Tag: January 2007

Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

New Battery Back-up Technology Targeting Developing Countries and Remote Regions

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 20/11/2022
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By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Africa’s greater global engagement and economic growth in the past few years has started to draw attention back towards the continent’s dearth of reliable power sources and inadequate power infrastructure. While demand grows at a fast pace, sadly political instability and lack of security in many countries scares off foreign investors and multinational companies who could help to expand capacity. This leaves people running small enterprises and organisations – especially in rural areas – significantly neglected. According to Zandile Mjoli, senior general manager for resources and strategy at South African utility Eskom, two-thirds of Africa’s 700 million people live in rural areas, and less than 10 per cent of the rural population has access to electricity. Each one per cent increase in available power will increase GDP by an estimated two to three per cent.

The extent of the looming crisis in 2007 can be seen in the problems of the Southern African Power Pool, which coordinates power production and trade in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It predicts an energy shortfall in 2007 that will force countries like South Africa and Mozambique, which have provided about 40 percent of Zimbabwe’s power requirements for example, to scale down on exports in order to meet rising demand from their own domestic markets.

Plug Power is a research and development company in the US specializing in clean, reliable energy products for areas where power supply is unreliable or non-existent. It uses fuel cell technology to build back-up power supplies for telecommunications, utilities and uninterruptible power supply needs like refrigerators and medical supplies. It is now targeting Africa with its new GenCore back-up fuel cell system using ultra capacitor technology, basically the mechanism by which the fuel cell stores electricity. It is specifically built for remote regions with severe climates where the limited lifespan of a battery and harsh weather conditions can lead to power supply disruptions.

Fuel cells use chemicals to create electricity and heat similar to batteries, but when hydrogen is used, they only produce clean water as a by-product. Most importantly for those working in development, it provides a continuous power supply as long as the fuel is provided. Plug Power’s system allows for hydrogen to be taken from multiple sources to power the cells.

Published: January 2007

Website: http://www.plugpower.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.

This work is licensed under a
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ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

Tags 2007, batteries, battery, battery refill, David South Consulting, Development Challenges, development challenges south-south solutions, fuel cells, January 2007, New Battery Back-up Technology Targeting Developing Countries and Remote Regions, R&D, South-South Solutions, Southern Innovator magazine, UNDP, United Nations, UNOSSC

Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Trade to Benefit the Poor Up in 2006 and to Grow in 2007

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 20/10/2022
No Comments on Trade to Benefit the Poor Up in 2006 and to Grow in 2007

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

The global fair trade market – in which goods and services are traded under the Fairtrade logo, guaranteeing a minimum fair price to producers experienced unprecedented growth in 2006. In the UK alone, 2006 sales totalled £290 million – a jump of 46 percent from 2005. The Fairtrade Foundation predicts sales will reach UK £300 million in 2007.

In 2005 Fairtrade sales were € 1.1 billion in the brand’s main markets of Switzerland, the UK, New Zealand, Australia and the US. At present fair trade works with 5 million farmers in the global South, and it represents an ever-increasing opportunity for Southern entrepreneurs.

A tipping point has been reached in Western awareness of and demand for the Fairtrade brand and concept, and it is now being adopted by major supermarkets. In the UK, 62 percent of consumers know the logo and understand what it means.

The concept of fair trade began in the Netherlands in 1988, when the Max Havelaar Foundation launched the Fairtrade consumer label with coffee from Mexico. Unlike conventional businesses, where the price paid to a producer is what the market dictates, fair trade guarantees the producer a minimum price for their product. This amount is set at a level that ensures the producer can live a life with dignity and meet all the essentials. A portion of the profits is also kept in a communal fund which the producers democratically elect to spend as they wish (many choose to spend it on community projects).

Fair trade has been criticized for a number of reasons. It has been seen as too small and marginal to really make inroads on poverty, and has been accused of privileging a small number of producers while ignoring the rest. It has also been criticized for not focusing enough on innovation and increasing production to really eradicate poverty in the developing world.

For all its faults and shortcomings, it is a fact that the Fairtrade brand is a runaway success and offers a wide range of opportunities for entrepreneurs.

In the UK, fair trade now includes 2,500 products, ranging from footballs, to tea, cotton and honey – up from just 150 in 2003, an astonishing rate of growth. Where fair-trade products were once confined to co-operative and charity shops, they are now widely sold in major supermarkets.

The success of fair trade is not confined to Europe and the US. It is growing in Japan, where, says fair trade retailer Sonoko Iwasa, “the concept of using trade to equalize the world by buying goods from developing countries from Asia and Africa was a notion that had no connection with everyday lives.”

Iwasa’s Rumaba Goods store just outside Tokyo sells organic chocolates from Africa, woollen gloves and hats from Nepal, and elegant clothes from Thailand. Iwasa found that the key in the highly competitive Japanese consumer market was to focus on quality, not fairness. This, she says, has made these products fashionable.

