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21. Sub-Saharan Africa in the Czech Foreign Policy

Author:
Kateřina Ženková Rudincová
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Institute of International Relations Prague
Abstract:
The Czech foreign policy towards Sub-Saharan Africa can be characterised as continuous with aims of deepening the relations with traditional African partners in the fields of economy, defence, security and agriculture, and establishing new partnerships mainly with the Sahel countries. Similarly to the previous year, none of the themes connected to Sub-Saharan Africa were either politicised or polarised. The co-operation between ministries successfully continued with multi-sectoral visits on the continent by the representatives of the Czech Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Agriculture, Defence and Industry and Trade. The Czech Republic was also active on the European level, since it took part in the 5th EU-AU Summit and also worked actively on the negotiation mandate and draft of the post-Cotonou agreement with the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) countries. The Czech foreign policy towards Africa puts an emphasis on creating real partnerships with African states with the aim to achieve their sustainability and accountability.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Agriculture, and Economy
Political Geography:
Africa, Czech Republic, and Sub-Saharan Africa

22. Why northern Ghana lags behind in Ghana’s growth and poverty reduction success

Author:
John Baptist D. Jatoe, Ramatu Al-Hassan, and Bamidele Adekunle
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)
Abstract:
Ghana’s post adjustment growth and poverty reduction performance has been hailed as impressive, albeit with spatial disparities in the distribution of welfare, especially between the north and south of the country. Researchers generally agree that economic growth does not always reduce poverty. Indeed, the effectiveness of growth in reducing poverty depends on the level of inequality in the population. Growth that increases inequality may not reduce poverty; growth that does not change inequality (distribution-neutral growth) and growth that reduces inequality (pro-poor growth) result in poverty reduction. Policy makers can promote pro-poor growth by empowering the poor to participate in growth directly. Policy makers can focus on interventions that improve productivity in smallholder agriculture, particularly export crops, increasing employment of semi-skilled or unskilled labour, promoting technology adoption, increasing access to production assets, as well as effective participation in input and product markets. Also, increasing public spending on social services and infrastructure made possible by redistribution of the benefits of growth benefits the poor, indirectly.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, Poverty, Labor Issues, Economic growth, Labor Policies, Economic Policy, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Africa and Ghana

23. Selected Effects of Climate Change on Africa

Author:
Africa Center for Strategic Studies
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Africa Center for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Africa is more vulnerable to climate change than any other region on the planet. This map reflects a few of the ways the changing environment is straining Africa’s social systems.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Poverty, Water, Political stability, and Unemployment
Political Geography:
Africa, South Africa, Sahel, and Sahara

24. Brazilian Foreign Policy and Investments in Angola

Author:
Pietro Carlos De Souza Rodrigues and Sonia Delindro Goncalces
Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
AUSTRAL: Brazilian Journal of Strategy International Relations
Institution:
Postgraduate Program in International Strategic Studies, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Abstract:
The literature has given increasing attention to the role played by Brazilian transnational companies in its international insertion. In this context, special attention has been given to Brazilian private activities in Africa and, in particular, in Angola. Some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are understood as potential markets for investments, especially given the similarities of the challenges for development and expertise of some of the Brazilian firms in sectors as agriculture, mining and civil construction. The objective of this paper is to try to capture possible relations between Brazil-Angola bilateral relations over the international operations of Brazilian firms. Our argument is that the business environment to investments has been favoured by a simultaneous international political alignment, as a consequence of the changes in the Brazilian foreign policy orientation.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Agriculture, International Cooperation, Foreign Direct Investment, Mining, and transnationalism
Political Geography:
Africa, Brazil, South America, and Angola

25. Bridging Theory and Practice: A Life in the Field

Author:
Meg Murphy
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
During the turmoil in Uganda after the fall of repressive leader Idi Amin Dada, political scientist Robert Bates was in the field. At the time, he was widely known for his astute public policy analysis of agricultural decline in Africa. His war zone experience led to the great concern of the latter part of his career—the study of political violence. Now one of his books on the subject, When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa, is being published by the Cambridge University Press. It was selected for the Canto Classics series, which features the most influential titles over the past half-century. With the inclusion, Bates joins intellects such as literary critic C.S. Lewis, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, and British anthropologist Jack Goody. For Bates, the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and professor of African and African American studies at Harvard and a Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, a deep commitment to fieldwork has been paramount. On his office door there’s a picture of Bates, long white beard and Panama hat, looking, as he does, like a restless scholar ready to set out on expedition.
Topic:
Agriculture, Violence, political warfare, and Socioeconomics
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Ghana

