A great number of literatures on the labor migration stressed out the negative development impact of educated emigrations in the home country, what is called “Brain-Drain,” but, recent literature shifted from Brain-Drain to “Brain-Gain” exploring the potential benefits of labor migration arising from remittances. In fact, remittances exceed the volume of Official Development Assistance and have been also recognized as a major source of external development finance in African countries.

If we subscribe to the endogenous growth theory, the expansionary effect of remittances will be greater if they are spent on human capital investments through education. However, there is no evidence of whether or not remittances improve educational attainment in the country. This study empirically examines the relationship among international migration, remittances, and educational attainment in South Africa where remittances received is one of the largest among African countries and many households have credit constraints of sending their children to school.

I use the panel data of the South Africa Labor Force Survey from 2002 to 2004 and estimate the effect of the years of schooling of children whose household receives remittances from migrant family members. Because it is highly possible that migrants self-select to migrate, I employ the fixed effects model (and corresponding random effects model) to control for potential endogeneity (so called selection bias).

The empirical results after controlling for endogeneity show that the key independent variable representing the status of whether a household receives remittances is positive and statistically significant, indicating that remittances mitigate the credit constraints of the household and allow children to attend schools.

Thus, in conclusion, there is evidence of significant and large impact of remittances on schooling outcomes in South Africa. Based on the result of this study, in order to increase the volume of remittances, I have recommended to a policy circle of South African Government reducing the transaction costs of remittances and improving attractiveness of receiving countries to senders.

Institution and organization-building has been gaining much attention in the area of international development. We have seen rapid development of theoretical frameworks and better practices for institution and organization-building, such as creating mutual trust, promoting cooperation among stakeholders and counterparts, and achieving efficiency and effectiveness in the government as well as encouraging citizen's participation. Nonetheless, we have not yet established an evaluation framework of institutionalization. The discussions such as how institutionalization is defined in the context of evaluation for project, and what is a necessary and sufficient condition of institutionalization are not sufficient. This paper presents a potential framework for evaluating institutionalization based on institution theories in sociology. After presenting the framework, we apply it to the Sulawesi Poverty Alleviation project conducted by JICA.

The Sulawesi Poverty Alleviation project is shown as one of the successful social development model that builds local capacity by improving the administrative abilities and encouraging citizen participation. The model proved itself institutionalized in regulation by order of the provincial head order and provincial council ordinances, and in approving the budget by district were a true sign of institutionalization. The model also proved itself effective in establishing administrative support systems. As such, the model was well recognized by counterparts in other districts as well as local district officials, the Head of Takalar district, and council members. Takalar District has taken steps towards establishing an ordinance stipulating the provision of administrative support for participatory social development by way of its own budget. In view of the above, JICA has concluded that the objective of the project will most likely be achieved in the future. However, compilation of the budget, securing of staffs, the criteria for evaluation of sustainability of project in JICA, are not sufficient in following reason. Impact of institution can be seen by whether institution changed actor's preference and behavior or not. Sociological framework of institution and institutionalization can supplement of evaluation of JICA. According to the institution theory of sociology, institution can be seen as a set of mores, a sort of super-custom and patterns of behavior. Institutionalization can be seen as a newly establishment of new patters of behavior led by elimination of constrains of behavior and change of the preference by the newly adopted institution. These frameworks are assumed to be useful.

We introduce two analytical concepts of institutionalization: “enabling environment” and “stakeholders' reaction”. Enabling environment lens shows constraints such as insufficient available information at community level and the lack of access to budget. The stakeholders' reaction is further divided into four categories: (1) stakeholders' commitment to institution, (2) stakeholders' motivation, (3) the degree of congruence between stakeholders' actions and aims/intentions of institutions, and (4) the change in the congruity between stakeholders' actions and institutional intentions. Stakeholders' reaction is proved especially effective. It often helps us identify inadequate institutional environment, thus would signal the need for improvement in promoting institutionalization. Moreover, it provides an opportunity for all the stakeholders to discuss an institution's stability, potential course of development, and benefits to stakeholders. The Sulawesi project shows some examples of inefficient efforts to maintain institutions without clear rationale or objectives.

