The Republic of Kenya has made remarkable progress in the past 20 years. On the outskirts of the capital city of Nairobi, multilevel roads have been constructed, and modern shopping malls and beautiful residential areas have been built. These coincide with a period of high economic growth driven by the development of natural resources. At the same time, however, poverty is still prevalent in Kenya, and it is said that a quarter of the population is poor. I began my fieldwork in Kenya in the mid-1990s. Since then, I have witnessed this imbalance and wondered whether the government is making efforts to improve people's lives. In such a situation, when I paid attention to the presence of Kenyan migrants living abroad, I thought that their multifaceted contribution, not only through their economic power of remittance, would impact their home country and lead to its social development. It is not a top-down development but a bottom-up aspiration to help each other among the fellow countrymen.

Kenyan immigrants in Baltimore, Maryland, the United States, where I conducted fieldwork, had strong feelings for their people back home and the ability to take actions to save their home country from crisis. They showed an attitude of improving the work capacity and correcting unequal gender relations and social hierarchy. Also, they make efforts to resist injustice and discrimination prevailing in their home countries and return to their hometown with glory. This paper examines the potential for these immigrants' attitudes, behaviors, and newly acquired abilities, which I named “immigrant power,”to promote social development in Kenya.

The diaspora is a strong actor with a substantial influence on home country politics. Also, the formation of public opinion is a critical factor in the resident government's reactions towards the requests and opinions expressed by the diaspora. This study examines what the Myanmar diaspora requests to their countries of residence under the humanitarian crisis of Myanmar. Also, this study analyzes how public opinion in their countries of residence is being formed by focusing on Japan. The analysis of open letters submitted to the government of the residence by the Myanmar diaspora and newspaper editorials published in Japan are analyzed. The results indicate that Myanmar's humanitarian crisis is viewed as a “diplomatic” issue to be addressed by the international community's cooperation. Additionally, public opinion has not been sufficiently shaped to pay attention to the fear and precarious position of Myanmar residents in Japan. Nevertheless, the open letter does not solely view the Myanmar humanitarian crisis in a foreign policy framework. It included the perspective of the Myanmar diaspora, which is in a vulnerable position due to the crisis of home countries. However, the relationship between newspaper editorial and public opinion is reciprocal. Newspaper editorials lead the discussion. At the same time, editorials serve as citizens' voices against those in power. Therefore, there is a need for enhancing dialogue within civil society on how the Japanese government responds to the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar and the challenges faced by the Myanmar diaspora in Japan.

This paper examines the results of four surveys on the livelihoods of Cambodian farmers, nutrition and health of rural infants, and the measures to improve them. It examines the background and causes of why some farmers who want to make a living from agriculture are hindered while some subsistence organic farmers succeed in profitable management. It also suggests possible improvement measures.

A few dozen farmers conducted the livelihood recording. It became clear that the net income from agriculture of some of them is in the black figure while they also grew enough agricultural products for self-consumption. This presents the possibility and the options for livelihood improvement measures to replace migrant work. The 2019 survey shows that there are some rural youths in each commune who would like to live in their home village and engage in farming if they could get appropriate support.

The main challenges that rural youths and farmers face can be summarized as follows: 1) Difficulty in accessing market for agricultural products, inability to grow and sell certain quantities on a regular basis, falling agricultural product prices, low quality of products; 2) Insufficient funds to invest in agriculture, soaring prices of fertilizer and petrol, high cost of irrigation facility construction; 3) Difficulty in accessing low monthly interest (1% or less) loans, difficulty in repayment of increased debt; 4) Unpaved rural roads; 5) Difficulty in accessing agricultural technical information and training.

Yet, some possibilities to improve farmers' livelihood exist since vegetables are in demand and imported in all local markets. It is crucial to support the improvement of farmers' capacity and the cooperation of vegetable growing groups so that they can produce vegetables that meet the demands of the local markets. It is necessary for local traders, consumers, and farmers to work together to promote the consumption of local vegetables.

This study focuses on female overseas migrant workers from Bangladesh. Bangladesh sends out a large number of overseas migrant workers and receives international remittances. Although the number of female workers migrating abroad is currently smaller than that of males, the Bangladesh government has actively initiated a policy to help female workers with overseas employment opportunities. However, it faces some challenges in implementing this initiative. Most female workers are engaged in unskilled labour such as domestic work or cleaning. More than half of them have only completed primary education or are illiterate.

Furthermore, many women reportedly face harassment or violence in their workplaces. Previous studies have highlighted the need to protect the rights of migrant women and ensure their safety. In this study, we analyse the situation of female Bangladeshi overseas migrants using data from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2016. The data confirms the findings of previous studies that most female workers have a low level of education and are engaged in unskilled work. The average amount of remittances from female workers was smaller than those from males. The most frequently observed overseas remittance spending at the household sending overseas workers was household consumption. Additionally, it has been found that remittances from women are used more for education than that from men.

The situation of overseas migrant women is still difficult and needs further improvement. Instead of merely sending a large number of unskilled workers, the government should consider dispatching more skilled female workers. In addition, the government should engage in collaborations with host countries to protect the rights and security of female Bangladeshi migrant workers.

