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In rural Cambodia the rampant allocation of state land to political elites and foreign investors in the form of “Economic Land Concessions (ELCs)”—estimated to cover an area equivalent to more than 50 % of the country’s arable land—has been associated with encroachment on farmland, community forests and indigenous territories and has contributed to a rapid increase of rural landlessness. By contrast, less than 7,000 ha of land have been allotted to land-poor and landless farmers under the pilot project for “Social Land Concessions (SLCs)” supported by various donor agencies. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in two research sites in Kratie Province, this article sheds light on the mechanisms and discourses surrounding the allocation of ELCs and SLCs. Our findings suggest that large-scale and non-transparent land leases in the form of ELCs are discursively justified as land policy measures supporting national development, creating employment opportunities in rural areas, and restoring “degraded” and “non-use” land, while SLCs are presented by the government and its international donors as a complementary policy to reduce landlessness, alleviate rural poverty, and ensure a more equitable land distribution. We argue that the SLC pilot project is a deliberate strategy deployed by the Cambodian ruling elite to instrumentalize international aid agencies in formalizing displacement and distributional injustices, in smoothing the adverse social impacts of their very own land policies and in minimizing resistance by dispossessed rural people.

The globalization of developmentalist architecture has become a major topic in architectural history, but less is known about the funding mechanisms and national development policies that supported consulting firms as they competed for contracts in the global South. This article examines the application of the integrated rural development (IRD) approach in postcolonial Tanzania, taking as its point of departure two IRD-based regional economic plans developed for the regions of Mtwara and Lindi that were financed by the Finnish development organization Finnida and prepared by two Finnish consulting firms, Finnplanco and Finconsult. While the Nordic countries actively promoted developmentalist intervention in the late 20th century, the role they played in this context has been overlooked. Attempts to implement these rural economic development plans are relevant to architectural history, even if the implementation failed, because they shed light on the modernization projects promoted by ‘global experts’ worldwide, drawing attention to the long-term dialogue between developmentalist forces and architectural state-making in the global South.

This article uses a key principle of the Tanzanian ujamaa project – self-reliance – as an analytical lever to open up the historical landscape of development politics in that national context during the 1960s and early 1970s. Throughout this period Tanzanians understood and experienced self-reliance in a variety of ways: as a mandated developmental strategy or a collective developmental aspiration, a condition of dignity or privation, a hallmark of national citizenship or a reflection of local survivalism, a matter of luxury or necessity. I trace these multiple meanings through three distinct but overlapping fields of inquiry: first, by cataloguing the plural ideological registers indexed by self-reliance within official development discourse vis-à-vis domestic and international politics; second, by illuminating a diverse range of rural elders' accounts of ujamaa villagization and self-reliance policy in the south-eastern region of Mtwara; and third, by examining the ambivalent position of self-reliance within public debates about regional development in relation to the national scale. In doing so, I expose the dialectical friction between competing constructions of citizenship and development at the heart of ujamaa, and suggest new avenues forward for conceptualizing the afterlives of ‘self-reliance’ and the changing meaning of development in contemporary Tanzania and beyond. Cet article se sert du principe clé du projet tanzanien ujamaa, l'autonomie, comme d'un levier analytique pour découvrir le paysage historique de la politique de développement dans ce contexte national pendant les années 1960 et au début des années 1970. Tout au long de cette période, les Tanzaniens ont compris et vécu l'autonomie de diverses manières : comme une stratégie de développement mandatée ou une aspiration collective au développement, une condition de dignité ou de privation, une marque de citoyenneté nationale ou le reflet d'un survivalisme local, un luxe ou une nécessité. L'auteur étudie ces sens multiples à travers trois champs d'analyse distincts qui se recouvrent partiellement : d'abord, en cataloguant les registres idéologiques pluriels indexés par l'autonomie dans le cadre du discours de développement officiel concernant la politique domestique et internationale ; ensuite, en mettant en lumière la diversité de ce que relatent les anciens ruraux de la politique ujamaa de villagisation et d'autonomie dans la région de Mtwara, dans le Sud-Est du pays ; enfin, en examinant la position ambivalente de l'autonomie dans le débat public sur le développement régional par rapport à l’échelle nationale. Ce faisant, l'article expose la friction dialectique entre des constructions concurrentes de citoyenneté et de développement au cœur de l'ujamaa, et suggère de nouvelles pistes pour conceptualiser les incarnations futures de l'autonomie et la signification changeante du développement dans la Tanzanie contemporaine et au-delà.

This pathbreaking book analyzes a highly successful participatory development program in Indonesia, exploring its distinctive origins and design principles and its impacts on local conflict dynamics and social institutions.

