This study assessed the role of agricultural projects in poverty alleviation at Ngqushwa local municipality. These projects are very important for poverty alleviation and to fight the growing levels of unemployment in the Eastern Cape. Despite the advantages of these projects, there are challenges that impact negatively on the implementation of these projects such as conflict, lack of resources, market failure and these projects are too disconnected. Consequently, the projects do not achieve their intended objectives and there are high levels of dissatisfaction among project members. The study was conducted in two wards of Ngqushwa local municipality, and two projects were selected from each ward and ten members were selected from each project and the total number of a sample for the study was forty project members. The research utilized both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Data was collected through questionnaires, document analysis and observations. The sampling method that was used to select respondents or participants was purposive. The findings of the study indicated that agricultural projects in this area did not bring about any significant reduction in poverty, and they did not bring about any significant economic development. The study also revealed that there was lack of community participation in matters pertaining to community development and lack of support by all relevant stakeholders which resulted in failure at the implementation phase. The researcher also discovered that the poverty alleviation approach was mainly focused on one type of project, other than looking at other avenues to ensure that those who do not have interest in food gardens are given alternative opportunities like cattle farming. In view of these findings, the study recognises a need for empowerment in terms of knowledge and skills, understanding and resource management of agricultural projects. The study thus recommended that community members should be actively involved in community development projects. Additionally, the study recommended for the establishment or formulation of new policies or amendments of the existing policies in order to boost agriculture in rural areas so as to be able to alleviate poverty effectively.

Amongst other socio-economic challenges that South Africa has, unemployment still remains high; in July 2010 unemployment was at 25.3 percentage and in July 2011 it was at 25.7 percentage ; in a space of a year it grew by 0.4 percentage (Trading Economics, 2012). Even though South Africa has made some significant progress with its democracy; there is still significant socioeconomic problems. Poverty, lack of economic empowerment among the disadvantaged groups are amongst and lack of proper education are amongst some of these pressing challenges in South Africa. More than a quarter of South Africa's population currently receives social grants (Index mundi, 2011). The Eastern Cape Province is still faced with significant socio-economic challenges such as high unemployment rate. 74 percentage unemployed are the economically active group as they are under the age of 35 (ECDC, 2011:22). “More than a quarter (26.4 percentage) of households in the Eastern Cape relies on government grants as their main source of income. Nationally, the youth unemployment rate is estimated to be close to 35 percentage, with more than three million young people out of work. Youth unemployment in the Eastern Cape averages 41.4 percentage. This is more than twice the adult unemployment rate (18.4 percent). A total of 695,175 young people have been without work every year in the Eastern” (ECDC, 2010-2011: 23). Besides, this province has a third largest number of people who are living with HIV/AIDS in the country. These statistics have a major significance on the province’s economic prospects and progress (ECDC, 2010-2011:22). The RSA Constitution 1996, the White Paper on Local Government 1998 has mandated local governments to facilitate LED. South Africa adopted LED as a way of fighting poverty and stimulating economic growth and development for local residents. LED is promoting skills development, SMMEs and tourism to encourage economic development. However the success of LED has received mixed views in that; some successes of LED were recorded in urban or metropolitan municipalities. Few successes have been recorded of LED projects in rural municipalities. Some of the constraints of LED consist of capacity problems within the municipalities, understanding the role of LED in the municipality and lack of funding. In Makana Municipality, about 23 percentage of households live below poverty line of (R800.00 – R9600 a year). Most of the population earns between R801.00-R1600.00 per month with 24.7 percentage. A mere 0.6 percentage earn R204801.00 or more compared to 12.7 percentage with no income. Inadequate infrastructure poses as a threat to attracting and retaining investment in this municipality. In light of the above paragraphs, this thesis evaluated the impact assessment of the LED projects within Makana Municipality. The premise of this thesis is that realization and significant support of LED projects would impact positively on unemployment and poverty rate that this municipality is facing and subsequently; the burden of unemployment and poverty will be reduced in the region, province and country.

