https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(11)60754-X.pdf

Poverty and mental disorders: breaking the cycle in low-income and middle-income countries

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14346248.pdf

The Impact of Microfinance in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review of the Evidence

Lori Heise reviews the empirical evidence of what works in low- and middle-income countries to prevent violence against women by their husbands and other male partners. The review focuses on prevention programmes rather than responses or services, and on research-based evaluations rather than insights from practice. Individual chapters cover: changing gender norms, childhood exposure to violence, excessive alcohol use, women’s economic empowerment, law and justice system reform. Heise summarises the evidence that links each factor with the risk of partner violence as well as the effectiveness of prevention programmes.

What Works to Prevent Partner Violence? An Evidence Overview.

We provide a ‘how to’ guide to undertake systematic reviews of effects in international development, by which we mean, synthesis of literature relating to the effectiveness of particular development interventions. Our remit includes determining the review's questions and scope, literature search, critical appraisal, methods of synthesis including meta-analysis, and assessing the extent to which generalisable conclusions can be drawn using a theory-based approach. Our work draws on the experiences of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation's (3ie's) systematic reviews programme.

How to do a good systematic review of effects in international development: a tool kit

The concept of microcredit was first introduced in Bangladesh by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Professor Yunus started Grameen Bank (GB) more than 30 years ago with the aim of reducing poverty by providing small loans to the country’s rural poor (Yunus 1999). Microcredit has evolved over the years and does not only provide credit to the poor, but also now spans a myriad of other services including savings, insurance, remittances and non-financial services such as financial literacy training and skills development programmes; microcredit is now referred to as microfinance (Armendariz de Aghion and Morduch 2005, 2010). A key feature of microfinance has been the targeting of women on the grounds that, compared to men, they perform better as clients of microfinance institutions and that their participation has more desirable development outcomes (Pitt and Khandker 1998). Despite the apparent success and popularity of microfinance, no clear evidence yet exists that microfinance programmes have positive impacts (Armendariz de Aghion and Morduch 2005, 2010; and many others). There have been four major reviews examining impacts of microfinance (Sebstad and Chen, 1996; Gaile and Foster 1996, Goldberg 2005, Odell 2010, see also Orso 2011). These reviews concluded that, while anecdotes and other inspiring stories (such as Todd 1996) purported to show that microfinance can make a real difference in the lives of those served, rigorous quantitative evidence on the nature, magnitude and balance of microfinance impact is still scarce and inconclusive (Armendariz de Aghion and Morduch 2005, 2010). Overall, it is widely acknowledged that no well-known study robustly shows any strong impacts of microfinance (Armendariz de Aghion and Morduch 2005, p199-230). Because of the growth of the microfinance industry and the attention the sector has received from policy makers, donors and private investors in recent years, existing microfinance impact evaluations need to be re-investigated; the robustness of claims that microfinance successfully alleviates poverty and empowers women must be scrutinised more carefully. Hence, this review revisits the evidence of microfinance evaluations focusing on the technical challenges of conducting rigorous microfinance impact evaluations.

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What is the evidence of the impact of microfinance on the well-being of poor people?

What is the impact of microfinance on poor people?: a systematic review of evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

Issues of food security and nutrition have wide reaching implications for people and their environments, particularly in low and middle-income countries. One proposed solution is urban agriculture, which has been widely upheld as a solution to the food-crisis facing increasingly metropolitan populations. It is believed to provide the urban poor with food and a source of potential income, whilst improving the urban environment and reducing pressure on finite farmland. Although it faded from many development agendas in the 1990’s, urban agriculture has seen a resurgence since a peak in global food prices in the late 2000’s. There are, however, potential disadvantages to this increasing drive for urban agriculture including associated urban health risks and implications for the environment. The usage of waste-water, for example, may contaminate produced food and intensive irrigation might lead to the spread of malaria and water borne diseases, as well as threatening already limited water supplies. Soil erosion and the intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides might also present health risks to urban populations and damage the environment. Despite the potential benefits and harms of urban agriculture, the evidence-base is not well understood. Given the current policy drive to promote urban agriculture, there is an urgent need to understand its effects on urban populations and their environments. This review will seek out, select, appraise and synthesise evidence on the impacts of urban agriculture on food security and nutrition. We will employ systematic review methodology to ensure that our review of the evidence is comprehensive, transparent and replicable. In addition to searching electronic databases, we will examine websites and contact academics, practitioners and policy-makers for relevant research. All potentially relevant literature will be screened against pre-specified criteria and assessed for risk of bias using established critical appraisal tools. This is to ensure that we only include the evidence in which we have confidence. Depending on the nature of the available data, we will then synthesise the available evidence using statistical meta-analysis and/or narrative synthesis. Our findings will be disseminated in a variety of ways to ensure that the evidence is available for policy-makers and practitioners.

