Suchergebnisse

AbstractPromoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in particular, fiscal austerity measures have been extensively implemented across the world in the last decade as a policy prescription to address the impacts of economic shocks. Consequently, the implementation of austerity has engendered a vast body of austerity impact assessment literature in the Global North, in particular. Although austerity measures have been equally implemented (and longer) in Global South contexts, the same level of intellectual curiosity has not been dedicated to understanding the human and social costs of austerity in the Global South. To help fill this gap, this paper examines the implications of fiscal austerity for the delivery of two complementary programmes linked to Ghana's conditional cash transfer (CCT) — the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme. The paper adopts a qualitative design where semi‐structured interviews are conducted with (a) two LEAP officers, (b) two headteachers and (c) 35 LEAP beneficiaries in northern Ghana. The findings show that within the current context of fiscal austerity, mainly mediated through the government's commitment to "cut expenditures to the bone", the two complementary services have been unfunded and thus do not exist in practice. The non‐existence of complementary services has dire consequences for children's education as well as undermines Ghana's poverty reduction attempts through the implementation of the LEAP programme.

AbstractOn 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation declared COVID‐19 a global pandemic. Subsequently, governments worldwide implemented strict regimes of lockdowns and school closures to contain the transmission of the virus. Ghana's government on 15 March 2020 also announced a lockdown and closure of schools, lasting up till January 2021. Against this backdrop, the paper examined the implications of school closures on child labour in Ghana. Qualitative data for the study were collected between October 2020 to February 2021 in a small rural community in northern Ghana. Findings from 16 semi‐structured interviews with schoolchildren aged 8–13 years show how school closures have meant that children from contexts of poverty: (a) are driven into child labour as they are either forced to accompany their parents to work on farms or sell foodstuff by the roadside; and thus, ultimately (b) engage in no learning during the lockdown period.

AbstractFollowing the introduction of the concept of agency by the New Sociology of Childhood, the concept has dominated discourses about children's everyday lives. Nevertheless, little is known about schoolchildren's agency in their daily interactions with the service providers of Ghana's school feeding programme. Through this qualitative study, the paper provides empirical evidence to show how children in restrictive contexts exercise 'thin' agency in their interactions with frontline service providers, leading to significant improvements in the quality of services delivered to them. Consequently, the article questions Michael Lipsky's assumption that clients have minimal effect on the services delivered to them.

The latest round of fiscal austerity in Ghana has meant that the feeding rate paid to the service providers of Ghana's school feeding programme is both frozen and unrealistically low. Accordingly, service providers adopt discretionary coping strategies. This qualitative case study, therefore, explores the impacts of austerity on children's school engagement. Relying on semi-structured interviews with school children in two public primary schools, as well as two focus group discussions with the teachers in both schools, the study shows how the discretionary coping strategies adopted by the service providers impact school children's food security, which might lead to disinterest in classroom activities and increases in absenteeism and truancy.

AbstractGhana's economy faltered in 2012, culminating in the country requesting a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Typical of IMF financial assistance, the approval of this bailout was hinged on the government agreeing to implement some conditionalities. In fulfilment of the IMF conditionalities, the government in 2015 adopted fiscal austerity. Using Michael Lipsky's Street‐Level Bureaucrat conceptual framework, this paper investigates the implications of Ghana's fiscal austerity programme for the implementation of the country's school feeding programme. Specifically, the paper examines the coping strategies adopted by the service providers to endure the challenges of delivering the programme within the climate of austerity. The findings highlight how financial challenges can lead to inadequate service delivery, as the service providers adopt a host of discretionary practices such as compromising the quality of meals served, the delivery of cheaper‐to‐prepare diets and an inconsistent service delivery regime.

Starting in 2015, the government of Ghana implemented austerity as a response to economic challenges in the country. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to demonstrate how a political climate of austerity undermines the goal of linking local agricultural production to school feeding markets. The paper draws on one-on-one semi-structured in-depth interviews with 25 service providers and one expert from the international NGO SEND-Ghana to examine the implication of austerity for Ghana's home-grown school feeding programme. The findings reveal that austerity has meant that the actions and decisions of the service providers undermine the critical goal of linking the school feeding market to local agricultural production. Specifically, due to significant delays in reimbursing service providers for services delivered, the service providers are forced to deliver the programme by relying on credit purchases from the open market, rather than purchasing 80% of their foodstuff from the local smallholder farmers as required of them. Thus, Ghana might miss out on the development policy potential of stimulating local agricultural production through its connection to school feeding markets.

In this book, street-level bureaucracy scholars from South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America analyse the conditions that shape frontline work and citizens´ everyday experience of the state. Institutional factors such as political clientelism, resource scarcity, social inequality, job insecurity, and systemic corruption affect the way street-level bureaucrats enforce rules and implement policies. Inadvertently, they end up implementing inequities in citizens' access to rights and services —despite efforts to repair organisational deficiencies and broker relations between vulnerable citizens and a distant state. This book illuminates these realities and challenges and provides unique insights into critical themes such as resource scarcities, bureaucratic corruption, control practices and the complexities of dealing with vulnerable population groups