18336 research outputs found
Sort by
Local Social Solidarity and Mutual Assistance Mechanisms in Niger: A Rich and Varied Repertoire for Resilience and Crisis Response
No full textThis paper reports on research undertaken on local social solidarity and mutual assistance mechanisms in the Republic of Niger, investigating the different forms these take and their contributions to resilience and response to crises. Findings confirm that in the absence of adequate formal support, individuals, households, and communities rely on these mechanisms as a primary source of social protection. The research also analyses examples of formal assistance that has built on selected mechanisms. It offers suggestions for how consideration for community-based systems and values might be more firmly embedded in national social protection, humanitarian response, and social development policies and programmes.</p
Using the 20th Anniversary of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) to Progress Atrocity Prevention
No full textThe Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a global political commitment to protect people from atrocity crimes, a term which encompasses genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It places responsibilities on individual states to protect their citizens from atrocity crimes and, should they fall short, on the international community to do so. As the 20th anniversary of R2P approaches, this review collates key recommendations on R2P and atrocity prevention: a) specifically for the UK; b) for individual states in general; c) for international bodies (notably UN entities); and d) other measures to strengthen R2P implementation.</p
Equity Dimensions of Resilience to Drought in Four Sub-Saharan African Catchments: A Summary Report
No full textThe Supporting Transformative Adaptation and Building Equitable Resilience to Drought for Sustainable Development (ERD) project, supported by the UK Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), focused on resilience to drought in the fruit and vegetable value chains in four case study locations in South Africa and Kenya where the agricultural sector includes a smallholder horticulture and a large-scale commercial horticulture subsector. The ERD project aimed to understand how the systemic risk of drought could be managed in these settings in ways that enhance social equity and build resilience at multiple scales, in multiple dimensions and for diverse groups. This report explains the core methods used in each case study and picks out cross-cutting findings from the four case studies indicating the characteristics that contribute to more and less equitable expressions of resilience to drought, at different scales. More specific, in-depth and theoretical findings from each case study will be presented in other reports.</p
Tracking and Taxing Cross-Border Digital Transactions: The Case of VAT in Senegal
No full textThis paper examines the implementation of VAT on cross-border digital transactions in Senegal, with particular focus on transactions involving digital B2C services, within the broader context of taxing the digital economy in Africa. It analyses the extent to which Senegal’s 2024 VAT reform aligns with or diverges from international guidance, while situating it within wider regional developments. As digital platforms reshape global business models, traditional tax frameworks, reliant on physical presence, struggle to address the challenges posed by nonresident digital service providers. Senegal’s 2024 VAT reform extends VAT to cross-border transactions involving intangible digital services supplied by foreign operators. It thus serves as a case study to assess the design, scope and implementation of digital B2C VAT systems in Africa as well as the implications of definitional inconsistencies and fragmented approaches across the continent.The analysis reveals significant variations across African countries in legal frameworks, compliance measures, and operational strategies when benchmarked against international standards such as the OECD’s 2017 International VAT/GST Guidelines and the 2023 VAT Digital Toolkit for Africa. While countries align closely with global best practices for some components of the reforms, there are several divergences due to economic, infrastructural, and administrative constraints. Common gaps include the lack of simplified compliance regimes, the absence of VAT thresholds for non-resident operators, and invoicing requirements. Senegal’s reform demonstrates a pragmatic approach, aligning with international standards by introducing simplified registration and invoicing, leveraging digital infrastructure, and avoiding mandatory local representation for foreign operators. However, challenges persist, including enforcement capacity, the administrative burden on small foreign businesses, and limited interoperability with other tax systems. The paper provides actionable recommendations to address these issues, including harmonising VAT regimes across the continent, strengthening digital infrastructure, and fostering international cooperation.</p
Understanding the Tax Payment Compliance of Companies: Evidence from Eswatini
No full textCorporate income tax (CIT) compliance is a critical aspect of maintaining a fair and robust tax system. It ensures that businesses fulfil their legal tax obligations and contribute their fair share to public finances. However, achieving high compliance rates is often challenging due to various factors including, among others, the complexity of the tax system, economic factors (income levels, audit probabilities, liquidity constraints, tax benefits etc.) and businesses’ perceptions about the tax system and government.The Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) database was used to access returns and payments data covering a six-year period from 2017 to 2022, to study patterns of non-compliance with CIT tax payments and to understand the key factors explaining them. We present several results. First, large firms are more likely to comply with tax payments compared to smaller businesses. This results in the smaller companies attracting interest and penalties on top of their declared liabilities. Second, in terms of sectoral analysis, the tertiary sector evidently recorded the highest compliance with tax payments. Third, payments made through electronic bank transfers were associated with being timely and more complete than those made through cash and by card. However, mobile money payments do not perform as well as electronic transfers in terms of being associated with timely payments. Additionally, taxpayers in their first three years since registration were found to be more likely to comply when compared to those that have been in the system for longer. Lastly, the correlational evidence revealed that taxpayers filing their tax returns late were less likely to pay their liabilities and that compliance was found to be higher for taxpayers who correctly filed two provisional declarations and one annual tax return in the year.From the findings of the study, some administrative and policy considerations can be adopted by the ERS, in order to enforce and support compliance with CIT. These include strategies to ensure simplified processes for smaller taxpayers to reduce their tax compliance burden, and proactive approaches to boosting voluntary compliance, such as investing in comprehensive taxpayer education programmes.</p
