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  • Brazilian Restaurant Serves Amazonian Treats

    Brazilian Restaurant Serves Amazonian Treats

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    The vast Amazon rainforest has inspired a cuisine pioneer in Brazil. Combining the sensual pleasures of fine dining and the joy of tasting new flavours with a pursuit of sustainable and profitable local farming, a chef is inventing a new Brazilian cuisine and showing the way to create sustainable incomes.

    The kitchens of chef Alex Atala are as much a laboratory of food experimentation as a place to cook meals. He applies French and Italian cooking styles to traditional Brazilian dishes and ingredients. Since opening his restaurant D.O.M in 1999 in Sao Paulo, Atala has relentlessly pursued – through adventurous journeys around Brazil and into the Amazon rainforest – new flavours, foods and cuisines native to the country. When he started out, he was surprised to discover the lack of knowledge about native Brazilian ingredients, both within the country and outside. He has turned himself into a champion for local communities, helping them turn local foods into sources of income.

    Brazil, home to the largest portion of the Amazon rainforest, is hoping to become the world’s biggest food producer – it is currently second after the United States – addressing a major global problem and providing income for Brazil’s farmers.

    The challenge is to increase food production – providing income for Brazil’s farmers and helping address a major global problem – without destroying the Amazon’s complex ecosystem.

    Amazonia, the region that takes in the mighty Amazon River and the vast Amazon rainforest, is home to the most diverse range of plant and animal species in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Rainforest).
    Brazil is currently debating legislation to ease restrictions on how small farmers can use land in the Amazon rainforest. It would loosen regulations on farming near river banks and hilltops. Many working in Brazil’s agricultural industry believe the country is not living up to its potential. They say Brazil could surpass the United States as an agricultural producer if allowed to use all its arable land.

    This is a crucial debate not only for the future of the environment, but also for humanity. World demand for food keeps rising as populations increase and living standards rise in many countries, such as China. Another trend at work is increasing global urbanization, where more people are leaving agriculture as a business to live in cities and peri-urban areas to pursue a better quality of life. These growing megacities will need vast amounts of food to feed their populations.

    Brazil has, in recent years, increased the amount of territory designated as a protected area in the Amazon forest.

    The National Institute for Space Research in Brazil (http://www.inpe.br/ingles/index.php) has satellite photographs showing deforestation in the Amazon at its slowest pace for two decades. But more recent reports show deforestation accelerating again in 2011.

    Sao Paulo’s D.O.M. Restaurante (http://www.domrestaurante.com.br) – the name is an acronym for the Latin phrase “God, the best and greatest” – has used the rainforest’s rich harvest of foods to create an award-winning destination restaurant that prioritises sustainable sources. It was ranked seventh in this year’s S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

    Atala says on his website he “is bringing a new sustainable Brazilian cuisine to the world’s attention.” His motto is “It is necessary to cook and eat as a citizen.”

    The restaurant celebrates small-scale producers when sourcing food products (http://www.domrestaurante.com.br/#/en-us/menu/ingredientes).  One pioneering food producer Atala works with is DRO Ervas e Flores (herbs and flowers) (http://www.droervaseflores.com). Located in the city of Cequilho, it grows edible herbs and flowers for restaurants. The flowers cultivated by DRO serve mainly to decorate plates, but can also be eaten. At the company farm, the flowers produced include violas, begonias, borago, monks cress, chrysanthemums, pumpkin flowers, coriander flowers, sweet alyssum, mini roses, basil flowers, roses, rockets and violets.

    One notable success has been the Amazonian root priprioca. Once it was used only for cosmetics, but Atala has turned it into an essence for cooking. He has conducted original research into uses for the root, which is produced by small communities in the Amazon.

    Other Brazilian foods he champions include black rice, an unusual variety sought after for its health benefits. It has 30 percent more fibre and 20 percent more protein than white rice, and less fat and calories than brown rice. The black rice used at D.O.M is produced in the Paraiba Valley in Sao Paulo state by Chicao Ruzene (http://www.arrozpreto.com.br), who researches new varieties on the rice farm.

    Jambu, a herb from the Amazon, gives an electrical sensation when it is chewed. Tucupi, a yellowish liquid from pressed wild manioc tuber, is used to season typical Amazonian dishes made with fish, fowl and ducks.

