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171. Biosafety of GM Crops in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania

Author:
Judith A. Chambers
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
Against a background of rapid global adoption rates and two decades of safe use, the overly cautious approach to genetic modification (GM) technology in agriculture by African governments seems misplaced. To date, only three African countries are engaged in commercial production of GM crops, although others are experimenting with the technology. Among those African countries experimenting with the technology, several are proceeding along a path toward commercialization and reside geographically close in East Africa, where the potential for regional trade impacts and issues exist. An examination of their historical circumstance and experience with GM technology, and the resultant effects on regulatory policy, can offer some useful insights about the various factors that impact GM technology adoption in Africa, especially from the perspective of the biosafety policies enacted.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, International Trade and Finance, Science and Technology, Food, and Governance
Political Geography:
Uganda, Kenya, Africa, and Tanzania

172. Investment Power in Africa: Where from and where to?

Author:
Anton Eberhard and Katharine Nawaal Gratwick
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
Economic and social development depends critically on infrastructure, for which electricity may be among the most important inputs. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has among the lowest rates of electricity access in the world - less than 30 percent. Furthermore, excluding South Africa, SSA is the only region for which per capita consumption of electricity is falling. The total installed capacity in the region amounts to less than South Korea's, and this limited supply is costly and unpredictable, imposing heavy tolls on social and economic development. It has been estimated that about 7,000 megawatts (MW) need to be added each year (2005-2015) to meet suppressed demand and provide additional capacity for electrification expansion. Such an investment would cost approximately $27 billion per year. Presently, funding to the electricity sector (for capital expenditure) is estimated at just $4.6 billion a year; hence, an annual funding gap of more than $20 billion exists. Public sources - utility income and fiscal transfers - contribute only about one-half of current capital investments, highlighting the urgent need for increased private investment, including public-private partnerships. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, the push towards private investment in electrical generation dates to the early 1990s, but the journey has not been smooth. Significant lessons may be identified, including: understanding the limited pool of investments, together with the importance of public stakeholders in equity and debt alike; the increasing application of partial risk guarantees (PRGs) to mobilize finance; and the emergence of more non-OECD partners. We note a number of success stories, including Kenya, South Africa and (potentially) Nigeria, whose policy innovations have replication potential in other Sub-Saharan African countries and beyond.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, South Korea, South Africa, and Nigeria

173. Decaf empowerment? Post-Washington Consensus development policy, fair trade and Kenya's coffee industry

Author:
Zoë Pflaeger
Publication Date:
07-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
There has been much debate surrounding the shift in development policy towards the Post-Washington Consensus and its associated Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. This article seeks to engage critically with and further this literature by considering the concept of empowerment and its role within this consensus through an examination of development policy aimed at farmer empowerment in Kenya. This is investigated with a focus upon coffee producers in the context of Kenya's coffee reforms and the restructuring of the global coffee industry. While acknowledging the limitations of the dominant approach, exacerbated in the African context due to a problematic interpretation of the African state, it is argued that analyses of empowerment should also consider the opportunities for its re-politicisation. Drawing upon Gramscian thought, this article suggests that fair trade initiatives have the potential to offer an alternative approach to farmer empowerment more capable of challenging the concentration of power among roasters and buyers that has taken place within the coffee industry.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, and Washington

174. Rethinking Ivory: Why Trade in Tusks Won't Go Away

Author:
John Frederick Walker
Publication Date:
06-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
TSAVO WEST, Kenya—Two years ago, in what was billed as a defiant message to elephant poachers, Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki arrived by helicopter at a dusty airstrip in Tsavo West National Park to set fire to five tons of seized contraband ivory.
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

175. Linking People, Crossing Borders: A Conversation with Mo Ibrahim

Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
Born in northern Sudan at the end of World War II, educated in England with a Ph.D. in engineering and mobile communications, Mo Ibrahim returned to Africa in 1998, bringing cellular technology with him. At the time of his arrival, there were barely three million landline telephones on the entire continent—the bulk of them in North Africa and the nation of South Africa. Most of sub-Saharan Africa was all but inaccessible to terrestrial telephone lines. The Democratic Republic of Congo had only 3,000 phones to serve its population of about 55 million. Seeing demand for mobile phones and with little competition from landlines, Mo Ibrahim created Celtel, beginning in Kenya, branching quickly into Uganda and Tanzania. The company allowed millions of mobile subscribers to roam freely across borders, recharging with local cards as they went. Quickly, Celtel expanded across Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Malawi, Zambia, and finally his native Sudan—a vast pan-African territory almost devoid of telecommunications boundaries. By the time he sold Celtel five years ago, he had linked 24 million people—a number that was growing exponentially.
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, Sudan, South Africa, North Africa, and England