Thesis (LLM. (Development and Management Law)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / An Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is an environmental tool used to assess possible and expected adverse impact that might occur as a result of a proposed developmental project, in a vulnerable area and environment. All project developments must be socially, environmentally and economically sustainable. For any such projects to be sustainable, Environmental Impact Assessment must be conducted as a prerequisite for the development of the projects. This must be done in compliance with environmental legislation, to ensure that proposed developments benefit current and future generations, while at the same time protecting the environment. Environmental degradation must be minimized, where possible prevented for environmental protection, and sustainability

The Maputo Corridor is the most significant development project undertaken by the South African government since 1994. The Corridor is an extremely complex project, bringing together a variety of actors from South Africa, Mozambique, and beyond. The project includes the rehabilitation and upgrading of major transport and communications infrastructure between Witbank and Maputo, institutional reform to expedite border-crossing, and incentives for labour-intensive investment in the areas adjacent to the Corridor. The Maputo Corridor is also the first build-operate- transfer highway in the region. The Maputo Corridor is a valid and fascinating subject for political inquiry because it provides insight into the new South African government's priorities and ideological stance. Research on the Corridor also contributes to our understanding of political power structures in the region. The primary goal of this dissertation was to come to an understanding of why and how the Maputo Corridor developed. Research was designed to test popular hypotheses from the South African media. These hypotheses were (1) that the Corridor was designed to isolate Gauteng from potential transport-based blackmail by the IFP and (2) that the Corridor was sponsored and directed by the leaders of Mpumalanga Province. This dissertation is composed of four main sections. First, the historical context of the Corridor starting in the 19th century is investigated. Repetitive historical themes with relevance for the present are identified. Second, the leaders and managers of the corridor project are pinpointed. Third, strategic motivations for the corridor in the current political environment are studied. The fourth part consists of an investigation of the means used to implement the Corridor. Several sources of information were used. These sources included indepth interviews with the Corridor's stakeholders, primary documentation, and secondary published sources.

Zugl.: Göttingen, Universiẗat, Habil.-Schr., 2005 u.d.T.: Faust, Heiko: Perspektiven einer integrativen Kulturgeographie. / Zsfassung in engl. Sprache.

There are three lines of poverty in South Africa, the first line is that of people living at less than R271 per month and constitute one third of the population (about 33 percent), second being those people living at less than R422 per month (50 percent of the population) and the last group being people living at less than R1 230 per month, constituting 79.1 percent of the population (Oosthuizen. 2008: 7 – 9). The poorest provinces are Eastern Cape and Limpopo with a poverty rate of 68.3 percent and 60.7 percent respectively, Western Cape and Gauteng the poverty rates are 20 percent and 28.8 percent respectively (United Nations Development Programme. 2003) To respond to the poverty challenges the government has come up with poverty alleviation strategies which were later translated into anti-poverty programmes. The Anti-poverty programmes undertaken by Government since 1994 can be grouped into various categories of public expenditure such as (Friedman and Bhengu, 2008:14), Social assistance and grants, Employment generating programmes, enterprise development and income support, Basic household security, Social services, Disaster relief and Employment related social insurance. This study assessed Mogabane Community Project to find out reasons why the project did not reach its objective of poverty reduction in the community. Qualitative Research methodology was used to arrive at the findings.

