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Despite 15 years of economic growth African agriculture still lagging
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Full video of the symposium is now available - Why Has Africa Been Slow in Developing its Agriculture?
A poor African farmer produces a little more corn than last year. He sells the surplus in a nearby urban market, and uses the money to purchase a shirt stitched by a local seamstress. With the bumper crop of corn, more and more farmers are interested in the seamstress' wares. The extra income allows her to buy better materials and a new sewing machine. Her business grows, and she begins to sell her work in bigger markets, further from her small village.
Years later, a poor farmer responds to an announcement for a job in a local clothing factory. The monthly wage is more than he currently makes in a year.
This is the vision that Dr. Ousmane Badiane, Africa Director for the International Food Policy Research Institute, presented to an audience of Stanford students and faculty on April 7. In a two-hour symposium entitled "Why Has Africa Been Slow in Developing its Agriculture?," Badiane outlined the steps he believes African nations must take to sustain economic growth and encourage high-value industrial development. Public investment in agriculture formed the backbone of his proposal.
Badiane said that although African nations have experienced unprecedented economic growth in the last 15 years, they still lag behind the developed world in economic sophistication. When workers leave agriculture for other sectors, he explained, the transition usually signifies economic progress.
But in Africa, too many farmers have abandoned their fields to peddle trinkets on the streets as part of a low-productivity service sector. They have left behind an underdeveloped and understaffed agricultural industry.
Agriculture has just plummeted too fast and too quickly in these countries," Badiane said. "Agriculture is not claiming the share of GDP and employment that it should."
When agriculture thrives, Badiane explained, economies grow and diversify. A wealthier rural population purchases products manufactured by urban entrepreneurs. Productive local farms buffer fluctuations in global crop output and food prices, improving security for urban industrial workers and reducing wage pressure on industrial employers.
"What agriculture needs is what industry needs," Badiane said, emphasizing that investment in one need not mean neglect of the other. "There are a lot of things you can do right by all the sectors at the same time."
In fact, according to Badiane, every $100 increase in agricultural output could result in up to a $130 increase in output from industry.
Badiane described one step that African governments have already taken to set the positive agriculture-industry feedback in motion. The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program is a cooperative effort by the African Union's 53 member nations to achieve ambitious goals for economic development and investment in agriculture by 2015.
Badiane commended the Program's unprecedented commitment to agricultural growth and its high standards for accountability, policy research, and performance review. He also praised the political momentum and unity that the initiative has generated within Africa, and the respect that it has earned in the international community.
However, Badiane admitted that agricultural growth in Africa cannot always proceed in harmony with other objectives. The need to finance agricultural research and development will put pressure on budgets for broader public welfare programs that Dr. Joel Samoff, a Stanford professor of African Studies, says most African nations simply cannot afford to de-fund.
"Most countries in Africa spend around $10 per person per year on health," says Samoff. "How do you reduce that?"
But Badiane suggested that governments may be able to address both agriculture and welfare simultaneously.
They will have to see how they can use social service budgets to sustain growth in agriculture," he said. "Look at health and education not as an entitlement, but as a tool to raise labor productivity."
Addressing the audience during a question-and-answer session following Badiane's talk, Harvard Development Professor, Emeritus, Peter Timmer drew attention to the scope of Badiane's objectives.
"You're talking about getting industry moving at the same time as you're getting agriculture moving," he noted, "and this is a very ambitious undertaking."
However, Timmer also indicated that he saw the seeds of success in Badiane's ideas. "I think we've just heard a quite profound analysis of Africa's agricultural problems, and its structural history," he said. "And a possible way forward."
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Research Presentations (3 of 4) - Aosaki, Palande and Takeuchi
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Minoru Aosaki, "International Banking Regulation after the Financial Crisis: Economic Impacts and Policy Challenges in the US, Japan, and the EU"
To address lessons of the financial crisis, the Basel Committee introduced a new international framework on banking regulations, known as Basel III. The world leaders subsequently committed to implement it at the last G20 summit meeting. A current key issue is how regulators in each country should/can transform their current regulatory regime to the new regime under their own economic and regulatory environments. To consider the issue, Aosaki examines how economic costs and benefits of the regulatory reform would vary among countries and discusses policy challenges of the regulators to ensure the benefits and mitigate the costs.
Pradnya Palande, "Population Dynamics: A New Approach in Understanding Cancer Development"
Cancer, the most vicious and hard to cure disease, results from an accumulation of genetic alterations best known as mutations, in our body. These mutations constantly keep evolving by natural selection. A consequence of this evolution is that a cancer treatment will tend to kill the susceptible cells but will leave the resistant ones to flourish. A few months later, the cancer will reappear and will be resistant to previous treatment. Hence studying the population dynamics of cancer will provide insight into development of cancer and will help in developing better methods for cancer prevention and therapy.
