David South Consulting

Tag: development challenges south-south solutions

  • Carbon Markets Need to Help the Poor

    Carbon Markets Need to Help the Poor

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    The global carbon credit trading schemes emanating from the Kyoto Protocol have created a multi-billion dollar market – the global carbon market was worth US $30 billion in 2007 (World Bank) – and represents one of the fastest growing business opportunities in the world. The bulk of this trading is with the European Union’s emissions trading scheme, some US $25 billion. But the big problem to date has been most of this investment is enriching stock brokers, and not the poor.

    And this is a huge opportunity missed, as some point out: “These numbers are relevant because they demonstrate that the carbon market has become a valuable catalyst for leveraging substantial financial flows for clean energy in developing countries,” according to Warren Evans, the World Bank’s director of environment.

    And the way to do this is through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – where wealthy countries can meet their greenhouse gas targets by investing in clean energy projects in the South. But so far, it has been criticised for spending 4.6 billion Euros on projects that would have cost just 100 million Euros if implemented by development agencies.

    But if done right, the CDM could become directly beneficial to the so-called Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) – the four billion who live on less than US $2 a day. The CDM allows developed countries to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by paying projects targeting the poor to develop clean energy, or to create what are called carbon sinks (planting trees for example), to cut global emissions.

    One mechanism to make all of this work is the CDM Bazaar: officially launched in September 2007, it is about linking together buyers and sellers. This is a place where people with business ideas or projects can go for start-up funding. It is also a place to share information, contacts and learn about how to tap the market.

    And two Southern innovators are showing what can be achieved by tapping the power of the sun to help the poor.

    One such initiative In India, owned by Mr. Deepak Gadhia and Dr Mrs. Shirin Gadhia, is targeting the 63 per cent of the BOP market that is with rural populations. All of these people need affordable and clean energy if their lives are to improve: most currently use firewood and kerosene for cooking and heating. The company Gadhia Solar is building and selling solar steam cook stoves in rural villages. The giant solar dishes which resemble satellite TV dishes, can fry and roast using the sun and come in Do-it-Yourself kits. The enormous silver dishes beam concentrated sunlight on to a black plate on the oven, reaching temperatures of over 450 Celsius.

    In Morocco, the company Tenesol, an electric supply co-operative society, is using solar power to bring electricity to 60,000 poor households in 29 provinces. And it is making Morocco a world leader in the use of solar for rural electricity.

    Each house is equipped with a solar home system comprising a solar panel, battery and controller. It is powerful enough to light four to eight lamps, and support a television, radio or mobile phone charger.

    Customers pay a connection fee of US $80, and then a monthly service fee of between US $7.50 and US $17.50. The fee competes well with what rural households were spending on candles and batteries.

    The initial outlay for equipment is mostly paid for by investors, with the hope that the money will be made back on the service fees.

    Tenesol hopes to bring electricity to 101,500 households, and also wire them up and provide light bulbs.

    Published: March 2008

    Resources

    • More on emissions trading: Click here
    • UNDP has produced a free users guide introduction to the Clean Development Mechanism.
      Website: http://www.undp.org/
    • South South North has also produced a Practitioners’ Practical Toolkit.
      Website: http://www.cdmguide.com/

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

    Follow @SouthSouth1

    Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DqmXBgAAQBAJ&dq=development+challenges+march+2008&source=gbs_navlinks_s

    Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/DavidSouth1/development-challengessouthsouthsolutionsmarch2008issue-44443163

    Southern Innovator Issue 1: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q1O54YSE2BgC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

    Southern Innovator Issue 2: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ty0N969dcssC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

    Southern Innovator Issue 3: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AQNt4YmhZagC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

    Southern Innovator Issue 4: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9T_n2tA7l4EC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

    Southern Innovator Issue 5: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6ILdAgAAQBAJ&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2021

  • Innovation Villages Tackling MDGs

    Innovation Villages Tackling MDGs

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    The global economic crisis that began to roll across the world in September 2008 is threatening gains made against poverty and hunger all over the South. As Kevin Watkins from UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report told the Financial Times, “With the slowdown in growth in 2009, we estimate that the average income of the 391 million Africans living on less than US $1.25 a day will take a 20 percent hit.”

