My Beauty Best Teacher

Specialized corridors and other innovations for improving Agricultural productivity
Boughezoul: A Flawed "New Model of Urbanism" in Algeria?
Arabs and the long revolution, by Brian Whitaker
Intra-regional trade booming
Can Technology End Poverty?
A Book: The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn't Working

From United Nations University:

Photo | Alan Lew

A recent study co-authored by UNU-INRA’s Director, Elias Ayuk, finds that forest income reduces both income inequality and poverty in rural Nigeria. The analysis presented indicates that the decision to participate in forest extraction increases with more access to community forest areas, larger and poorer households and membership in forest management committees, and decreases with higher educational attainment. Furthermore, the researchers’ poverty and inequality simulations revealed that household welfare in rural Nigeria could be improved through policies and programs that can stimulate earnings from minor forest resources and assist households to earn income from alternative sources such as agriculture and commerce...[continue reading]

Worldwatch reports:

Image courtesy of CIDSE

Although women comprise 43 percent of the agricultural labor force in developing countries, they typically aren’t able to own land. Cultural barriers also limit women’s ability to obtain credit and insurance.Strengthening women’s rights can help strengthen the global food system. According to the World Food Programme, allowing women farmers access to more resources could reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 100-150 million people. Nourishing the Planet highlights five innovations that are helping empower women farmers around the world,they are:
-Vertical Farming
-Food, Agriculture & Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network’s (FANRPAN) Theatre
-Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)
-Women’s Collective
-GREEN Foundation

Read here for details

In Ghana:

The Agro Mindset organisation was founded with a clear mission to advocate the youth in the diaspora to pursue agriculture and related sciences, its entrepreneurial excellence and rural development. One component of this work is to train new interdisciplinary generation of agriculturist who think innovatively about the challenges that lie ahead in this field…
The future of agriculture relies on the younger generation coming through to provide succession, add enthusiasm, bring fresh ideas and drive innovation. To us, as long as agricultural growth in Sub-Saharan Africa remains below 3% annually, Food Security is wishful thinking.
The vision of the Agro Mindset Organisation is to build the green revolution where the youth having attained academic skill and knowledge relating to agribusiness can develop the knowledge and skill towards career requirements and industry expectation, apply and transfer the knowledge, skill and technology in a variety of settings.

In the Guardian:

Photograph: Zed Nelson/Institute

Mabior Garang, son of Dr John Garang, a former SPLA rebel leader and Sudanese politician

'The people are edgy right now. They fought the war, contributed their children, their crops, their livestock. The moment they should be paid back, the ­movement is hijacked by the ­"cut-and-paste ­middle class" – the foreign diaspora returning. They can’t institute ­policies that speak to the people. And when ­people are hungry and perceive those in power are denying them food, they will rise up.'

via Kilele

The Economist profiles Sao Tome and Principe:

Image courtesy of Paxgaea

Across São Tomé dense cocoa plantations cling to the sides of monolithic pillars. A third of the archipelago is covered in the crop which makes up 80% of its exports. In the late 1990s, dips in production and prices left the island state heavily reliant on foreign aid and farmers on the poverty line. But since 2004 farmers have set up collectives, eliminating the middlemen who had been eating into their profits. With facilities to ferment the product and dry the cocoa to export they are benefitting from prices five times higher than those for cocoa seeds still in their treacly translucent liquid. São Tomé and Príncipe does not produce huge quantities of cocoa but what it does grow is organic and Fairtrade which goes down well with wealthy Western consumers.

More here

Mariamé Touré Ouattara writing in Open Democracy:

There is little common ground between the realities faced by the population of Burkina Faso and international requirements and the shortfall in grain production and worsening of hunger in the past years can largely be attributed to this fact. It is not that farmers are unable to produce a sufficient quantity of food, it is that they find themselves in a political system that will not allow them to fulfill their potential. Not consulted in policy debates and uninvited to discussions, they feel excluded from the system when in reality they are key actors. What is more, farmers do not always understand how policy demands play out in these domains. Yet these are the people who suffer the effects of policy choices. In my view, the problem really lies here at the level of policy.

