Jack Breslauer is an intern on the Global Policy Team at ONE. Prior to joining ONE, Jack spent six months in Cape Town, South Africa, where he worked for a social enterprise helping to develop income generation and sustainable best practices across the nonprofit sector. His policy interests are in the areas of agriculture and innovative finance. Born and bred in the United Kingdom, Jack holds an AB from Princeton University in Public Policy.
Government-funded global agriculture programs are making a world of difference for many small farmers in rural Africa. Don’t believe it? Read the living proof:
Getting a fair price at market is always a struggle. Find out how mobile technology is changing the lives of farmers in Ghana.
Esoko worker showing a farmer how to use the mobile app
Prosper Biche is a yam farmer from eastern Ghana. Until recently, he relied on an antiquated system to sell his goods and get them to market – he would sell his wares to individual buyers who then crisscross the countryside on bicycles and sell the goods to processing plants in towns and cities, which will then pass them on to distributors, retailers and exporters.
Prosper Biche is a yam farmer from Eastern Ghana. Until recently, he relied on an antiquated system to sell and transport his goods to the market. This archaic system meant that Prosper would sell his wares to individual buyers, who travel across the countryside on bicycles. These buyers would then provide the goods to processors in towns and cities, who were in charge of dispensing them to distributors, retailers and exporters.
This system was incredibly corrupt, as the original buyers understood that farmers like Biche were totally uninformed and unaware of the amount that processors should pay for their commodities. Buyers would take advantage of these farmers and purchase their produce for rock bottom prices. Luckily for farmers like Biche, a company called Esoko has an innovative technology that can change this system.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is a seductive idea. For many, it conjures up images of multinational companies pouring money, technologies and expertise into underdeveloped regions, driving openness and prosperity. At many times and in many places this is accurate, yet we must be careful. In some (mostly African) countries, FDI is coming at an unacceptable cost of displaced people and degraded environments.
Last week, the Economist published a chilling account of the land deals that have put more than 50 million hectares of African land — an area twice the size of Great Britain — into the hands of foreign investors. While the contracts that hand the land over from the African governments to the corporations promise jobs, growth and environmental preservation, most fail to deliver. The World Bank reports on one project which claimed to provide 2,650 jobs but only actually created 40. Another, in Sierra Leone, promised to preserve the bolis-swamps that locals relied on to grow rice — but ended up draining them.
As prices rise and the ranks of the hungry continue to grow, it is only natural that those with empty stomachs start pointing fingers. Who is to blame?
While much of sub-Saharan Africa seemed to be coping well during the first months of the food crisis in 2010, some countries in East Africa have suffered more recently from poor rains and seen prices rise since the turn of the year.
Prices for maize rose over the past three months by 25 percent in Uganda and Somalia and 27 percent in Kenya, and maize prices in Uganda are double what they were this time last year.
Dry weather in Kenya and Tanzania has drastically reduced the second harvest in some areas, while crumbling roads and fragmented markets mean that food cannot be brought in as quickly or cheaply as needed to make up the deficit.
The poorest countries on earth have more needs and deficiencies than many of us can comprehend, from fallow fields to failing schools to raging epidemics. One cannot help but ask: Where should donor countries even begin to help out?
This Wednesday, Raj Shah, the head of USAID, testified in front of a Congress that is threatening to cut funding to development programs by as much as 40 percent. Much of the speech was just as you would expect: a celebration of the success of US aid programs in improving health, cutting hunger and driving development in poor countries, along with a reminder that all these benefits are being delivered on less than 1 percent of the US budget. However, he chose to end on a different note:
Right now, some of the world's biggest oil companies are fighting to keep some of their deals with foreign governments secret. Let's tell big oil we won't be bullied.
Cuts to poverty-fighting programs won't balance the budget, but they will set back progress on Canada's development priorities and risk jeopardizing existing investments.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
