Publications

The Women Centered Health Project was an experiment to operionalise the principles of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. The project was aimed at improving the provision of women centered reproductive and sexual health services through the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai.

Agricultural development aimed at poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) requires greatly accelerated technological, organizational and institutional innovation. Emphasis on strengthening the demand side for agricultural service provision and the call for a separation of responsibilities for policy making, funding and implementation have resulted in alternative funding mechanisms for agricultural research and development (R&D) at national and local levels.

Au Mali, les indicateurs de santé restent préoccupants. Une meilleure performance du secteur public dans la fourniture de services de base est une nécessité absolue pour la réduction de la pauvreté. Le défi posé aux divers acteurs en matière de santé communale est de travailler ensemble de façon effective au profit d’une santé publique appropriée aux besoins locaux, y compris à ceux des groupes les plus vulnérables.

Millions of smallholder farmers and indigenous communities in Africa are
working to improve their livelihoods in an environment characterized by
dwindling government support and increased competition between producers, processing companies and supermarkets within agricultural markets. How can we assist smallholders to cope with these challenges and secure market access and better incomes? What strategies can NGOs and business development services adopt to support this type of farmers?

Although agricultural research and development (R&D) in West Africa aim at improving the livelihoods of resource-poor farmers, the intended beneficiaries are often too poorly organised and consequently have limited political clout to influence the R&D agenda. The authors are not aware of farmers in West Africa funding agricultural R&D projects; this in contrast to farmers in Northern America and Europe

The medicinal plant sector in Uttaranchal, a Himalayan state in northern India, can provide an important source of income to the rural population, especially as returns from traditional crops are declining (Alam 2003). Because of its diverse agroclimatic conditions and relative isolation, India’s Himalayan region is richly endowed with a large variety of plant species, many of which have medicinal properties. The medicinal plants found in the Himalayan areas include species of particularly high medicinal value (Planning Commission 2000). People in India have long known of the benefits of medicinal and aromatic plants, which provide raw materials for both the pharmaceutical industry and traditional forms of medicine. Besides providing basic health care, the plants generate income and employment and also have implications for the preservation of biodiversity and of traditional knowledge

In 1995, Novib and a number of its partners initiated a courageous and risky journey; they undertook a collective learning and organisational change process to promote gender equality within their organisations. The programme was called the Gender Focus Programme. The Politics of the Possible is the story of the journey undertaken by seven NGO partners of Novib in South Asia and the Middle East. Today, a decade after the Beijing conference in 1995, it is hard to imagine that the process of gender mainstreaming and organisational change was uncharted territory when the GFP began. Thus the seven participating organisations, whose endeavours are the focus of this book, had to find their way using no more than an organisational development tool adapted for the programme.

Since the 1990s Sub-Saharan African countries have embarked on major
agricultural sector reforms, which led to changing and innovative roles for the public and private sectors as well as civil society organizations. Farmers’ organizations (FOs) now increasingly voice the needs of their members in various fora on policy-making and orienting service provision. They are solicited by the private sector to enhance chain development, including those for new markets, and they play a role in local development planning. FOs are now, more than ever, actively involved in agricultural development, which requires institutional, organizational and technological innovation in order to be successful. Providing user-oriented research, extension, and training services is therefore a prerequisite for technological innovation. Institutionalizing participatory methods, decentralizing services, creating multi-actor platforms and multi-stakeholder driven funding mechanisms all enhance demand-driven agricultural services. The private-sector and/or public-private arrangements currently play an increasing role in research and extension. FOs are thus evolving in an environment where stakeholders’ interests diverge and/or converge. However, the effective use of new technologies to become innovations is often defined by conditions other than simple access to knowledge and information; it often requires appropriate, innovative institutional and organizational settings. The agricultural innovation systems concept therefore considers links between actors, interactive learning processes, and the policy and institutional contexts that govern the system in order to better understand the generation, dissemination and application of knowledge. The agricultural innovation systems concept also emphasizes the need for all stakeholders to work together towards innovation for development

Worldwide, the choice of consumer products is increasing rapidly. One of the effects of economic liberalization is more international trade, so consumers are presented with new products and many more brands. How do they respond to this mushrooming number of products? If we can compare a modern supermarket with a dense tropical forest, how does a consumer find the right plant species that is safe and tasty? Do we need Neanderthal-like skills to fill our shopping carts with the right ingredients to feed our families?