Monthly Highlights from ECDPM's Talking Points Blog, GREAT Insights, Volume 2, Issue 7 (October 2013)
Bananas and bottlenecks: Piloting regional value chain cooperation for food security. Talking Points, Francesco Rampa, 18 October 2013 After decades of protocols and high-level declarations without implementation, regional integration is slowly happening in many parts of Africa, often driven by commercial moves. More recently, regional markets and especially public-private-partnerships (PPP) are becoming fashionable approaches to promote food security. Many bottlenecks remain, however, both in policy reform follow-up and asymmetric benefits for entrepreneurs along the food value-chains. RECs, their member states and interested stakeholders should pilot concrete results to show that regional integration can become more credible and effective, and contribute to food security. As part of ECDPM’s support to RECs and the Comprehensive (…) Challenges in 2014: the Post-2015 agenda. Talking Points, James Mackie, 17 October 2013 +++ ECDPM Challenges blog series. Post number one +++ The negotiations on the next post-2015 international development framework will not be easy. This time around there is a lot of interest and many different voices need to be heard. An inclusive process that promotes ownership are seen as key to success. A major challenge is therefore to get as much preparatory work done as possible before the negotiations start in earnest. Over the year ahead the debate will continue to gain pace. Given the success of the Millennium Development Goals in mobilizing international efforts on (...) Political Economy: will Africa’s leaders finally walk the talk? Talking Points, Christian Kingombe, 7 October 2013 Guest blog by Christian Kingombe The citizens of the African continent have been introduced to one grand vision of development after the other – from OAU to AU since the well-known debate between Kwame Nkrumah and Nnamdi Azikiwe. However, there is a tendency by some of the African Development Bank’s regional member countries to retreat from fulfilling regional treaty commitments, which, in some cases, would entail losing a degree of sovereignty. What is the biggest stumbling block to achieving the African Integration Vision? But after more than 50 years of solemn regional integration declarations these (...) Polarised discussions in EU Member States contradict the European Commission’s stance on migration, Talking Points, Anna Knoll, 2 October 2013 The upcoming UN High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development. Is it not the dream of all people to have the right to move and live where they want? , Owen Barder thinks so. However Paul Collier suggests, in a short article, that people who do move for a better life incur substantial psychological costs that may broadly offset their economic gains through higher wages. He argues that migrants may become wealthier but not always happier and that tensions may rise within countries of destination the more migrants are admitted. This notion was described as (...) This article was published in Great Insights Volume 2, Issue 7 (October 2013)
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