ABOUT THE SPEAKER

José Gabriel Palma is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Economics, Cambridge University. He has a D. Phil in Economics from Oxford University, a PHD from Cambridge University (by incorporation) and a D. Phil in Political Science from Sussex University.  He worked during the Government of Salvador Allende in the nationalisation of the copper industry, and after his graduate work in the UK he worked as a lecturer at the universities of London, Sussex, Oxford and Cambridge. He has published articles and books dealing with the economics of developing countries, with a strong focus on Latin America and Asia. He has also written extensively on inequality, financial liberalisation and financial crises, industrial policy, the history of ideas in development economics and politics, and Latin American economic history.

Document can be found at: http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/dae/repec/cam/pdf/cwpe1111.pdf

Susan Newman currently holds the position of lecturer in international economics at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam. Her main research interests include the political economy of post-apartheid industrial development in South Africa, the relationship between financial and physical markets for commodities, and the relationship between finance and the restructuring of production. She holds a visiting position at the University of the Witwatersrand and has contributed to industrial policy research for the South African Department of Trade and Industry and the Gauteng Department of Economic Development.

Samantha Ashman is currently a Post- Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg. She is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her research interests include the financialization of the global economy and its implications; the relationship between real and financial accumulation; the evolution of South Africa's Minerals Energy Complex; and Industrial Policy.

Sheila Farrell is an experienced international ports consultant who has undertaken around 120 port consulting assignments in more than 50 countries, most of them concerned with port economics and finance, tariff setting, port reform and privatisation, and regulation.  Several of the projects have been linked to the development of port-related industries. She has over 40 years of experience of port and shipping consultancy. As well as working as a port consultant, she is also a Visiting Professor in Port Operations Research at Imperial College London. She is a member of an EU-funded multi-national group of academics undertaking a four year research programme into improving the effectiveness of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in transport, and has written two books on the subject of financing transport infrastructure.  She also writes and teaches on economic and financial issues relating to ports.

Abstract

CDI's Context of Public Primary Education Research Project is an extension of this South African Community Capability Study, in that it further zooms into the education dimension within communities by investigating its relationship to formal schooling in its location. Part of this project attention is paid to the Community Work Programme (CWP) that is implementing its meaningful work for basic income intervention in certain schools, including in four of the communities in the study. This report presents the findings of the perceptions and experiences of public primary schools that are beneficiaries of the CWP as well as the experiences of CWP participants' in working in public primary schools.

About the speaker

Melani Prinsloo is a founding member of the Centre for Democratising Information (CDI), where she undertakes the strategic leadership of the organisation as a whole. CDI has positioned itself as a significant and unique research entity – operating a community-based research platform focussing on under-developed communities. CDI and Infusion's clients include Department of Basic Education, Department of Science and Technology, Department of Health, Business Trust, SoulCity, Finmark Trust, Standard Bank, FNB, African Life, Sanlam, Metropolitan, Shoprite, Vodacom, Microsoft, MultiChoice, Financial Services Board and more. CDI aims to address the shortage of reliable, detailed information on under-developed by training unemployed people from communities to act as information agents, gathering data for surveys designed to investigate the context in which people live and make their decisions. A significant part of Melani's role is to identify and manage a network of people who engage on these research projects to ensure that each project is supported by a suitable, relevant and well-aligned team.