Successful NGO development and academic partnerships have, at their core, effective intercultural and multilingual communication and translation practices and processes, including critical recognition of the role of “fixers”, who act as the “interface” between local participants and academic NGO impact-assessment researchers. Examining what we call the “contrôleuse” in development research projects in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, we show the need, as in journalism, to critically interrogate this intermediary role. Identifying and incorporating the role into research funding and design can be a simple and practical contribution towards challenging inequalities, including contrôleuse perspectives and increasing participatory impact-assessment and development practices.

This paper evaluates the impacts of a Brazilian home-based programme on violent behaviour of elementary school students. To identify the causal impact, it explores the variation between schools with potentially treated students and the municipalities that implemented the programme over the years. The results suggest a reduction in verbal or physical abuse, theft or robbery, and attack or threat by more than 5 percentage points in schools with treated students. There is also evidence that the effects are greater the sooner children participate in the programme, meaning that early years interventions can be an effective policy to reduce school violence.

Climate compatible development (CCD) is a deliberate policy framework that reduces climate-related harm while increasing development opportunities when its three components – adaptation, mitigation, and development – are pursued jointly. In this viewpoint article, we use three island case studies – urban infrastructure improvements in the Solomon Islands, clean energy transitions in Hawaii, and sustainable tourism in the Seychelles – to argue that, in practice, CCD is not always deliberate and that a focus on one component can have unintended but positive outcomes for the others. These case studies illustrate the potential for “triple wins”, including lower emissions, increased resilience, and accelerated development.

This article presents a case study on how dairy producers and a university are connected to generate territorial development in a municipality. The field of study along with in-depth semi-structured interviews showed that university knowledge reaches dairy farmers through weak ties and imitating production processes. This relationship makes it possible to show that the knowledge produced in academia reaches producers, even though there is no deliberate plan to bring these two local development actors together. This case study allows us to better understand local actors and the manner in which they can generate development in an area.

The Global Partnership for Education (GPE)/Education for All (EFA) seeks to reduce poverty and bridge inequalities through the provision of quality education in developing countries. This paper sets out to accomplish two main objectives: (a) examine the extent to which the Ghana Partnership for Education Grant (GPEG) retained its pro-poor intentions during the course of implementation, and (b) examine if/whether GPEG eschewed resource capture by the political elite. A mixed methodology approach was employed in this study. Findings of the study showed the program was largely implemented in a pro-poor manner and was also devoid of the elite capture of resources.

We examine the impact of multinational oil companies’ (MOCs’) corporate social responsibility (CSR) on traditional practices recognised as violence against women and girls (VAWG) in Nigeria’s oil region. Results from a combined propensity score matching and logit model indicate that MOCs’ CSR plays a significant role in empowering women and girls with information and education to protect their human rights. It is implied that CSR offers an opportunity for MOCs to help address the prevalence of child early and forced marriage, female genital mutilation/cutting, sex trafficking, virginity testing, and taboos through a business case for stakeholders’ human rights protection.

Restrictive abortion laws resulting in unsafe abortions form one of the key causes of maternal morbidity and mortality in Kenya. Despite the existence of several Women's Rights Organisations (WROs), advocacy for safe abortions against restrictive laws does not have the momentum the subject deserves. This research draws on agenda-setting literature to explore factors that impede advocacy initiatives of WROs against restrictive abortion laws in Kenya. Using qualitative methods, the article shows that women's rights agenda results from existing societal norms, funding priorities, state legislation, and lack of solidarity among WROs.

This article introduces the role that design principles play in Tearfund’s expanding approach to international development practice. Mindful that development gains can be undermined by degraded environments, Tearfund now encourages a focus on taking steps towards greater ecological integrity alongside economic and social imperatives when working with poor and vulnerable communities worldwide. We explain the purpose and goals of the “design principles” and consider how they translate principles of sustainability into practice. We discuss how the design principles extend the faith-based international NGO’s work to conceptualise and operationalise holistic development more effectively, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The dominant discourses on the politicisation of social policy in the Global South mainly focus on analysing the effects of clientelism through the lens of voting behaviour or electoral outcomes. This paper goes beyond the dominant voting behaviour lens by arguing that the effects of political clientelism go well beyond the scope of electoral outcomes. Using qualitative data from the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP), the paper shows how the programme is used to reward loyal party supporters through the partisan award of service delivery contracts. Further, the paper demonstrates how this politicisation of the programme ultimately leads to a de facto system of no supervision and monitoring of the activities of frontline service providers, undercutting the goals of the GSFP in the long run.