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From Aid to Partnership. A Joint Review of Norwegian - South African Development Cooperation 1995-2001
Get PDFThis joint review of Norwegian – South African development cooperation was commissioned by the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation (NORAD)/the Norwegian Embassy Pretoria and the South African National Treasury.
The study provides an overview and an assessment of the Norwegian development assistance to South Africa since the first democratic elections in 1994. Nearly one billion Norwegian kroner were disbursed from Norway to South Africa during the first seven years. A relatively high proportion of this aid has been channelled through Norwegian NGOs to a variety of private South African organisations. 25 percent of the aid has gone directly from the Norwegian State to the South African State.
This report’s overall assessments and conclusions have both positive and negative elements. In some areas the Norwegian contribution has been highly relevant and effective, especially in some of the efforts to assist in developing new policies and planning institutional reform, such as in the support to the energy and fisheries sectors. The record is much more uneven in the Norwegian support to implementation and capacity building. The achievements have been fewer in the Norwegian support for poverty reduction and job creation.
The study also welcomes the efforts to include a regional Southern African dimension in the co-operation programmes with South Africa, but finds that these regional components are small and suffer from an insufficient Norwegian strategy for assistance to regional co-operation.
The review also notes that co-operation has been entered into between South African and Norwegian institutions in most areas. The political co-operation between the two countries is also judged to be solid and strong. The commercial and private sector co-operation on the other hand, is limited.
Based on the lessons learnt and extensive interviews with stakeholders in both countries the review team recommends a continuation of the development co-operation programme. However, the study proposes significant changes in scope are focus and makes 18 sets of recommendations. A key proposal is the scaling up of support to regional development efforts in Southern Africa and a more systematic Norwegian support for regional cooperation
The evolution of social norms
Get PDFEvolutionary game theory provides the tools to analyze which strategies, or patterns of behaviour, emerge over time through a process of adaptation. Social norms can be defined as patterns of behaviour with certain characteristics. Evolutionary game theory thus provides one perspective on how social norms are formed and maintained. Prisoner’s dilemma games can be used to study the conditions under which cooperative norms emerge. Bargaining games can be used to address the formation of fairness norms. However, being more congenial to analyzing norms that somehow focus on material payoffs, it is not a given that evolutionary game theory can adequately address norms focusing on rights or virtues
Verdensbankens strukturtilpasningsprogrammer: Virkninger og politiske linjeskift
Get PDFDette notatet bidrar til den offentlige debatten om Verdensbankens rolle langs to dimensjoner. Først defineres de mest sentrale elementene i strukturtilpasningspolitikken og det blir stilt opp en oversikt over de ulike låneinstrumentene. Så følger en diskusjon av de mest sentrale endringene som er foreslått for bankens utlånspolitikk, med en oversikt over hvordan fordelingen av lån mellom sosial sektor og fysisk infrastruktur har forandret seg over tid. Notatet gir en generell vurdering av hvordan strukturtilpasningsprogrammene påvirker fattigdom, og illustrerer hvordan utviklingen har vært for tre Afrikanske land som har vært underlagt denne politikken
(Ghana, Uganda og Madagaskar)
Company interests and foreign aid policy: Playing donors out against each other
Get PDFDespite the importance attached to conditionality by the donors, and the fact that aid is a crucial income source for the recipient, it is found that conditionality fails. One explanation for this failure could be that a halt in aid could trigger the recipient to cancel contracts with companies from donor countries, which creates incentives for the companies to put pressure towards aid disbursement. We use a multi-agent triadic model of the relationships between a recipient and two donors and two companies to illustrate that recipients may use contracts strategically to make companies influence the disbursement decision to avoid implementing the donors’ conditions. Failing to take account of the companies’ role yields the opposite result in this model, i.e., conditionality becomes successful
What has trust got to do with it? Non-payment of service charges in local authorities in South Africa