At present, the fair trade market is worth only about US $6 to $7 million a year in Japan and includes 1,500 products. But according to Michiko Ono of Japan’s best-known fair trade label, People Tree, the trend is catching on among the country’s socially aware youth.

To start a fair trade business, entrepreneurs or producers need first to contact the international body that certifies fair trade products and ensure that production meets the ethical standards required.

Published: January 2007

Resources

The Fairtrade Foundation: Established in 1992, is a coalition of UK charities and is a member of the Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International. It sets the standards for fair trade and protects the trademark and copyright.
The Authentic Business Network promotes doing business with a charitable purpose as well as profit. The website contains all the resources a budding entrepreneur requires to get started.
DATA: Founded by lead singer Bono of the rock group U2, DATA tries to partner businesses to increase trade opportunities with Africa.
The world’s largest online fair trade store is : Fairtrade UK
Oxfam: The UK-based charity has been a pioneer in fair trade and has extensive resources on how to get involved in fair trade and a shop vending fair trade products.
Ten Thousand Villages: An online fair trade shop selling handicrafts from around the world.
Agbanga Karite: A Togo-based African-owned online retailer selling products made from unrefined shea butter, including soaps, creams and oils.
Ananse Village: A fair trade online shop vending a wide range of crafts and products from Africa’s villages.
Two sides of the fair trade story in film: Black Gold: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee and Bitter Aftertaste: A critical film about fair trade.

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https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/21/chinese-trade-in-angola-helps-recovery/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/19/cooking-up-a-recipe-to-end-poverty/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/04/12/djibouti-re-shapes-itself-as-african-trade-hub/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/24/flurry-of-anti-poverty-innovations/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/07/19/global-south-trade-boosted-with-increasing-china-africa-trade-in-2013/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/21/local-animation-a-way-out-of-poverty/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/26/perfume-of-peace-helps-farmers-switch-from-drug-trade/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/21/social-networking-websites-a-way-out-of-poverty/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/07/19/south-south-trade-helping-countries-during-economic-crisis/

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

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/01/23/a-steppe-back-economic-liberalisation-and-poverty-reduction-in-mongolia/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/01/23/the-sweet-smell-of-failure-the-world-bank-and-the-persistence-of-poverty/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/18/web-2-0-networking-to-eradicate-poverty/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/05/women-empowered-by-fair-trade-manufacturer/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/06/16/women-mastering-trade-rules/

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

Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Carbon Credits Can Benefit African Farmers Thanks to New System

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 30/05/2022
No Comments on Carbon Credits Can Benefit African Farmers Thanks to New System

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

The global carbon credit trading schemes emanating from the Kyoto Protocol are now creating a multi-billion dollar market – the European carbon market was worth €14.6 billion in 2006 – and represents one of the fastest growing business opportunities in the world. Being green has finally come of age. Yet all the benefits of this are largely bypassing Africa despite more than 70 percent of the continent’s inhabitants earning a living off the land.

The World Agroforestry Centre – whose mission is to advance the science and practice of agroforestry to transform the lives and landscapes of the rural poor in developing countries – in partnership with Michigan State University has developed a method using satellite imagery and infrared sensing that measures carbon storage in African farmland. They have completed a pilot programme in western Kenya and are ready to encourage poor farmers to plant trees as soon as the European Union allows carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol to be awarded for this kind of scheme. Further pilot projects will be rolled out in 2007 in partnership with CARE International and the WWF.

But European Union policies on carbon credits are holding back this significant opportunity to enhance African livelihoods. Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is at present not willing to recognize the new method of verifying carbon storage in farmland. The ETS is the largest multi-country, multi-sector greenhouse gas emission trading scheme in the world. The issue of carbon storage, or carbon “sinks” as they are known, is very controversial in the world of Kyoto agreement implementation. Non-government organizations that advocate for forests and indigenous people have worked hard to exclude the use of forestry credits to offset fossil fuel burning, arguing that forestry offsets to date have been for big monoculture plantations of fast-growing eucalyptus or pine trees. It is claimed they are net carbon emitters over their lifetimes and also cause additional environmental and social problems.

But the World Agroforestry Centre’s approach is very different from a monoculture plantation. Their scheme is to help rural Africans to integrate more trees into their agricultural production systems, with benefits besides storing carbon. They argue that the right kinds of trees can increase the productivity and resilience of the land. Trees provide food, fuel, fertilizer, and medicine – medicinal trees are the main source of medication for 80 percent of Africa’s population.

Louis Verchon, the lead scientist for climate change at the World Agroforestry Centre, believes that if the EU would put in place a new scheme to credit farmers who capture carbon in their land, “millions of dollars in carbon credits could begin flowing to the world’s rural poor.” At present, Verchon says two-thirds of the carbon credit business is being captured by Asian countries who are mostly offering industrial solutions. “Africa has something to offer on this – it can’t compete with the likes of South Korea on industrial solutions, but it has plenty of land.”

