In recent years debates on as well as funding of impact evaluations of development interventions have flourished. Unfortunately, controversy regarding the promotion and application of randomized experiments (RE) has led to a sense of polarization in the development policy and evaluation...

Belgium's Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO)-sector embodies some of the country's most distinctive characteristics. Two of its main features are the affiliation of many organisations to one of the societal pillars and the divergence of the NGO-landscape on the different sides of the language...

Over the past decade, the African Union (AU) had put in place an important normative framework to promote constitutional rule and, in particular, orderly constitutional transfers of power in its member states. Through its Peace and Security Council (PSC), the AU has actively opposed, including...

This article conducts a value chain analysis of smallholder burley tobacco production in Malawi for the 2003/04 and 2009/10 agricultural seasons. The comparison suggests in 2003/04 smallholder profits from growing burley were limited by two main factors: first, the practices of leaf merchant...

During the past century tobacco production and marketing in Nyasaland/Malawi has undergone periods of dynamism similar to changes since the early 1990s. This article highlights four recurrent patterns. First, estate owners have either fostered or constrained peasant/smallholder production...

Rich measures of micro-level violent conflict intensity are key for successfully providing insight into the legacy of civil war. Yet, the debate on how exactly conflict intensity should be measured has just started. This paper aims to fuel this awakening debate. It is demonstrated how existing...

More than 200 years after its first publication, the Malthusian thesis is still much debated, albeit in a modified form. Rather than predicting a global catastrophe, most neo-Malthusians stress the local character of the relationship between population pressure, natural resource scarcity, and...

The focus on Aid effectiveness and the adoption of aid modalities, such as budget support, has put the spotlight on Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). Both donors and recipient countries are asked to reform their M&E system in line with the principles of the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda...

In response to the orphan crisis, a number of community initiatives have proliferated to enhance service delivery to OVCs (Orphans and other Vulnerable Children). Part of the literature paints a bleak and pessimistic picture: it believes that community based support interventions anchored on the...

Charcoal use in urban Congo expanded significantly in the early 1990s. While recourse to charcoal (makala) as cooking fuel existed during the early independence period, most urban households had access to electricity for domestic use. Population, pressure, poorly maintained infrastructures and...