Get PDFA major financial problem in many municipalities in South Africa is the inadequate collection of service charges due to widespread nonpayment. The prevailing view is that non-compliance is caused by poverty and the existence of an ‘entitlement culture’. However, huge variations in compliance exist both within poor communities and between communities with similar socio-economic characteristics. How can these differences be explained? Moreover, what factors determine citizens’ compliance? This paper argues that non-payment is not only related to inability to pay and ‘a culture of entitlement’, but also to whether citizens perceive the local government to act in their interest. In particular, three dimensions of trust may affect citizens’ compliance: (1) trust in the local government to use revenues to provide expected services; (2) trust in the authorities to establish fair procedures for revenue collection and distribution of services; and (3) trust in other citizens to pay their share
Uncertainty as a Strategy: Electoral Processes in Zambia 1991-2001
Get PDFZambia has held three multiparty elections since its restoration of democracy in 1991. This peaceful transition raised expectations of a smooth process towards democratic consolidation. But similar to experiences from other African countries and Eastern Europe, the Zambian democratic process has remained stuck in a ‘transitional zone’ between actual democracy and authoritarian systems. We argue that Zambian elections fall short of the expectations of a democratic process due to the institutional uncertainty surrounding elections and the weakness of the Zambian Electoral Commission. Despite an alarming economic record the continued uncertainty – of the rules and regulations guiding elections and electoral administration – has maintained the same party in power through three consecutive elections
When women grow wings: Gender relations in the informal economy of Kampala
Get PDFIn urban Africa, informal employment constitutes 90 per cent
of all new jobs. Informal work is characterised by being
unrecognised, unprotected or unrecorded by the public
authorities, and a larger percentage of women than men earn
their living in the informal economy.
This study looks into the gender relations of the
informal economy of Kampala. A combination of internal war
and unrest, economic crisis, the AIDS epidemic, economic
restructuring, and government policies enhancing women, have
changed gender relations in Uganda over the last decades.
Urban men were once expected to provide for their families,
but today married women bring in 50-70 per cent of household
incomes.
While some men feel threatened by women’s
economic independence, others realise that female
entrepreneurship is needed in the present economic realities.
Many women complain that since they started working, the
men have stopped contributing to household expenses.
The bulk of women are engaged in sectors
traditionally defined as female, but some venture into male
arenas where profits are generally higher. Similarly, men with
limited capital have started going into ‘female’ domains (such
as catering and hair styling), changing the landscape of the
urban informal economy.
Informants interviewed for this study cited lack of
capital as a major obstacle. Almost one in two started their
enterprise with less than US 57 a month. Some female respondents
had benefited from micro finance loans, but the majority were
deeply sceptical of micro finance institutions.
While increased formalisation would enhance both the
national economy as a whole and enhance worker’s security, an
unfair and random tax system functions as an incentive for the
self-employed to stay informal and avoid expansion
Angola 2002/2003. Key Development Issues and Democratic Decentralisation
Get PDFThis is the fourth report on Angola under the Country Advisor Agreement between the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI). The report consists of a Part I synthesising and assessing recent information regarding political, economic and social developments in Angola, and a Part II focussing on democratic decentralisation. The latter maps out the main characteristics of the local governance system in Angola, and analyses the reforms which are in preparation. The focus is on how the current ‘deconcentration and decentralisation’ reform process – a key ingredient in the ‘good governance’ tool box – will transform the Angolan state
Company influence on foreign aid disbursement: Is conditionality credible when donors have mixed motives?
Get PDFWhen donors enforce conditionality upon recipients who do not implement the conditions, companies can suffer from cancellation of their contracts with the recipient when aid dries up. A strategic recipient may avoid implementing controversial conditions by only granting a contract to a company that puts pressure on the donor to keep aid flowing. In our model, each of these three agents takes account of each of the two other agents’ actions. We show that this triadic structure can be crucial when explaining recipients’ use of companies to influence donors to give aid unconditionally, and offer a time-consistent explanation for the failure of conditionality
Corruption and market reform
Get PDFMarket reforms in developing and transition economies have sometimes failed to deliver the desired welfare effects.Corruption may be an important reason for the inefficiency of market reforms, such as privatizationcampaigns. The present paper demonstrates howcorruption can affect the choice of buyer of a public asset.
Our main result is that market reform in highly corruptsocieties is likely to result in less competition and lesseconomic efficiency than reform in less corrupt societies.
We also demonstrate that the level of bribes in the sale ofpublic assets does not necessarily increase in thegovernment’s emphasis on bribes