Africa Needs to Do Innovation or KAIZEN?
How Different are Innovation and KAIZEN? Innovation is Like a Lottery. KAIZEN is Invention Without Innovation.
Entries by Ippei Tsuruga
Social Policy and the Elimination of Extreme Poverty
“In middle-income countries, it may be that growth has lifted all the poor out of poverty who can be lifted; for the rest, social policy will be needed (Raj M. Desai 2015).” Thinking about approaches towards the goal of poverty elimination by 2030, this may be a sentence that we can cite to convince people […]
Book Review: The Last Mile in Ending Extreme Poverty
If The End of Poverty by Jeffery Sachs and The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier are classics for development studies during the era of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), The Last Mile in Ending Extreme Poverty will be a classic book for the era of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) towards 2030. As SDGs aim, the book […]
Implementing SDGs to End Poverty and Malnutrition through Sustainable Development
At the United Nations General Assembly in this month, representatives will adopt a new sustainable development goals (SDGs), consisting of 17 goals and 169 targets. It illustrates a road towards 2030. One single message word would be no one should be left behind. Another key word is environment. Though there is a general agreement to […]
Japan Starts Emergency Assistance to Dominica over the Tropical Storm Erika
The tropical storm named Erika hit the Commonwealth of Dominica on August 27. Over dozens of losses and the ongoing catastrophe, Japan decided to support the country. Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is shipping generators, water purifiers and water storage tanks. Further details will be announced at the following websites. Reference Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) […]
Ending Chronic Poverty by 2030: What is Required for Implementation?
Do we ‘still’ have 15 years to 2030? No. We have ‘only’ 15 years. In order to eliminate extreme poverty, we need to take immediate actions to tackle chronic poverty. What are the potential challenges? How can they be overcome? For the past decade, policy makers and researchers have paid great attention to pro-poor growth, […]
Why does Japan not Tweet? Compliance and Public Relations
In development communities, it is often said, ‘we don’t know what Japan does’. People in the world think Japan is invisible. There are a lot fewer practitioners, researchers and leaders who have public accounts on Twitter, Facebook or other social media in Japan, compared to Europe and the rest of the world. I personally believe […]
Can Graduation Programmes End Child Poverty?
Can social protection lift up and sustain households out of poverty? The keyword of this sentence is ‘sustainability’. Social protection commonly and theoretically aims to cut a vicious cycle of poverty, which also refers to long-term poverty or intergenerational transmission of poverty. Nevertheless, social protection in practice tends to focus on short- and medium-term impacts. How […]
Civil G8 Dialogue
On April 23rd and 24th, “Civil G8 Dialogue” took place in Kyoto, to put forward civil society perspectives on the issues on the official agenda of the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit. I worked part time and joined it as well. That was my first international conference ever.
Japan Starts Emergency Assistance to Nepal over the Great Earthquake
The great earthquake hit the Nepali capital Katmandu at 11:56, April 25 in local time. Within only half day, Japanese organisations have already started emergency assistance. It is time for Japan to support those who are affected by the earthquake. We remember March 11, 2011. We all know how hard the earthquake is, and our experts […]