    How well millions of people survive the economic turmoil will depend on how local communities respond. And there are innovating communities across the South that show it is possible to succeed. By studying the microcosm of test villages, where quantifiable results are being tracked, lessons are being learned on how to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (http://www.undp.org/mdg/).

    The challenge of matching improving living standards and quality of life with environmental sustainability has been taken up by one village in Colombia. The technologies it has developed over the past few decades have been adopted around the country.

    In Las Gaviotas, Colombia a unique experiment was hatched at the end of the 1960s: to see if a village could survive – and even thrive – while eschewing fossil fuels and industrial agriculture. It found its first test in the oil crisis of the early 1970s. For Las Gaviotas’ survival, meeting energy needs became paramount.

    One of the simple concepts the community applied is a take on the physical reality that energy is never created or destroyed, it just moves from one medium to another. Las Gaviotas believes in using all the sources for energy that can be found in a local area first, before seeking out others.

    Founded by development specialist Paolo Lugari,Las Gaviotas(http://www.friendsofgaviotas.org) is located in a desert region of Colombia. The area covers a vast territory comprising three-fifths of the country but is home to just 10 percent of the population. To Lugari, the harsh environment is a challenge to be overcome. To begin to reverse the arid environment at Las Gaviotas, the villagers reversed the dry climate by planting trees.

    This had the effect of increasing local rainfall by 10 percent, making it possible to do other economic activities.”The only deserts that exist in this world are deserts of the imagination,” Lugari told the New York Times.

    The 200 people living in Las Gaviotas have been able to get by without guns, police, a mayor, cellphones, television or the Internet. Nobody uses a job title — instead the adults in the community rotate jobs.

    While the villagers do not use many of the technological tools people associate with modern life and prosperity, they do have a culture of invention. The inventions they have come up with include a solar kettle for sterilizing water and a 8,012 hectare pine forest which is harvested for resin to make biofuel for trucks and motorcycles. The resin is also used to make varnishes and linseed oil.

    For years Colombia’s ongoing civil war raged around the community. Violent drug traffickers and private armies destabilized the country for decades. But despite this mayhem, Las Gaviotas has attracted rural peasants seeking to double their wages (US $500 a month) and enjoy the quiet life away from the war.

    “We try to live a quiet life, depending on nothing but our own labor and ingenuity,” said Teresa Valencia, a teacher who has lived in Las Gaviotas for three decades.

    Other products developed by the village included a turbine powered by a small, one metre high dam that produced 10 kilowatts of electricity, a windmill that was able to spin despite light breezes, and a pump strong enough to draw water from the hard-to-reach savannah water table.

    Pride of place was the village’s hospital. Despite hot temperatures and high humidity, the hospital used clever technologies like subsurface tunnels and double ventilation systems in the walls to cool its operating theatre. The roof slid off to allow ultraviolet sunlight to disinfect rooms. After healthcare reforms in Colombia, the hospital was closed. Undefeated, the village turned the hospital’s kitchen into a potable water bottling facility, and reduced the need for hospital visits by making sure everyone in the area had access to clean water.

    The community’s approach inspired scientists and architects, who came to design homes, laboratories and factories for Las Gaviotas.

    One significant success has been the windmill-driven water pumps developed by Las Gaviotas. Invented by Jorge Zapp, head of the mechanical engineering department of Bogota’s Universidad de Los Andes, it is a lightweight windmill unit weighing barely 45 kilograms. The blades use the airfoil found on airplane propellers to make the most of light breezes.

    In the 1980s, UNDP hired the Gaviotas team to install water and windmill pumps in other places in Colombia. Thousands have now been installed in Colombia and the design has been copied throughout Latin America.

    Other inventions include a solar-powered kitchen, a water pump powered by a children’s see-saw, and a zeppelin that floats above the savannah plains to detect forest fires.

    While the community has been able to forge a success, it can’t avoid the ups and downs of the global economy entirely. Competition from cheap imports of pine resin have pushed down the price the community can charge.

    But in a topsy-turvy world, and surrounded by a civil war, what Las Gaviotas has achieved still seems impressive. “We have survived,” said Andrea Beltran. “Maybe, at this time and place in Colombia, that is enough.”

