Competing and Learning in Global Value Chains - Firms’ Experiences in the Case of Uganda. A study of five export sub-sectors with reference to trade between Uganda and Europe

Executive Summary and Chapter 5: Presentation and discussion of main finding

Beyond harsh trade? The relevance of ‘soft’ competitiveness factors for Ugandan enterprises to endure in Global Value Chains

This article is based on an empirical study which examined the issues of organization and coordination of global production and trade for the case of trade between Uganda and Europe.Respective experiences of 34 exporters in Uganda and 19 importers in Europe were documented through in-depth interviews and consequently analyzed. The article discusses matters of cooperation between the exporters and importers and points to its significance for upgrading and enhancing competitiveness of the exporters studied. It further identifies firm level ‘soft competitiveness factors’ (SCFs) of Ugandan exporters and discusses their relevance for the firms’ performance in Global Value Chains. The findings reveal that deficiencies in SCFs can have damaging effects, and vice-versa. Possession of the SCFs can yield significant competitive advantage for exporters and help to strengthen the relationship with the importers. Findings of ill-treatment of exporters by their importers highlight a particular kind of challenge that is often overseen in the debate about exports of African firms: the challenge regarding business behaviours, practices, and ethics including the ability to engage in relations with foreign buyers and leverage resources, knowledge and generally cooperation from them, first, and the general issue of problematic business practices in the global economy, second. The article policy recommends Policy, practice and research should focus on economic, political, social, cultural and institutional factors that impact on local levels of SCFs; to improve and help exporting enterprises in Africa to survive and succeed in GVCs, within the context of the state of the moral economy in global capitalism

Fisheries and Aquaculture and Their Potential Roles in Development: An Assessment of the Current Evidence

Commissioned by the International Sustainability Unity, this report investigates a number of innovative solutions that have been developed to deal with five key challenges that are impeding progress in achieving sustainable fisheries: overcapacity; perverse subsidies; poor governance; lack of data; and by-catch and discards. These key challenges are interlinked and affect the sustainability of fisheries both directly as well as indirectly by undermining instances of good management. Through 22 case studies demonstrating good practice, we explore how these challenges have been addressed around the world and how these approaches might be scaled up and applied in other fisheries. Each case study draws on published material and interviews with key people involved in the fishery. The main report draws lessons from these case studies

Food System and Food Security Study for the City of Cape Town

Food insecurity is a critical, but poorly understood, challenge for the health and development of Capetonians. Food insecurity is often imagined as hunger, but it is far broader than that. Households are considered food secure when they have “physical and economic access to sufficient and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (WHO/FAO 1996). Health is not merely the absence of disease, but also encompasses good nutrition and healthy lifestyles. Individuals in a food insecure household and/or community are at greater risk due to diets of poor nutritional value, which lowers immunity against diseases. In children, food insecurity is known to stunt growth and development and this places the child in a disadvantaged position from early on in life. Any improvement in the nutritional profile of an individual is beneficial and as the family and community become more food secure, the greater the benefit. It further reduces the demand on health services. In the Cape Town context, food insecurity manifests not just as hunger, but as long term consumption of a limited variety of foods, reduction in meal sizes and choices to eat calorie dense, nutritionally poor foods in an effort to get enough food to get by. Associated with this food insecurity are chronic malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency, particularly among young children, and an increase in obesity, diabetes and other diet related illnesses. Food insecurity is therefore not about food not being available, it is about households not having the economic or physical resources to access enough of the right kind of food. The latest study of food insecurity in Cape Town found that 75 percent of households in sampled low-income areas were food insecure, with 58 percent falling into the severely food insecurity category. Food insecurity is caused by household scale characteristics, such as income poverty, but also by wider structural issues, such as the local food retail environment and the price and availability of healthy relative to less healthy foods. The City of Cape Town therefore commissioned a study based on the following understanding of the food security challenge facing the City. “Food security or the lack thereof is the outcome of complex and multi-dimensional factors comprising a food system. Therefore, food insecurity is the result of failures or inefficiencies in one or more dimensions of the food system. This necessitates a holistic analysis of the food system that than can provide insights into the various components of the system, especially in our context as a developing world city.” The call for a food system study sees the City of Cape Town taking the lead nationally, being the first metropolitan area to seek to engage in the food system in a holistic manner and attempting to understand what role the city needs to play in the food system. The City must work towards a food system that is reliable, sustainable and transparent. Such a system will generate household food security that is less dependent on welfarist responses to the challenge. In this context, reliability is taken to mean stable and consistent prices, the nutritional quality of available and accessible food, and food safety. Sustainability means that the food system does not degrade the environmental, economic and social environment. Finally, transparency refers to the legibility of the system and its control by the state and citizens

Kennisbasis WOT Fisheries 2011 - what is in the Programme?

The KBWOT Fisheries programme is core to the maintenance and development of the expertise that underpins the statutory obligations of fisheries monitoring and advice for the Netherlands. The structure of the KBWOT Fisheries programme for 2011 changed to reflect the recent discussions on the research direction between IMARES, CVO and EL&I. One of the strengths of the structure of the KBWOT Fisheries programme was the bottom up approach to calls for projects to fulfil the research priorities. This however was seen as giving the programme the potential to miss strategic needs of both the science development within IMARES and the research questions of EL&I, thus the programme now also contains a specific project request on an research subject relevant to IMARES and EL&I needs. The KBWOT Fisheries programme will fund 12 projects in 2011. The projects will investigate competition in exploited fish communities, long term changes in eel populations, the spawning habitat of mackerel, sub-stock structure in fish, trawling impact on benthic communities, quality assurance in fish aging, surveys of shellfish, maturity staging of fish and acoustic methods. Plus a targeted project specifically designed to research needs of IMARES and EL&I will be carried out into the trade-offs in FMSY targets for North Sea flatfish fisheries