The main advantage of decentralization over centralized government is its informational superiority. Local service delivery can then be tailored to the needs and preferences of the citizens. This paper analyses if this assertion, that holds for developed countries, is also valid in the case of a...

Poverty assessment and targetting usually relies on expensive, large scale survey data. We argue that, in some cases, exploiting information villagers have on their immediate neighbors in close-knit agricultural societies might provide an alternative. We use the results of a participatory wealth...

Most rural development interventions consciously or unconsciously make use of local intermediation mechanisms in their endeavour to combat poverty at the local level. At the same time, how these local intermediation mechanisms occur in practice exerts an important infl uence on the functioning...

In poor societies where nutrition and health status is very low, consumption of basic needs amounts to investment. It enhances labour productivity and reduces morbidity. In this paper it is shown that inequality can persist in rural Ethiopia due to the existence the low nutrition- low...

The Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) framework introduced by the World Bank and the IMF at the turn of the century goes well beyond the mainly macroeconomic conditionalities of the structural adjustment era by requesting that civil society participates in the preparation and the...

Post-genocide Rwanda has been trapped in a situation of armed peace. Paul Kagame has used repressive state machinery to rule over the entire political space. The opposition has either been eliminated or forced into exile, leaving the regime politically and intellectually unchallenged in the...

This paper assesses the gender sensitiveness of Belgian aid at the turn of the century by looking at gender policy discourse and practice. It is shown that declarations regarding the integration of gender issues into development interventions largely live up to standards set at the Beijing...

At a time when technological innovations are making our world increasingly smaller and our production systems are becoming increasingly more efficient, the benefits of economic growth and development as a whole have not been able to reach all of society. Indeed, many poor countries,...

The conflict in Northern Uganda is now in its 17th year. It pitches a rebel group, the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army, against the Ugandan government and against its own people, the Acholi. The robustness of the conflict as a semi-permanent feature of the Ugandan condition for such a long...

In this paper we look at the developmental consequences of aid flows on the Great Lakes Region in Africa. The reshuffling of international relations after the end of the cold war has dramatically changed the exogenous influence of external actors on the agency of local and regional actors in the...