WIDE 3

Long-term Perspectives on Development Impacts in Rural Ethiopia: Stage 1 November 2009 - June 2010
Concept Note

Research objectives
Over the past six years significant changes in Ethiopia include high economic growth rates, expansion in services and political and governance reforms. The impact of these changes at local rural level is poorly understood; in particular the extent to which there are variations, by region, geographical area and community and by sector or issue, remains unclear. Rural communities are open complex systems whose workings are not well understood; little is known about (1) what actually happens when government interventions enter communities and (2) why sustainable development processes are launched in some contexts but not others.

With limited baseline information, understanding of cumulative community level effects of the numerous decentralised donor-supported government programmes instituted in the last six years is limited. In this research we address this knowledge gap. The main objective is to improve knowledge and understanding of what actually happened as donor-supported government policies designed at macro level were introduced into different types of rural community in Ethiopia between 2003 and 2009, with a view to assisting government(s) and donors to improve policy design, implementation processes, and monitoring and evaluation systems. Below we present the thesis Current research progress, but you can contribute to this field of research and also publish or participate in (online) conferences and engage in educational activities, finally you can turn to cheap ghostwriters for hire.

Research plan
We are doing this by returning to the WIDE2 rural communities to investigate the implementation and consequences of all development interventions since 2003, the year for which we have baseline data. At this stage we have funding from a group of donors in Ethiopia to conduct fieldwork in six of the twenty communities. For four of these (the rural DEEP sites) we are also making use of in-depth knowledge accumulated through seventeen months of multi-level research in 2004/5. In Stage 1 we are exploring the ways in which development interventions have affected the trajectories of these six communities experimenting with specially-designed research protocols and refining them for use in the other communities, including the remaining fourteen WIDE2 sites. We are sending one male and one female researcher to each site to ensure that women's experiences of ,and perspectives on, development interventions are properly represented. The final research report will be available in mid-2010.

Current research progress - February 17 2010
During the inception phase in November/December 2009 we produced four pieces of work as the first step in the research programme: 'Methodological Approach and Fieldwork Plan' view; 'Macro Level Policies, Programmes and Models entering Rural Communities 2003-9 view; 'Twenty Community Comparative Baseline 2002' view; 'Holistic Baselines' for each of the six Stage 1 communities. We also we organised small workshops and meetings with a range of donor staff involved in the different development sectors seeking guidance on key policy-related issues and questions. The wide response produced many ideas which have helped us to design the research instruments and a number of people have joined our worknet which we will be using to consult relevant donor experts as we move into analysis and write-up mode.

The fieldwork is being undertaken in two phases: Fieldwork1 between January 8 and 25 and Fieldwork2 between February 3 and 24. In the gap between we held a Debriefing Workshop with the Research Officers to identify important site-sepcific issues (some common to two or more sites) for follow-up in Phase 2.

Fieldwork1 contained five Modules and Fieldwork 2 contained 7 Modules:
WIDE3Stage1: Fieldwork1 Summary
Module 1: Wereda perspective on the kebele 1
Module 2: Kebele perspective on Development Interventions and the Wereda; Module 2.6: Site specific
Module 3: Community Trajectory 2003-9
Module 4: Community Experiences of Government Interventions - Men; Community Experiences of Government Interventions - Women
Module 5: Wereda perspective on the kebele 2
WIDE3Stage1: Fieldwork2 Summary
Module 6: The impact of development interventions on different kinds of household and their members: Household Head Module and Wife/Senior Woman Module
Module 7: The impact of development interventions on dependent adults and young people
Module 8: Organisations involved in, or affected by, development interventions
Module 9: Key development actors and their experiences of development interventions
Module 10: Two common issues: Gender relations in practice; HIV/AIDS and the impact of interventions
Module 11: Site specific follow-up: Tigray - Geblen; Amhara - Dinki and Yetmen; Oromia - Korodegaga and Turufe Kecheme; SNNP - Imdibir
Module 12: Research Officer topics and Modules - being designed in the field

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Updated: 17-Feb-2010