Browse by Theme: Reviewed 2021

This case study explores how CARE Kenya combined food security programming with an emerging market engagement strategy to decrease food shortages and increase incomes in western Kenya. With support from USAID, CARE implemented the Dak Achana project from 2004 to 2009. Over this period, the multi-component initiative succeeded in reducing the incidence of food shortages among the target area households from 86 percent in 2006 to 65 percent in 2008. The project has benefitted well over 100,000 Kenyans. These results are not insignificant in a region where 60 percent of the population lives in poverty and 90 percent of households depend on subsistence agriculture for their staple foods.

Interest is growing in supporting vulnerable people and communities to adapt to the impacts of a changing climate, and there is a general assumption that there are close links between development and adaptation. Yet our understanding of the impacts that development interventions have on adaptive capacity at the local level remains limited.

Most development interventions are not designed with a climate change ‘adaptation’ label, but it is likely that they influence communities’ capacity to adapt to changing shocks and trends – whether as a result of climate change or other pressures associated with development (see Jones et al., 2010).

A framework for understanding and assessing adaptive capacity at the local level is needed to begin to understand how it can be supported through wider development processes at both local and national levels. Such a framework may in time serve as a platform to monitor progress, identify needs and allocate development resources to enhance a system’s ability to adapt to change.

With support from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), CARE Zambia is using a market-based approach to develop a sustainable network of 500 rural agro dealers, which will provide 91,000 smallholder farmers with access to a range of high-quality, affordable agricultural inputs and improved technologies. This innovation brief highlights one unique strategy CARE has used to enable agrodealers to go the last kilomenter in input supply in Zambia – the introduction of pedaling power.

Livestock is the main household asset and a key productive resource for pastoralist communitiesliving in the border areas of Kenya and Ethiopia. However, recurrent droughts are eroding pastoralists’ livestock base and weakening their livelihoods and their resilience to climatic shocks.

Livestock marketing, understood as the process through which live animals change ownership, is increasingly perceived as critical for improving pastoral household income. Efforts aimed at addressing constraints to the development of efficient and vibrant livestock marketing activities in the region are increasingly seen as a meaningful way of reducing pastoralists’ vulnerability to drought.

This baseline study, commissioned by CARE International, identifies structural issues behind livestock marketing in Mandera Central and West in Kenya and the Borana zone in Ethiopia. The study also aims to provide potential entry points for action to improve livestock marketing in the region.

Livestock is the main household asset and a key productive resource for pastoralist communities living in the border areas of Kenya and Ethiopia. However, recurrent droughts are eroding pastoralists' livestock base and weakening their livelihoods and their resilience to climatic shocks.

Livestock marketing, understood as the process through which live animals change ownership, is increasingly perceived as critical for improving pastoral household income. Efforts aimed at addressing constraints to the development of efficient and vibrant livestock marketing activities in the region are increasingly seen as a meaningful way of reducing pastoralists' vulnerability to drought.

This baseline study, commissioned by CARE International, identifies structural issues behind livestock marketing in Mandera Central and West in Kenya and the Borana zone in Ethiopia. The study also aims to provide potential entry points for action to improve livestock marketing in the region

CARE's programme on the tea sector of Sri Lanka demonstrates how improving worker's lives makes sense for businesses.

The current context in Nepal represents a period of intense and historical change an also great opportunities for civil society and citizens to participate, engage and shape the “New Nepal”. This paper explores the diverse positions of civil and political society on federalism, unpacking the ethnicity-based proposals and the growth of identity politics in Nepal. It argues that the diversity and complexity of multinational societies challenge the dominant liberal political model, requiring instead the constructive of more substantive and consensual notions of citizenship and democracy.