    More recently, a much-publicized experiment is also underway in the Millennium villages. The Millennium Villages (http://www.millenniumvillages.org/index.htm) is a joint project between Columbia University’s The Earth Institute and UNDP, and is a bold experiment working with villages in Africa to identify and test solutions to help in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (http://www.undp.org/mdg/).

    Britain’s Guardian newspaper has also been sponsoring and tracking changes in the villages of Katine sub-county in Uganda (http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine). Comprising 25,000 people, the project began in October 2007, and is conducted in partnership with the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref) and Farm-Africa in Katine.

    What is useful to people looking for solutions is the way the project is being tracked in detail on the newspaper’s website.

    In India, the Model Village India (www.modelvillageindia.org.in) concept pioneered by Rangeswamy Elango, a head of the village of Kuthampakkam near Chennai, has now expanded to 30 model villages. Its approach is about being positive, eschewing griping about problems and instead getting down to work to solve them. Its success is based on an ancient Indian self-organizing model, the Panchayat, and Elango has modernized it to become what he calls The “Network Growth Economy Model” – a direct challenge to the “special economic zones that benefit only capitalist owners,” he said.

    Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World – 10th Anniversary Edition by Alan Weisman details further the achievements of the village (www.amazon.com)

    Published: November 2009

    Resources

    1) Unleashing India’s Innovation: Toward Sustainable and Inclusive Growth, a report by the World Bank. Website: http://www.worldbank.org/

    2) NextBillion.net: Hosted by the World Resources Institute, it identifies sustainable business models that address the needs of the world’s poorest citizens. Website: http://www.nextbillion.net/news

    3) Model Village India: Drawing on self-organizing methods used in India since 1200 BC, the Model Village India is based around India’s democratic system of Panchayats: a village assembly of people stemming back to pre-colonial times. Website: http://www.modelvillageindia.org.in

    4) Maker Faire: The African Maker Faire has tapped into Africa’s well-entrenched do-it-yourself development culture. It went looking for more inventors like those celebrated on the website AfriGadget (http://www.afrigadget.com/), with its projects that solve “everyday problems with African ingenuity.” The Faire works with the participants to share their ideas and to find ways to make money from their ideas. Website: http://makerfaireafrica.com/

    5) eMachineShop: This remarkable service allows budding inventors to download free design software, design their invention, and then have it made in any quantity they wish and shipped to them: Amazing! Website: http://www.emachineshop.com/

    6) The red dot logo stands for belonging to the best in design and business. The red dot is an internationally recognized quality label for excellent design that is aimed at all those who would like to improve their business activities with the help of design. Website: http://www.red-dot.de

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/05/02/landmark-study-finds-simple-toys-key-to-boosting-educational-development-and-meeting-mdgs/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/12/20/press-release-1-southern-innovator/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/12/20/press-release-2-southern-innovator/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/12/20/press-release-3-southern-innovator/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-1/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-2/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-3/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-4/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-5/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/09/study-finds-simple-toys-key-to-boosting-educational-development-january-2007/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2023/01/17/war-peace-and-development-may-2018/

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2023

  • Growing A Southern Brand To Global Success: The Olam Story

    Growing A Southern Brand To Global Success: The Olam Story

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    Most people haven’t heard of Olam International, but they know the brands they work for and they more than likely eat their produce. The story of Olam (http://www.olamonline.com) – a global food supply company in ‘agri-products’ that got its start in Nigeria – shows how a Southern brand can grow and go global, and overcome the difficulties of cross-border trade.

    Olam supplies well-known global food brands including Cadbury (chocolate), Nestle, Lavazza (coffee), Mars (chocolate), Tchibo and Planters (peanuts).

    Olam not only survived its startup in Nigeria, it has thrived, trading around Africa and across the globe, becoming a major supplier to the world’s top food brands.

    The quantity of agri-products harvested in the world is 5.2 billion metric tonnes. In that market, Olam is a significant producer of cashews, peanuts, spices, beans, coffee, cocoa, sheanuts, packaged foods, rice, wheat, barley, sugar, cotton, wood, and rubber. It is already the world’s largest supplier of cashew nuts and sesame nuts and in the top three for peanuts. Olam’s cashew business in Africa provides work for 17,000 people, 95 percent of whom are women.