    Already well known in his native Brazil, Atala has become the country’s first internationally known celebrity chef and standard-bearer for the “New Brazilian Gastronomy.”

    His origins are inspiring: a former DJ and punk, he sold his records and went on a trip backpacking in Europe when he was 18. He made a living as a painter and dishwasher until a friend convinced him to go to catering school. Upon graduation, he worked in some of the top restaurants in Italy and France. This apprenticeship left Atala skilled in the techniques of French cuisine – considered one of the most disciplined and methodical in the world – and he returned in 1994 to Brazil.

    The restaurant has ultra-modern design and the sleek kitchen is home to a collection of Amazonian art. Atala acts as an ambassador for the country’s cuisine and flavours to the world. He opened a second restaurant in 2009, Dalva e Dito (http://www.dalvaedito.com.br), which celebrates home cooking by mothers and grandmothers and features only local produce.

    Atala’s inclusion of ‘wild’ ingredients has inspired other chefs. His expeditions into the Amazon continue to discover and study the biodiversity of the rainforest and the culinary culture of its inhabitants.

    His long-term agenda is to boost local farmers and food production and to increase the availability of ‘wild’ foods in the nation’s supermarkets. If he gets his way, people around the world will be eating the Brazilian way.

    “French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese chefs, for example, have their own cuisine and give value to their terroir (local) produce,” Atala explained his passion to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. “We have to do the same in Brazil! Our ingredients are exotic now, but can become popular in the near future.”

    Published: June 2011

    Resources

    1) Brazilian Exporters and Importers website. Website:http://www.brazilianexportersandimporters.com/index.aspx

    2) Por uma Gastronomia Brasileira by Alex Atala – ISBN 8586518352 Website:http://www.submarino.com.br/produto/1/220365/por+uma+gastronomia+brasileira

    3) Winner of a UN Habitat award, the Brazilian farmer’s cooperative Cooperhaf: Cooperativa de Habitacao dos Agricultores Familiares has put together what it calls a “social technology” combining housing and farm diversification to support family farmers. Website:http://www.cooperhaf.org.br

    4) Eat Smart in Brazil: How to Decipher the Menu, Know the Market Foods and Embark on a Tasting Adventure by Joan Peterson, Publisher: Ginko Press. Website:http://www.ginkgopress.com/

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

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    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/09/27/avoiding-wasting-food-and-human-potential-with-icts/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/08/14/brazil-preserves-family-farms-keeping-food-local/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/05/cool-food-for-the-poor/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/04/food-diplomacy-next-front-for-souths-nations/

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    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/01/indonesian-food-company-helps-itself-by-making-farmers-more-efficient/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/05/04/insects-can-help-in-food-crisis/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/21/latin-america/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/24/latin-american-food-renaissance-excites-diners/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/17/sos-shops-keep-food-affordable-for-poor-unemployed/

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

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    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/20/texting-for-cheaper-marketplace-food-with-sokotext/

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

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/11/woman-restaurant-entrepreneur-embraces-brand-driven-growth/

    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

  • Indonesian Food Company Helps Itself by Making Farmers More Efficient

    Indonesian Food Company Helps Itself by Making Farmers More Efficient

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    The current global economic crisis is taking place at the same time as a global food crisis. Food inflation took off at the beginning of 2011. This is having a devastating affect on countries dependent on food imports and experiencing decreasing domestic production capabilities. The least developed countries (LDCs) saw food imports rise from US $9 billion in 2002, to US $23 billion by 2008 (UNCTAD), prompting Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary general of UNCTAD, to say “the import dependence has become quite devastating.”

    Garuda Food (www.garudafood.com), one of Indonesia’s leading snack food and drink manufacturers, has been boosting its own productivity by investing in improving the productivity of domestic small-scale farmers. This led to a doubling of crop purchases from peanut farmers between 2007 and 2009. By stabilising the market for peanuts and better guaranteeing income, it has attracted more people into becoming peanut farmers in the region.

    This is crucial for the future of feeding the planet: we need more farmers.

    Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country, with a population of over 238 million, spread out over a network of islands. Peanut farmers in West Nusa Tenggara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Nusa_Tenggara) (one of Indonesia’s poorest places) are a key part of the region’s wealth. Peanuts are the area’s third largest crop after rice, maize and soybeans, and the region supplies six percent of the country’s peanut production and 10 percent of Garuda Food’s needs.

