The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects that different competitiveness strategies based on commercial quality attributes may have on the livelihoods of small coffee growers in Colombia. Using a combination of global value chain and sustainable livelihood approaches, it appears that...

While the Congolese government is actively promoting large-scale industrial mining since it provides easy rents, artisanal mining seems to escape most attempts to control and regulate it. Yet artisanal mining provides employment and livelihoods to an estimated million people. This paper presents...

A scholarly consensus exists regarding the fact that electoral processes can facilitate democratisation but can equally be the source of instability and/or advance authoritarian rule. Generally, these processes are analyzed by focussing on macro-political institutions and actors. This paper,...

In the last 18 years, large enterprises have emerged in post-conflict Rwanda, which are fully or partially owned and controlled by the ruling party – Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) – in association with state-owned enterprises, the military and the RPF-appointed managers (i.e. the new business...

The rebellion of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) is the most recent in a series of rebellions that aimed to fight the post-genocide Rwandan regime from bases in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The FDLR is a politico-military movement, which allegedly aims to...

Poverty, the increasing urbanisation of poverty and the environmental degradation are major problems facing the actual world. This is reflected in international conferences and agendas, such as Local Agenda 21. This agenda is responding to the current problems by promoting sustainable...

This paper gives a broad overview of the evolution of Belgian aid policies throughout the 1990s. It documents changes in stated motives and objectives, aid volumes, poverty orientation of aid, the structure and main components of the aid programme, the use of new types of aid instruments, the...

According to the International Rescue Committee, as many as 3.3 million people have lost their lives, either in direct fighting or from the outbreak of diseases as a result of the war. Despite the formation of a two-year national transition government, composed of representatives of the former...

1. Dans le premier axe nous évoquerons brièvement quelques définitions et les principales causes de la pauvreté. Selon la Banque Mondiale, la croissance économique est la meilleure politique contre la pauvreté. Cependant, elle constate que la croissance économique n'est pas synonyme de...

Impact studies at the level of the beneficiary are not very common in the case of small-scale development projects. In this paper we will present the case of an evaluation study on a training project in Low External Input Agriculture in Guatemala. The evaluation design is based on a simple...