    Olam also uses its success to play a critical role in securing the world’s food supply and has specialized in meeting the food needs of the world’s rapidly growing population, especially in China and India. Between 2001 and 2007, annual increases in the global consumption of agricultural commodities were larger than during the 1980s and 1990s. Higher incomes are leading to higher consumption of proteins like meat. And as meat demand rises, so does the demand for grain and protein feeds to produce the meat. It takes two kilograms of grain to produce one kilogram of chicken, four kilograms of produce for one kilogram of pork, and eight kilograms of produce for one kilogram of beef.

    Chris Brett, Olam’s senior vice president and head of corporate social responsibility and sustainability, said the company tries to blend business success with wider social goals.

    “We are one of the few businesses investing in rural environments and am tackling the problem of urbanization,” said Brett in Olam’s London office – the company’s global headquarters is in Singapore.

    In 2008, it won the World Business Development Award for its contribution to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/).

    Olam also has been recognized for its contribution to global food security. By providing farmers with credit to help build their communities, it has also been able to revive declining rural economies and help stem the outflow of farmers to the big cities and urban slums.

    “Many countries are afraid to lend to farmers,” Brett said. “We gather the farmers together in groups of 500 and Olam manages the loan while a local bank receives the money. Defaults have been low and farmers are building up a credit rating. In this way, farming becomes a business not just a subsistence existence.”

    The dramatic changes taking place in African countries – especially rapid urbanization that has made the continent home to 25 of the world’s fastest growing cities (International Institute for Environment and Development) – means there is an urgent need to increase food production and stabilize rural economies to support farming.

    Olam International, started in 1989 in Nigeria by its India-born CEO Sonny George Verghese has many lessons for any Southern entrepreneurs who have their sights set high.

    After developing its skills in exporting cashew nuts from Nigeria, Olam moved into cotton, cocoa and sheanuts. From 1993 to 1995, the company explored ways of taking their skills into other countries and different products. It was a period of rapid expansion into other African countries including Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Senegal.

    Olam now operates in 26 African countries.

    There has been a renaissance in South-South trade in recent years before the current economic crisis, growing by an average of 13 percent per year between 1995 and 2007. By 2007, South-South trade made up 20 percent of world trade.

    Olam started with one product, got its supply right, and then started looking around and seeing what other products and services it could offer, applying already-tested expertise and supply skills – what the company calls the ‘Olam DNA’.

    Olam claims its success has come from building strong relationships with farmers to guarantee high standards for the food products. The company does this by tightly tracking its stock and its quality. Olam then uses the information to analyze risks to the supply network. The company also keeps both warehouses and field managers close to the farmers. Olam estimates 65 percent of its profit comes from managing the journey from farmer’s field to factory gate.

    Its selling point to customers is the ability to guarantee the entire journey from farmer’s field to factory gate, taking on all the risk and stress for ensuring the product is of the right standard and delivered on time.

    Its niche is to provide the food products required by some of the world’s top food brands. The company has grown from just one product in Nigeria and two employees in 1989, to directly employing over 10,000 people worldwide and supplying 20 products in 60 countries, according to Brett. He says the company, which had a total 2008 turnover of US $5.75 billion, was “born out of Africa.”

    Brett says the company is now “investing heavily in Africa in processing and distribution centres” – proof that a success story feeds back into more success and investment. It has been able to use its profits to go back and buy up failing businesses and former state-run enterprises, and modernize them. Olam now grows the food, processes it, and transports it to market.

    Olam actively works with international donors, global NGOs like Technoserve (farmer business development), WWF (environmental impact of supply chain), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (cocoa and cashew farmers).

    Olam, however, has received criticisms for its past practices. The global environmental group Greenpeace attacked its logging in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/tags/olam), and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) divested its holdings from Olam for it trading illegally cut timber.

    Olam and the Gates Foundation project are working with 200,000 cocoa farmers in West Africa to double their incomes. In Ghana, cocoa farming has become synonymous with poverty and perceived as an occupation of last resort. The work force is rapidly aging and the industry will die out if it doesn’t become more profitable and attractive to young people.

    “We want the farmers to be profitable, the transporters to be profitable,” Brett said. “We believe a supply chain does not work if one player takes too much.”