    Garuda Food says investing in farmers has raised its own productivity by a third. Turning past practices on its head, this large agri-food company is supporting small-scale farmers and helping them to boost their productivity and incomes. Conventional wisdom had been to view small-scale farmers as an inefficient hold-over from the past – the quicker they were driven out of business, the better.

    The Indonesian peanut farmers were using traditional farming methods and local seeds. Knowledge of more sustainable farming methods and land management techniques was poor. The farmers were also beholden to the whims of local buyers and fluctuating market prices.

    Then Garuda Food stepped in. The company’s field staff offer the farmers training, and through its subsidiary PT Bumi Mekar Tani, it spreads knowledge about new agricultural practices and provides the farmers with quality seeds and farming equipment.

    The company buys crops directly from the farmers, rather than from middlemen, increasing the amount the farmer makes. A premium is also paid if the farmer achieves better quality for their crop.

    “We receive substantial supply from peanut farmers in NTB (West Nusa Tenggara) and we hope the arrangement will continue,” Garuda Food’s managing director Hartono Atmadja told the Enchanting Lombok website.

    Garuda Food’s initiative, with support from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and AusAID, through the Australia Indonesia Partnership, has raised the productivity for 8,000 small-scale farmers by 30 percent: an income boost for the farmers of 3.9 million Indonesian rupiah (US $456) per hectare annually.

    Peanut farmer H. Sajidin told the IFC (International Finance Corporation): “My farm’s productivity doubled, my income improved significantly, and I can sleep peacefully at night knowing that Garuda Food will buy my crops at agreed prices.”

    Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System (http://stuffedandstarved.org/drupal/frontpage), has grappled with the conundrum of how to feed a rapidly growing planet. He finds the world is not lacking in food, but distributes its bounty very poorly and wastefully, leaving a planet where some people are literally ‘stuffed’ with too much food (the well-documented global obesity crisis) and others left to starve.

    He finds the solution is often local.

    “It turns out that if you’re keen to make the world’s poorest people better off, it’s smarter to invest in their farms and workplaces than to send them packing to the cities,” Patel wrote recently in Foreign Policy. “In its 2008 World Development Report, the World Bank found that, indeed, investment in peasants was among the most efficient and effective ways of raising people out of poverty and hunger.”

    Patel uses the example of the southern African nation of Malawi, where “according to one estimate, the marginal cost of importing a ton of food-aid maize is $400, versus $200 a ton to import it commercially, and only $50 to source it domestically using fertilizers.”

    Published: May 2011

    Resources

    1) Emprapa: The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation’s mission is to provide feasible solutions for the sustainable development of Brazilian agribusiness through knowledge and technology generation and transfer. Website: http://www.embrapa.br/english

    2) Divine Chocolate: The highly successful global chocolate brand from the Kuapa Kokoo farmers’ cooperative in Ghana, West Africa. Website: http://www.divinechocolateshop.com

    3) Olam: The highly successful global food product supplier brand which got its start in Nigeria, West Africa. Website: http://www.olamonline.com

    4) Insects as food: Tapping the world’s vast insect population offers many ways to supplement world food sources. Website: http://ssc.undp.org/other/e-news/newsletters/april-2008/

    5) Cooperhaf: The Brazilian farmers’ cooperative Cooperhaf: Cooperativa de Habitacao dos Agricultores Familiares, has put together what it calls a “social technology”, combining housing and farm diversification to support family farmers. Website: http://www.cooperhaf.org.br

    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

  • Latin American Food Renaissance Excites Diners

    Latin American Food Renaissance Excites Diners

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    Food is essential for a good life and plays a critical part in overall human health and development. The better the quality of food available to the population, the better each individual’s overall health will be, and this will have a direct impact on mental and physical performance (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213453012000055).

    An innovative restaurant can be the beginning of a taste and flavors renaissance as new foods are discovered and the recipes and foods are cross-marketed. It is an effective strategy that has worked around the world. The restaurant’s brand, in turn, becomes a valuable commodity that can be used to promote a range of products. For example, Brazil’s D.O.M. Restaurante has successfully used its strong reputation to help promote a range of food products drawn from the Amazon rainforest. There is money to be made in this and it can be a major boost to the incomes of food producers, especially small-scale farmers.

