Since the concept of “intermediate technology” was launched by E.F. Schumacher in the mid 1960's, “appropriate technology” as a term for replacing the “intermediate technology” has been defined, discussed and implemented in various way by both organizations and individuals. There have been two different contexts in which this concept is applied, that is, the context of development and that of alternatives to modern technologies. Reviewing existing discussions and activities of appropriate technology so far, the author has proposed a way to use this word as a media for expressing technologies most suitable or appropriate to given conditions with explanation of the meaning of the appropriateness.

After that, concrete examples of appropriate technologies in the field of wastewater treatment, agriculture and biomass energy are introduced.

Although the appropriate technology became to be paid less attention after the mid 1980's, the author maintains the revitalization of the technology in today's world conditions in which problems such as global warming and global inequality is becoming very serious. Technologies required in these conditions are ones that alleviate various kinds of poverty of the ordinary people in developing countries without resulting problems such as environmental ones, shortage of natural resources and dehumanization. That is nothing but the appropriate technology in the sense of integration of said two contexts, that is the context of development and the context of alternatives to modern technologies.

In this paper, the approach for small scale road improvement towards development where no one left behind are discussed. Though so many road development project has been conducted so far, there are still a lot of road in poor condition, especially in rural area. The authors had proposed to utilize labour intensive and locally available material based method to improve small scale unpaved road but the lifeline for people. As a specific method like proposed, Do-nou, which means soil bag in Japanese, method for building base course was developed. The applied method including Do-nou method has enabled roadside communities to play dominant roles in road improvement project not just as paid labour. On the other hand, it has found that even with the simple and applicable method, stakeholders' support to communities is required in terms of provisions of material and capacity building for group management, material procurement, store/tool management, and other basic road maintenance technique.

Based on the scope of works on road improvement, the suitable work structure and required capacities are summarized through case studies on road improvement projects in Asia and Africa. It is envisaged that the summary of road improvement approach where community play major role would contribute to make road authorities and donors understand the scope of works and develop the road project with appropriate target, thus the small scale road network become accessible.

Since the late 1960s, Labour Based Technology (LBT) has attracted attention for its utilization in infrastructure construction in developing countries, a fact illustrated by research and pilot projects conducted by the World Bank (WB). Subsequently, LBT has gradually become more widespread in developing countries, and many LBT technical manuals and handbooks have been prepared by the International Labour Organization (ILO), other international institutions and government agencies in order to summarize successful LBT case studies. More recently, therefore, LBT is acknowledged as an effective development project for the community road access improvement.

Accordingly, many developing countries such as African countries, small scale infrastructure projects, mainly rural road improvement, are utilized by LBT as reasons for hard to get enough number of well-discipline human resources, materials, funds, and advanced technology at the project sites. Meanwhile, in Japan as well, recently, infrastructure improvement led by local governments is faced to the lack of infrastructure maintenance budget due to the depopulation. Traditionally, however, LBT have been adopted in Japan since the early ages, as commonly observed in the existence of words such as “Michibushin”, quite literally meaning ‘road repair’, or “Oyaku” (local infrastructure maintenance by the community). Such Japanese LBT works also encouraged the creation of jobs in the post-war period through “the make work road rehabilitation program” as part of the emergency employment policy of the unemployed.

This study aims to contribute to the literature on “Regional Revitalization Policy” which the Japanese government has currently declared a priority policy by proposing the reintroduction of LBT in rural areas as an effective method for community development. The current research reviews case studies of LBT being introduced to Japanese rural areas and evaluate its impact by Input Output Analysis. Finally, the study will recommend the applicability of LBT projects in Japan from the viewpoint of their effectiveness, impacts and sustainability.

Nurturing human resources who have ability to assimilate advanced technology and to create new value is one of the priority agenda for developing countries; human capital is essential as social capacity for technological progress. Since developing countries are also required to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) through harmonizing economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection, industrialization is indispensable and must be followed by technological progress. In this regard, higher education institutions in developing countries often lack research capability and hence fail to produce human resources necessary for industrial development.

Laboratory-Based Education (LBE) is Japanese-style engineering education and involves graduate students in research activities as his/her supervisor's laboratory (lab) members. A lab has hierarchical structure, consisting of a principal investigator as the leader, researchers, graduate students and undergraduate students doing graduation thesis work; in the context of LBE, a lab is not a space but a research team. LBE thus makes faculty members conduct research and produce new ideas, while nurturing graduate students'research capability in the lab.

