Jean-Claude Baraka Munyaka, Olivier Gallay, Edward Mutandwa, Lolemtum Joseph Timu · 8 authors
Climate change continues to undermine agricultural productivity and livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa, where smallholder, rain-fed systems predominate. Kenya and Zimbabwe, representing contrasting decentralized and centralized adaptation systems, provide insights into how institutional design shapes agricultural resilience. This study conducts a comparative institutional analysis of climate change adaptation across four dimensions: land tenure, governance structures, access to inputs and resources, and community-based support. Using a systematic literature review (2000–2025), bibliometric mapping, and a Composite Institutional Adaptation Index (CIAI), the analysis examines how policies and local institutions interact to shape adaptive capacity. Findings indicate that Kenya's devolved governance facilitates local innovation through County Climate Change Funds, while Zimbabwe's centralized approach promotes policy coherence but constrains local autonomy. In both contexts, tenure security, equitable input access, and integration of cooperatives, traditional leaders, and women's groups emerge as critical determinants of resilience. The study situates these findings within debates on adaptation finance and governance, including Locally Led Adaptation, Green Climate Fund support, and CAADP implementation. It concludes that effective climate adaptation requires multi-scalar governance systems that integrate formal and informal institutions, align finance with local priorities, and embed learning within agricultural policy.
Aim: This study investigates the use of bitcoin by nonviolent resistance campaigns to counter state financial censorship, a topic underrepresented in academic literature. Method: This study is designed as descriptive basic research with its methodological approach as case studies. The study presents a global dataset of 93 financial censorship events by government authorities from 1981 to 2023, encompassing the first global dataset of nonviolent campaigns that have employed bitcoin. Two nonviolent campaigns that utilised bitcoin are examined in detail: the Feminist Coalition’s EndSARS protest and the Freedom Convoy’s Covid-19 mandate protest. Additionally, the study explores the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice’s use of bitcoin despite not facing financial censorship. Results: Both the Feminist Coalition and the Freedom Convoy adopted bitcoin immediately following financial censorship events, allowing them to add significant contributions to their funds. Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice experienced limited impact from using bitcoin. The results suggest that bitcoin has supported nonviolent campaigns, particularly in response to financial censorship. Conclusion: This study shows how (a) nonviolent campaigns have used bitcoin against financial censorship, for private donations, and for alternative means for funding; (b) bitcoin is a nonviolent tool with many features and functions similar to previous nonviolent tools and tactics involving money; (c) bitcoin can be of great interest for human rights activists and NGOs, illustrating how misconceptions regarding its association with illegal activities should be reconsidered. On the contrary, this study illustrates how bitcoin enhances personal autonomy and serves as a form of resistance against financial censorship by enabling borderless, censorship-resistant, and permissionless transactions.
From the Inside:The Colonial Film Unit and the Beginning of the End Tom Rice (bio) In January 1948 the British Film Institute organized a conference entitled "The Film in Colonial Development." While speakers at the conference trotted out, as the journal West Africa termed it, "the old rusty arguments about primitive, illiterate peoples … ad nauseam," they also acknowledged a shift in colonial film policy that was clearly closely aligned to broader political developments.1 "Throughout our Colonial Office policy we are working at one main thing," explained K. W. Blackburn, the Director of Information Services at the Colonial Office, "trying to teach the people of the Colonies to run the show themselves and doing precisely that thing in the film world as in every other field."2 Speaking at the conference, John Grierson further outlined the need to create "a genuine African Unit that can work with native units in other colonies," what he described as a "Colonial Film Unit with true regard for decentralization and the part which natives will play in it."3 The conference marks a public shift in colonial film policy, revealing at a moment when the British government was outlining concurrent changes in its political strategies toward Africa. It represents a moment of transition, one marked by uncertainty surrounding decentralization and the alacrity and extent to which power would be transferred. The discussions address the position, function, and structure of the Colonial Film Unit (CFU) and, as throughout the history of the CFU, these film policies were intricately connected to greater political changes. When the CFU began in 1939, under the aegis of the Ministry of Information (MOI), it sought to produce "propaganda" films encouraging African audiences, exemplified by its first production, Mr. English at Home (dir. Gordon Hales, 1940, Great Britain). After the war, the role of the CFU began to change in ways that often mirrored the broader processes of decolonization. At the start of 1946, the CFU sent units to East and West Africa. Now funded by the Colonial Development and Welfare Act and under the direction of the Films Division of the Central Office of Information (COI), the CFU made instructional films for African audiences, as practical [End Page 107] instruction replaced more general imperial propaganda. By 1948, the CFU was increasingly looking to take production (and with it expenditure) away from London and into the colonies. The Home Unit now accounted for no more than twenty percent of the CFU's output and was financed separately as an allied service from the vote of the COI. The increasing marginalization of the Home Unit is indicative then of this shift in film policy, which closely mirrored changes in political policy.4 The Home Unit serves to connect the traditional functions and structure of the CFU with its ultimate ambitions. Its role in filming Africans brought over to London may appear anachronistic within the context of an administrative and film policy that was increasingly looking away from London and towards the colonies. Yet, in filming a series of conferences, tours, and public exhibitions, these Home Unit productions reveal some of the ways in which the Colonial Office visualized Britain's changing relationship with Africa and, more significantly, sought to articulate these impending changes to an African audience. The films depict African sportsmen (Nigerian Footballers in England, 1949), musicians (Colonial Cinemagazine 9, 1947), and leaders (An African Conference in London, 1948). They celebrate British interest in the empire (Colonial Month, 1949) and show social and political events that sought to challenge popular perceptions of African political life. Yet, in their largely traditional formal structure, which defined London through its landmarks, institutions, and repeated references to the royal family, as the ideological center from which the empire could be controlled and contained, the films reveal the still tentative and reactionary nature of the British government's moves toward decolonization. The films of the Home Unit thus provide a starting point when examining these shifts within colonial film and political policy. In showing official events and tours, they reveal some of the ways in which the Colonial Office and the COI sought to promote and represent a reconfigured empire to the British public and...