Purpose - This paper seeks to use actor network theory (ANT) to examine the different phases - i.e. translation process - of an information and communication technology (ICT) initiative intended to bring development to underserved rural communities in the Peruvian Andes by providing access to computers and the internet.Design methodology approach - The paper employs a holistic-multiple case study based on cross-sectional data collected between July and November 2005 by means of in-depth interviews, field notes and photographs gathered in eight rural communities in Peru, plus demographic data and background reports obtained from the sponsor of an ICT for development (ICT4D) project. The collected data are analysed through the lens of ANT.Findings - The ANT analysis dissects the history of the translations of the ICT4D project. ANT analytic dimensions of convergence and devices afford a great deal of insight into the underlying anatomy of the project and its assumptions. The study shows that when actors' interests are not aligned and the network procedures defined by the ICT4D initiative sponsors are unfamiliar to local people, the network cannot be established.Practical implications - Since ICT4D projects invariably superimpose technological networks over existing networks, ANT analytic dimensions do provide some unique and useful understandings for such projects. ANT overall affords visibility of the actions of both humans and non-humans, and their disparate goals. The focus on the alignment of disparate goals is particularly important in ICT4D research, where the recipients need to be engaged in a different way. Often in ICT4D projects, participants are using ICT for the first time, and there is no compulsion for them to do so. So the process of translation is very important in an ICT4D context; while there are many ways to engage participants, ANT gives particular insight into how that process might play out.Originality value - The paper demonstrates the usefulness of ANT's concepts for analysing a rural telecentre project and itemises how the use of each ANT analytical concept might contribute to ICT4D research.

This report evaluates the outcomes of World Bank Group support to Liberia from its post-war reengagement in 2003 through 2011. The country has moved from total disarray to a solid foundation for inclusive development. Although development has not moved forward as quickly as hoped, substantial progress has been made. Public finance and key institutions have been rebuilt; crucial transport facilities have been restored; and hospitals, schools, and universities are operating. The debilitating burden of massive external debt has been eliminated. Although the government deserves most of the credit, this success would not have been possible without external development and security partners, including the World Bank Group. Regarding outcomes, the rebuilding of public institutions has seen substantial progress, with important achievements in restoring public finances and reforming the civil service. Regarding the rehabilitation of infrastructure, the World Bank Group has helped improve the conditions of roads, ports, power supply, and water and sanitation. However, World Bank Group financial support has been relatively modest with regard to facilitating growth, but it has helped with policy advice and in filling gaps left by other partners. With regard to the three cross-cutting themes of Bank Group strategy, some effective programs were carried out, including capacity development at several core public finance-related agencies. However, the integration of these themes across World Bank Group interventions, which was the underlying intent, still needs a vision and better articulated strategy. Finally, the Bank and the International Monetary Fund led efforts to reduce Liberia's inherited external debt burden under the enhanced Highly-Indebted Poor Country Initiative and the Multi-lateral Debt Relief Initiative mechanisms.

Poverty has long been a developmental challenge in the Global South in general and in sub-Saharan Africa in particular. With a fifth, mainly from the rural areas of the world, living below the poverty datum line, the world has a huge challenge to reduce poverty, worse still to eradicate it from the face of the earth. A target was set through the 2000-2015 United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and subsequently through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to reduce poverty by at least half by the years 2015 and 2030 respectively. In pursuing this goal, livelihoods of poor people though meeting with serious challenges, especially in rural areas, play a major role. This book explores the role played by people-centred Public Works Programmes in the fight against poverty and the development of rural communities in Africa. Whereas a number of countries in Africa have been approaching the issue of poverty through several interventions including Public Works Schemes, it is sad to note that poverty still tops the rankings among numerous economic and social challenges facing the continent. One wonders whether the public works strategy is misguided, misconstrued or mismanaged considering that its main objective is to make the unemployed more employable through the provision of temporary employment and training opportunities. The book concludes that Public Works Programmes, if well managed and people-centred, are one of the best ways to alleviate and even eradicate poverty in rural Africa, as it allows governments to make partnership with people, and facilitates implementation while giving space for economic self-sustenance, growth and development.

This second volume from the United Nations Intellectual History Project surveys the history of the UN's regional commissions and the ideas they have developed over the last 40 years. Each essay is devoted to one of the five regional commissions -- Europe, Asia and the Far East, Latin America, Africa, and Western Asia -- and how it has approached its mission of assessing the condition of regional economies and making prognoses about future conditions. The essays describe how each commission has added local perspectives to global debates over economic development and brought an authentic regional voice to the UN. Contributors are Adebayo Adedeji, Yves Berthelot, Leelananda de Silva, Blandine Destremau, Paul Rayment, and Gert Rosenthal.

The complexities facing development managers are vast. The enormous challenges to understanding the breadth and depth of development transformation are apparent in each level of this process and demand attention. Managing Development answers the need for a comprehensive introductory resource. Offering a fresh perspective on development management, it analyzes both international and national development agencies and shows the widely differing cultural contexts in which to plan, manage and evaluate development programmes.