This paper examines two examples of LBE that had been introduced through Japanese technical cooperation projects in Indonesia and Vietnam and evaluates the output of LBE implementation. The result suggests that introducing LBE enables faculty members of universities in developing countries to conduct research and equip graduate students with ability to solve problems. Considering that economic growth is one of the essential factors for SDGs, LBE therefore may contribute to the achievement of SDGs through providing industries with new ideas that are necessary for technological progress and human resources who are capable of assimilating advanced technologies.

Challenges for international higher education cooperation in the engineering field are to sustain research cooperation in order to continuously upgrade research capability of universities in developing countries and to raise consciousness of the importance of industry-university linkage in terms of contribution to sustainable economic growth.

SDGs started as a new common goal of the international community after MDGs though some targets might be ambitious and not easy to achieve by business as usual methods. Accordingly, expectations for the utilization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the development practices are increasing more than ever. We already see some innovative ICT utilization cases which creates development effect untraditionally. In the meantime, ICT utilization requires fundamentals such as power supply and internet infrastructure, while some developing countries does not fully secure it yet. To tackle with such challenges, innovative idea of youth and new technologies should be critical.

In this paper, on the premise of the international agreement that the achievement of SDGs is necessary to realize poverty alleviation and shared prosperity, the utility and possibility of ICT to contribute to achieving SDGs is discussed. In addition, some key factors which to tackle with the existing difficulties of ICT utilization in developing countries are also suggested.

Traditional donors have made wide debates and attempts to coordinate aid to reduce transaction cost and increase aid effectiveness. Several obstacles have been studied, one of which is emerging donors' bilateral approach with recipients. This not only complicates existing aid coordination, but also increases transaction cost for recipients. Relation between China and traditional donors is mostly heated discussed due to its prominence in aid provision. This paper, applying the geothermal financing in Kenya as a case, tests the hypothesis that trilateral cooperation based on comparative advantages can provide a configuration to coordinate traditional and Chinese donors at project or sectoral level, with expected results of reducing transaction cost and increasing aid effectiveness. This paper contributes to the field by showing potential improvement of transaction costs and aid effectiveness through trilateral cooperation engaging emerging donors in energy project or sector, which also sheds lights on aid coordination in infrastructure sector.

The purpose of this article is to discuss impacts of ‘deagrarianization’ in mineral-rich African communities. To this end, the article hypothesizes that deagrarianization due to expansion of Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM) brings about changes in social relationship in mining communities. To examine the hypothesis, this article analyzes a case of mining communities of Geita in Tanzania.

The result of analysis states that the relationship between miners and society becomes stronger particularly in a hamlet level as deagrarianization progresses. A mining site is located in a hamlet where miners seek economic benefits as well as social benefits from mutualism and collectiveness. The social relationship becomes stronger because of the exclusive nature of small-scale mining operation in a relatively small community.

The results of analysis imply that, with the progress of deagrarianization, the social relationship becomes stronger in a smaller space like a hamlet. This may bring about a conflict between mining sites over mineral rights and benefit allocation. Therefore, the role of a governing body of the larger space like a village appears to become more important in the future.

Kenya is one of the fastest countries to expand educational opportunities in Africa. Secondary schools are not equal, so that better education usually correlates to a higher school fee. Although previous studies have explained the reasons for the decreasing quality of education and the impact of that on causing inequality, it is also important to focus on the reasons for noticeable improvement in the quality of education. The objective of this study is to clarify the structure that causes inequality by revealing the self-sustaining practices for school development.

Data was collected through fieldwork for a month in May 2017 in Busia county. The major participants were three public schools which were established in the same year. Semi-structured interviews and participant observation were employed in the schools and in each community to clarify the efforts made towards school development and the roles played by the communities in those efforts. Collected data suggests the correlation between the number of students and their mean scores act as key factors in school development. This correlation was achieved by community characteristics. If a school was blessed with a better community, it could easily increase the number of students and its mean score. If not, a school would be trapped in a management crisis due to both a lack of students and a lower mean score.

Schools which originally depended on the geographic community presently depend on the educational community as well for their development. Educational communities in popular schools and unpopular schools are constructed by respectively positive and negative schooling decisions. Hence, a school in a poorer geographic community also suffers from the lack of a positive contribution by the educational community. That is why, it can be observed that the cause of inequality is that vulnerable students in unpopular schools are rarely blessed with resources from both the geographic and educational communities.