26. Sustainability Issues in the Cameroon Banana Supply Chain

Author:
Kingsly Awang Ollong
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Institution:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Abstract:
Banana cultivation has long been a key aspect of agricultural development in Cameroon, actually taking advantage of this incentive impetus created for agricultural development. In the late 1970s, the Office Camerounaise de Banane (OCB), a state parastatal was put in place to regulate the banana industry in Cameroon. It received the mandate to organize the marketing chain of Cameroonian bananas (UNECA 1981). To better realize this mission assigned to her by the State, OCB was endowed with financial autonomy guaranteed through the allocation of public subsidies, ensuring the channeling of production, supervision of producers and access to credit and agricultural inputs to operators in the banana sector in Cameroon. The attractive and enticing prospects of a booming banana market and opportunities for land acquisition in a banana field that was seen as terra nullius aroused the interest of many international operators for the Cameroon banana sector. Until 1988 the banana sector in Cameroon was organized around coexistence between food crops and industrial cultivation. Since 1988, the organization of the productive system changed with the dissolution of the OCB in 1993—effectively signaling the end of small banana farms (Anania 2014, 173). Consequently, the field was left free to banana agribusiness consisting of giant multinational corporations. Under the impetus of these large industrial groups, Cameroon’s banana industry experienced tremendous growth. Thus, the industry pointed to the first largest export crops in Cameroon, imposing itself as a crucial economic activity (Atanga 2006)
Topic:
Agriculture, Natural Resources, Economic Development, and Supply Chains
Political Geography:
Africa and Cameroon

27. Transforming Sub Saharan Africa Agriculture

Author:
Jamal Saghir and Hans Hoogeveen
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University
Abstract:
Across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) agriculture is a dominant sector in the economies of most countries accounting for between 30 to 40 percent of gross domestic product, and the sector is a leading source of jobs for over two-thirds of Africa’s population. And yet, though it has the potential to be an agricultural power, a combination of low productivity and an inadequate policy framework make SSA the world’s most food-insecure region. Over the last 40 years it has also been steadily losing its share of the global agricultural market. With less than 10% of SSA’s population, Thailand exports more food products than all SSA countries combined, and Brazil’s food exports are now 150% higher than those of SSA, although levels were similar in the 1980s. The “Green Revolution” that transformed tropical agriculture in Asia and Latin America largely bypassed Africa, with total factor productivity growth in agriculture lagging behind that of other regions in the world (Evenson and Gollin 2003) 1 . Two main factors are responsible. First, little land on the continent is irrigated. Only two percent of Africa’s renewable water resources are used, compared to a global average of five percent. Of the 183 million hectares of cultivated land in SSA, 95 percent is rain-fed and less than 5 percent benefits from some sort of agricultural water management practice—by far the lowest irrigation development rate of any region in the world. Moreover, of the 7.1 million hectares equipped with irrigation equipment, only 5.3 million are currently operational. Second, modern inputs and technological processes are grossly underutilized. Africa has, by far, the lowest rate of improved seed and fertilizer use of any region— a rate that has remained virtually constant for the last 40 years—and the lowest level of mechanization in the world. In consequence, African farmers have the lowest farm productivity; their grain yields only one-half of those achieved by Asian or Latin American farmers.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Poverty, and Economy
Political Geography:
Africa

28. More Inclusive Decision-making Processes in Foreign Land Leasing: Policy Insights from Kenya

Author:
DAVID JAKINDA OTIENO
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Foreign land leases could help developing countries to acquire foreign direct investments (FDIs), including technical expertise and income necessary for economic transformation. A lack of local stakeholder consultation and involvement in the design of land leases leads to the rejection or disruption of such leases by local communities and wastes investors' resources due to disruptions. Local public stakeholders in Kenya are willing to accept and participate in leases, provided they include certain provisions: that leases do not exceed 15 years; are renewable subject to mutual negotiations; offer formal employment to landowners' household members; and provide adequate monetary compensation for the leased land. Effective and transparent management of land leases requires the formation of management committees comprising local stakeholders such as youth, women and land experts. To enhance lease transparency, regular consultative meetings should be held, negotiation records must be shared with local community members and landowners should receive direct payment, rather than being paid through intermediaries.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Development, Economics, Poverty, and Food
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

29. Improving Regional and Rural Development for Inclusive Growth in Egypt

Author:
Hafez Ghanem
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
This paper examines how economic growth in Egypt can be made more inclusive through a focus on rural development and reducing regional disparities. Nearly all of the extremely poor in Egypt live in rural areas and 83 percent of them live in Upper Egypt. The youth in those rural areas feel particularly excluded.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Economics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa and Arabia

30. Afrique centrale : les défis sécuritaires du pastoralisme

Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
La pénétration du pastoralisme qui s'accentue depuis plusieurs années en Afrique centrale génère des conflits à la fois fréquents et ignorés dans un monde rural où l'empreinte de l'Etat est particulièrement faible. Ces conflits s'intensifient sous l'effet conjugué de plusieurs facteurs: l'insécurité croissante, le changement climatique qui pousse les pasteurs toujours plus au sud, l'éclatement des couloirs traditionnels de transhumance, notamment transfrontaliers, l'extension des cultures et l'augmentation des cheptels qui entrainent une compétition accrue sur les ressources naturelles. Même si les défis sécuritaires du pastoralisme ne sont pas de même intensité dans les trois pays étudiés dans ce rapport (Tchad, République centrafricaine et République démocratique du Congo), ils ont deux dénominateurs communs : l'impératif d'une prise en compte de ce problème par les pouvoirs publics et la nécessité d'une régulation de la transhumance qui inclue les différents acteurs concernés.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Agriculture, Climate Change, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure
Political Geography:
Africa