Iron (Fe) toxicity is recognized as one of the most widely spread soil constraints for rice production especially in West Africa. Oryza glaberrima the cultivated rice species that originated from ...West Africa is well-adapted to its growing ecologies. The aim of this study was to identify the promising O. glaberrima accessions tolerant to Fe toxicity from the 2106 accessions held at the AfricaRice gene bank. The screenings were conducted over a four-year period and involved evaluating the entries under Fe-toxic field conditions in West Africa, selecting good yielding accessions and repeating the testing with newly selected lines. Three accessions (TOG 7206, TOG 6218-B and TOG 7250-A) were higher yielding than O. sativa checks under stress but with similar yields under control conditions. These accessions yielded over 300g/m2 under both Fe toxicity and control conditions. In conclusion, these materials could be used as donors in breeding programs for developing high yielding rice varieties suited to Fe toxicity affected areas in West Africa.
Major DAC donors are widely criticized for weak targeting of aid, selfish aid motives, and insufficient coordination. The emergence of an increasing number of new donors may further complicate the ...coordination of international aid efforts. At the same time, it is open to question whether new donors (many of which were aid recipients until recently) are more altruistic and provide better targeted aid according to need and merit. Project-level data on aid by new donors, as collected by the AidData initiative, allow for empirical analyses comparing the allocation behavior of new
versus old donors. We employ Probit and Tobit models and test for significant differences in the distribution of aid by new and old donors across recipient countries. We find that, on average, new donors care less for recipient need than old donors. New and old donors behave similarly in several respects, however. They disregard merit by not taking the level of corruption in recipient countries into account. Concerns that commercial self-interest distorts the allocation of aid seem to be overblown for both groups.
The past half-decade has seen a resurgence of dam building in Africa, a controversial development after decades of critique exposing the environmental, economic, and social costs of such projects. ...Dams have been imagined as symbols of modernity and as keys to national economic development, giving them such status that potential negatives get overlooked. This paper sets out to investigate the implementation of a particular dam built in this new resurgence period. It will ask whether modernist development logics are being repeated in the construction process, causing the social and environmental costs documented in past dam construction. This paper focuses on the Nyabarongo Dam in Rwanda, a country whose post-genocide development record and authoritarian modernist tendencies have been considerably debated. This particular case study also shows the growing role of India in Africa, as it records one of the first Indian financed and built dams on the continent. Qualitative field research found that that while construction planning and practice has enabled many locals to benefit, the dam's construction was influenced by modernist logics of development that created detrimental, top-down practices.
With the intension of understanding why poor countries provide aid to other developing countries, we analyze aid commitments by India’s Ministry of External Affairs to 125 countries over the 2008–10 ...period. Our findings are partially in line with our expectations of the behavior of a “needy” donor. Commercial and political self-interests dominate India’s aid allocation. We find the importance of political interests to be significantly larger for India than for all donors of the Development Assistance Committee. Moreover, countries that are geographically closer are favored, and countries at a similar developmental stage are more likely to enter India’s aid program.
Abstract Background The present contribution aims to investigate the motivations underlying blood donation and to probe how these differ on the basis of number of donations and donors' gender. ...Materials and methods A total of 237 Italian donors (64.6% male) were administered a self-report questionnaire containing socio-demographic variables and Omoto and Snyder's Motivations for Volunteerism Scale adapted to blood donation. Results and discussion The results reveal: (a) significant differences between new donors (1–4 donations) and loyal donors (5–15 donations) as well as between new donors and regular donors (more than 16 donations) emerge with respect to social motivations and ego-protection, which increase proportionately to number of donations; (b) gender differences characterize all the motivations except those related to values; (c) value motivations do not vary either with respect to number of donations or to gender.
This paper investigates whether new donors use foreign aid to facilitate their integration in the world economy. With this aim, the effect of foreign aid on gross trade and global value chains (GVC) ...is estimated for a sample of 12 new donors and 130 recipients over the period from 2000 to 2014. The results from a theoretically justified gravity model show that the aid effects are heterogeneous across donors and, although weak in the short run for GVC, they are however sizable in the long run. Foreign aid has a positive impact on gross trade for all donors, but only for some of them on the length of GVC. In particular, aid provided by Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Korea, Thailand and Turkey fosters the two forms of internationalization, whereas aid given by Russia and Israel only affects gross exports. Surprisingly, the magnitude of the aid effects is smaller for China than for other donors.
Iron (Fe) toxicity is recognized as one of the most widely spread soil constraints for rice production especially in West Africa. Oryza glaberrima the cultivated rice species that originated from ...West Africa is well-adapted to its growing ecologies. The aim of this study was to identify the promising O. glaberrima accessions tolerant to Fe toxicity from the 2106 accessions held at the AfricaRice gene bank. The screenings were conducted over a four-year period and involved evaluating the entries under Fe-toxic field conditions in West Africa, selecting good yielding accessions and repeating the testing with newly selected lines. Three accessions (TOG 7206, TOG 6218-B and TOG 7250-A) were higher yielding than O. sativa checks under stress but with similar yields under control conditions. These accessions yielded over 300g/m2 under both Fe toxicity and control conditions. In conclusion, these materials could be used as donors in breeding programs for developing high yielding rice varieties suited to Fe toxicity affected areas in West Africa.
In recent decades China has become an important source of official finance for African countries, especially for infrastructures. Most railways in Africa, built in the colonial period and then ...managed by state owned companies, experienced poor performances and deteriorated since independence. From the end of the last century, international financial institutions and traditional donors promoted private concessions in the railway sector, but results were generally below expectations. Based on project level data about official financial flows from the World Bank and from China, the study shows that China is now a main foreign finance provider for the railway systems in Africa. Through panel data regressions on flows at country leveland considering the determinants of funding, we find that financial allocation by China does not seem to be biased in favour of public or private management, nor to favour countries supported by the World Bank before the privatization phase. The needs of recipient countries seem to shape the allocation of funds by China, but also commercial interests play a role in this allocation. Overall funding from China seems to complement World Bank funding in the effort to fill the financing gap of the sector.
•In the last decades China became a main donor for railway in Africa.•China's allocation of funds is based on recipient countries' needs.•China supports more the countries less supported by the World Bank.•China doesn't favour countries supported by World Bank before privatization phase.•Commercial interest of China plays a role in the allocation of its official funding.
The aim of this text is to find out whether the Pontis Foundation, a Slovak philanthrocapitalist NGO that also engages in development cooperation, depoliticizes unequal power relations in its ...discourse and if so, how. Using samples of promotional materials published by Pontis, I analyze Pontis' discursive constructions of legitimation and interviews with respondents from Pontis. My analysis shows that documents published by Pontis do indeed depoliticize unequal power relations, for example, by highlighting the importance of education. I also find that the Foundation's employees, with the exception of one who comments on the organization's apolitical stance, exclude politics from their personal perspectives. The article also discusses the question of intentionality in the depoliticizing discourse and the question of the way ideology works in relation to depoliticization.
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