Sida is a government agency working on behalf of the Swedish parliament and government, with the mission to reduce poverty in the world. Through our work and in cooperation with others, we contribute to implementing Sweden’s Policy for Global Development (PGU).
We work in order to implement the Swedish development policy that will enable poor people to improve their lives. Another part of our mission is conducting reform cooperation with Eastern Europe, which is financed through a specific appropriation. The third part of our assignment is to distribute humanitarian aid to people in need of assistance.
We carry out enhanced development cooperation with a total of 33 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Our selection of cooperation countries are based on political decisions made by the Swedish government.
Sida’s mission is to allocate aid and other funding. Our operations are managed by the government’s guidelines, describing the goals for each year’s operations and the size of the development aid budget.
Our staff members and their expertise assist the government with the assessments and the information it needs, in order to decide and implement its development assistance policy. We participate in the advocacy work for Sweden’s prioritised issues within the international development cooperation field, and we are in constant dialogue with other countries and international organisations. Part of our assignment is also to report statistics and disseminate information about our operations.
Our work is financed by tax money and we administer approximately half of Sweden’s total development aid budget. The other part is channelled through the ministry for Foreign Affairs. All our work should be performed in a cost-effective way with a strong focus on results.
Sida has more than 700 employees, located in our three offices in Sweden as well as abroad in our cooperation countries.
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Resources
Displaying 81 - 85 of 273Towards land equality? Exploring how cancelled land deals affect smallholder farmers’ land access and liveliho
General
The world is facing an unprecedented land inequality, not least in Africa where smallholder farmers lose land to private corporations. Land is the basis for smallholder farmers’ livelihoods. In addition, African smallholder farmers produce a major share of the continent’s food. Thus, the unequal land distribution is a major obstacle to food security and poverty eradication. It is also a major obstacle to building sustainable societies in general. Our research on large-scale agro-investments in Tanzania shows that there is an unexplored phenomenon that could contribute to a more equal land distribution: since the early 2000’s many such investments have been cancelled and millions of hectares of land have been left uncultivated. Studying the effects of such cancelled land deals is urgent since they seem to affect smallholders’ land access and livelihoods negatively but also seem to offer opportunities to redistribute land to smallholders. The aim of this project is to explore how cancelled land deals affect smallholders’ land access and livelihoods in Tanzania.The project will provide recommendations on how development policy and global sustainability standards better can support smallholders when land is redistributed, and better mitigate negative impacts of cancelled development projects. This is urgent since Covid-19 causes many cancelled projects when development funds are re-allocated to handling the pandemic.
Transforming matrilineal land rights? Agricultural intensification and land regularization in Northern Mozambi
General
The purpose of this study is to investigate how processes of individual/household land titling and agricultural intensification initiatives affect women’s and land-holding lineages’ land rights, and how they affect gendered land-related responsibilities under matrilineal tenure systems. While African policy documents highlight women’s land tenure insecurity as a key development problem, land reforms through regularisation are usually based on the implicit assumption is that land tenure is patrilineal. Furthermore, when customary land rights are formalised through ‘community delimitations’, in spite of non-discriminatory intentions, there is a tendency to formalisation bringing about a strengthening of male roles and authorities, in both patrilineal and matrilineal communities. In a context of a community-based land tenure reform in Nampula Province in Northern Mozambique, we aim to carry out field-based studies in communities where traditional tenure arrangements have been matrilineal. We will focus on four main issues: i) titling processes and women’s roles, ii) land rights and gendered responsibilities, iii) access to and control of land, and iv) agricultural intensification and subsistence. The research approach is qualitative, based on a comparative case study of three delimited communities. So far, there are no systematic research findings reported in the scholarly literature on this particular topic.
Women's Economic Empowerment project - MTR Women Economic Empowernment
General
This project is part of Canada’s Women’s Voice and Leadership Program, which supports local and regional women’s organisations and networks that are working to promote women’s rights, and advance women’s empowerment and gender equality in developing countries. This is done by supporting their activities, building their institutional capacity, and promoting network and alliance-building as women’s rights and feminist organizations are critical agents of change. The Program also responds to the globally recognized, significant gap in funding and support to women’s rights organizations and movements around the world. The project has two components, implemented by two Tanzanian women’s rights’ organizations (WROs), the Women Fund Tanzania and the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP). This component implemented by the Women Fund Tanzania (WFT) aims to reach over 100 national, regional, district and local WROs in Tanzania. WFT’s focus is providing small, mid-sized and larger sub-grants to local WROs, along with project management and program delivery training, as well as mentorship throughout the sub-grantees’ project cycle. Grant selection is based on feminist principles, ensuring maximum reach and supporting organizations working on a variety of key sectors including health, education and land rights in different regions of the country. WFT also supports the development of networks and alliances between WROs, coordinated advocacy activities and coalitions on specific issues including sextortion.
RCN/Abunzi Preparatory Phase
General
The contribution for the preparatory phase support to RCN Justice et Democratie to prepare the implementation of 'Improving the Management of Land by strengthening the Prevention and Resolution of Land Conflicts' (ILPRC)
The resilience and sustainability of soil microbial functions to climate change induced-drought in Ethiopia
General
Climate change will cause extreme fluctuations in precipitation and temperatures generating intense drought and rainfall events. This will affect the functioning of most ecosystems, but the most severely affected include the world’s poorest and food security challenged nations, including Ethiopia. Microorganisms control decomposition of organic matter (OM), and dominate the terrestrial contribution to the global carbon (C) cycle. Water availability is a decisive regulator of microbial processes, but they also depend on C-availability, creating a strong feedback with plants. We will investigate how microbial processes are influenced by changes in water availability across a gradient from cool moist to hot arid Ecosystems in Ethiopia. We will evaluate the effect of different land-uses and field experimental drought on the resilience of microbial functions. Insights will be included in ecosystem models, and used to guide land-use policy in Ethiopia. The aims are: 1. Defining the microbial moisture dependence, and the resilience of the microbial functions to rewetting a soil. 2. Determining both long-term (gradient across Ethiopia) and short-term (within site field-experiments) legacy effects of drought and dry-wet cycles on 1. 3. Disentangling the relative influence of the soil microbial community and land-use on 1. 4. Distinguishing how land-use, restoration of degraded soils, and plant material additions can affect the microbial resilience to drought and variable moisture.