Notes on Contributors: Democracy Contested
No full textThis is the Notes on Contributors for IDS Bulletin 56.1, Democracy Contested.</p
Post-Conflict Social Protection Support
No full textWhile there is a growing amount of evidence looking at supporting social protection systems during conflict (for example the Better Assistance in Crises (BASIC) Research Programme and Social Protection Technical Assistance, Advice, and Resources Facility, (STAAR)), this rapid review found little evidence focusing specifically on support for social protection systems post-conflict (and even less on post political transitions). Most of the evidence about social protection post-conflict appears to be in the form of grey literature (mainly reviews) rather than journal articles, and much of it is older rather than more recent evidence.</p
Executive Summary: Rapid Scoping Review: Anti-Rollback Actors and Strategies
No full textThis report presents the findings of a rapid scoping review of queer and feminist organisations and social movements countering roll back in 14 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa, and Türkiye). It was conducted for the United Kingdom (UK) Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in 2024. The rapid scoping review maps out the landscape of rollback politics across four key areas: sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI); sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR); gender-based violence (GBV); and women’s public participation and visibility. We also explore how queer and feminist movements and organisations have worked to counter rollback. We outline the gaps in our current understanding of counter-rollback dynamics, and stress the importance of supporting a range of counter-rollback strategies to effectively challenge roll back, and progress towards gender and sexual justice and rights.To read the EPUB file, you must have an eBook reader installed. See the EPUB Download Guidelines for information on accessing EPUB files from IDS OpenDocs on your device. You can also download IDS eBooks for your device directly from Amazon, Apple, B&N, Google, or the British Library from which they will be delivered to you in the usual way from these sites.This PDF was created in July 2025 for compliance with the European Accessibility Act.The EPUB file conforms to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standard.</p
Rural Pathways out of Poverty in Zambia
No full textPoverty rates are high in Zambia, with the incidence of poverty having increased from 54.4 per cent in 2015 to 60.0 per cent in 2022 (ZamStats 2023). This overall trend hides variations according to area of residence and socio-demographic characteristics. For example, poverty is largely a rural rather than an urban phenomenon, with the incidence of poverty in rural areas estimated at 78.8 per cent compared with 31.9 per cent for urban areas as of 2022 (ibid.). Poverty is also more prevalent among female-headed households (83.4 per cent) compared with male-headed households (77.3 per cent). Comparisons between 2015 and 2022 shows that the proportionate increase in poverty rates was higher among female-headed households (4.5 per cent) compared with male-headed households (0.7 per cent). Poverty in Zambia is also associated with the livelihood strategies that households pursue. For instance, poverty is highest among those employed in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors, increasing from 63.9 per cent in 2015 to 64.7 per cent in 2022 (ibid.).This working paper aims to synthesise evidence on pathways out of rural poverty for the Government of Zambia and other stakeholders. It uses mixed-methods evidence on rural poverty graduation pathways in Zambia, categorising these pathways into three groups: (1) chronically and extremely poor people escaping poverty, (2) moderately poor people escaping poverty, and (3) vulnerable non-poor people maintaining their escape from poverty. This report uses recent quantitative data from 2015 to early 2022, capturing the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on mobility. The life history qualitative analysis extends this further through to November 2023, incorporating the effects of inflation, and the new administration’s social protection and promotion policies. Thus, we can more effectively cover the role of social protection and exit ramps for those receiving social cash transfers (SCTs) while taking into account the most recent impact of climate change on these rural pathways out of poverty.</p
Digital Surveillance in Africa: Power, Agency, and Rights
No full textMedia coverage and scholarly research on digital surveillance has focused primarily on the USA and Europe. Everyone knows about Cambridge Analytica’s social media surveillance; Edward Snowden’s revelations of the West’s mass internet and phone surveillance; and Pegasus Spyware’s mobile phone surveillance of activists, journalists, judges, and presidents across the world. Comparatively little is known about the millions of dollars now being spent on digital technologies for use in the illegal and illegitimate surveillance of citizens in Africa.In this open-access third volume of Bloomsbury’sDigital Africaseries, a broad range of African and European scholars and practitioners map the development, procurement and (mis)use of the ever-expanding suite of digital surveillance and policing technologies across the continent. Drawing on the empirically rich, theoretically sophisticated research of the African Digital Rights Network, this book examines how public and private actors in Africa use spyware, mobile phone extraction, biometric and face recognition systems, and other technologies for smart-city and other social, and social-control, applications. Eight chapters examine eight African countries, and each of these begins with a thorough political history of the nature of surveillance there under colonial and post-liberation political settlements. This enables new analyses of the socio-cultural, political, and economic drivers and characteristics of contemporary digital surveillance in each country, all of which ultimately leads to concrete policy recommendations at local, national, and international levels.For its empirical richness and breadth, as well as its theoretical sophistication,Digital Surveillance in Africais essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary African studies, and it is of keen interest to anyone concerned with how digital surveillance affects everyday lives across the world.</p