"Economic competitiveness" is at the top of national, regional and global political and economic agendas. Several countries in all regions of the world have established policies and institutions devoted to economic competitiveness, including in developing and transition countries. This leads to the question of how to define national economic…

Development as a growth process is what every person, nation and state seeks from day to day. The issues of development and better welfare are generally important to the average man and woman, especially in developing countries like Nigeria. Nigeria and other African countries need to instigate the principles and strategies that will bring about…

Higher education institutions seem to be becoming increasingly flexible with different functions. Most universities' mission statements involve teaching, research and service, but while the teaching and research missions are clearly defined and located within certain areas of the university activities, service is less clear and more ambiguous,…

Due to the increasing number of children and youth dropping out of school, the Malawi government came up with a strategy to address their learning needs through non-formal means in its Education for All (EFA) plan. This resulted in the introduction of a three-year cycle pilot programme known as Complementary Basic Education (CBE). Funded by GTZ, a…

The paper examines e-government development in Africa. This study is based on the Cape Gateway project in South Africa, a leading e-government initiative on the continent. We observe that African countries have jumped on the e-government band wagon by looking mostly at the benefits without a clear risk assessment. We argue that African countries…

Health and education are two important issues in developing economies. Field and natural experiments provided me with great opportunities for identifying the effects of health insurance and incentive on doctors' prescribing behaviors and the peer influences among students. The first chapter examines whether doctors write more expensive…

Social enterprise and fair trade are seen increasingly as redefining capitalist relationships through revaluing social impact and ownership in enterprise activities. One of the dilemmas in such activities is the tension between operating a viable and commercially-sustainable enterprise and maximising social and developmental impacts. This article…

This article addresses the context and challenges of small island developing states, focusing particularly on Cape Verde. After a general discussion of the characteristics of small island developing states, several development challenges such as poverty, unemployment and migratory issues specific to Cape Verde are evoked. Despite a period of…

This article argues that given its structural conditions, development aid bears a particularly heavy burden of learning and accountability. Unfortunately, however, the organization of evaluation guarantees that evaluations will be inconsistent and it creates incentives for positive bias. This article presents evidence from organizational studies…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to examine the teacher's career in developing countries based on a review of studies published in refereed journals of comparative education and of teaching education, and to suggest further lines of research on teaching and teachers in these countries. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based partially on…

Numerous cross-cultural studies have focused on certain aspects of urban housing conditions and their social consequences. However, most data on housing satisfaction is restricted to Western countries. Relatively little comparison has been made between these findings and those in developing areas where rapid urbanization is occurring and where…

In recent years the two concepts of economic development and technological advancement have become entwined so that they have, in many cases, come to mean the same thing. For countries seeking economic development through engagement with the Information Economy, policies supporting technological development claim privileged positions in national…

Literacy policy and programming in developing countries continues to be influenced by the assumption that without literacy, an adult is unable to function on an equal basis in society and that an individual can be easily categorised as either literate or illiterate. Although this has led to prioritisation of primary schooling over adult literacy…

In the socio-economic context of Bangladesh, involvement of women in agriculture is very important. It would be easier to control rural-urban migration by engaging women in agricultural activities to a greater extent. Women play a vital role in agricultural production throughout the Bangladesh, making a significant contribution to the basic…

In light of the recently developed European Union (EU) Biofuels Strategy, the literature is reviewed to examine (a) the coherency of biofuel production with the EU nonindustrial vision of agriculture, and (b) given its insufficient land base, the implications of a proposed bioenergy pact to grow biofuel crops in the developing world to meet EU…