This report presents findings from the first randomised evaluation of a cash transfer programme delivered using mobile phones. The study investigated the effect of mobile phone technology on monthly cash transfers to households in Niger that were affected by a severe drought.  

Villages that received cash in this way, known as 'zap', saw benefits such as reduced costs of receiving cash, more diverse purchases and diets, and more types of crops. This, suggest the authors, is down to the zap mechanism encouraging different decision-making in the household, as well as due to lower costs and greater privacy.

They conclude that mobile transfers are a cost-effective way of transferring cash to remote rural populations, especially those with limited road and financial infrastructure, but caution that more research is needed on broader effects on the welfare of these populations.

This report outlines the first coherent strategy drawn up by the UN to address dryland management, taking into account environmental concerns and the well-being of dryland communities. It examines the relationship between drylands and climate change, food security and livelihoods, and highlights ways in which the UN is working to mainstream drylands into policymaking processes.

Climate change is already having an impact on crop yields and nutrition in areas that rely on rain-fed agriculture, according to the report, and these impacts will intensify by 2020 in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America. The impacts of climate change may be most pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, suggesting that those already vulnerable will be affected the most.

A key message is that the international community has an opportunity to address the underlying causes of dryland degradation. The report concludes that global cooperation must be intensified if the ten-year strategic plan of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification — whose aim is to tackle desertification and degradation — and the Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved.

This online book, published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, explores Africa's potential for intensifying agricultural production through ecological agriculture — the integration of traditional, conservation oriented farming techniques with modern science and technology.

Building on discussions from the Conference on Ecological Agriculture, held in Ethiopia in 2008, it outlines past experiences such as lessons learned from the Green Revolution in Asia; trends in African agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development; and climate change implications for agriculture.

The book concludes that ecological agriculture can benefit smallholder farmers in several ways such as helping to increase Africa's productivity, and therefore improving food security, and helping farmers adapt to climate change by making agro-ecosystems more resilient to stress. But scaling up ecological agriculture will require policy support as well as additional resources and information.

This paper reports the results of a systematic review of the impacts of climate change on crop productivity in Africa and South Asia. The study, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), assessed eight food crops — rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, millet, cassava, yam, plantain and sugarcane — that make up more than 80 per cent of agricultural production in these regions. Its findings aim to inform DFID's policies, allocation of resources and other practices according to the need for a stronger focus on evidence-informed decision-making on agriculture in a changing climate. The report provides background information; a detailed account of the review protocol and methodology; the data extraction strategy; data collection; meta-analyses; a synthesis of results; and key findings for all crops organised by region. It recognises that climate change will worsen environmental conditions that already affect crops, such as heat, drought, salinity and submergence in water.

This project outlines deployment models and decision support tools for supplying energy, including solar, to rural areas in developing countries. It showcases practical examples of rural energy supply from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including the use of solar home systems in Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, among others. The project also lists experts in rural energy supply across different regions of the developing world.

This report, written for the Meridian Institute by a team of scientists from South Africa and Sri Lanka, describes the general issues facing projects aimed at improving access to clean water in the developing world, as well as the specific challenges facing nano-based projects.

The authors describe a number of water treatment devices that incorporate nanotechnology, including nanofiltration membranes, attapulgite clays and zeolites, nanocatalysts, magnetic nanoparticles and nanosensors. More importantly, they outline potential opportunities associated with these technologies, and possible risks.

The paper includes two case studies of projects designed to improve access to clean water — one in Bangladesh based on a conventional approach using sari cloth to remove cholera from water, and one in South Africa that incorporates a nanofiltration membrane.

This paper from the Association of Commonwealth Universities outlines the commitments and activities made by major international partners — specifically the G8 countries — to developing African higher education between 2000 and 2004.

Projects are analysed by topic — from human resources development to HIV/AIDS to science and technology — and region. The authors highlight trends in donors' strategies for supporting African higher education, presenting development portfolios and case studies from France, Germany, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and the United States, among others. They suggest improvements in aid delivery, including collaboration between donors and increased communication about individual donor strategies. They also call for more networking and collaboration across higher education institutions within Africa, while noting that these face financial constraints.

The authors conclude that there is a particular need for donors to provide more support to science and technology projects — as a crucial driver of socioeconomic development.

This paper, written by an international team of researchers, documents the work of the African AIDS Vaccine Programme (AAVP). It highlights the programme's impacts, successes and challenges, and looks to where the AAVP is heading.

The AAVP, supported by the WHO and UNAIDS, is a network of African HIV vaccine stakeholders that promotes a coordinated approach to developing HIV vaccines and making them available on the continent. It operates through collaborative centres located at key institutions across Africa.

Programme members work on crucial issues including regulation; ethics, laws and human rights in clinical trials; biomedical research; country-based strategic planning; and communication and media.

The authors outline the AAVP's achievements to date, highlighting its success in expanding training and infrastructure specific to HIV vaccine development. They suggest that AAVP could offer a way for African stakeholders to influence the global agenda for HIV vaccine research and development.

