Six new publications from the Southern Voice

Southern Voice is pleased to announce the publications of the Southern Voice Occasional Papers (SVOP) 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. These papers seek to reinterpret research findings in the light of post 2015 agenda.

Southern Voice Occasional Paper 7: Looking Beyond Aid to Fund Africa’s Development

Dr. J. K.  Kwakye, IEA, Ghana

The paper calls on African countries to explore more intensely supplementary vehicles of development finance, including the national budget; domestic capital markets; remittances; other diaspora capital; foreign direct investment; future foreign exchange flows; and ‘reverse capital flight.’ The paper also makes the point that the post-2015 agenda goes beyond long-term finance and that, more importantly, it embraces a new global partnership and international cooperation.

Southern Voice Occasional Paper 8: Understanding the role of social exclusion in progress towards MDGs for the excluded groups

Nidhi S. Sabharwal, IIDS, India

The paper focuses on discrimination, inequality and poverty. It proposes to look deeper into the reasons for the gap between discriminated groups and ‘the rest’ to get some recommendations. The poor are not uniformly disadvantaged. Across most MDGs, the situation of the excluded groups is significantly worse than that of others. While, much of the poverty, hunger and deprivation of indigenous and excluded groups is the result of factors which are common to all poor, including those from excluded groups.

Southern Voice Occasional Paper 9: Is the Current Booming Growth in Africa Worth Celebrating? Some Evidence from Tanzania

Bitrina Diyamett and Musambya Mutambala, STIPRO, Tanzania

The paper finds a missing link in the relationship between growth and long term poverty reduction, which is perceived to have resulted from a premature structural transformation from agriculture to the service sectors which are less skill intensive and less employment-generating. As a way forward, the paper proposes an alternative policy focus for poverty reducing growth. Much of the emphasis has been put on normal structural transformation, towards more employment and skills enhancing manufacturing sector, and building associated technological capabilities around it.

Southern Voice Occasional Paper 10: The changing intersection of society and development goals: An examination aimed at improving policy-making

Shuvechha Khadka and Ajaya Dixit, ISET-Nepal, Nepal

The paper explores the links between the MDGs and Sustainable Development Goals. In addition, it examines the interconnection between climate vulnerability, water, sanitation and health in Nepal. The study seeks to interrogate these issues within a framework of sustainable livelihood conditions.

Southern Voice Occasional Paper 11: Sustainable Access For All: Building Sustainability into Universal Energy Access

Nihit Goyal, Sahil Ali and Shweta Srinivasan, CSSTP, India

This paper investigates whether the goal of universal energy access in the post-MDGs dialogue sufficiently addresses the challenges faced by the Southern countries. It argues that though the notion of energy access in the dialogue may be fairly comprehensive in tracking the current level of access, it does not provide sufficient insight into the ability of the energy system to sustain that level of access. In addition, an approach based on literature on risk assessment is proposed to incorporate ‘sustainability of access’ into the current energy goal.

Southern Voice Occasional Paper 12: Social Protection and MDGs in Sri Lanka: Implications for the Post-2015 Agenda

Ganga Tilakaratna, IPS, Srilanka

The paper highlights the role of social protection in achieving MDGs. The Sri Lankan experience demonstrates that social protection policies and programs carried out by the successive governments over decades have helped make substantial progress on many goals. The importance of social protection goes beyond MDGs. The issues of ageing population, Informalization of work, low female labor force participation and increasing vulnerability to shocks also stress the need for comprehensive social protection systems. Social protection has to be a key element of the post-2015 development agenda – either as a goal or as an instrument to achieve several goals.

Implementation Issues Concerning Post-2015 Development Agenda – Technical Briefings

Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Dhaka and Chair for Southern Voice on Post-MDG International Development Goals delivered two sets of interactive technical briefings organized by UNITAR for members of delegations and other government officials at the United Nations in New York (20 May, 2014) and in Geneva (22 May, 2014). He specifically spoke on implementation challenges of the post 2015 agenda elaborating on their financial and non-financial aspects. The overall objective of the briefings was to strengthen knowledge for evidence-based decision making in the formulation of the Post-2015 Development Agenda.