In this paper, the authors would like to show (1) some examples of the early deteriorated Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures in developing countries with ODA, (2) poor construction technology and workmanship in site and (3) the effect of temperature on the corrosion of steel bars in reinforced concrete. Also, the authors describe the investigative approach, the construction technique and the material choice based on the situation in the developing countries.

As a result, the RC structures in the developing countries are more easily deteriorated compared to those in Japan and other developed countries. This is partly because of the fact that the temperature is relatively higher in developing countries of Southeast Asia and Africa, and therefore the percolation rate of chloride ions and water contents in concrete becomes larger, which then induces the corrosion of steel bars in concrete.

Also, in developing countries, the improvement and the specialization of construction are not advanced as in Japan and there are few professional engineers equivalent to the Japanese craftsmen. In general, the technical levels of the local supply companies are considerably lower than those in Japan. Also, the construction supplies which are prepared by those local supply companies can be low in terms of quality. Therefore, it is important that the Japanese operation staff personally check the quality and manage the supply companies appropriately at the locale. In addition, the engineers of the Japanese companies need to learn the basic knowledge about concrete technology. It is important to arrange a field supervisor who has the work experience and knowledge about the construction management and the field-oriented construction management system.

This study aims to clarify the situation of disaster victims who became disabled as a consequence of natural disaster and try to find critical factors for their life recovery. In case of natural disaster, especially the earthquake in developing countries, many victims who suffered from building collapse caused by tremor assumed to become disabled. The damages tend to concentrate on vulnerable people who live in vulnerable housing. On the other hand, it is still not clear their living conditions or what kind of assistance is required for their life recovery.

Life recovery is a subjective issue that differs from social values, living conditions, loss, etc. The long-termed grass rooted study conducted after the Kobe Earthquake, Japan, 1995 showed that life recovery were based not only on infrastructure or housing recovery, but depended more on human relation between their friends or neighborhood, which corresponded to social capital of the community.

In this study, through the case study of Central Java Earthquake, Indonesia, we clarify the situation surrounding disaster victims who became newly disabled. Then we discuss their life recovery focusing on human networks. Finally, based on the result of the study we propose requirement for the international cooperation to support their life recovery.

The Trans African Highway Northern Corridor is the economical aortas to the landlocked country such as not only Kenya but also adjacent Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi. However, inadequate maintenance over the last 30 years has resulted in about 40% of this road network being “lost”, which in turn has produced higher vehicle operating costs and longer travel times for road users that are having a negative effect on the national economy. It is vital towards maintaining and improving pavement to understand well the cause of the destructive phenomena. It can be hypothesized that pavement damage occurs when the triangle balance is lost between the supportive strength of the subgrade base, the traffic load on the road surface, and pavement structure. The hypothesis is supported by present conditions analysis and non destructive inspection of the road fatigue destruction. This study analyzes and propose the current state of road maintenance and management issues of the Trans African Highway Northern Corridor in Kenyan region and explores effective human resource development approaches suitable for the region.

Heyneman & Loxley (1983) discussed the importance of school related factors on children's learning achievements, which they emphasized were more important than children's family background. Later, Baker et al. (2002) reported that school related factors were no longer the most important factors to determine children's learning achievements now that the economy in developing countries had greatly grown up and the educational investment had been increased by the governments and donors. It is true that the economic growth is acknowledged in many developing countries. However, there are still some countries with the least economic development, similar to the economic situation of countries targeted in Heyneman & Loxley study. What about these countries? Are school related factors still important in such countries compared to children's family background?

Data of a pilot survey for Monitoring Achievement in Lower Primary (MALP) in Malawi were analyzed to examine variables explaining fourth grade pupils' learning achievements in mathematics and Chichewa (national language) and the relationship among the variables and pupils' learning achievements. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied for the analysis. School variable consisted of teacher variable, head teacher variables and school resource variables was the strongest variable explaining children's learning achievements. The influence of pupils' family background on their learning achievements was insignificant in mathematics. It was significant in Chichewa, however the effect size on pupils' learning achievements was not as large as that of school variable. Thus, this research confirmed the findings of Heyneman & Loxley in Malawi after 25 years of their study, despite the change in the world economic level.