Palande has concentrated her research on population dynamics of cancer cells in chronic myeloid leukemia, a type of blood cancer. She is trying to study the role of the antibody diversification enzyme, namely Activation Induced cytidine Deaminase (AID), in the generation of mutations associated with cancer progression and drug resistance in chronic myeloid leukemia.
Naoki Takeuchi, "Energy Policies, Clean Technologies, and Business Innovations in the United States"
In January 2011, at his State of the Union speech, President Obama suggested setting a goal that 80% of electricity will come from clean energy sources in the United States by 2035. He also suggested that the United States will become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.
In Takeuchi's research, he tries to understand the dynamic interactions among government energy policies, clean technologies, and business innovations in the United States. His research includes an overview of federal energy policies (both regulations and incentives), an overview of California State government policies, recent trends of clean technologies, venture capital investments in cleantech companies, and major areas of clean technologies and business innovations. In this presentation, Takeuchi will present case studies focusing on cleantech companies in the Silicon Valley.
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Minoru Aosaki
Speaker
Ministry of Finance, Japan
Pradnya Palande
Speaker
Reliance Industries
Naoki Takeuchi
Speaker
Development Bank of Japan
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Research Presentations (1 of 4) - Kadowaki, Sato and Vasudeva
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In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:
Toshifumi Kadowaki, "The Keys to Successful M&As in High-Tech Industries - Based on a Study of the HP-Compaq Merger"
Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are tactics, not strategy. Successful M&As, however, can be considered one of the most useful tactics in realizing corporate strategy because M&As often save time and can even save money and reduce risk. Many high-tech companies, therefore, have made a large number of M&As recently. Numerous empirical studies, though, have shown that most M&As fail. Through the case study of the Hewlett Packard-Compaq merger, Kadowaki analyzes what makes M&As successful and what causes them to fail.
Oshie Sato, "Dawn of a new Era in the Video Industry - Impact of Smart TVs from a Historical Perspective of Broadcasting and Movie Industries in the United States and Japan"
After prospering for more than a half century both in the United States and Japan, the broadcasting and movie industries have reached a turning point of their business models. This is due mostly to the rise of competition with the Internet since the late 1990s and a global recession led by Lehman's fall in 2008. What will happen to these industries in the U.S. and Japan over the next decade? Sato analyzes a future picture of the broadcasting and movie industries, focusing on the impact of smart TVs - next-generation video devices such as Google TV and Apple TV.
Sonya Vasudeva, "Pharmacogenetics in Cancer: Steps Towards Personalized Medicine"
The variability in clinical response to drug treatment has been well known for decades. An era of pharmacogenetics started almost fifty years ago when it was recognized that a part of this variation is inherited, and can therefore be predictable. With the wealth of information readily available online, the promise of personalized medicine looms large, but the generalization into clinical applications of pharmacogenomics has been more challenging. In Vasudeva's research, she shares examples of tests, which are integrated by USA FDA and EMA into drug lables, one example being K Ras mutation for metastatic colorectal cancer. Vasudeva argues that the increased availability of such tests may transform the field of medical oncology, moving treatment from the "one size fits all" approach to a personalized therapy based on variations in an individual genome.
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Toshifumi Kadowaki
Speaker
Sumitomo Corporation
Oshie Sato
Speaker
Sumitomo Corporation
Sonya Vasudeva
Speaker
Reliance Industries
Seminars
Entrepreneurship and Japan's Transformation
Brochure for STAJE April conference
The meeting will bring together over 30 scholars on Japan to discuss new developments in Japan, including potential opportunities opening up after the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake. We will have 22 paper presenters and discussants, with topics ranging from new firm profitability, the politics of firm creation, management of innovation, and large firm entrepreneurial processes in Japan. The goal is to lead to a better understanding of the nature of entrepreneurship, and how analyses of Japan might inform more theoretical discussions.
Also, in view of the disastrous earthquake and tsunami that has recently afflicted Japan, the conference will feature a panel of prominent experts on Japan's economic, social systems, business, and government who will discuss the effects of the great earthquake on research and today's Japan.
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E-commerce, online gaming and social networking benefit from internet boom in China: SPRIE visiting scholar details way forward for US internet firms and investors
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Duncan Clark, Visiting Scholar at SPRIE and Chairman/Founder of Beijing-based investment advisory firm BDA China, spoke to a packed room at a seminar titled "Life after Google? The Way Forward for US Internet Firms and Investors in China", hosted by SPRIE, about the appeal and complexities of China's dynamic internet sector. The talk is part of SPRIE's ongoing series of speaker events, seminars and conferences entitled "China 2.0: The Rise of a Digital Superpower".
