Africa's cities purchase much more food domestically than the continent imports or exports; they represent economic hope if rural and peri-urban producers learn to meet their particular food demands, including more meat, dairy, and processed foods. Increased efficiency will come with more onsite processing, contract enforcement, and distribution centers. Best practices from South Africa include the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market and Thohoyandou Spar Supermarket requiring their agents to purchase a share of their fresh vegetables from small growers. Efforts to strengthen regulation and raise standards must remember that the urban poor depend on public markets, the informal sector and "inferior" products.

Charles Cadwell, a University of Maryland expert on the political economy of reform in developing nations, the relationship of institutions to economic development, and the implementation of legal and judicial reforms, has joined the Urban Institute as the director of its International Activities Center.

The conceptual and legal framework for the development of an effective system of local governance in Pakistan was created in July 2001, and a review of the Local Government Ordinance of 2001 reveals that the rules and procedures to govern the process have been set in place. Yet, four and a half years into devolution, political decentralization has not been followed by adequate administrative and fiscal decentralization to ensure quality service delivery to the public. This report assesses the progress and challenges of effective and efficient service delivery in the health, education, and water sectors, local fiscal roles and responsibilities, and local government accountability and citizen participation under devolution. Conclusions presented in the report focus on "governance" issues impeding successful devolution. Many of the recommendations are aimed at donor organizations and several are already being addressed by ongoing USAID projects.

This paper presents an impact evaluation of an active labor market program operating in over a dozen Russian cities. The program provides job search assistance and significant financial and social services support to unemployed workers who are members of very poor families. It is of interest because of high success (job acquisition) rates previously documented. The analysis shows that participants are significantly more likely to find and retain a job than a control group of similar workers who registered at the local Employment Centers at the same time. On the other hand, these workers were found to take jobs paying significantly lower wages than the controls. Importantly, data for an earlier participant cohort (but no controls) show that 75 percent of program participants remained employed more than a year after exiting the program.

This work explores the satisfaction of a sample of 300 frail elderly from rural Russia with the support services provided by social service agency staff. The client population lives in extremely difficult conditions in terms of housing and associated communal services. They reported high levels of satisfaction with the agency provided services. The patterns identified are broadly consistent with expectations based on modeling done for the U.S. populations receiving at-home care. The results clearly indicate the value of providing such services to frail elderly in such circumstances.

The study's primary purpose is to provide background and analysis on existing realities in Uzbekistan as input into USAID's thinking in respect to the timeliness and appropriateness of local government assistance. This assessment addresses the basic legal institutional framework for subnational government in Uzbekistan. It also describes how the central and respective local government tiers interact in practice and, how, at the municipal level, government is organized and operates, most importantly in respect to budgeting and the delivery of basic urban services. In addition, the assessment examines the role of mahallas (a traditional, neighborhood-based form of community self-governance) which have largely been absorbed into the system of state administration. The authors hope that the report will also serve as an informational resource for other parties interested in improving the effectiveness and responsiveness of local government in Uzbekistan.

This primer on Local Economic Development (LED) is designed to provide USAID's field staff with a better understanding of LED. The first section provides a framework first for evaluating the utility of an LED initiative, and then developing an LED strategy. The second section highlights the components of a successful LED strategy. The third section addresses timing the implementation of an LED initiative. The fourth section provides case studies that demonstrate different approaches to LED programs (sectoral, regional, etc.). The primer concludes with samples of LED scopes of work, related websites, and other resource material.

This article describes UI's efforts to strengthen the policy development skills of Russian local government officials and NGO representatives. In 2-3 day courses, participants work together on exercises in analytical decision-making methods and monitoring and evaluation. The course also covers key concepts in policy making, such as considering the distributional aspects of policies, developing explicit decision-making criteria, balancing political and technical factors, defining public goods and services, and introducing competition to the public sector. Evaluations of the course indicate that it fills a definite training need for local officials and staff at advocacy NGOs in Russia.

This report summarizes the proceedings and lessons learned from a series of courses on urban development designed for USAID's field staff. There were two courses delivered: Development and Cities (given twice), and Cities and Economic Growth. The former discussed a broad range of urban issues ranging from slum upgrading/participatory management to disaster mitigation, and included participants from both USAID and its partner organizations. The latter covered mobilizing private resources for urban economic growth, the role of local government in promoting economic growth, etc. This final report includes agendas, case studies, evaluation results, focus groups, surveys, and a list of participants.

During the transition period, the countries of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States have witnessed the combination of sharp decentralization of government responsibilities to the local level, the creation of a flourishing nonprofit sector, and a growing need for NGOs to generate income beyond donor assistance to expand services. Russia is no exception. In this environment a strong case can be made for social service NGOs to be contracted by local governments to provide these services on behalf of city agencies. This arrangement provides a funding base for NGOs and introduces healthy competition into service delivery. This monograph describes and analyzes the early experience of several Russian local governments with contracting out. The main conclusion is that for this type of contracting out to be successful will require greater professionalism--of most NGOs in service delivery practices and local government agencies in contracting and in monitoring contractor performance. The author argues for a shift in some donor-supported training activities away from advocacy to service delivery NGOs.