This study compared the cases of expulsion from Latin American countries experienced by the United States Peace Corps (hereafter, Peace Corps), a government sponsored volunteer agency. The investigation period was set from 1971 to 1981, when the Peace Corps withdrew the most from the Latin American region, and it investigated five selected countries (Bolivia, Peru, Panama, Brazil, and Guyana) that the Peace Corps was asked to leave from host countries. The study compared the situations in these five countries when expulsions occurred, and it explored (1) what was the background of expulsion of the Peace Corps, and (2) how the United States perceived the expulsion of the Peace Corps. The study mainly used letters and newspaper articles, Peace Corps internal documents as well as telegrams including materials declassified under the author's request from the National Archives and Records Administration and LBJ Presidential Library. The results showed a common trend among the host countries that expelled the Peace Corps, that those host countries' governments were implementing policies against the will of the United States, and those governments were in a period of expansion of multilateral economic and diplomatic relations including communist countries. In addition, the rise of international anti-American movements in the 1960s and 1970s made it easier to expel the Peace Corps. On the other hand, as for the United States, it became clear that even if the diplomatic relations between the two countries were not good, they tended not to make decisions to withdraw volunteers by themselves. The result of the study showed how both host countries and the US sides utilized international volunteer program for constructing their own image and appealing its own political position towards international community.

In the era of ‘shared prosperity’ for development cooperation, there have been heightened interests in an innovative financing for development agenda. It was largely because the role of development finance has been underscored as a key to the successful fulfillment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)―particularly since the SDGs require moving from billions to trillions in resource flows. However, austerity-stricken traditional donors since 2007/8 financial crisis began to use their limited Official Development Assistance (ODA) resources to attract/mobilize private finance―by reducing risks/uncertainties for companies of donor countries investing in the developing region. As a result, the role of ODA has been reorganized from a core resource for a more ‘progressive’ public lending for poverty reduction to a catalyst for a more explicitly national interest-oriented blended financing for private sector- led economic growth. In order to better understand how the trend has manifested in terms of individual donors' national/domestic processes, the paper contextualises the innovative development finance agenda through the case of South Korea's ‘gaebal-geumyung (GG).’ In doing so, the paper showcases how such global agenda was actualised―within the particular political economic context of Korea's development cooperation. Hence, the study focuses on two queries: first, the political-economic context of the way in which the agenda was localised and institutionalised through the establishment of GG in Korea; 2) and how the key actors maneuvered the policy discourses/narratives to justify the strategic use of ODA through GG for shared prosperity.

This study focuses on community development in rural communities in the northern part of Ghana during the military regime of the 1980s. “The revolution” was launched and lasted for ten years following the coup d'état of Air Force Captain Jerry Rawlings on December 31, 1981. During the “revolution” led by Rawlings, “revolutionary organization” was organized by ordinary Ghanaian people throughout the country. Particularly in the rural communities, self-help activities such as the construction of roads, schools, and wells were promoted by the residents. At the center of these activities, there were “youth groups/associations” organized mainly by young people who attended schools, which were still few in the north at that time. By tracing the life story of the individual involved, this paper attempts to understand how the individual came to take a leadership role in the community, focusing on subjective reality. As a result, it was found that the acquisition of “alternative perception of the reality” and “alternative self-perception” through various experiences, including schooling, led the person to initiate group activity aimed at social change. Objectively, these activities were integrated into a popular movement called the “revolution,” but for the subject, the revolution was a “mean” to promote the social change he was pursuing. Even the “revolution” end, a grassroot activist continues what he has been doing since before the arrival of the “revolution.”

Local Curriculum is a curriculum that is developed by local educational authorities or schools rather than by the national government. In recent years, in order to solve global issues such as the environment, poverty and inequalities, it has been pointed out that it is necessary to look at these issues from a local perspective. The local curriculum was introduced in the Republic of Mozambique in 2004, and efforts have been made to integrate the knowledge of community traditions and the knowledge taught in school education. The purpose of this study is to examine the philosophy of the local curriculum, and to discuss the possibilities and challenges of implementing the local curriculum in mathematics, which is the most universal among all subjects, by analysing the interviews applying the Modified Grounded Theory Approach (M-GTA). The analysis revealed that although all teachers are aware of the importance of local knowledge, the local curriculum is rarely practiced in mathematics education. The reasons were the stereotype that mathematics is universal and taught only in schools, and the lack of value of local knowledge related to mathematics. In order to further promote the local curriculum in mathematics education, it is necessary to clarify the mathematics that has been lost or slept in their culture, make them into teaching materials, and accumulate practical examples. We have been able to obtain practical suggestions for the future through developing a specific picture of the problems and causes of the implementation of local curriculum in mathematics education.

In technical cooperation, the successful transfer of technologies and organisational practices to the organisations of developing countries is essential. It is worth researching how development cooperation practitioners can achieve this. However, research on this theme seems to be scarce. Only a few papers in the Journal of International Development Studies have dealt with this subject. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) conducted investigative studies on technical transfer to some extent until around 2000, but not afterwards. Meanwhile, in the field of International Human Resource Management (IHRM), there are many studies dealing with the transfer of organisational practices from a multinational corporation (MNC) parent in advanced economies to subsidiaries in developing counties. This is because MNCs must standardise the quality of their services and goods regardless of the subsidiaries' locations to be competitive in the rapidly globalising business environment. The current paper reviews the development of technical transfer (or ‘gijutsu-iten’) research at JICA. Then, it introduces four assertions in IHRM research regarding the transfer of organisational practices that are useful for development cooperation practitioners and researchers. These are:(1) rules and policies are easily transferred, but not practices;(2) codification helps the transfer of organisational practices, or at least their forms;(3) the forms of organisational practices are transferrable, but not their hidden meanings; and (4) transferring only forms is not necessarily meaningless.