scholarly journals Using a Realist Framework to Overcome Evaluation Challenges in the Uncertain Landscape of Carbon Finance

Author(s):  
Callum Murdoch ◽  
Lisa Keppler ◽  
Tillem Burlace ◽  
Christine Wörlen

AbstractIn 2013, the United Kingdom Department for International Development and the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy published a business case for the Carbon Market Finance Programme (CMFP). The core mandate: to build capacity and develop aids for least developed countries in sub-Saharan Africa to access finance via the carbon market. The chosen strategy involved signing emission reduction purchase agreements with private sector enterprises, using the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to verify generation of tradeable certified emissions reductions. The World Bank’s Carbon Initiative for Development (Ci-Dev) would implement the 12-year program. The team for the 2019 midterm evaluation found that program uncertainty—from sociopolitical challenges in pilot markets to global indecision on the future of Article 6 and carbon markets—would complicate assessing progress toward business case objectives. The collapse and failed recovery of the carbon market impacted underlying assumptions of the CMFP’s theory of change, and uncertainty about CDM’s future complicated evaluation of program sustainability. This chapter presents a practical approach to using realist evaluation to overcome the contextual uncertainties of the carbon market landscape, providing strengths and weaknesses of the approach applied and recommending a revised approach for future evaluations.

2003 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-169
Author(s):  
Samina Nazli

Raising the standards of literacy in the developing world has been a major goal of the less developed countries since most of them became independent in the process of decolonisation that followed World War II. The Human Development Report 2004, brought out by the United Nations Development Programme lists some major improvements in increasing literacy levels of a number of countries between the year 1990 and 2002. For example, low human development countries like Togo increased their adult literacy rates from 44.2 percent in 1990 to 59.6 percent in 2002. Congo saw an increase in its literacy rate for the same period from 67.1 percent to 82.8 percent. The rates for Uganda, Kenya, Yemen, and Nigeria are 56.1 percent and 68.9 percent, 70.8 percent and 84.3 percent, 32.7 percent and 49.0 percent, and 48.7 percent and 68.8 percent respectively. If one examines the breakdown by region, the least developed countries as a group saw an increase in their adult literacy rates from 43.0 percent to 52.5 percent, the Arab states from 50.8 percent to 63.3 percent, South Asia from 47.0 percent to 57.6 percent, Sub-Saharan Africa from 50.8 percent to 63.2 percent and East Asia and the Pacific from 79.8 percent to 90.3 percent. If we look at the increase in the levels of literacy from the perspective of medium human development and low human development, the figures are 71.8 percent and 80.4 percent, and 42.5 percent and 54.3 percent, respectively.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Rud ◽  
Ija Trapeznikova

Abstract Least developed economies are characterised by poorly functioning labour markets: only a small fraction of workers is in paid employment, where productivity and wages are low. We incorporate a standard search framework into a two-sector model of development to assess the importance of different obstacles to job creation and productivity. The model provides new insights in the characterisation of poorly developed labour markets that are observed in the data, such as high wage dispersion. We estimate the model using micro data for six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and highlight the empirical relevance of labour market frictions, entry costs and skills.


2012 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christobel Asiedu

The information communication technologies for development literature (ICT4D) has identified information communication technologies (ICTs) as a significant tool for economic and social development of least developed countries. The discourse has marginalized radio and promoted ICTs. However, there are numerous challenges to using ICTs as a communication tool in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Although investment in technology could create a much more effective use of ICTs, local appropriation should be at the center of any communication tool for development. This article discusses the widespread exposure to radio in SSA, and emphasizes the effectiveness of using radio to create indigenous knowledge, and in the process empower local women to actively frame their own messages and be active participants in development agendas. Combining radio and ICTs, also known as technological blending, would make certain that rural, poor and non-literate women are not only given meaningful access to new technologies, but also ‘brought into’ the development discourse, as active agents of social change.


2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-33
Author(s):  
Pratim Datta ◽  
Victor W. Mbarika ◽  
Chitu Okoli

Although Benbasat and Zmud’s (2003) pronouncement of an “identity crisis” within the information systems (IS) discipline has been mitigated in the industrialized world, the authors are concerned that the crisis still looms large in the developing world. The author’s objective is to theoretically underpin how the discipline can extend its social presence in developing countries to help sustain life. These arguments are contextualized with an in-depth examination of an area for which information systems research has much to offer: telemedicine. Telemedicine is an information systems intensive method concerning the remote delivery of healthcare. Telemedicine is fundamental to any healthcare solution in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)— a capital-starved society, home to 33 of the 48 least developed countries of the world, and suffering from a dire shortage of medical professionals. The social, political, and economic idiosyncrasies of SSA require a different lens to investigate telemedicine to induce social development. This paper proposes a research framework for telemedicine transfer in the context of SSA with propositions pertinent to the developing world. The authors draw on thorough implications of this research agenda as a stepping stone to recreate a social identity in developing nations plagued with more immediate concerns surrounding basic human sustenance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19(34) (3) ◽  
pp. 57-66
Author(s):  
Jakub Kraciuk

The aim of the study was to show the impact of the activities of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on the economic situation of the least developed countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It was found that the operation of these organizations in accordance with the principles of the Washington consensus did not bring the expected results, and the credit aid of IMF and World Bank increased debt, but did not contribute to a significant GDP growth per capita in the analyzed countries. Therefore, it is necessary to change the rules of operation of international financial institutions towards least developed countries. The proposed adjustment programs are to generate economic growth, which will be subordinated to the needs of societies, and the choice of economic and social policy options should be adapted to the conditions of a given country.


2008 ◽  
pp. 2948-2962
Author(s):  
Victor W. Mbarika ◽  
Peter N. Meso ◽  
Philip F. Musa

With the dynamic and meteoric rise in teledensity diffusion across Sub Saharan Africa, one would expect a departure in the perceptions of stakeholders as they relate to the Bernt and Weiss framework that identifies organizational, financial, technological, and geographical factors as the key impediments to teledensity growth. The findings of this research show that there is disconnect between current happenings and perception of stakeholders. Specifically, there is no change in stakeholders’ perceptions with respect to the framework mentioned above. However, historical and recent teledensity data from Africa’s Least Developed Countries illustrate that the model is inconsistent with the emerging realities in these countries, and that it may be getting obsolete. This leads us to conjecture that in this new dispensation, there may be some emerging factors, issues, constraints, and opportunities that may be of greater importance to understanding telecommunications capabilities in these countries and the world at large.


Author(s):  
Victor W. Mbarika ◽  
Peter N. Meso ◽  
Philip F. Musa

With the dynamic and meteoric rise in teledensity diffusion across Sub Saharan Africa, one would expect a departure in the perceptions of stakeholders as they relate to the Bernt and Weiss framework that identifies organizational, financial, technological, and geographical factors as the key impediments to teledensity growth. The findings of this research show that there is disconnect between current happenings and perception of stakeholders. Specifically, there is no change in stakeholders’ perceptions with respect to the framework mentioned above. However, historical and recent teledensity data from Africa’s Least Developed Countries illustrate that the model is inconsistent with the emerging realities in these countries, and that it may be getting obsolete. This leads us to conjecture that in this new dispensation, there may be some emerging factors, issues, constraints, and opportunities that may be of greater importance to understanding telecommunications capabilities in these countries and the world at large.


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