China's internet population will soon be double that of the US. China is home to a thriving market for social networking, games, e-commerce and other applications. While many individual and institutional investors in Chinese internet firms have profited from this growth, US internet firms themselves have struggled to gain a foothold. In fact a number of the most iconic internet firms in the US - including eBay, Yahoo and Google - have either pulled out of China or significantly scaled back their expectations for the market. Why?
Censorship and government restrictions are often pointed to as the principal cause. Is this justified, or does it sometimes serve as a convenient excuse for other factors such as management missteps?
Certainly Google placed blame squarely with the Chinese government, citing the growing burden of censorship and sophisticated attacks on Gmail as principal motivations for its 2010 decision to scale back its China business. In his 45-minute talk, Clark discussed the implications of Google's move, both for the company (and the benefits to its main competitor Baidu) and for a new wave of US internet companies who are evaluating the market (such as Facebook) or who have recently entered the market (such as Groupon).
Clark explored the psyche driving the Chinese government's approach to internet restrictions and the varying degrees of sensitivity associated with online activities such as social networking, email/IM, games and e-commerce. He also discussed the risks faced by Chinese internet founders/CEOs as they balance the need to serve customers and the stock market with serving the requirements and expectations of the Chinese government and the Communist Party.
The talk reviewed in turn the experience of various US internet companies in China and how elusive the right formula for success can be.
Clark concluded with a discussion of the more positive of US individual and institutional investors. While competitive risks remain substantial, backing Chinese management teams to some extent insulates investors from the vagaries of government regulation. Chinese internet firms such as Baidu, Tencent and Taobao have emerged as some of the world's most highly visited and most valuable sites. Clark explored the questions of how sustainable are their positions in China, and whether these firms can demonstrate an ability to innovate and extend their reach beyond China's shores.
Duncan Clark and Marguerite Gong Hancock, associate director of SPRIE, are continuing their research into these and other topics as part of SPRIE's China 2.0: The Rise of a Digital Superpower project. SPRIE looks forward to the perspectives of upcoming invited speakers as the program keeps apace with the fast growing but unpredictable China internet market.
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Duncan Clark, visiting scholar at SPRIE, gave a talk at Stanford on "Life after Google? The way forward for US internet firms and investors in China" on April 13, 2011.
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Conference in Jerusalem engages European, US, and Middle East scholars on democracy
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The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies is proud to announce its major international conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” (May 18-19, 2011, Jerusalem). This conference – co-sponsored and hosted by the Center’s project partner, the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute – is designed to engage global, profound, and heretofore considered intractible problems of divided societies, as well as today’s crises events of the Arab world in the greater Middle East and North Africa. With US, European, and NATO command forces engaged in the region, The Europe Center recognizes shared concern across the transatlantic community, and brings its Stanford senior research affiliates as well as international partner scholars to illuminate the immediate as well as long-term points of contention, and prospects for meaningful peace and reconciliation.
The Europe Center’s conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” includes
sessions on the following critical subjects:
- In Search of What Democracy Is and Should Be: Contemporary Challenges to democratic ideas/formations
- Institutional Forms of Contemporary Democracies: Translating Democratic Theory into Practice
- The Challenge of Managing Diversity in Contemporary Democracies
- Civil Societies and Democratic Quality and Efficacy
- Democracy and Development
- Democratic Transitions and Recessions: The International Dimension
The participants include leading scholars and policy analysts:
- Dan Banik, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo
- Bashir Bashir, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
- Nancy Bermeo, Nuffield College, Oxford University
- Naomi Chazan, Hebrew University, Academic College of Tel Aviv Yafo
- Amir Eshel, Stanford University, The Europe Center, FSI
- Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University FSI
- Ruth Gavison, Hebrew University Jerusalem, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
- Amal Jamal, Tel Aviv University
- Michael Karayanni, The Sacher Institute, Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University
- Jeffrey Kopstein, University of Toronto
- Stephen Krasner, Stanford University FSI
- Leonardo Morlino, University of Florence
- Gabriel Motzkin, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, University of Jerusalem
- Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Stanford University FSI
- Ramzi Suleiman, University of Haifa
- Laurence Whitehead, Nuffield College, Oxford University
The Europe Center’s conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” is co-developed by Michael Karayanni and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, and co-sponsored by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. The conference is one of The Europe Center’s international partner projects run within the Center’s larger and multi-year program on “Reconciliation".
This project is conceived to address subjects of contention, and potentially reconciliation, in divided societies. The multi-year collaborative project is designed to develop, in successive stages, a full range of programming including international workshops, publications, and scholar exchange. Sponsored work will benefit scholarly, policy-oriented, and cultural relations. We especially seek to support the work of colleagues from a wide range of fields including the humanities, social sciences, law, business, and education.
Further information on The Europe Center’s multi-year program on “Reconciliation” may be found here.
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