The impact of saving with mobile money transfer technology on the livelihoods of rural wage-earning women: a case study in Maragua District, Kenya.

Masters in Development Studies. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College 2015.Information and communication technologies have been shown to potentially aid in leveraging financial inclusion among low-income groups. This study investigates whether mobile money transfer technologies can be utilised by women in an empowering way within rural agricultural settings. Through a case study focusing on rural women in the agricultural Kenyan context, the research explores whether the savings mechanism offered by mobile money transfer technologies is being utilised. Guided by a qualitative research approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 purposively selected women in the Gakoigo sub-location in the Maragua district, of Central Province, Kenya, some of whom used mobile money transfer technologies and others who did not. The Choice Framework was applied to the findings gathered in order to provide an in-depth and holistic understanding of how mobile money transfer technologies provided women engaged in rural wage labour access to new financial options. The findings show that some of the choices made by these women, including the usage of both formal and informal savings, complements their current financial practice, as well as the achievements attained as a result this choice. The study finds that although mobile money transfer technologies do benefit women who make use of mobile savings, pre-existing policies have formed structures within institutions and organisations which do not cater for the needs of rural women. For this reason, these policies prevent women whose livelihoods depend on the agricultural sector from exerting their full potential to use mobile phones as a saving tool. Informal methods of saving, such as Rotating Service and Credit Associations therefore continue to be used as a preferred method of saving amongst these rural Kenyan women

Early childhood development and South Africa: a literature review.

This work is based on the research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant No 71220). The work was also produced with the assistance of the Programme to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development (PSPPD Phase II) a partnership between the Presidency, the Republic of South Africa and the European Union under the project addressing the poverty and inequality challenge, grant for Informal Early Childhood Development Centres a new area based approach for improved and up-scaled ECD services for the urban poor. The contents of this work are the sole responsibility of the authors and can in no way be taken to reflect neither the views of the European Union nor the National Research Foundation.Early Childhood Development (ECD) has become a priority sector within South Africa, particularly in respect to ensuring equity and high quality of care for the youngest members (ages 0 to 5 years old) of the population. South Africa is also burdened with high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment as well as unequal levels of service delivery and public provision of infrastructure. Given the recent development and request for feedback on the provisional ECD policy, there would be a benefit to examine the current state of this draft policy, its respective white papers, and its national and international mandates as well as to understand their relationship to South Africa’s context of poverty. Furthermore, child poverty remains a major concern in the country, particularly in respect to the geographical and living conditions where children live, study and play. This paper wishes to bring to light literature on poverty and, from a multi-dimensional lens, understand how early childhood development provision, whether it be through its programming or the physical centres themselves, are affecting the lives of children, particularly those within households living in urban poverty. ECD are intended to provide children with a safe facility to stay and with some standards of conditions which would allow children to learn and improve their skills. ECD also provides parents with the ability to leave their children in safe places so that they can work or learn. The proximity of ECD centres, their costs, the staffing and their physical conditions influence the choices of parents to leave their children at an ECD centre. The ECD centres within informal settlements are also explored in this paper, given the need for further understanding of such physical infrastructures within a municipality’s planning. Planning for ECD centres within the ‘grey areas’, such as informal settlements or those located in traditional land, can be problematic, especially for ECD managers or principals in gaining access to much needed ECD resources through the appropriate departments. Those parents who have limited and erratic income stream are provided with inadequate choices which may put a mother and/or father in difficult situations of child care. The ECD policy would benefit poor households, particularly those living within informal settlements, through understanding the conditions of the poor and their limitation of choices in ECD centres. In understanding their limitation, government could help provide a more meaningful policy which caters to their needs

A snapshot of early childhood care and education in South Africa: institutional offerings, challenges and recommendations

This article draws from a research report on the Project for Inclusive Early Childhood Care and Education (PIECCE), which surveyed attitudes, training strategies, materials and entrance requirements across most relevant higher education institutions (HEIs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and technical and vocational education and training colleges (TVETs). The aim of this study was to identify what institutions were offering in terms of training teachers in the birth-to-four age group, to identify the challenges and provide recommendations based on the findings