Working Paper 125 - China and Africa: An Emerging Partnership for Development? - An Overview of Issues

China’s phenomenal growth offers an opportunity to boost development in African countries. Moreover, China’s loans and concessional assistance financed a wide range of development projects. China also is reaping significant benefits from this relationship, through access to raw materials, expanded markets for exports of manufactures, the establishment of investment relationships which could generate significant profits over time and diplomatic influence. But leadership from African governments, particularly to strengthen domestic policies and governance and to harmonize regional policies so as to improve the continent’s bargaining position with China, are required to ensure that the China-Africa relationship contributes to sustainable growth and poverty reduction. The twin goals of this paper are to summarizes the analysis on the economic exchange between China and Africa, and to outline policy recommendations to improve the benefits to both parties.

Dairy development in the Philippines : Visions for the future: uniformity and/or diversity, community and/or commodity

Although milk has been produced and processed in the Philippines for a long time, the country does not have a strong dairy tradition. Climate and ecology are not very favourable for high yields. Moreover, policies have been erratic and the country has not used the momentum towards dairy development like some of its neighbours. This report reviews the current state of the dairy sector, with a view to developing visions for the future. Dairy sector fragmentation is partly due to the fact that the country is an archipelago with different ecological and demographic conditions - good markets and favourable ecology often do not come together. The report analyses selected aspects of production systems, value chains, and management, particularly focusing on roles of public and private sector. The country should a) consider its variation as strength and not as weakness and b) focus (use of its public) resources for development of a dairy sector that mainly produces local milk for local markets, rather than trying to become self-sufficient in milk products that can be imported much more cheaply. The country has much to gain from taking development of its dairy sector seriously. Government should become a facilitator, rather than being directly in charge of services like cattle imports, insemination services, and research & education

Working Paper 124 - Post-Crisis Prospects for China-Africa Relations

China’s rapid growth has transformed its relationship with Africa. Industrialization has boosted China’s import demand for oil and minerals (e.g. iron ore, bauxite, nickel, copper), which Africa can satisfy. China is now Africa’s third largest trading partner and the Chinese governments going global strategy encouraged Chinese companies to become multinationals. The China-Africa relationship could be described as “commodities-for-infrastructure”, although a shift to broader cooperation on development is now evident. This paper discusses how China’s relationship with Africa is contributing to its overall development and emphasizes the central role of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). The principal conclusion is that while China is likely to remain engaged with Africa in the medium term, to reap the full benefits, African countries need to transform this engagement into additional development opportunities.

Quality in smallholder dairy farming in Minas Gerais, Brazil

Dit rapport bespreekt de resultaten van een onderzoek naar de zuivelkwaliteit van kleinschalige boerderijen in Minas Gerais, Brazilië. De volgende ondewerpen kwamen daarbij aan de orde: product- en proceskwaliteit, de positie van de boeren en toekomstige kansen en bedreigingen voor deze boere

Vulnerability and public service delivery in China from 1985 to 1999

This research focused on the determinants of vulnerability, as measured by the variable of expenditure on food consumption, by the quality of public service delivery as measured by three education variables (amount of students per teacher in primary education, amount of students per teacher in secondary education and amount of students per teacher in higher education) and two health variables (amount of doctors per bed and the amount of beds per hospital). To measure the impact of public service delivery on vulnerability we will use OLS regression, Fixed Effect, Two Stage Least Square (TSLS) and TSLS with Fixed Effect. The instrumental of the TSLS regressions are a group of political decentralization and inequality variables. Lags of respective one and two years are introduced as an additional robustness test. The conclusion is threefold: (i) the quality of primary education has a negative impact on vulnerability, probably due to the selection bias of children from poor families being taken out of school; (ii) the quality of the education service in higher education has a positive impact on vulnerability; and (iii) quality of health care has, at most, only a partial positive effect on reducing vulnerability.

The Impact of China on the Donor Landscape in African Fragile States

This article analyses the impact of China on the donor landscape in African fragile states. This is undertaken by first discussing the global trends of South–South collaboration as part of the broader post?Busan development debate, and secondly, the specific role of China in four African fragile states, which are respectively Liberia, Angola, Mali and Sudan. The article has two main findings. Firstly, China provides additional development opportunities but is not applying the same development cooperation model as traditional Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors. This fragmentation of global development cooperation modalities requires capacity to coordinate donors by aid?recipient countries. Secondly, as China's economic interests grow in Africa, it is also expanding its support for regional stability by participating in UN peacekeeping operations. One of the key conditions for China's participation, however, is a clear mandate by an African regional organisation such as the African Union and Regional Economic Communities. This approach ensures that China maintains its principles of respecting national sovereignty and non?interference in the domestic affairs of other countries

Details for timber bridges with asphalt wearing surfaces

Timber bridges for road traffic are built out with an asphalt wearing surface on the timber deck so vehicles can cross with high velocity (>50 km/h). The application of the asphalt layer on the majority of the surface is usually unproblematic, but is challenging along the edges. Engineers and practitioners often find them-selves using their own creativity as constraints, geometry, and design of new timber bridges does not allow a direct copy of details of existing bridges. This paper presents base details along with recommendations listed by experienced timber bridge designers and experts from the field of detailing of concrete bridges. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages of existing details are discussed, and new details are pre-sented. This forms a basis for new bridge designs, as the details from a basis for economic and robust construction of timber bridges and, hence, increases their longevity