CMI has won a framework agreement with the Norwegian embassy in Tanzania to conduct 7-10 in-depth studies on aid, public finance, natural resources, land and agriculture, macroeconomics the next 4 years. Studies will include topics such as aid transformation in resource rich Sub Saharan African countries, public finance management, economic crime, patterns of job creation, informality, trade and structural transformation and agricultural productivity, production, food security and markets.

Project leader: Espen Villanger

End Review of institutional university cooperation

CMI has also won a tender for an end review of an institutional university cooperation between universities in Ethiopia and Norway.The purpose of the review is to assess goal attainment as well as efficiency, relevance, impact and sustainability, and to take stock of experiences gained and lessons learned. The end review shall also provide recommendations for a possible continuation of the programme.

Project leader: Johan Helland

Four new projects from the Norwegian Research Council

Violence against women in Afghanistan 
This project focuses on violence against women (VAW) as it is treated in the criminal justice system in Afghanistan. Although progress has been made, most cases, even if registered with the prosecution, fail to make it through the criminal justice system. The complex reasons for such attrition are poorly understood and form the subject of this research project.

Project leader: Astri Suhrke

Engineering gender equality: The effects of aid on women's political representation in Malawi, Sudan, Uganda and Zambia
The last decade, women's political empowerment has been the biggest target area of gendered Norwegian aid with seven African countries on the top-10 list of recipients. The theory of change underpinning this aid is that increasing the number of women (descriptive representation) in political decision-making processes is important for its own sake, but it is additionally regarded as a powerful tool to fight gendered injustices more generally. This project looks at the effects of aid on women's substantive (acting for women) and symbolic (role-modeling women) representation in Malawi, Sudan, Uganda and Zambia from 2007 until 2013. the project explores whether gendered aid is most efficient in countries where there is a high degree of descriptive representation and a visible women's movement to push and support female legislators to act in the interest of women.

Project leader: Liv Tønnessen

Democratisation, Political Participation, and Gender in Malawi
The project will explore the obstacles to and prospects for women’s increased political involvement in Malawi? The project proposes to investigate the impact of three forms of representation, within three 'arenas' where politics is played out. We will present the numbers and analyse the trends and patterns of women representation; we will examine how female representation affects the policy process and outcomes; and we will study the attitudes towards women in the public sphere. This will be done in the three political arenas of executive/government, parliament/legislature, and within the political parties.

Project leader: Inge Amundsen

 

The Political Economy of Governance in Malawi
This 3-year interdisciplinary project (2014-2016) - comprising sociology, political science and social anthropology - intends to contribute to an improved understanding of Malawi's political economy by studying the functioning of three selected institutions as well as their inter-relationships: the civil service at the central level, traditional authorities at the local level, and faith-based organizations in civil society.

Project leaders: Arne Tostensen and Eyolf Jul-Larsen