This article presents the main findings of a study about the Senior Citizens Grant programme (SCG) piloted in Kiboga District, Uganda. Recognising elderly persons’ vulnerabilities and acknowledging their capabilities is essential to motivate elderly beneficiaries of social grants towards self-sustenance rather than increasing dependency on such grants. Findings indicate that indigenous support systems, such as family members and agriculture directly influenced grant expenditure patterns and thus determined the well-being of grant beneficiaries. Old age vulnerability as the main criterion for eligibility and implementation casts shadows on older persons’ capabilities needed to support their own lives, and hence impacts their well-being.

Local consultants are an implicit, but overlooked, part of many capacity development strategies. It takes a trustworthy consultant to facilitate genuine change in a civil society organisation. This practical note identifies the learning from a local consultant formation programme (“Consultants for Change” – C4C) implemented in five countries in 2016–17. The note highlights six factors critical to C4C’s apparent success: recruitment; focus of the learning; design of the process; assignments between modules; mentoring support; and the human/financial resources. These same factors may be relevant and applicable to other capacity development programmes.

A foremost challenge to the realisation of the accelerated economic growth of the demographic dividend in Africa remains the commitment of the region’s political leadership to creating the enabling contexts to maximise the potential of its youthful population. This viewpoint considers three critical African cultural mores – the reverence-for-posterity norm; leader-as-community-proxy culture; and the elder tradition – that offer unique levers for fostering political leadership for the demographic dividend in Africa. Strategies for successfully tapping these cultural traditions require further research.

Gender-based violence (GBV) remains a key development challenge. In Papua New Guinea, a country with one of the highest rates of GBV, the issue has been prioritised in the national development agenda. The programme Yumi Kirapim Senis (Together Creating Change) was created to support the development of the National GBV Strategy. To build on existing understandings and workable solutions in communities, six community-led programmes were examined. This article explores a crucial component of the initiative which utilised participatory visual media to bridge communication gaps between national agencies and communities to drive social change at all levels.

This article discusses research on action research for community development in a remote district of Papua New Guinea. The authors taught (during site visits) and supported (by mobile phone) five groups of community members to undertake action research. The article discusses how the visits and mobile telephony were deployed to facilitate their action research. It is concluded that action research, with appropriate face-to-face and mobile phone support, was viable and cost-effective for community development in remote districts. Several strengths and weaknesses of the approach were identified to enable improvements for subsequent action research remote community development projects.

This article explores the significance and application of human rights in a local context, investigating the meaning and operationalisation of human rights on the ground. It focuses on the reality of women’s land rights in rural Uganda, when juxtaposed with international human rights instruments: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and its implementing covenants, the International Convention on Economic Social Cultural Rights (ICESCR), International Convention on Civil Rights (ICCR), and the Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Development projects in Madagascar have increased and evolved for half a century, yet they have failed to enhance farmers’ performances. Related literature attributes the causes of failure as external to the project instigators, who are mostly institutions and funders. This article aims to highlight the role of development agents and their responsibility in unsuccessful projects. Participant observation of participatory learning and action research conducted in the Malagasy highlands revealed that non-consideration of the target audience’s rationale makes the innovation processes provided by development projects obsolete.

An economic impact snapshot of foreign and domestic enterprises from the functional economic areas of Guinea-Bissau showed that not all micro and small enterprises (MSEs) are local, and not all outside investment is large scale. We find that South–South entrepreneurship has prospects to improve livelihoods as drivers of economic growth and development in a low-income economy. While political instability and a lack of resources remain as barriers to solvency for both domestic and foreign investors in the global periphery, as opportunities and effective business strategies are fostered, improved socio-economic integration and development results.

If we are finally to end violence against women and girls (VAWG), then this commitment needs to be embedded into all development programmes, regardless of sectorial focus. Women and girls are vulnerable across the board and recognition of this reality is the first step. This article proposes a VAWG mainstreaming framework that addresses how to centralise a VAWG lens into development programming, irrespective of programmatic priorities. The article outlines the need for such a lens and presents the approach through a number of stages. The model is then applied to two programme areas, microfinance and HIV/AIDS, demonstrating its applicability across development issues.