176. History, Overview, Trends and Issues in Major Somali Refugee Displacements in the Near Region (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Yemen)

Author:
Laura Hammond
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
This paper was originally prepared for the High Level Panel on Somali Refugees convened by the High Commissioner for Refugees to take place in Geneva on 13 and 14 November 2013. The Panel is part of a Global Initiative the High Commissioner has launched to rally international support for creative, meaningful and transformative solutions for Somali refugees.
Political Geography:
Uganda, Kenya, Yemen, and Ethiopia

177. To pay or Not to Pay? Citizens’ Attitudes towards Taxation in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa

Author:
Merima Ali, Odd Helge Fjeldstad, and Ingrid Hoem Sjursen
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
This paper examines factors that determine citizens’ tax-compliance attitude in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa. Using the 2011/12 Afrobarometer survey data, we find that tax-compliance attitude is positively correlated with the provision of public services in the four countries. However, the correlation depends on the specific service in question and differs between countries. Tax knowledge and awareness are found to be positively correlated with tax-compliance attitude. On the other hand, frequent payment to non-state actors in exchange for security and individual’s perception that their own ethnic group is treated unfairly by the government are negatively correlated with tax-compliance attitude.
Topic:
Non State Actors, Citizenship, Tax Systems, and Social Services
Political Geography:
Uganda, Kenya, Africa, South Africa, and Tanzania

178. Prosecuting International and Other Serious Crimes in Kenya

Author:
The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
Publication Date:
04-2013
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
Abstract:
This briefing paper focuses on the topic of prosecuting international and other serious crimes in Kenya, including crimes committed in the context of the postelection crisis of late 2007 and early 2008. In particular, it identifies and analyzes obstacles and opportunities for such prosecutions within current legal and institutional frameworks.
Topic:
Elections, Criminal Justice, Accountability, and International Crime
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

179. Libya and the Responsibility to Protect

Author:
Simon Adams
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Abstract:
For those concerned with the international community's Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the implementation of United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized a military intervention in Libya, has caused much controversy and dissension. From the start of Muammar al-Qaddafi's violent crackdown against protesters in February 2011, R2P informed the Security Council's response. Adopted at the UN World Summit in 2005 and intended as an antidote to the inaction that had plagued the UN during the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and Srebrenica, R2P represents a solemn commitment by the international community to never again be passive spectators to genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity. While R2P played some role in preventing an escalation of deadly ethnic conflict in Kenya during 2007, it had never been utilized to mobilize the Security Council to take coercive action against a UN member state before.
Topic:
Civil War, Human Rights, Human Welfare, Regime Change, and Insurgency
Political Geography:
Kenya, Arabia, Cambodia, United Nations, North Africa, and Rwanda

180. And Africa Will Shine Forth: A Statesman's Memoir

Author:
Jean Ping
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
International Peace Institute (IPI)
Abstract:
Everyone knows that Africa, cradle of humanity, land of the Pharaohs and human civilization, and vast reservoir of human and natural resources, is not doing well. She crosses the deepest crisis that has shaken her since the end of colonial times. The specter of chaos lurks everywhere. She is now seen as the continent of “collapsing states” and “zombie nations”; the continent of extreme poverty, misery, and injustice; the continent of horrors, of the Rwandan genocide and of the worst atrocities committed in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Darfur and elsewhere. This brutal reality has been, for quite some time now, analyzed by most observers and experts with certain fatalism, as testified by these book titles with pessimistic or even alarmist tones: “Black Africa Started on the Wrong Foot” (René Dumont), “Can Black Africa Take Off?” (Albert Meister); “And What If Africa Refused Development” (Axelle Kabou); “Africa Down” (Jacques Giri). By now, it is just a chorus of permanent lamentations about the “lost continent,” the “damned continent,” or the “cursed continent” whose past is not passing. And the rest of the world, which sees us as negligible, even contemptible (“all corrupt and all dictators,” they say), consider that henceforth, they no longer need us.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Economics, Post Colonialism, Natural Resources, Fragile/Failed State, and Neoimperialism
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, Darfur, Liberia, and Sierra Leone