer farmer trainers (VFTs) having technical skills and overcoming process-related challenges that hinder them from achieving the desired outcomes. This article uses quantitative and qualitative data collected from seven sites to explore the challenges experienced by VFTs as they share their knowledge on livestock feed innovations in a dairy development project in Kenya. Sustainable opportunities for enhancing VFTs' performance are discussed.

The vast biocultural diversity of Tanah Papua (Land of Papua) are important resources for local economic development, especially where their sustainable use incorporates affirmative action to ensure that indigenous communities capture the resulting benefits. Papuan stakeholders already have their own detailed plans, and there are some success stories to instil confidence in the abilities of the indigenous peoples of Papua to lead their own development. Multi-stakeholder approaches are known to work well, and in this case, locally driven initiatives are also known to be promising. This viewpoint suggests the need for a balance between inclusive participation in multi-stakeholder programmes and the enhancement of locally driven initiatives.

Although resources are invested in maintaining the professional standards, knowledge, and skills of community development practitioners (CDPs), research has not established if they have benefited adequately from the provisions of an appropriate professional development programme. The Stufflebeam's CIPP model was used to evaluate this, which is the first exercise of its kind in South Africa. This qualitative study reports on the circumstances associated with its planning. Lack of alignment between the professionals' needs and learning activities was uncovered, which resulted from the absence of learning activities which meet the needs of CDPs and poor planning. A planning framework is proposed to mitigate the obstacles and challenges.