    And what advice does Olam have for budding food producers and growers? “Catchy, simple brands work. Our Mama Mia pasta caught the wave of the Abba revival.”

    “Our Tasty Tom brand became very popular in Africa so we extended the brand into other products than just tomato paste. You reduce the cost of advertising by extending the brand name.”

    “We feel SMEs (small, medium enterprises) growth is critical because it would give us more support. If more people invested in SMEs, we would have more people to do business with. We want to be able to make deals: they could be entrepreneurs.

    “If you can add extra value it costs nothing but time.”

    Brett advises budding SMEs: “It’s all about quality: trust and shared business ethics like formal contracts. When you have those, the bigger brands will give you support.”

    Published: October 2009

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/21/africa/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/14/african-farming-wisdom-now-scientifically-proven/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/21/agribusiness-food-security/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/16/brazils-agricultural-success-teaches-south-how-to-grow/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/10/cheap-farming-kit-hopes-to-help-more-become-farmers/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/18/farmers-weather-fertilizer-crisis-by-going-organic/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/23/kenyan-farmer-uses-internet-to-boost-potato-farm/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/09/16/small-fish-farming-opportunity-can-wipe-out-malnutrition/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/09/16/ugandan-fish-sausages-transform-female-fortunes/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/11/urban-farming-to-tackle-global-food-crisis/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/10/us-1-trillion-opportunity-for-africas-agribusinesses-says-report/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/18/woman-wants-african-farming-to-be-cool/

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

    Follow @SouthSouth1

    Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tRKYBgAAQBAJ&dq=development+challenges+october+2009&source=gbs_navlinks_s

    Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/DavidSouth1/development-challengessouthsouthsolutionsoctober2009issue

    Southern Innovator Issue 1: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q1O54YSE2BgC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

    Southern Innovator Issue 2: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ty0N969dcssC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

    Southern Innovator Issue 3: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AQNt4YmhZagC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

    Southern Innovator Issue 4: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9T_n2tA7l4EC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

    Southern Innovator Issue 5: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6ILdAgAAQBAJ&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-3/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-5/

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2023

  • Food Diplomacy Next Front for South’s Nations

    Food Diplomacy Next Front for South’s Nations

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    The meal is a universal bonding ritual, a time for families or friends to socialize and catch up on the day’s activities. Food has the ability to transcend cultures and societies when humour, the arts, and diplomacy cannot. A person may know nothing about a particular country or culture, but they know what their appetite and palate likes. So it’s no surprise that countries in the South are turning to cuisine as a new weapon in their armoury of diplomacy and cultural outreach.

    The phenomenon of ‘gastrodiplomacy’ got its start in Thailand. Thai cooking and restaurants had been on the rise around the world since the 1980s. But in 2002 the Thai government decided to use these kitchens and restaurants as new cultural outposts to promote brand Thailand and encourage tourism and business investment. The “Global Thai” campaign sought to increase the number of Thai restaurants around the world and boost Thailand’s cultural impact.

    As The Economist reported at the time, more restaurants “will not only introduce delicious spicy Thai food to thousands of new tummies and persuade more people to visit Thailand, but it could subtly help deepen relations with other countries.”

    Thailand’s 2002 campaign boosted the number of Thai restaurants around the world and made popular dishes like pad Thai and tom yum soup (http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/tomyumsoup_85069) familiar to many more people. They are now signature dishes, as synonymous with Thailand as hamburgers are with the United States.

    Malaysia, whose varied and delicious cuisine is less known globally than that if its neighbour Thailand, has been running an aggressive campaign in Britain to promote its food. This included setting up a street market in the famous Trafalgar Square in central London: a high foot-traffic spot guaranteed to get the city’s attention.

    South Korea also has been pursuing its “Kimchi” diplomacy, an ambitious US $44 million campaign to promote Korean food, or hansik (http://www.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/CU/CU_EN_8_1_5.jsp) as it is known, to more nations. They aim to make Korean food one of the top five most popular cuisines in the world. Using a master plan, South Korea is opening Korean cooking classes at top culinary schools like France’s Le Cordon Bleu and the Culinary Institute of America, increasing the number of overseas Korean restaurants to 40,000 by 2017, and promoting the food’s health qualities. The Korean staple of kimchi – a fermented, spicy cabbage dish – will be perfected at a “kimchi institute” to appeal to foreign palates (http://www.korea.net/detail.do?guid=45469).