/pdf/what-are-the-impacts-of-urban-agriculture-programs-on-food-2oh87fwmr9.pdf

What are the impacts of urban agriculture programs on food security in low and middle-income countries?

Background: Urban Agriculture is considered to contribute to improved food security among the income poor in urban contexts across developing countries. Much literature exists on the topic assuming a positive relationship. The aim of this review was to collect and analyse available evidence on the impact of urban agriculture in low and middle-income countries. Methods: We employed systematic review methods to identify all relevant and reliable research on UA’s impact on food security and nutrition. Only impact evaluations that set out to measure the effectiveness of UA interventions on food security, as compared to the effects of not engaging in UA, qualified for inclusion. Studies had to have a comparison group and at least two data points. Results: Systematic searches resulted in 8142 hits, and screening of abstracts resulted in 198 full texts identified. No studies met the review’s inclusion criteria. Therefore, the review found no available evidence that supports or refutes the suggestion that urban agriculture positively impacts on individual or household food security in low and middle-income countries. The largest proportion of studies at full text stage was excluded based on study design, as they were not impact evaluations, i.e. they did not have a comparison group and at least data points. Two observations were made: Firstly, searches yielded a range of studies that consider associations between UA and certain aspects of food security. Secondly, there is a large pool of cross-sectional studies on UA’s potential to contribute to increased food security, particularly from west and east Africa. Conclusions: The research currently available does not allow for any conclusions to be made on whether or not urban agriculture initiatives contribute to food security. The fact that impact evaluations are absent from the current evidence-base calls for increased efforts to measure the impact of urban agriculture on food security in low and middle-income countries through rigorous impact evaluations. With regard to systematic review methodology, this review alludes to the value of compiling a systematic map prior to engaging in a full systematic review.

/pdf/what-are-the-impacts-of-urban-agriculture-programs-on-food-1em13j78jx.pdf

What are the impacts of urban agriculture programs on food security in low and middle-income countries: a systematic review

This paper is based on a systematic review of evidence of the impact of microfinance on the lives of poor women, men and children in sub-Saharan Africa. It focuses specifically on longer-term non-financial outcomes related to health and nutrition and education. The paper contrasts microfinance's early days' initially refreshing and encouraging promises of a development initiative that empowers people to help themselves while ‘paying for itself’ with a more gloomy picture that derives from the synthesis results of our systematic review. It presents two simple models that show the pathways from microfinance to increased investment in improved health and education, contrasting theory with our synthesis results. Our discussion highlights that thinking through microfinance makes it necessary to thoroughly investigate both the theory behind interventions and the evidence for their impact. It raises the essential question: Is microfinance about providing banking services to the unbanked, or is microfinance a development intervention that concerns itself with the attainment of long-term sustainable responses to high levels of poverty?

Microfinance: Development Intervention or Just Another Bank?

The evidence-informed approach to policy-making and implementation is, at its core, about better decisions for a better future. It is focused on the effective use of scarce resources, on avoiding harm and maximising good. It is grounded in principles of equity and equality, of accountability and transparency. Given these characteristics, for those of us who work in this field, there is arguably a moral, economic, social and political case for paying closer attention to evidence-informed decision-making ecosystems in the South. Evidence-based policy and implementation, or evidence-informed decision-making in line with the most recent thinking, is often framed from two inter-related but limited perspectives: first, it is viewed as an approach that has originated from ‘developed’ Northern countries, and second, it is conceptualised as a technical intervention. However, there has been a shift in how the approach is conceived, moving away from assumptions that it is an intervention implemented from outside, from the North, for the benefit of the South. As part of this shift, certain initiatives in Africa have gained greater momentum. It is in acknowledging that there are different ways to think (epistemic diversity) about Southern evidence-informed decision-making, that this work has arisen. It seizes on the opportunity to view evidence-informed decision-making in a new light, exploring the evidence ecosystems in the South as systems strongly influenced by, but not defined by, Northern stimuli, including, but not limited to, technical interventions. This work set out to describe the evidence ecosystem in South Africa. In doing so, it finds that the ecosystem is increasingly resilient despite some limitations. It has strong structural foundations, includes many diverse organisations, is supported by not inconsiderable investment, is enabled by growing and significant capacity, contains iterations and innovations, and last but not least, incorporates complexity that gives the ecosystem resilience. The work demonstrates, through its focus on South Africa’s evidence ecosystem, that the global movement has much to learn from the South.

/pdf/the-evidence-ecosystem-in-south-africa-growing-resilience-a627giwy7r.pdf

Carina van Rooyen

Papers

What is the impact of microfinance on poor people?: a systematic review of evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

What are the impacts of urban agriculture programs on food security in low and middle-income countries?

What are the impacts of urban agriculture programs on food security in low and middle-income countries: a systematic review

Microfinance: Development Intervention or Just Another Bank?

The evidence ecosystem in South Africa: growing resilience and institutionalisation of evidence use