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This paper provides an account of migrant youths' experiences of access to education through a social initiative-driven school and highlights how these youths developed pathways of aspirations to work for the good of the community. In doing so, the paper also provides a lens to the issues of migration in Southern Africa and a context in which to understand how collective action (agency) for education can deeply transform marginalised migrants' aspirations and offer spaces of equality and agency for change. Drawing on data collected over a span of three years, the paper aims to illustrate how Albert Street School (Authority obtained to use original school name), established as a part of grass-root collective action, supports and impacts on migrants' capabilities and how these capabilities lead to aspirations for public good. The narrative methodology used to understand migrant youths' lives and experiences illustrates that collective capabilities have the potential to address different forms of disadvantage and distribute diverse and incommensurable good to local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes 24 African census samples from 13 countries available via the African Integrated Census MicroData website to illustrate how microdata may be used to assess development and pinpoint basic human needs at local administrative levels over time. We calculate a Human Development Index-like measure for small administrative areas, where much of the responsibility lies for executing policies related to health, education and general well-being. The methodological proposals introduced in this paper are particularly pertinent for the case of Africa. While it is true that data for much of Africa is not appropriate for economic growth rates or per-capita income estimates, the analysis in this paper demonstrates that they are good enough for many other purposes. Indeed, a major aggravating problem that contributes to the “African statistical tragedy” is the lack of accessibility to existing census microdata. This paper aims to illustrate the usefulness of census microdata—which are vastly under-utilized in Africa—and hopefully contribute to make them more transparent and freely accessible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most social innovation (SI) work done in developing countries is carried out through development agencies that focus on initiating innovations and processes, and establishing institutions that cultivate a change-oriented mindset. I offer a general critique of that approach and I link that critique with my observations from 15 years living and working among rural indigenous people in West Africa. I suggest that, not only do much of the SI processes fail to show respect for the creativity and intelligence of indigenous people, they tend to come packaged with exogenous participatory processes, encourage scaling-up, and ignore innovation that is already occurring. These arguments set the stage for an examination of a system of innovation that I discovered operating in a Hausa village in Niger. This system not only challenges the most important theory explaining the adoption and spread of ideas, the diffusion of innovations, it also demonstrates how indigenous people in one of the poorest countries on earth are innovating without intervention or support from development agencies. I complete the paper by suggesting that in some cases more sensible SI can be facilitated by discovering and supporting indigenous processes of innovation rather than by focusing on initiating change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces Kohonen self-organizing maps to the scholarly discussion of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). We use data through the MDGs' approximate mid-point (2000–2008) to analyze three world regions: Africa, Asia and Latin America. We observe a handful of countries that showcase noteworthy progress, including Ghana, Senegal, China, Vietnam, India, and Brazil, and then examine more closely the three major regions of developing countries: Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Major statistical differences within Africa separate the northern and southern regions from the central, eastern and western regions. In contrast, Latin America and Asia are largely homogeneous in the MDG measures with the exceptions of Afghanistan, Haiti, and Bolivia, which lag far behind. The substantial differences between Africa and the other continents (and indeed within Africa itself) appear to be mainly attributable to deficiencies in education and information and communications technology infrastructure, both areas that are imperative for the achievement of other MDGs. The paper demonstrates self-organizing maps to be a useful tool in evaluating differential convergence over the three time periods under investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role can aspirations play in small-scale human development interventions? In this paper, we contribute to answering that question with both conceptual and empirical work. Aspirations can play at least two roles in small-scale human development interventions: the capabilities-selecting role and the agency-unlocking role. While aspirations also face the challenge of adaptation to adverse circumstances and unjust social structures, we argue that this challenge can be met by embedding the formulation and expression of aspirations within a setting of public discussion and awareness-raising activities, and that adaptation can be further countered by including a commitment to action. We then report on field research done in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town, South Africa, where a group of women went through a process of voicing, examining, and then realizing their aspirations. The action research confirms our theoretical hypotheses. We also do not find any evidence of adaptation of the women's aspirations, and argue that the absence of such adaptation might be a result of active capability selection, reflection, deliberation, and the exercise of agency throughout the action research programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]