Browse by Theme: Inclusive Governance

At the end of 2016 the Doing Development Differently community held a workshop to take stock. What have we learned over the past two years? Is anything actually different?

By Gianluca Nardi and Katherine Carr (CARE International UK, Programme Officer - Africa)

When we arrive in Kariyata, a rural community in the Upper Eastern region of Ghana, close to Garu, most of the women in the community are waiting for us within a circle of shea trees that they normally use for meetings, and some men are also there, although in a separate group. The community is partly Christian and partly Muslim and partly followers of traditional religions and all of them are there for one reason: to talk about gender.

Two recent CARE workshops have helped frame for me the resilience discussion that has come to dominate development discourse over the last five years. In fragile contexts, can we afford to be ambitious with our programming goals to encompass both gender transformative action and crisis adaptation? And more to the point, can we afford not to?

The signing of the Compromise Peace Agreement in August removed one obstacle on the long road to peace in South Sudan, but the future is far from certain. For the fragile peace to take root, South Sudan and its international backers must show patience and ensure equal weight is given to both peacebuilding and economic development.

You spend half the year waiting for the government’s strategy on aid and conflict, and then two come along at once. On Monday 23 November, the government released both the National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) and its Aid Review, which together laid out the strategic aims of UK hard and soft power (including development) as well as how funding would be allocated among priority areas. CARE has released a statement on the Aid review, but here are some thoughts on the SDSR, its strengths and areas for further inquiry.

Last month in New York, 17 Sustainable Development Goals were launched, now known as the ‘Global Goals’ with a comprehensive roadmap for the next 15 years leading up to 2030. While the fanfare and the party might be over, the question remains: what next?

Bangladesh has been quite successful in working towards the Millennium Development Goals, even receiving a Millennium Development Goal Award in 2010 for its notable progress toward reducing child mortality (MDG 4). But how far did this progress reach? Does the way we measure progress fail to account for the experience of millions of the country’s poorest people?