E-Government for Rural Development in Tanzania

This chapter presents the importance of developing rural areas with an emphasis on good governance and poverty alleviation through the use of electronic government in Tanzania. With such concern, the authors show that rural areas are as significant as the economy of most of the developing countries, including Tanzania. As such, putting sufficient efforts on rural development is unavoidable for rapid development. Further, the authors note how Tanzania improves its rural areas through the use of e-government, but efforts are constrained by the existence of poor Information Communication Technology service providers, ineffective policy, and unreliability of rural electricity. In order to address such shortfalls, the authors propose several solutions that could motivate the increase in the use of rural e-government and revise rural development policy.

Correlates of Political Consumption in Africa

Using the marketplace as a site for political action with social change motives is referred as political consumption. Boycott, as a form of political consumption is an innovative way being used by citizens to directly express their attitudes, interests and concerns with the ultimate goal of influencing public affairs. This book chapter specifically examines the correlates of boycott as a form of political consumption in Africa using Wave 6 of the World Values Survey. Based on binary logistic regression, the correlates of boycott action are: level of education, gender, social class, media usage, gender equality, institutional confidence, social network, interest in politics, life satisfaction, seeing oneself as being part of world citizenship, seeing oneself as being embedded in local community, importance of doing something for the good of society, importance of traditions, and importance of riches or expensive things. These findings have implications for reaching out to boycotters.

Women Entrepreneurs Address Poverty and Social Change Through Empowering Grassroots Initiatives in Tanzania

This chapter investigates the story of Jitahidi women in Tanzania to understand the dynamics of empowerment at the grassroots level. The stories chronicled in this chapter present self-reliance events, motivations, and practical initiatives of a small entrepreneurial group of women, organized with shoe-string budgets. Their goal was to establish a women's collective strength that could unleash women's lives from oppressive economic regimes, patriarchal traditions, gender inequality, gender discrimination, and socio-historical legacies that exploit women everywhere. The study revealed that dialogical way of thinking and underlying conventions wrapped-up in Women in Development activities in Tanzania were critical in providing the vision that guided the Jitahidi group to create a space for transformation and potential to empower women so as to define their own educational needs and create political organizations within the local community.

Integrating Spatial Technologies in Urban Environments for Food Security

Food security for the urban poor has been an important topic for both developed and developing countries over the last 15 years. Although South Bend Indiana is a city in a developed country, declining economic circumstances have caused the city to show significant urban decay somewhat similar to some cities in developing countries. In this chapter, we explore South Bend's history and economic development strategies, and review practices aimed at strengthening food security for the urban poor. The chapter documents how numerous disparate organizations have been trying to help alleviate urban poverty and hunger, and reviews previous strategies used to foster sustainable growth and development. The integration of spatial technologies will become a key factor for promoting community social networks, participatory planning, and collaboration. The case is presented for the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and associated technologies to help organizations, community leaders, local organizations, city planners, higher education institutions and the urban poor, work together to alleviate poverty and malnutrition through networking and sustainable urban agriculture.

Sustainable Rural Development in the Conditions of Trade Integration

The chapter aims at overview of the main approaches to agricultural policies in developed and developing countries and investigation of perspective ways to ensure sustainable rural development in the conditions of liberalization of trade in agricultural commodities and food. The issues of sustainable rural development and main influences of trade liberalization are considered in the light of food security, alternative income opportunities in rural areas, and support of local identities. When analyzing the economic potential of rural areas, the following indicators are studied: natural conditions; assets; general characteristics of labor resources. Some of the indicators, used to be considered as secondary for economic results of agricultural activity, are also considered: living conditions in rural areas; demographic situation; rural social, cultural and leisure infrastructure; access of rural people to modern services of communication, transport, education, medicine, consumer services and other benefits, accustomed for urban citizens.

Functional Effectiveness and Modern Mechanisms for National Urban Systems Globalization

Cities' transformation into active actors of international economic relations and their participation in international competition form a complex of relevant problems about efficiency of relationships between business and government, global competitive advantages of urban economies, quality of municipal governance, and development and international integration of the urban system of the modern countries (including Russia). This chapter examines a development of the modern features of the urban system in Russia, analyzes its macroeconomic indicators, actual problems, and evaluates various scenarios for the development of both individual urban economies and the entire urban system of Russia.

Digital Entrepreneurial Charity, Solidarity, and Social Change

Microcredit has been studied from many perspectives. In this work, the authors analyze KIVA, the most important Person-to-Person microfinance organization from the viewpoint of social change, and they consider how it has impacted on the nascent of a new wave of entrepreneurs known as digital entrepreneurial charity. Applied to KIVA, the authors analyze the impact of the digital space and its Internet-based Peer-to-Peer Lending to create social change in the poor, while alleviating the poverty thanks to solidarity and charity. This work concludes affirming that banking the poor and education, with the intensive use of Internet-based devices, is the best way to alleviate poverty in the digital and globalized economic world. Finally, after their last research, the authors found some critics about Kiva and microcredits which might be interesting to be considered and these have been analyzed at the end of this work.

The Inter-Linkage Between Governance and Poverty

This chapter aims at assessing the impact of governance on the country's economic and human well-being in the selected South Asian countries. The study finds that for the countries-India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, over the years 1990-2012, the growing rate of GDP per capita (PPP) and growing employment to population ratio has a significant negative impact on the Global Hunger Index as expected. Also the panel regression run for the eight SAARC countries over the period 2007-13 to find out the impact of each of the six governance indicators on the per capita GDP showed that political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness and regulatory quality have very strong and significant role in augmenting the economic output besides the remaining indicators. The trends for each of the indicators across countries over time show that except Bhutan, none of the countries are exhibiting good performance of the governance indicators.

Deploying ICT to Enhance Small Businesses and Achieving Sustainable Development

Beside the SMEs, families operate small and fragmented businesses due to poverty and unemployment to help cater for their needs and family needs. These small and fragmented businesses are common among the poor due to lack of credit to expand such businesses. In addition, with the mandate from the federal government of Nigeria, every business must be registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission of the federal republic of Nigeria and pay a certain amount of money every year depending on level of business growth and development. Suffice to note that despite the payment of these charges by businesses, nothing is done by the federal government to assist them.

Lorenz Curve, Gini Coefficient, and the Income Inequality in Turkey in the Last 13 Years

Today income inequality and poverty are among highly disputed issues all over the world. It has been well understood that this problem can not be solved only with economic growth. Some social policy implementations conducive to redistribute the national income are essential to create a decrease in social and eceonomic inequalities. This is also true for Turkey. In last decade Turkey has managed high growth rates, budget discipline and improved some basic public services. As a result, absolute poverty rates decreased considerably. Although Turkey's welfare regime is going through a serious transformation process with effect of EU accession process, these policies have not been able to reduce relative poverty rates and income inequalities. Consequently Turkey's last decade is marked by high gini coefficients and income inequalities. It is obvious that there is a great need to develop a welfare regime which is able to establish a fairer income distribution.