More here

Ndidi Nwuneli founder of AACE Foods writes:

Image courtesy of Alhaji's Groove

In my current status as a local food content activist and food processor, I have become a keen observer of the activities of restaurants, caterers and food processing companies. Sadly, my observations reinforce the Minister’s assertions – at least 60% and in some cases, up to 90% of the food on our shelves and in our tummies is imported. For example, I visited a local restaurant outside Lagos early in the month and decided to run the same test. I asked the chef for the sources of the different food being offered to the clients. What surprised me was that in a relatively “local” joint, owned by Nigerians and focused on catering to our local taste buds, the menu was tilted in the favor of imported products or products that were imported and repackaged in Nigeria. Interestingly, the chef did not seem to give much thought to the issue of the source of food. In her mind, she was looking for the most convenient and cost effective options. When I asked her why the restaurant used imported instead of local chicken, she simply said that “they purchased it in the local market.”

Jamie Doran writing in Al Jazeera:

Ethiopia is a poor country, with most of its population living in what is termed 'extreme poverty' (accepted definition: less than $1 per day). But Ethiopia should not be a poor country; large areas are lush green with plenty of opportunity for cultivation. The key is to direct aid in such a way that it avoids sporadic development and, instead, achieves long-term success through integrating all of the requirements a community needs to thrive. In other words, what's the point of building a school when the kids are too hungry, or sick with malaria, to attend? You need to provide them with food, health care and education at the same time. This is only part of it, but you get the idea.The fancy phrase is 'holistic development' and it's not pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking; I saw it with my own eyes during my visit: large swathes of land being irrigated to produce cash crops which, in turn, could be sold at market (the tradition had been to grow maize, more maize and more still); schools being built, new health centres, savings and lending schemes allowing investment in rudimentary tools which revolutionise production and, crucially, food storage to ensure that if the rains do not arrive one year there's enough food to feed their families. In short, a major success story run entirely by Ethiopians themselves.A group called Self Help Africa runs the project in the Sodo region I visited, along with others in various parts of the country. To see such immense pride on the faces of the farmers planting their new crops, on the children walking to their new schools and, particularly, on the women who run the savings and lending schemes is a memory which simply doesn't fade. Whole communities coming together, hundreds of men, women and children digging ditches, building dams: millions of gallons of rainwater which had previously crashed off the mountainside, dragging topsoil from the land below until eventually pouring uselessly into the river and being lost forever, now being stopped in its tracks. That rainwater now seeps into the ground, raising the water table.

More here

Sudan turns to farms as income from oil wanes
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How did ignorance become history?

Claire Melamed in the Guardian:

A worker moves brass tubes at a factory in Zhuji, Zhejiang province. In China, it was agricultural growth that started to reduce poverty; manufacturing jobs actually contributed less. Image: AP

There's a not-unreasonable assumption, based mainly on the experience of east Asia, that building up low-skilled manufacturing industries, such as clothing or electronics, would create jobs that reduce poverty. And the creation of export-processing zones have often been recommended by donors to attract investors to these sectors. But, to reduce poverty, jobs in agriculture or services are just as important. In China, it was agricultural growth that really kick-started poverty reduction; manufacturing jobs actually contributed less. In many countries it's the services sector – providing haircuts, selling food, cleaning houses – that is the real growth area for jobs. The potential for expansion in any sector is finite, and too much focus on any one sector is almost certain to reach a dead end before too long. The key is a mix of sectors and the ability to move people and money easily between them.

More here

Lessons for Africa's chocolate producers from a Dominican co-op :

In the backcountry of the Dominican Republic, poor cacao farmers have been fighting a losing battle with the global economy for as long as anyone can remember. But the thriving Loma Guaconejo cooperative has found a way to turn the system on its head. "For us, the cooperative was like electricity...[continue reading]

via Next Billion

In the New Agriculturist:

courtesy of Story Workshop

"Knowledge is like fire; you get it from your neighbour," explains Malawian radio producer Gladson Makowa, based in Blantyre. He should know; his radio programme, Mwana Alirenji, is the only media programme in the country to provide a national forum for dialogue amongst ordinary smallscale farmers, encouraging thousands to become food secure by listening to each other.

More here

How We Made It Africa spotlights expatriate farmers from Zimbabwe in an interview:

courtesy of how we made it in Africa

Give us an overview of the current situation at your farm?

At present we have 400 hectares of cassava in the land, growing well due to recent rains. We now also have six boreholes in place, plus a holding dam.
Irrigation is key to our project but there have been many delays in this area.
The promise of a constant electricity supply has not yet materialised, although there are many electrical poles and wires on our farm.
Finance is also still a problem. We battle to get the financial institutions to understand the concept of short-, medium- and long-term loans and the real need to have finance before the rainy season starts. We are geared up to plant another 300 hectares in 2010 and just need the finance to do it.

Read the rest of the interview here