The effects of import-substitution: the case of Kenya's manufacturing sector

This paper attempts to assess to what extent growth of the manufacturing sector in Kenya has contributed to a process of integrated and wide spread economic development. There are three sections. The first reviews the general arguments of development theory to promote industrial development in the Third World countries. The second section deals with the pros and cons of the 'import-substitution' policy, which was adopted to speed up growth of the manufacturing sector. The last section brings together relevant research findings concerning the effects of this policy on the structure of the manufacturing sector, employment creation, income distribution and the operations of multi-national firms in Kenya. The conclusion is that the type of industrialization that occurred has not led to 'a structural transformation' of the Kenyan economy. Growth in the manufacturing sector, although fast in terms of output, has been growth within existing types of industries. Few 'forwardand backward linkages' were developed and the impact of the policy on employment creation and income distribution can hardly be viewed favourably. Resources have been concentrated on a small part of the economy and to a large extent have neglected others, in particular agriculture. Multinational firms in Kenya have been a hindrance to the establishment of an integrated, balanced type of economic development. Import-substitution did not lessen Kenya's external dependency, but merely changed its nature. Consequently, the policy was not effective in alleviating the balance of payments difficulties

Efficient screening for ‘genetic pollution’ in an anthropogenic crested newt hybrid zone

Genetic admixture between endangered native and non-native invasive species poses a complex conservation problem. Decision makers often need to quickly screen large numbers of individuals and distinguish natives from morphologically similar invading species and their genetically admixed offspring. We describe a protocol using the fast and economical Kompetitive Allele Specific PCR (KASP) technology for genotyping on a large scale. We apply this protocol to a case study of hybridization between a native and an invasive crested newt species. Using previously published data, we designed a panel of ten nuclear and one mitochondrial diagnostic SNP markers. We observed only minor differences between KASP and next-generation sequencing data previously produced with the Ion Torrent platform. We briefly discuss practical considerations for tackling the insidious conservation problem of genetic admixture between native and invasive species. The KASP genotyping protocol facilitates policy decision making for the crested newt case and is generally applicable to invasive hybridization with endangered taxa

Amphibian decline, pond loss and reduced population connectivity under agricultural intensification over a 38 year period

Habitat loss, together with less obvious land-use changes such as intensified farming practice, can have significant adverse impacts on biodiversity. An important factor in determining the ability of species to cope with such changes is their potential to sustain a populations network by dispersal across the landscape. Habitat quality and structure are particularly important for surface-dwelling species with low dispersal abilities, such as amphibians. To assess this ecological function, ponds in a coastal and typically rural area of northern France were surveyed for amphibians in 1974, 1992 and 2011. These repeated surveys yielded different outcomes for different species groups. Three rare species persisted in more or less specialized habitat types. Two moderately common species declined, but kept strongholds in coastal dunes and associated marshes. Five common species with broad ecological niches remained equally widespread. The Northern crested newt declined markedly and the Midwife toad declined dramatically, as did their breeding habitats in vegetated ponds and cattle drinking troughs. One species, the Moor frog, may have gone locally extinct. A model of relative resistance to amphibian dispersal was created for different landscape types, on a scale from 0 (low resistance) to 1 (high resistance). This generated values of 0.23 for pasture, 0.72 for arable and 0.98 for urban and transport. As pasture declined in the study area, while arable and urban/transport infrastructure increased, amphibian dispersal became more difficult. However, dispersal paths proved difficult to evaluate in a patchy landscape like the one surveyed, due to a paucity of spatial signal. Pond loss is a more tractable reason for the observed amphibian species decline than is the quality of intervening terrestrial habitat matrix. In 2011, 22 newly created ponds had species richness in line with pre-existing ponds and this will have counteracted a dwindling metapopulation structure, indicating that habitat creation/restoration can play a valuable role in conservation. The colonization of new ponds may also prove more informative for gauging the potential for amphibian dispersal in the landscape than the preceding decline

An extended mtDNA phylogeography for the alpine newt illuminates the provenance of introduced populations

Many herpetofauna species have been introduced outside of their native range. MtDNA barcoding is regularly used to determine the provenance of such populations. The alpine newt has been introduced across the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ireland. However, geographical mtDNA structure across the natural range of the alpine newt is still incompletely understood and certain regions are severely undersampled. We collect mtDNA sequence data of over seven hundred individuals, from both the native and the introduced range. The main new insights from our extended mtDNA phylogeography are that 1) haplotypes from Spain do not form a reciprocally monophyletic clade, but are nested inside the mtDNA clade that covers western and eastern Europe; and 2) haplotypes from the northwest Balkans form a monophyletic clade together with those from the Southern Carpathians and Apuseni Mountains. We also home in on the regions where the distinct mtDNA clades meet in nature. We show that four out of the seven distinct mtDNA clades that comprise the alpine newt are implicated in the introductions in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Ireland. In several introduced localities, two distinct mtDNA clades co-occur. As these mtDNA clades presumably represent cryptic species, we urge that the extent of genetic admixture between them is assessed from genome-wide nuclear DNA markers. We mobilized a large number of citizen scientists in this project to support the collection of DNA samples by skin swabbing and underscore the effectiveness of this sampling technique for mtDNA barcoding

Difficulties in species identification in water frogs (genus Pelophylax) using morphological and molecular markers in The Netherlands

NaturalisAnimal science