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It is often claimed that the choice of a "state-farm line" was forced upon the Mozambican Government by the disruption of production occurring in the wake of the Portuguese exodus. While there is some truth in this, this paper will seek to show that the decision also rested on certain assumptions about what crops should be given priority and upon a particularly oversimplified conception of agricultural "modernization". The paper will also consider briefly some of the effects of centralized physical planning in exacerbating the problems

AbstractEffective flood risk management (FRM) requires a mix of policy instruments that reduces, shares, and manages flood risk. The social acceptability of these policy instruments—the degree of public support or opposition to their use—is an important consideration when designing an optimal mix to achieve FRM objectives. This paper examines public attitudes toward FRM policy instruments based on a national survey of Canadians living in high-risk areas. Respondents were asked their views on flood maps, disaster assistance, flood insurance, flood risk disclosure and liability, and property buyouts. The results indicate that all five policy instruments have high social acceptability, but they must be calibrated to ensure access to flood risk information and achieve a fair distribution of FRM costs among key stakeholders.

Low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) are increasing investments in early childhood development programs, including early childhood education. As programs reach scale, there is increasing demand for evidence on impacts of investments. Little work to date has examined capacity required to effectively use data at scale in LMIC, including opportunities and barriers to integrating data into ongoing program implementation and tracking child development and quality of services at scale. Below, we outline the rationale and approach of the Consortium for Pre-primary Data and Measurement in Sub-Saharan Africa, focused on building capacity for data-driven decision-making in early childhood systems. Themes from the first phase include the importance of building diverse groups of stakeholders to define priorities for data and measurement, the need for coordinated and strategic investments in data and measurement, and the value of long-term investments in government/civil society/university partnerships to generate locally relevant data on early childhood education.

This paper explores the experiences and support needs of British Pakistani families of prisoners through in-depth interviews with six family members of different prisoners: four males and two females, ranging between 18 and 40 years. Key findings are that British Pakistani family members of prisoners experienced the Criminal Justice System as culturally inappropriate and insensitive, raising questions of direct, indirect and institutional racism. Furthermore, family members were more likely to access support if criminal justice and support services staff were drawn from the wider British Pakistani community, but felt hindered from doing so if those staff were thought to have personal relationships to the families' own local communities.

AbstractThe attainment of self‐regulatory skills during the toddler years is an understudied issue, especially among low‐income children. The present study used growth modeling to examine the change over time and the final status in children's abilities to self‐regulate, in a sample of 2,441 low‐income children aged 14 to 36 months. Positive growth in their self‐regulation occurred between 14 and 36 months, but individual variation was observed in both the growth rates and final status. Children who showed high degrees of negativity at 14, 24 and 36 months grew at slower rates than other children. Boys and children high in negativity had lower scores in self‐regulation at 36 months than girls and children with low negativity, whereas higher quality mother–child interactions at 14 and 24 months were associated with better self‐regulation at 36 months. The results suggest that some children may be at risk for developing problems in regulation because of mother–child interaction patterns and child characteristics such as high negativity.