The Commonwealth

Cash on Delivery

Nancy Birdsall

Foreign aid has no shortage of critics. Some argue that it undermines development and inherently does more harm than good; others insist that aid must be seriously reformed to work properly. Cash on Delivery (COD) Aid proposes serious reform to make aid work well by forcing accountability, aligning the objectives of funders and recipients, and sharing information about what works.Public and private aid can improve lives in poor countries, but the willingness of taxpayers and private funders to finance aid programs depends more than ever on showing results. COD Aid is a funding mechanism that hinges on results. At its core is a contract between funders and recipients that stipulates a fixed payment for each unit of confirmed progress toward an agreed-upon goal. Once the contract is struck, the funder takes a hands-off approach, allowing the recipient the freedom and responsibility to achieve the goal on its own. Payment is made only after progress toward the goal is independently verified by a third party. At all steps, a COD Aid program is remarkably transparent: the contract, the amount of progress made, and the payment are disseminated publicly to highlight the credibility of the arrangement and improve accountability to the public. COD Aid is a new approach to foreign aid, but one that complements other aid programs and would ultimately encourage funders and recipients to use existing resources more efficiently.Cash On Delivery Aid: A New Approach to Foreign Aid explains the approach in detail and investigates its application in one sector: education. More specifically, the authors show how foreign aid agencies could use COD Aid to help developing countries achieve universal primary school education. The example illustrates how to deal with potential challenges of the approach—challenges that are no greater than those of traditional aid—and includes model term sheets for contracts that could be used for any COD Aid agreement.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9781933286600
• Publication Date: Apr 2011
• Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5-7 Working Days

Oil to Cash

Todd Moss

What should a country do if it suddenly discovers oil and gas? How should it spend the subsequent cash windfall? How can it protect against corruption? How can citizens truly benefit from national wealth? With many of the world's poorest and most fragile states suddenly joining the ranks of oil and gas producers, these are pressing policy questions. Oil to Cash explores one option that may help avoid the so-called resource curse: just give the money directly to citizens. A universal, transparent, and regular cash transfer would not only provide a concrete benefit to regular people, but would also create powerful incentives for citizens to hold their government accountable. Oil to Cash details how and where this idea could work and how policymakers can learn from the experiences with cash transfers in places like Mexico, Mongolia, and Alaska.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9781933286693
• Publication Date: Jun 2015
• Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5-7 Working Days

Exclusion, Gender and Education

Maureen A. Lewis

Girls have achieved remarkable increases in primary schooling over the past decade, yet millions are still not in school. In their previous book, Inexcusable Absence, Maureen A. Lewis and Marlaine E. Lockheed reported the startling new finding that nearly threequarters of the girls who are not in school belong to ethnic, religious, linguistic, racial, or other minorities. In this companion volume, they further analyze the determinants of school enrollment, completion, and learning in seven countries: the highly heterogeneous populations of Laos, China, Pakistan, India, and Guatemala and the homogeneous populations of Bangladesh and Tunisia. The authors find that in ethnically and linguistically diverse populations, minority groups—minority girls in particular— lag significantly behind the majority population in school attendance, while highly homogeneous populations like Bangladesh and Tunisia have successfully integrated girls into school on a par with boys. By increasing understanding about the major impediments to universal primary education, Exclusion, Gender and Education provides valuable new knowledge to those who are working to bring gender equity to the education systems of poor countries.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9781933286228
• Publication Date: Oct 2007
• Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5-7 Working Days

Africa's Private Sector

Vijaya Ramachandran

Why is business performance lagging in Africa? To provide answers, this volume focuses on the day-to-day problems that private sector managers and entrepreneurs there encounter. Through enterprise surveys conducted in several African countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, these businesspeople identify poor infrastructure—particularly the lack of a reliable source of power—as a huge constraint on private sector activity.Politics also plays a key role in limiting the success of African businesses. Many countries there have private sectors that are ethnically segmented or dominated by ethnic minorities or both. Segmented networks in already sparse economic environments limit competition, encourage an ambivalent attitude toward facilitating a good business environment, and constrain the growth of firms outside the dominant network. Consequently, Africa has yet to see the emergence of a broad-based business class. Africa's Private Sector identifies several solutions to address both the infrastructure and political economy constraints hampering business growth in Africa.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9781933286280
• Publication Date: Jan 2009
• Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5-7 Working Days

Beyond Lending

Guillermo Perry

When he began this book in early 2008, Guillermo Perry argued that developing countries remained highly vulnerable to external risks such as commodity price declines, capital flow reversals, and natural disasters. The economic crisis that has since ensued confirmed Perry's analysis. It has also made his proposal more important than ever: multilateral development banks (MDBs) should move beyond lending to provide innovative risk-management tools for developing countries to manage volatility. The risk that MDBs will fall into complacency as the short-term demand for traditional loans increases during the crisis should not deter innovations to ensure long-term stability.Contents1. Causes and Consequences of High Volatility in Developing Countries2. The Role of Financial Insurance and Hedging3. Dealing with Liquidity Shocks and the Procyclicality of Private Capital Flows4. Dealing with Currency Risks5. Dealing with Commodity Price, Terms of Trade, and Output Risks6. Dealing with Natural Disaster Risks7. Why Multilateral Development Bank Practices Are So Far from Their Potential8. An Agenda Going Forward

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9781933286327
• Publication Date: May 2009
• Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5-7 Working Days

