Human Development Impacts of Migration: South Africa Case Study

Controls on human mobility and efforts to undermine them continue to shape South Africa’s politics, economy, and society. Despite the need for improved policy responses to human mobility, reform is hindered by lack of capacity, misinformation, and anti-migrant sentiments within and outside of government. This report outlines these trends and tensions by providing a broad overview of the limited demographic and socio-economic data available on migration to and within South Africa. Doing so highlights the spatialised aspects of human mobility, trends centred on and around the country’s towns and cities. It also finds significant development potential in international migrants’ skills and entrepreneurialism. By enhancing remittances and trade, non-nationals may also expand markets for South African products and services. Despite these potential benefits, there are severe obstacles to immigration reform. These include a renewed South African populism; the influence of a strong anti-trafficking lobby; a European Union (EU) agenda promoting stricter border controls; poor implementation capacity; and endemic corruption among police and immigration officials. There are different, but equally significant problems in reforming frameworks governing domestic mobility including perceptions that in-migration is an inherent drain on municipal budgets. Recognising these limitations, the report concludes with three recommendations. (1) A conceptual reconsideration of the divisions between documented and undocumented migrants; between voluntary and forced migrants; and between international and domestic migration. (2) An analytical respatialisation in future planning and management scenarios involving regional and local bodies in evaluating, designing and implementing policy. (3) To situate migration and its management within global debates over governance and development and for ‘migration mainstreaming’ into all aspects of governance. The success of any of these initiatives will require better data, the skills to analyse that data, and the integration of data into planning processes.migration, urbanisation, governance, South Africa, policy reform, capabilities

Factors influencing adoption of agroforestry among smallholder farmers in Zambia

Agroforestry technologies have been extensively researched and introduced to smallholder farmers in Zambia for over two decades. Despite the research and extension effort over this period, not many farmers have adopted these technologies. The purpose of this paper is to determine why agroforestry technologies are not being taken up by examining factors that influence the adoption of agroforestry practices. Based on data obtained from 388 farming households, statistical analysis show an association between adoption of both improved fallows and biomass transfer technologies with knowledge of the technology, availability of seed, and having the appropriate skills. In addition some household characteristics are found to be linked to the incidence of adoption. However, the strength of association between these variables is low, giving an indication that there might be other factors at play limiting agroforestry adoption. It is anticipated that these findings will point to other areas beyond the household and community level that need further exploration in order to understand factors limiting agroforestry adoption.Agroforestry adoption, smallholder farmers, limitations to adoption, chi-square tests of independence analysis, Zambia, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use,

Prices Paid to Cotton Farmers: How Does Zambia Compare to its African Neighbors?

1. Zambia has paid among the best nominal seed cotton prices to farmers in SSA since 1995. 2. By a more refined measure (share of FOT), during 1995-1999, Zambia paid prices comparable to those in Tanzania (a very competitive sector), and substantially higher than in Mozambique and WCA. However, from 2000-2005, Zambia's pricing performance fell, and exceeded only Zimbabwe and Mozambique in our sample 3. The recently announced reference price for 2008 of ZKW 1,200/kg of seed cotton was negotiated and jointly announced by ginners and farmers. It amounts to about 53% of FOT at current exchange rates and Index A prices; about equal to recent shares received by farmers in Zambia, but well below levels in WCA and Tanzania. 4. What “rules of the game” are needed for farmers and ginners to continue working together so that the costs and benefits in Zambia’s cotton sector are shared equitably?food security, food policy, Zambia, cotton, Crop Production/Industries, Q20,

Urgent Need for Effective Public-Private Coordination in Zambia’s Cotton Sector. Deliberations on the Cotton Act.

