Monthly Highlights from ECDPM's Talking Points Blog, GREAT Insights, Volume 1, Issue 10 (December 2012)

African trade and agriculture ministers sow a seed for closer cooperation. Talking Points,Francesco Rampa, 7 December 2012
Dan Lui co-authored this article. For the first time, African Union ministers of trade and agriculture gathered last week at a joint conference in Addis Ababa. Originally scheduled for late October, the conference had been postponed since not enough ministers from AU member states had confirmed their attendance. Also this time the conference did not manage to attract a full turnout of high-level representatives from all African states and Regional Economic Communities – yet it still represented a significant moment with officials and experts from the two traditionally separate sectors and from both regional and (...)

MDGs matter only minimally for development in Côte d’Ivoire. Talking Points, Bruce Byiers, 30 November 2012
++ SERIES: BUILDING THE POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK++
This article was published on 6 December and is available on the European Report on Development blog. Preparation of the European Report on Development 2013 is now well underway. It will focus on “Elements for a Post-2015 Agenda” and aims at feeding into the debate about what development framework should replace the Millennium Development Goals after their expiry date in 2015. As part of the background research work for this report, the ERD teamis conducting four country case studies (in Nepal, Peru, Rwanda and Côte d’Ivoire) to ensure that the report reflects (...)

Facing up to realities: DG DEVCO introduces new organigram for 2013. Talking Points, Florian Krätke, 30 November 2012 
Staffing issues are all the talk in Brussels at the moment amid heated discussions over the next EU budget. EU Member States want the European Commission (EC) to reduce its staff by more than 5 % over the next 5 years, more than Council President van Rompuy recently proposed. In particular, Member State officials have made critical observations about the size of the Directorate-General for Development and Cooperation – EuropeAid (DG DEVCO). Counting 6.5% of the EC’s Brussels-based staff, it is the second largest of the EC’s offices in Brussels. However, DEVCO staff manages relatively (...)

Employment – it’s what we’ve always wanted! Talking Points, Bruce Byiers, 23 November 2012
“Jobs” are the focus of the recently launched World Development Report 2013. This year’s edition of the World Bank’s annual flagship publication raises a host of interesting issues. Key points and take away messages I got from the London launch event earlier this month are: 1) Although labour market functioning is important, labour market policies in developing countries matter much less for employment than other policies because of implementation difficulties and the fact that most employment is informal. 2) Relatedly, although most people in developing countries are informally self-employed on farms and in micro-enterprises, it (...)

This article was published in Great Insights Volume 1, Issue 10 (December 2012)