Due Diligence

David Roodman

The idea that small loans can help poor families build businesses and exit poverty has blossomed into a global movement. The concept has captured the public imagination, drawn in billions of dollars, reached millions of customers, and garnered a Nobel Prize. Radical in its suggestion that the poor are creditworthy and conservative in its insistence on individual accountability, the idea has expanded beyond credit into savings, insurance, and money transfers, earning the name microfinance. But is it the boon so many think it is?Readers of David Roodman's openbook blog will immediately recognize his thorough, straightforward, and trenchant analysis. Due Diligence, written entirely in public with input from readers, probes the truth about microfinance to guide governments, foundations, investors, and private citizens who support financial services for poor people. In particular, it explains the need to deemphasize microcredit in favor of other financial services for the poor.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9781933286488
• Publication Date: Dec 2011
• Availability: Temporarily out of stock: Usually despatched in 14-18 days

Greenprint

Arvind Subramanian

Beleaguered by mutual recrimination between rich and poor countries, squeezed by the zero-sum arithmetic of a shrinking global carbon budget, and overtaken by shifts in economic and hence bargaining power between these countries, international cooperation on climate change has floundered. Given these three factors—which Arvind Subramanian and Aaditya Mattoo call the "narrative," "adding up," and "new world" problems—the wonder is not the current impasse; it is, rather, the belief that progress might be possible at all.In this book, the authors argue that any chance of progress must address each of these problems in a radically different way. First, the old narrative of recrimination must cede to a narrative based on recognition of common interests. Second, leaders must shift the focus away from emissions cuts to technology generation. Third, the old "cash-for-cuts" approach must be abandoned for one that requires contributions from all countries calibrated in magnitude and form to their current level of development and future prospects.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9781933286679
• Publication Date: Feb 2013
• Availability: Temporarily out of stock: Usually despatched in 14-18 days

A Better Globalization

Kemal Dervis

The huge costs of armed conflict, the great challenge of state failure, and the slow pace of international actions to address world poverty all point to weaknesses in the global institutional framework and the need for much more effective international cooperation. In this book, Kemal Dervis argues that it is time to build a new international governance structure, breaking away from a system that reflects the post World War II world toward one that is appropriate to the realities and requirements of the 21st century. He proposes a reform of the international institutional architecture based on high-level governance in both the political and economic domains by a renewed and modernized United Nations. Navigating between careful realism and bold idealism, he formulates a coherent vision encompassing both institutional reform and new ideas for policies supported by the specialized institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the UN agencies themselves, and regional institutions such as the regional development banks. In this plea for "better" globalization, Dervis proposes that, under the legitimizing umbrella of the UN, the specialized institutions deal with the deep causes of the obstacles to poverty reduction and instability rather than their immediate manifestations. He recognizes the great potential that more and freer trade can have for accelerating growth throughout the world. He also stresses, however, that for this potential to be unleashed, the hearts and minds of people must be won by transforming not only the WTO framework but the entire governance of the international economic system into something that is perceived as more legitimate and more responsive to the concerns of the developing world as well as wealthy and creditor nations.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9780815717638
• Publication Date: Mar 2005
• Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5-7 Working Days

Youth and Development in Africa

Report of a youth seminar that brought together experts in the field of youth organisation and training in Commonwealth Africa to share ideas and experiences. The seminar considered the problem of transition from a traditional to a modern society, and how to equip young people with the skills, attitudes and opportunities to make the transference.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9780850920239
• Publication Date: Jan 1970
• Availability: Temporarily out of stock: Usually despatched in 14-18 days

Without Women No Development

Madhuri Shah

This handbook presents fifteen case studies on the non-formal education of women from Commonwealth countries in the Asia region: Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. Each section is accompanied by an introduction which highlights the major points of the case studies of the country.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9780850922837
• Publication Date: Jan 1986
• Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5 Working Days

Village Level Aquaculture Development in Africa

H.R. King

The current status and development of small-scale village based aquaculture, particularly fish farming, in Africa, has been the subject of some discussion in recent years. The ensuing conclusions and recommendations were crystallized in a 10-point Resolution on Village Aquaculture Development in Africa.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9780850923278
• Publication Date: Jan 1988
• Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5 Working Days

A Guide to the Medicinal Plants of Coastal Guyana

Deborah A. Lachman-White

This book describes and illustrates plants used medicinally in coastal Guyana. It includes entries for 173 native and naturalised Guyanese plants, as well as a few cultivated species. Of these, 148 are illustrated by line drawings, the majority of which have been created by local artists.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9780850923872
• Publication Date: Jan 1992
• Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5 Working Days

Compendium of Election Laws, Practices and Cases of Selected Commonwealth Countries, Volume 2, Part 1

Carl W. Dundas

This compendium presents the constitutional provisions and election laws of a number of selected Commonwealth countries in a user-friendly way.

• Format: Hardback
• ISBN: 9780850925333
• Publication Date: Jan 1998
• Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5 Working Days

Growing Good Tropical Trees for Planting

K.A. Longman

This Manual is the third in a series of readable, well illustrated handbooks about propagating and planting tropical trees. The procedures described in this series of Manuals may be used with the majority of woody species to provide diverse seedling or clonal mixtures.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9780850925357
• Publication Date: Jan 1998
• Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5 Working Days

Compendium of Election Laws, Practices and Cases of Selected Commonwealth Countries, Volume 2, Part 2

Carl W. Dundas

This compendium presents the constitutional provisions and election laws of a number of selected Commonwealth countries in a user-friendly way.

• Format: Hardback
• ISBN: 9780850925753
• Publication Date: Jan 1998
• Availability: Temporarily out of stock: Usually despatched in 14-18 days

Gender Mainstreaming in Finance

Gita Sen

Gender Mainstreaming in Finance has been produced to assist governments and other stakeholders in mainstreaming gender in the finance sector.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9780850926002
• Publication Date: Jun 1999
• Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5 Working Days