Cardiovascular disease accounts for 30% of deaths worldwide and 10% of all years of healthy life lost to disease, and the figures are nearly as high in developing countries — 27 per cent and 9 per cent respectively. This compares with 10% of lives lost worldwide from HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria put together (12% in developing countries). So why have donors not invested as heavily into tackling non-communicable chronic diseases as they have with infectious ones? The authors of this article suggest several reasons: infectious diseases are in some ways easier to solve by a vaccine or drugs so it might seem sensible to use precious funding this way; Western donors may want to see epidemics contained quickly to avoid global spread; pictures of small African children dying of AIDS are more heartrending than a middle-aged man with hypertension, even if that man is supporting a large family; there is a myth that chronic diseases are more costly to prevent than infectious ones. This last issue is one that should be tackled strongly to spread awareness that low-cost methods can have an enormous effect on chronic diseases.

Vaccination for infectious diseases is a vital method of prophylaxis, and has transformed modern medicine. By contrast, research into vaccines against chronic diseases has been less successful, in part because of the increased complexity involved.

In this opinion piece, the authors outline the prospects for the development of chronic disease vaccines. These might not need to rely on the traditional method of inducing the body to produce antibodies, but rather on introducing monoclonal antibodies against specific proteins — this has so far worked well against Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

The authors outline key hurdles in developing a successful therapeutic vaccine. Safety and efficacy are two obvious ones, but there is a third that is unique to vaccines for chronic diseases. Because these vaccines would block bodily chemicals — such as cytokines or hormones — it would not be acceptable for a vaccine to induce a life-long block (unlike a malaria vaccine, for example, where a lifelong block would be ideal).

These might be particularly useful in developing countries, say the authors. Because prophylaxis with vaccines is already a familiar concept, there should be no problem with patients' compliance, and judicious partnerships between public and private organisations could mean the vaccines are produced cheaply.

This book examines African science and technology policies, using a number of case studies from different sectors and countries. The key theme is that technology is central to development. The authors' stress that African countries must create an enabling macroeconomic environment, combined with effective technology policies, if the continent is to develop its own technological capabilities. The interaction between these two should facilitate technological learning, the building of appropriate institutions and effective technological management for industry and agriculture, both of which are important sources of income and employment in much of sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper argues that conventional approaches to development and industrialisation are not appropriate for analysing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa because they disregard domestic technological progress and learning efforts.

Instead, the author suggests, a new approach based on innovation system creation, is needed for economic diversification and poverty reduction. This should focus on developing human capital, physical infrastructure and formal institutions to ensure that firms in sub-Saharan Africa can acquire, adapt and change technology.

This paper examines the accumulation of technological capabilities through interactive learning between foreign firms in South Africa and local businesses. It asks how collaborative learning can help develop technological capability and how it can be encouraged in South African industry.

The authors stress the role of trade policies in opening up the South African market, which has led to restructured industrial networks as firms improve or close down in the face of foreign competition. They conclude that the experience and capability of local multinational subsidiaries are key determinants of collaborative learning and that, although institutional support in South Africa is lacking, initiatives undertaken by individual firms can enhance learning among local businesses.

This article looks at the factors affecting the technological development and export performance in a sample of garment enterprises in Mauritius.

It reviews the literature on technological capabilities in developing countries and examines market-oriented policies and firm performance, using an econometric analysis to identify the characteristics of successful enterprises.

The author concludes that it is large firms with strong technical manpower, high training expenditures and external technical assistance that have led export growth in the industry. Foreign ownership is also thought to have a positive effect on export performance.

This paper examines the role of North-South partnerships in building scientific and technological capabilities in Africa. It reviews current definitions of North-South collaborations, provides new thinking on what such partnership's objectives should be, and presents case studies illustrating how partnerships in Africa have been developed on the ground.

The author stresses the importance of organisations beyond those involved in research and education and makes policy recommendations based on the evidence presented.

This article evaluates scientific and technological capabilities in sub-Saharan Africa. It also reviews past and present capacity building initiatives at national and regional scales, highlighting the enabling and limiting factors of both. The author asks what lessons can be learnt from previous efforts and discusses the implications for the region's policymakers.

The author draws a bleak picture of sub-Saharan scientific and technological capacity, concluding that the region has not developed the capabilities it needs to compete in the global economy.

This working paper examines science and technology capacity building in Africa through international partnerships.

It presents success cases, including the Biosciences East and Central Africa centre of excellence, the African Economics Research Consortium and the East Coast Fever Vaccine Project, among others. The authors discuss the implications of such initiatives for new interventions to develop capabilities in Africa. One conclusion is the need to "focus on innovation and the shaping of social and economic need, not on the 'push' of science and technology alone".

This paper maps African countries' knowledge base through patent applications and publications. It shows South Africa as academically, and technically, the strongest country of the continent. The number of publications is growing in other African countries, but patenting remains limited all-round.

The paper ends on a positive note, arguing that African countries already possess the basis for knowledge-driven development.

This paper looks at how private support institutions influence the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in sub-Saharan Africa. It examines the factors stimulating the development of such institutions, as well as the approach's limitations and the policy implications.

The authors argue that sub-Saharan African SMEs deal with market failures and weak public institutions by developing private governance systems in the form of long-term business networks. The support provided by these networks raises the technological performance of network 'insiders'. But they also impact local firms outside the network, who have little access to productive resources and become excluded from business transactions.

The authors recommend policy reform to encourage cooperation between firms, mitigate the adverse effects of networks on local companies and develop formal institutions to help govern market exchange.

This article, by Harvard University's Calestous Juma, presents the case for a new approach to economic development in Africa focusing on the role of knowledge as a basis for growth.

Juma says that implementing such a vision means developing infrastructure, investing in technological capabilities, fostering business development and increasing Africa's participation in global trade.