Cotton is an unquestioned success of Zambia’s turn towards a market economy. Yet the entry over the past two years of new players has put the sector under great stress and may have pushed it to a turning point. Now more than ever, effective “rules of the game” are urgently needed to protect Zambia’s remarkable cotton success story. Other countries in southern and eastern Africa have seen dramatic declines in input credit and extension to farmers, and in cotton quality, when competition among ginning firms intensified in the absence of suitable rules of the game. The focus in Zambia must be on establishing broadly accepted rules of the game that ensure honest competition that does not undermine input credit, extension, and cotton quality.food security, food policy, Zambia, cotton, production, marketing, Crop Production/Industries, Q20,

Increasing Demand For Quality In World Cotton Markets: How Has Zambia Performed?

1. Changes in spinning technology have increased the premium on high quality lint in the world market and increased the discount for lint contaminated with non-vegetative matter 2. The inherent characteristics of most African lint, plus the fact that it is hand-picked, should give it a substantial premium in the world market. However, because so much African lint is highly contaminated by world standards, much of it trades at a discount to Index A. 3. Zambia has been the outstanding success among a sample of nine SSA countries in improving quality; this achievement is directly attributable to the efforts of Dunavant and Cargill, made possible by company culture and by the concentrated structure of Zambia's industry 4. Quality (and input supply) can be quickly undermined as a sector becomes more competitive. Continued collaboration among ZACOPA and CAZ within the framework of the Cotton Act, facilitated by a non-partisan government role, will be crucial to maintain good performance.food security, food policy, Zambia, cotton, Crop Production/Industries, Q20,

Input Credit Provision for Cotton Production: Learning from African Neighbors and Meeting Zambia’s Challenges

1. Smallholder farmers in Africa require reliable access to purchased production inputs and credit to take advantage of export opportunities from production of cotton. 2. Unregulated and poorly coordinated markets for cotton, production inputs and credit have too often failed to deliver sustainable production finance to farmers for cotton production resulting in a variety of different approaches to these problems among African countries. 3. Among the countries studied, approaches have varied from State monopolies to private markets with several large firms managing to achieve temporary duopolies. 4. Zambia has been relatively successful in dealing with the input-credit needs of cotton farmers for periods of time but the system has been unsustainable, breaking down from time to time. 5. Currently the Zambia government and private sector participants are proposing highly collaborative regulation of the sector driven by all stakeholders. The revised Cotton Act provides a framework under which this may be able to happen in Zambia and recent activities of ZACOP, in collaboration with CAZ are very much in this spirit.food security, food policy, Zambia, cotton, Crop Production/Industries, Q20,

Farm Yields and Returns to Farmers From Seed Cotton: Does Zambia Measure Up?

1. Farm yields are one key indicator of the productivity of a cotton sector, and an important determinant of returns to farmers (and thus of cotton’s ability to reduce poverty) 2. Zambia’s relatively good performance on input credit provision means that it has been able to raise yields since reforms in 1994; yet the rate of increase has been slow, and yields remain well below those found in countries of West and Central Africa. 3. Average returns to farmers do not appear to be any higher in Zambia, with good performance on input credit provision, than in Tanzania, where input use and yields are low. 4. Zambia’s concentrated structure gives it the potential to substantially increase farm productivity, and for cotton to make but relatively little of this potential has yet been realized. The key challenge for sector stakeholders, once the Cotton Act is passed, is to agree on a coordinated approach to address this problemfood security, food policy, Zambia, cotton, Crop Production/Industries, Q20,

Displacement and difference in Lubumbashi

Signs on the outskirts of the second largest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) welcome visitors to ‘the city of peace’. Lubumbashi has a reputation as a haven of tolerance in a violent nation but how are displaced people treated

Towards performing an afropolitan subjectivity

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (p. 32-34).Emerging directly from three devised performances conducted as practical research projects in the exploration of my thesis, the production supported by this explication titled Afrocartography: Traces of Places and all points in between, (Afrocartography) is located within a series of works that explore an Afropolitan subject position. Towards the goal of articulating a theatrical form, style and aesthetic of this so called Afropolitan experience, the first section of this paper serves to locate the term Afropolitan within a personal contextual frame from which the paper progresses