M.A. / The success of participation in research for development depends upon its ability to change power relations in the development setting. The central problem adressed by this study is the question whether participatory methodologies are able to change power relations. A case study is made of the Tshikonelo irrigation scheme of the Agricultural Corporation of Venda, now called the Agricultural and Rural Development Corporation (Pty) Ltd. This case study identifies obstacles relevant to developmental interventions which cast a critical light upon the claims of participatory methodologies. The following methodologies are discussed: Action Research, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), and the Actor-oriented perspective on rural development. The origin of the methodologies that use participation in research is located in the use of social scientific knowledge for development. Consequently, the use of social scientific knowledge is fundamental to the realisation of Participatory Development. This relationship problematises the role of social scientific knowledge for the development process, as social scientific knowledge for development cannot be limited to the context of the development project, and its ability to critique development efforts should be primary. Action Research is relevant to intervention if collaboration with other similar projects is possible. The focal point of this methodology is the degree to which Apartheid and the accompanying strategy of "Separate Development" continues to affect the lives and activities of the farmers involved in the Tshikonelo project. In this respect, it can be used to disseminate alternative agricultural techniques. This approach is important as it can bring about changes in the agricultural establishment. PRA is a positive contribution to the field by virtue of the innovative way in which it approaches development problems. The efficacy of PRA, however, depends upon factors that are external to the project context, such as the receptivity of the agricultural and development establishment to the participation of small farmers in the research process. Problems with PRA are highlighted which run parallel to the problematics of the use of social scientific knowledge for the development process. The strength of the Actor-oriented perspective lies mainly in the possibility of exposing the hidden power relations and dynamics of the irrigation project. As such, it has a unique and important role to play vis-à-vis the other methodologies, with regard to intervention in this project. A debate is constructed between the methodologies in question, covering the following: The degree of homogeneity of target groups; the "vision" of what participatory development should be like; and the identity of the community that has to validate the knowledge under discussion. "Participation" as paradigm for development should be refined in terms of these issues if it is to address deeper methodological problems. It can be seen as a methodological innovation as the community that is responsible for the final validation of knowledge is strange compared to the scientific community. The strategy of participation in development promotes the interests of the participants in two ways. Within the arrangement of how research is done, it promotes the interests of the participants before those of the individual scientist, and it is capable of promoting the interests of marginalised groups in terms of the present political economy. Participatory development is strongly influenced by those participating in the development process and is by no means an easy solution providing a more justifiable establishment.

Lack of appropriate level of beneficiary involvement during the project lifecycle may lead to mismatch between the project output and needs of beneficiaries. Therefore, involving beneficiaries in the project helps to assure that the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) provide the right solution to needs of beneficiaries as well as sustaining project results. Although beneficiary involvement is useful, the challenge is to determine how and when to involve beneficiaries in the project.    The purpose of this study is to improve the process of managing beneficiary involvement in NGOs. To achieve this, a review of the existing literature was done to have an initial understanding of beneficiary involvement. During our literature review, we identified six progressive levels of involvement which include: information sharing, listening and learning, joint assessment, shared decision-making, collaboration and empowerment.  Based on this literature review, we suggested a framework for managing beneficiary involvement.   In addition, we conducted a multiple case study and collected data from five different cases through interviews. Our respondents were professionals with several years of experience in developing and implementing development projects which are aimed at improving the livelihood of vulnerable communities. Through the analysis of the empirical findings, we got new insights on how the process of beneficiary involvement is managed. We identified four additional levels of beneficiary involvement within the project cycle. These include incentive system, peer facilitators, group forming, and cost sharing. The study also reveals the factors that affect beneficiary involvement, such as cultural context and, donors’ influence and requirements. We also highlighted that the appropriate level of beneficiary involvement should be chosen depending on the project context. Regardless of these factors, the research findings show that beneficiary involvement creates a sense of ownership, enhances project outcome and is useful in sustaining a project’s results in the long term. Therefore, NGOs should endeavour to involve beneficiaries as much as possible to ensure that the projects being implemented are addressing community needs.