    Neighbouring North Korea has also turned to gastrodiplomacy with its chain of “Pyongyang Restaurants” (http://www.pyongyangrestaurant.com) around Asia and Europe. These eateries first appeared in China, near the border with North Korea, but have expanded widely during the last decade. Pyongyang Restaurants can be found in Vientiane, Laos; Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and Bangkok and Pattaya, Thailand. In Europe, a restaurant has opened in the Dutch city of Amsterdam. The restaurants’ formula offers staff in traditional clothing, authentic North Korean interiors, North Korean art, cooking lessons, cultural performances, and singing. The food includes traditional Korean dishes like kimchi (fermented spicy cabbage), Pyongyang “cold noodle” and barbecued cuttlefish (squid).

    One example of how gastrodiplomacy can work on the ground is the Kogi Taco Truck (http://kogibbq.com/), which serves up Korean-Mexican fusion food  in Los Angeles, California. This food truck moves around the city and uses social media like Twitter (www.twitter.com) to notify customers and fans of its location. The truck quickly developed a cult following and had lines lasting two hours as people ordered barbecued beef tacos topped in Korean “salsa roja” with coriander, onions, cabbage and a soy-sesame chilli dressing. The truck has been praised for bringing the appreciation of Korean food and culture to parts of the city that knew little about Korea.

    A passionate promoter and chronicler of gastrodiplomacy is Paul Rockower, Communications Director of the Public Diplomacy Corps (http://publicdiplomacycorps.org), an organization dedicated to bringing
    diplomacy to the public. He noted on the Nation Branding (www.nation-branding.info) website that “a keen eye for the irreverent is a must if you really want to make the nation brand stand out. Highlighting exotic tastes and flavors, and engaging in nontraditional forms of public diplomacy help under-recognized nation brands gain more prominence in the field of culinary and cultural diplomacy.”

    For Taiwan, which has tense relations with China, which does not recognize it as a nation, gastrodiplomacy is a way to get the island’s message across. Taiwan is spending US $31 million on its food diplomacy campaign around the world.

    “Taiwan has figured out it can do better outreach work through the kitchen table,” Rockower told The Guardian newspaper. “When someone tries a sea-salt latte (a Taiwanese drink) it creates awareness about Taiwanese culture. The Koreans embarked on Kimchi diplomacy partly because their brands weren’t being recognized as Korean – Samsung was being recognized as a Japanese brand.”

    Published: December 2010

    Resources

    • Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization: Is an international, nonviolent, and democratic membership organization. Its members are indigenous peoples, minorities, and unrecognized or occupied territories who have joined together to protect and promote their human and cultural rights, to preserve their environments, and to find nonviolent solutions to conflicts which affect them. Website:http://www.unpo.org/
    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    Citations

    Launched in 2011, Southern Innovator’s first issue on mobile phones and information technology proved highly influential, profiling the work of a new generation of innovators. It has been cited in books, papers and strategic plans.  The third issue focused on agribusiness and food security, including the phenomenon of ‘gastrodiplomacy’. In 2017, the story Food Diplomacy Next Front for South’s Nations was cited in a paper on its potential for Uzbekistan. By 2019, Uzbekistan had launched its gastrodiplomacy strategy: Uzbekistan Embassy in Jakarta Launches its Gastrodiplomacy Project to Promote Tourism.

    Abduazimov, M. (2017) “Gastrodiplomacy: foreign experience and potential of the republic of Uzbekistan,” International Relations: Politics, Economics, Law: Vol. 2017 : Iss. 2 , Article 2. 
    Available at: https://uzjournals.edu.uz/intrel/vol2017/iss2/2.
    Gastrodiplomacy: foreign experience and potential of the republic of Uzbekistan by M. Abduazimov, International Relations: Politics, Economics, Law, 2017. 
    Anugrahningtyas, Wilda and Meganingratna, Andi (2023) “Analisis Gastrodiplomasi Melalui Samyang Challenge Terhadap Diplomasi Korea Selatan Di INDONESIA Tahun 2015-2017,” Jurnal Ilmiah Hubungan Internasional Fajar.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2025