    As is being found across South America, a rediscovered love of local cuisines and indigenous culinary culture can also lead to profits and a growing global awareness of the continent’s varied foods and recipes.

    Innovators are playing with traditional cooking and locally available foods to come up with a modern Latin American cuisine that is getting people very excited.

    The latest country to benefit from this is Peru. The first Michelin star awarded to a Peruvian restaurant in Europe went to a restaurant in London, UK. The Michelin (http://travel.michelin.co.uk/michelin-guides-105-c.asp) star is awarded to a restaurant based on the quality of its food and its overall atmosphere and service.

    The London restaurant Lima (limalondon.com) is part of the global rise in awareness of Latin American food. It was launched by Venezuelan brothers Gabriel and Jose Luis Gonzalez in partnership with Peruvian chef Virgilio Martinez. Their signature dishes include sea bream ceviche (a lime-preserved raw fish dish) and suckling pig done in the “Andes” style.

    Martinez is also a chef consultant for the Central Restaurante (http://centralrestaurante.com.pe/es/) in Lima, Peru. It was named one of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants by S. Pellegrino (theworlds50best.com).

    Gabriel Gonzalez moved to London from Paris two years ago, and is surprised at how quickly he and his colleagues have made an impact.

    “It was definitely not expected. … It’s just incredible, it definitely sets a precedent for Peruvian food and gives it a stamp of credibility and a lot of promise, it’s just amazing,” he told the London Evening Standard.

    As another mark of the rising profile of Latin American food, the first edition of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants was held in Lima in September 2013 (theworlds50best.com/latinamerica/en/). In its press release, it said: “The evolution and robustness of gastronomy in Latin America has demanded recognition.”

    It comes after the first expansion of the awards to Asia with Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, held in Singapore in February 2013.

    The ceremony in Peru is being seen as another vote of confidence in Peru’s innovative restaurant scene. Other acknowledgements of the country’s culinary success include winning in 2012 the World’s Best Culinary Destination by the World Travel Awards. The Organization of American States (OAS) also declared Peru’s cuisine part of America’s World Heritage (oas.org).

    The number of South American restaurants on the The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list increased to six in 2013, two more than in 2012. This year’s winners include the innovative Brazilian restaurant D.O.M  in Sao Paulo, and Astrid y Gaston (http://astridygaston.com/en/) in Lima.

    D.O.M. Restaurante’s (http://domrestaurante.com.br/pt-br/home.html) chef Alex Atala is a passionate champion of Brazil’s traditional ingredients and dishes. He trawls the Amazon rainforest for new taste sensations and then deploys them in his inventive dishes in the restaurant. D.O.M. was named the best restaurant in South America for four years in a row by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

    At Astrid y Gaston in Lima, an innovative take on menus shows how the restaurant stands out from the rest. The restaurant uses storytelling techniques to build up interest in its various menus. One example is the Winter 2013 Tasting Menu with its title El Viaje, meaning trip or journey. “It is a story told through a long sequence of courses divided into five acts, a mise en scène where we attempt to take the life experiences of a restaurant beyond its traditional gastronomic limits,” the restaurant says on its website.

    “During each of the five acts, the dishes, the music, the clothing, the decoration, the tableware and the book that accompanies this experience, will narrate the turning points that define this life journey”

    Astrid y Gaston is a partnership between a German and a Peruvian who set out to challenge the dominance of French haute cuisine and started the restaurant in 1994.

    “Twenty years later, much has happened with Peru and Peruvian cuisine. Unlike those times when inspiration was sought in foreign ingredients and recipes, when cooks locked themselves up in their kitchens and lived with suspicion of their peers, ignoring the farmers’ work and the social and ecological challenges of the environment, today’s cooking is fortunately getting a breath of fresh and beautiful air.”

    Another cuisine pioneer is Pujol (pujol.com.mx) in Mexico City, Mexico. It serves Mexican cuisine focused on local ingredients blending ancient and modern culinary techniques. The food is original and exciting: for starters, there is baby corn and chicatana ant, aguachile with chia seeds and avocado, suckling lamb taco, and for desert, fermented plantain, macadamia nuts, plantain vinegar and chamomile flower petals.

    The potential is enormous for marrying these restaurant innovators with the many small-scale farmers and food producers to boost awareness of their products and increase incomes across South and Central America.