Nisha Bhat, Peter H. Kilmarx, Freeman Dube, Albert Manenji · 6 authors
BACKGROUND: We conducted a case study of the Zimbabwe National AIDS Trust Fund ('AIDS Levy') as an approach to domestic government financing of the response to HIV and AIDS. METHODS: Data came from three sources: a literature review, including a search for grey literature, review of government documents from the Zimbabwe National AIDS Council (NAC), and key informant interviews with representatives of the Zimbabwean government, civil society and international organizations. FINDINGS: The literature search yielded 139 sources, and 20 key informants were interviewed. Established by legislation in 1999, the AIDS Levy entails a 3% income tax for individuals and 3% tax on profits of employers and trusts (which excluded the mining industry until 2015). It is managed by the parastatal NAC through a decentralized structure of AIDS Action Committees. Revenues increased from inception to 2006 through 2008, a period of economic instability and hyperinflation. Following dollarization in 2009, annual revenues continued to increase, reaching US$38.6 million in 2014. By policy, at least 50% of funds are used for purchase of antiretroviral medications. Other spending includes administration and capital costs, HIV prevention, and monitoring and evaluation. Several financial controls and auditing systems are in place. Key informants perceived the AIDS Levy as a 'homegrown' solution that provided country ownership and reduced dependence on donor funding, but called for further increased transparency, accountability, and reduced administrative costs, as well as recommended changes to increase revenue. CONCLUSIONS: The Zimbabwe AIDS Levy has generated substantial resources, recently over US$35 million per year, and signals an important commitment by Zimbabweans, which may have helped attract other donor resources. Many key informants considered the Zimbabwe AIDS Levy to be a best practice for other countries to follow.
Over the years there has been an increase in the number of bank failures in both centralized and decentralized economies (Saunders, 1994; Williams, 1995; The Economist, 1992; European Bank of Reconstruction, 1993). Internal reasons given for the bank failures include reckless lending, corruption, non-use of prudent classification risk assessment methods, fraud and management deficiencies. External factors such as deregulation; lack of information among bank customers; homogeneity of the banking business, connections among banks do cause bank failure. For centrally planned economies government and political interference in the banking operations and policies also contribute to bank failure. Tanzania, which until recently was characterized by a centrally planned economy, and the government having majority (51%) share holding in parastatals and banks also experienced bank failure in form of non-performing assets (NPAs). In Tanzania, bank policies reflected government directives and policies as well as political motives. Due to the dual government ownership of the bank and the parastatals, bank lending policies, procedures and regulations favored parastatal firms and agricultural marketing boards. For example, at the end of 1998, out of 78% NBC loan portfolio the majority went to parastatals and cooperative unions, with only 3% going to private firms. The majority of parastatals and cooperative unions were frequent loss makers and financially distressed. For continued existence they had to depend on the government subvention, which proved to be a heavy burden to the government. As a result, when the parastatals were experiencing financial difficulties and unable to pay the bank loans, the government solved the problem by directing the National bank of Commerce (NBC), the only commercial bank, to offer loans to the troubled parastatals and cooperative unions. By 1991, due to increased lending to financial distressed parastatals and cooperative unions, the NBC suffered large non-performing loans (NPAs) equal to 70% of the total bank NPAs. Considering the high rate of NPAs suffered by NBC, this paper has tried to show that government and political interventions and the non-use of prudent credit scoring methods had contributed to the NBC failure. African Journal of Finance and Management Vol.9(1) 2000: 14-30
Abstract Since Zimbabwe won its independence in 1980, the country's leaders have embarked on an ambitious programme of decentralization and local government reform. At the same time, urban conditions in the country have become increasingly difficult. This paper examines major aspects of urban local government finances in this environment of reform and growing fiscal pressures, with special reference to the experience of Harare City Council. It is argued that some relative successes have been recorded, although a number of undesirable elements of colonial practices and various fiscal problem persist.