Awakening Africa's Sleeping Giant' explores the feasibility of restoring international competitiveness and growth in African agriculture through the identification of products and production systems that can underpin rapid development of a competitive commercial agriculture. Based on a careful examination of the factors that contributed to the successes achieved in Brazil and Thailand, as well as comparative analysis of evidence obtained through detailed case studies of three African countries--Mozambique, Nigeria, and Zambia--the authors argue that opportunities abound for farmers in Africa to.
This book explores the feasibility of restoring international competitiveness and growth in African agriculture through the identification of products and production systems that can underpin rapid development of a competitive commercial agriculture.
Is China building a new empire in rural Africa? Over the past decade, China's meteoric rise on the continent has raised a drumbeat of alarm. China has 9 percent of the world's arable land, 6 percent of its water, and over 20 percent of its people. Africa's savannahs and river basins host the planet's largest expanses of underutilized land and water. Few topics are as controversial and emotionally charged as the belief that the Chinese government is aggressively buying up huge tracts of prime African land to grow food to ship back to China. In Will Africa Feed China?, Deborah Brautigam, one of the world's leading experts on China and Africa, probes the myths and realities behind the media headlines. Her careful research challenges the conventional wisdom; as she shows, Chinese farming investments are in fact surprisingly limited, and land acquisitions modest. Defying expectations, China actually exports more food to Africa than it imports. Is this picture likely to change? African governments are pushing hard for foreign capital, and China is building a portfolio of tools to allow its agribusiness firms to "go global." International concerns about "land grabbing" are well-justified. Yet to feed its own growing population, rural Africa must move from subsistence to commercial agriculture. What role will China play? Moving from the halls of power in Beijing to remote irrigated rice paddies of Africa, Will Africa Feed China? introduces the people and the politics that will shape the future of this engagement: the state-owned Chinese agribusiness firms that pioneered African farming in the 1960s and the entrepreneurial private investors who followed them. Their fascinating stories, and those of the African farmers and officials who are their counterparts, ground Brautigam's deeply informative, deftly balanced reporting. Forcefully argued and empirically rich, Will Africa Feed China? will be a landmark work, shedding new light on China's evolving global quest for food security and Africa's possibilities for structural transformation.
Home to some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Africa is a hot investment destination. More than 75 per cent of companies and investors in Africa are successful. Why? And how could you reap the benefits of doing business on the continent? In this book, business adviser, executive coach and author Winfred Oppong-Amoako presents a detailed picture of Africa’s investment environment, outlining the risks, challenges, misconceptions and opportunities, and providing a step-by-step guide for approaching the African market. The book covers key topics such as informal trading, China’s investment in the continent and the impact of recession on long-term GDP growth, and lays out certain factors that need to be taken into consideration before investing, such as cross-border trading, corruption, permits and legal contracts. If you’re new to investment or a successful businessperson looking to expand your brand, How to Succeed in the African Market is an indispensable reference, giving you the information that will enable you to make informed decisions and prosper.
This open access book offers unique in-depth, comprehensive, and comparative analyses of the motivations, context, and outcomes of recent land reforms in Africa. Whereas a considerable number of land reforms have been carried out by African governments since the 1990s, no systematic analysis on their meaning has so far been conducted. In the age of land reform, Africa has seen drastic rural changes. Analysing the relationship between those reforms and change, the chapters in this book reveal not only their socio-economic outcomes, such as accelerated marketisation of land, but also their political outcomes, which have often been contrasting. Countries such as Rwanda and Mozambique have utilised land reform to strengthen state control over land, but other countries, such as Ghana and Zambia, have seen the rise in power of traditional chiefs in managing the land. The comparative perspective of this book clarifies new features of African social changes, which are carefully investigated by area experts. Providing new perspectives on recent land reform, this book will have a considerable impact on scholars as well as policymakers.
The rise in global food prices and the ever-growing food import bill have prompted sharp attention on agricultural policies in Africa. African policy makers are grappling with what unstable food prices mean for their countries; how these price movements will affect their food security situation; how the private sector is likely to respond; and what governments themselves can do. In addition, they fear that global warming may significantly change the location of food production within Africa. This report discusses how opening up cross-border trade will boost the potential for greater food production in Africa and contribute to food security by improving poor people’s access to food and by increasing returns to poor farmers for the food they produce.
This book analyzes the current economic situations in African countries at the local, regional, and national level. It examines the growing interest from developed and developing countries to invest in Africa and their different reasons for doing so, which aren’t always aligned with the interests of African countries. Growth in African GDP has benefitted mainly multinational corporations while the rest of the population remains at the subsistence level, creating a smaller middle class and less opportunity for local businesses to flourish. This book offers potential models of cooperation which could create added value for both African countries and the MNCs investing in them.
The richness of Africa’s heritage at times stands in stark contrast to the economic, health, political and societal challenges faced. Development is essential but in what forms? For whom? Following whose agendas? At what costs? This book explores how heritage can promote, secure, or undermine sustainable development with special focus on sub-Saharan Africa, and in turn, how this affects conceptions of heritage. The chapters in this volume identify shared challenges, good practices and failures, and use specific case studies to provide detailed insights into varied forms of heritage and heritage defining processes on the continent. By critically analysing the often romanticised discourses of ‘heritage’, ‘community engagement’, and ‘sustainable development’ the volume suggests ways of harnessing aspects of heritage to tackle some of the socio-economic and political pressures facing heritage practices on the continent, including the legacies of colonialism.
Takes an in-depth look at twenty-six economic and social development successes in Sub-Saharan African countries, and addresses how these countries have overcome major developmental challenges.