In recent years the funds spent on research and development (R & D) have grown considerably. An indication of the extent of the growth in the U.K. was given by Hart (1) who noted that in 1900 approximately 0.05% of the gross national product was spent on research. This percentage increased to 0.25% in 1938, 1.6% in 1954 and 2.7% in 1962. Villiers (2) quotes a similar growth in the U.S., where research expenditure grew from <1% of gross national product in 1947, to about 3% in 1962. (In the U.K. it appears, from some statistics produced by the Ministry of Technology (3), that research expenditure has remained at about 2.7% of GNP over the period 1962-1967). The allocation of these resources poses a number of challenging questions in governmental, industrial and academic spheres. At a national level the kind of questions that might be asked are (a) what proportion of the gross national product should be devoted to government sponsored research, or (b) how should funds be divided between the claims of the aerospace, computer, or machine tool industries, or (c) how should funds be divided between the competing claims of the nuclear physicists and marine biologists. The large industrial concern is faced with similar problems though the resources involved are smaller. ICI for example spent about £30M on R & D in 1968, and during the later 1960's, the growth rate was about 8% per year. The Company must decide on the total amount to be spent on R & D and how it is to be allocated between different Divisions of the Company and different research categories. At lower levels of management two of the questions arising are (a) which projects shall be selected, and (b) how should the flow of resources to projects be controlled. It is now generally accepted that there is a need for techniques for assisting in the management of R & D. Jones (4) summed up the situation well when he wrote "It is not surprising that there is an increasing amount of discussion on the management of R & D for profit. Business becomes increasingly competitive and R & D activities, just as those of production and marketing must be examined to see how they can best play their part." Already a large number of relevant papers have been published, but as yet no significant breakthrough has been achieved. An important feature of the literature has been the concentration on theoretical models as a means of assisting research managers: reports of new methodology considerably out-number reports of practical testing of the methods in research laboratories. Throughout the author's research the opposite bias, that is to say towards a practical rather than a theoretical approach has been maintained. This was facilitated by the author completing most of his research in the R & D Department of the Mond Division of ICI (of which he is a member). The research presented in this thesis began with the very general objective of examining and developing methods for the allocation of resources (capital and manpower) to R & D and so Chapter 1 discusses some relevant methods that have been proposed in the literature. It was later decided to concentrate on the development of an improved system of project evaluation and control. Chapter 2 analyses an established system in this field, and looks at past projects to demonstrate some of the problems such a system should accept. Later chapters present the system that was developed during the research and record experience of testing the various procedures on a number of Mond Division R & D projects. As these are either still in progress or are only recently completed it has been necessary, for reasons of security, to limit descriptive detail and to normalize numerical data. Such normalization has been made in a manner that preserves the essential financial characteristics of the project. It is well perhaps, in the Introduction, to distinguish between the terms research and development. Following Baines, Bradbury and Suckling ( (5), page (2) ) process definition will be the term used to cover the steps required to take exploratory production activities from laboratory scale to full-scale. Development will refer to the problems of opening up a business area with a new product and will include economic assessment and marketing activities. For the most part these activities are closely linked to research activities and are usually performed by members of the same project team. The convention followed in the thesis will be to use the term 'research' to refer to all the activities of the project team and to assume that these also include some development activities as defined above. Only when discussing the work of others who have used the term R & D, or when there is a reason to emphasise the commercial exploitation content of a project will the word development be used.

D.Com. (Business Economics) / A clear distinction should be made between the straightforward financing of a project and project finance itself. In short, project finance can be defined as the financing of a particular economic unit with the aim of the financial structuring to be such that there is as little recourse as possible to the sponsor of the project and the lender is thus satisfied to look at the cash flows and earnings as the source of repayment and the assets of the project as security. Usually, project finance would incorporate all or some of the following characteristics namely, off balance sheet financing, recourse limited to the pre-commissioning stage, an element of fixed rate debt, utilisation of tax allowances, optimisation of tax position, long term finance and some degree of foreign exchange activity. If the project is sponsored by an existing company, it will be looking to maximise debt, minimise recourse and group tax liability, optimise financial costs and retain or improve financial ratios after consolidation of the project. However, the degree of project financing appropriate for any project depends on what lenders are prepared to accept and what sponsors are prepared to provide in order to let the project become a reality. The project financier's role is to formulate financial structures, assess financial feasibility, develop funding proposals, secure sources of finance and to manage the financing facilities once they are in place. A project sponsor employs a project financier because the latter is objective, impartial, has access to required information and is able to process it into a professional presentation to the financial community, has the experience and expertise to advise on the most appropriate and cost effective financing structure and is best equipped to perform a thorough project financial analysis. This study has been undertaken to point out the differences between project finance and finance for a project, to identify the role of project financier and is as such largely concentrated on the financial side of a project. The goal was to discuss the importance of project finance from the financial institutions' viewpoint and to identify those aspects that would be important to a project advisor or lender. Although relatively little has been published on project finance, it is a multidisciplinary subject and references have been used wherever available. The author's attendance at seminars on the subject, as well as discussions with international project financiers and bankers have also contributed to the understanding of the subject. In addition to an in-depth exposure to project finance in South Africa, several months have been spent with an international bank's project finance division in London.