There are a multitude of challenges confronting resource-limited, rapidly growing cities that revolve around food-water-energy (FWE) resource issues, and there are a multitude of potential solutions. But such solutions often address one or just a few challenges without regard to their impacts on the entire FWE system. This Working Paper discusses a process in integrating local knowledge on FWE [...]

Vocational Education and Training (TVET) can contribute to education and economic development under conditions of state fragility, crisis and conflict. Yet, TVET has to be adapted to these specific circumstances. Developed for the context of Somalia, Stefan Wolf and Nicole Rudner discuss their concept named TVET+ Service Hub. It combines the still separate fields of TVET, economic development and [...]

Developing countries (DCs) encounter the COVID-19 pandemic under distinctly different preconditions than high-income countries. Three issues arise: i) What are the prospects of DCs to stop further waves of the COVID-19 disease? ii) Why has the COVID-19 pandemic hit the economy of DCs so hard? iii) How has poverty and human tragedy re-emerged in DCs in the course of the COVID-19 crisis and will it [...]

There is a widespread assumption that education leads to empowerment. However, research rarely explores young people’s perceptions of their own educational experience in terms of empowerment or disempowerment. This is especially the case for the sub-Saharan African context. Addressing this gap, Simone Datzberger’s study lets almost 500 Ugandan youth speak for themselves in the scope of a [...]

Refugees and migrants from the Global South often experience difficulties in finding access to higher education in their host countries or to pursue their studies successfully. This is not only limiting their own life chances, but also means a loss to potentially fruitful internationalisation processes at universities. Indeed, this group of students is often overlooked and scientific research on [...]

In this paper, the role of physical actors in the global value chains (GVCs) of coffee, cocoa and cotton as hedgers in the price determination on commodity derivatives markets is analysed in relation to speculators. A novel measure of buying and selling pressure by trader categories is applied in a GARCH model. Our findings show that liquidity provision by hedgers allows speculators’ position [...]