This study assessed effects and drivers of mother–child pair participation in agriculture-nutrition-health linkage projects. Data were collected from 2,271 households in Kenya. Three categories of participation regime were defined: none, partial and full participation. Bivariate analyses and multinomial-logit regression were used to assess the effects and drivers of participation, respectively. Results found higher diet quality and consumption of vitamin A foods, and more frequent visits to ante-natal clinics, among full participants. Regression results showed that partial and full participation decreased with the caregivers’ age, de-incentivisation of community health workers and health facility linkage, but increased with dependency ratio and wealth.

This study explores men’s involvement in family planning programmes in a rural area of Lao PDR. Data from interviews with ethnic minority Mangkong couples and women suggest that while there are some positive outcomes from men’s involvement in family planning, such as increased spousal communication and shared responsibility for housework and childcaring, the current family planning model still places the burden on women as the main contraceptive users. This results in the exclusion of men from obtaining family planning information and services. Recommendations are provided for creating family planning programmes that are context-specific and gender-equitable.

This paper presents the experience of malt barley value-chain development through cooperative-based contract farming. The descriptive and qualitative analysis used primary data collected from the actors involved and secondary data. The results indicate that side selling is a major challenge, estimated at about 30%. Promoting the role of cooperatives and avoiding side selling by addressing both farmer- and system-level issues requires considering the dynamic nature of the malt barley market, involvement of all relevant stakeholders, capacitating cooperatives rather than providing handout-type support, and promoting market-based disincentives and incentives for the misconduct and conduct of actors.

This Practical Note reviews a long-term partnership between Operation Orphan–a small development charity–and Danbro–an accounting services firm. This partnership was formed in 2010 when Danbro committed to underwriting 100% of Operation Orphan’s UK administrative costs, enabling other donations to directly support orphans and vulnerable children in Zimbabwe and beyond. We discuss the core elements underpinning the partnership: governance arrangements, trust, relationship and long-term financial commitment, and explore how issues of power and partnership sustainability are perceived and managed. The case concludes with a reflective note on the broader implications of this type of SME–charity partnership model.

There is growing science and policy interest in multi-sectoral action, but bridging the gap between family planning and urban development is challenging. This paper analyses the experience of integrating these sectors in sub-Saharan Africa via building research capacity. Family-planning researchers were supported to link with urban-development actors, one goal being to generate lessons on the process of getting their research into the policy domain. The urban governance sector’s dynamic and complex nature was a particular challenge for family-planning researchers; in future, structured familiarisation with a sector might facilitate multi-sectoral action and better enable researchers to link with the policy world.

Aid donors, development advocates, and finance experts increasingly look to the private sector to fill the estimated $2.5 trillion annual Sustainable Development Goals financing gap, an amount likely to increase due to effects of COVID-19. Donors use a variety of partnerships with the private sector to realise development objectives. We use the term donor–private partnerships (DPPs) to describe the broad range of arrangements between donors and private–sector actors. Using ODA to leverage private finance, innovation testing, or service delivery, modalities include blended finance, de-risking instruments, public–private partnerships, and more. Does the reality match donors’ enthusiastic rhetoric? There are success stories but civil society actors and others question whether private sector engagement in development reduces poverty and inequality, advances gender justice, and achieves environmental sustainability. There may be trade-offs between development and profit making. We present our research based on frameworks we developed to categorise and assess DPPs. We applied these to 20 partnerships involving nine donors and found that donors fail to sufficiently integrate development, human rights, and environmental standards. They inconsistently implement due diligence and risk management requirements, and impact assessments are inadequate. Our frameworks offer practitioners and academics valuable tools to examine how DPPs can advance sustainable development.

African women's particular responsibilities in the family make them vulnerable to environmental change, exacerbated by the impacts of climate variability. In light of varying climatic conditions, this paper compares the exposure of female-headed and male-headed rural households to income risk induced by climate variation. Three hundred and twenty households and their farms are observed in the three Northern provinces of Cameroon. Most of them are livestock and crop farmers in a region characterised by high average daily temperatures, longer dry seasons, and shorter rainy seasons. The econometric assessment of incomes and market food expenditure (non-own farm-related expenses) indicates that increases in climate variability have an explicit impact on the expected farm and household incomes and expenditures on food, with significant implications for system's resilience and food security. Risk measured as variations in rainfall or temperature has an unexpected positive significant impact on incomes, with the impact more substantial in female-headed households. However, when the variations in rainfall and temperature double, households experience negative returns to income levels, indicating the insufficiency of the coping choices in cushioning the households against stronger shocks. This has significant consequences on household livelihood security.