In order to make the scheme work, two things will need to be improved: Africa’s institutional weakness and the paucity of qualified carbon credit verifiers. A network of verifiers would be required to inspect farm sites and make the calculations required to allocate carbon credits to poor farmers. At present, there are no qualified African-born verifiers in Africa according to Verchon.

The WAC are working with WWF and CARE to build up NGO capacity and start demonstration projects to prove it can work – two pilot projects are already up and running in Kenya. They are also automating much of the process by building a web portal.

Verchon says the WAC “are in it for the long-haul and we will see this grow over the next ten years.”

Published: January 2007

Resources

More on emissions trading: Click here
Kenya’s Greenbelt Movement: Founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, it provides income and sustenance to millions of people in Kenya through the planting of trees.

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.

Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Landmark Study Finds Simple Toys Key to Boosting Educational Development and Meeting MDGs

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 02/05/2022
No Comments on Landmark Study Finds Simple Toys Key to Boosting Educational Development and Meeting MDGs

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

African youth need to play more according to a new landmark study published in the UK’s leading medical journal, The Lancet. The study tackles the high rates of illiteracy and educational under-achievement in Africa and finds that malnourishment and lack of stimulation are leaving millions unable to benefit from schooling. It found projects that encouraged learning through play led to children boosting their IQs and getting better reading skills. And it comes up with a very simple and low-cost solution – but excellent opportunity for entrepreneurs – toys and play.

“These are not high tech interventions,” said team leader for the study, Professor Sally McGregor of the Institute of Child Health of University College London. “Research over decades in Jamaica (and other countries) has shown that women with only primary school-level education and a few home made toys can be trained to make a significant difference in the education, intelligence and mental health of disadvantaged children. The Millennium Goal of universal primary education for all cannot be met unless these children’s poor development is tackled.”

The paper – Strategies to Avoid the Loss of Developmental Potential among Over 200 Million Children in the Developing World – is published in three parts in the journal.

Twenty projects around the world were evaluated for the benefits they produce for children under five who use toys. McGregor, who has set up several projects in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda designing and constructing toys using whatever materials are available, was appalled by the widespread neglect of play throughout these countries. With play, the study found children read better, have better mental health and better self-esteem. In Africa it is ‘desperate, really desperate’ she says.

African primary school enrolments and literacy rates are among the lowest in the world, with over 42 million school children in sub-Saharan Africa not enrolled in school, and many children not able to afford to go or stay in primary school. Today a little more than half of African adults are literate and some 60 per cent of children go to school, according to UNESCO. The agency has forecasted the need for an additional 1.6 million teachers in Sub-Saharan African classrooms by 2015 – an increase of 68 percent.

The materials used to construct the toys do not need to be expensive or sophisticated. Toys can be constructed from banana trees, mud, corn on the cob, old plastic bottles, or cloth and straw dolls. It is key that the toys are safe for children under five and that anyone building such toys for sale must follow existing manuals.

McGregor continues: ‘One mother in a village was doing marvellous things with tiny scraps of material to make a doll. She received no recognition in the village for the work she was doing yet it was so important. It doesn’t take much – dolls or simple wooden blocks – they are so versatile. You see schools with nothing – it is unforgivable. The problem is how poor these people are – food just takes priority over toys – it is that stark.”

Locally produced toys are key to resolving this crisis for several reasons. Cost is the most important, with those most adversely affected also the least able to pay for toys and who are already living a precarious existence where basic survival takes precedence over play. Another factor is Africa being home to the countries who import the least number of toys: Somalia, Liberia, Togo, Rwanda and Chad. But the situation for African toymakers is often desperate as well, with many craft workers living at the economic margins. Several initiatives have emerged in the last couple of years to address this problem and ensure African toys are local and toymakers earn a living.

Initiatives like the African Toyshop based in Johannesburg, South Africa – a fair trade business – work to ensure African toymakers can make a living and get their wares to as wide a market as possible. The toymakers featured all use natural resources or recycled materials. Most work at the village level and produce toys that are culturally relevant to Africa. The organization COFTA – Cooperation For Fair Trade in Africa – is a network of Fair Trade producer Organizations in Africa involved and working with disadvantaged grassroots producers to eliminate poverty through fair trade. It is an excellent resource for grassroots organizations wanting to work with African toymakers.

Published: January 2007

Resources

The UK charity TALC – Teaching-aids At Low Cost – is planning to make available toy making manuals on a CD. Tel: (0) 1727 853869

This website also has excellent resources for budding toy and play area makers in Africa.

Online exhibition of African toys: Click here

Book: Africa on the Move: Toys from West Africa Stefan Eisenhofer, Karin Guggeis, Jacques Froidevaux Stuttgart, Germany: Arnoldsche, 2004. 216 pp., 195 color, 28 b/w illustrations. $75.00, cloth.