    Published: November 2013

    Resources

    1) Latin American food pyramid: A guide to eating a healthy diet using common foods from Latin America. Website: http://www.foodpyramid.com/food-pyramids/latin-american-pyramid/

    2) Visit Peru: Peru Tourism Bureau: Includes extensive information on Peruvian food and cuisine. Website: http://visitperu.com/

    3) How functional foods play critical roles in human health by Guangchang Pang, Junbo Xie, Qingsen Chen and Zhihe Hu. Website: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213453012000055

    Southern Innovator Issue 3: Agribusiness and Food Security: Website: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=-Y6Gnqx9PIcC&source=gbs_similarbooks_r&cad=2

    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

  • Brewing Prosperity Creates Good Jobs

    Brewing Prosperity Creates Good Jobs

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    In the Democratic Republic of Congo – home to the world’s largest United Nations peacekeeping mission and decades of bloody civil war – a brewery has not only survived, it has thrived to become a popular brand throughout central Africa. By being a success, the Brasimba brewery has brought prosperity and high-quality jobs to Congo’s second largest city, Lubumbashi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubumbashi), and proven that a modern business can do well there despite the obstacles.

    The Brasimba brewery has an ultra-modern factory (http://www.viddler.com/explore/kaysha/videos/298/) complete with high-tech laboratories to constantly test the quality of the beer. It employs 700 people – most of whom are Congolese – and produces 250,000 bottles of Simba beer every day, according to Monocle magazine. The company’s beer brands are Simba Biere du Lion and Tembo Biere and its slogan is a proud Notre Biere (Our Beer).

    Lubumbashi is a city described by the BBC as without “child beggars, without potholes and where there are no festering mounds of rubbish.”

    A study of the economic impact of breweries in Uganda and Honduras found that more than 100 local jobs, from farmers to truck drivers, depended on every person employed by a brewery (http://www.inclusivebusiness.org/2009/10/sabmiller-impact-assessment.html). Markets across the South are seen as growth areas for beer companies: China’s beer consumers now outnumber those in the U.S. By 2003, world sales of beer reached 148 billion hectolitres (Euromonitor). Overall, it is forecast that global beer consumption will rise by 3.5 percent by 2015, mostly in the South.

    Apart from creating steady employment, breweries also help to improve the development of the advertising and marketing businesses of a community as they promote their various brands, and they support local activities like sport with team sponsorship. They also offer a local example of how to run a modern beverage business, with mechanized production, distribution systems and laboratories to ensure hygiene and quality standards are maintained.

    Brasimba has been operating in Lubumbashi for eight decades, through the twists and turns of the country’s history. The city has prospered from its copper mines and wisely used that wealth to improve the city’s general prosperity.

    The brewery has successfully become a regional favourite, producing beer that is drunk not only in the surrounding Katanga province, but also in Zimbabwe and Zambia. It’s an impressive accomplishment for a company operating in such a turbulent environment. Distribution of the beer by truck is not easy, with the trip taking between six days and two weeks depending on the weather and the condition of the roads.

    And the beer is not cheap, at around US $1.48 for a big bottle — a sure sign there is money to be made.

    The healthy economic environment has also spawned a beer war with rivals Bralima, owned by the multinational Heineken. With five breweries in Congo and its head office in the capital Kinshasa, Heineken claims the lessons it has learned in Congo are helping it to change its marketing and business strategies far away in the United States.

    It recently transferred its commercial director of Congo operations to head up operations in the United States. Heineken Chief Executive Officer Jean-Francois van Boxmeer told the Bloomberg news agency that working in Africa was “certainly worth three times Harvard Business School.”

    Heineken’s market share doubled in the Democratic Republic of Congo in just four years and Africa has become a significant market for the brewer.

    Published: December 2009

    Resources

    • Small businesses looking to develop their brand can find plenty of free advice and resources here: Website: http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com
    • A Brandchannel: The world’s only online exchange about branding, packed with resources, debates and contacts to help businesses intelligently build their brand. Website: http://www.brandchannel.com
    • Just Food is a web portal packed with the latest news on the global food industry and packed with events and special briefings to fill entrepreneurs in on the difficult issues and constantly shifting market demands. Website: http://www.just-food.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. 

    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