Agricultural Value Chain Development in West Africa – Methodological framework and case study of mango in Benin

Globalization and competitiveness of agricultural commodities could have significant potential benefits for food security and poverty reduction in West Africa. Participation in global trade and economy is potentially important but not enough to ensure benefits at all levels of the chains and equitable distribution of income for each participant. Efficiency is key in the commodity value chain, but effective support functions and services, infrastructure, legal and policy environment are important. This paper presents the framework of value chain concept and analysis, as a guide to enhance competitiveness of commodities at national, regional or global level. The paper applies the value chain framework to a case study on mango in Benin, West Africa. The international market for mango is characterized by stringent quality requirements regarding fruit flies. This needs to be addressed as a key value chain challenge for competitiveness of the commodity in Benin and West Africa.Benin, Mango, Value chain, West Africa, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Crop Production/Industries, Demand and Price Analysis, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, International Development, International Relations/Trade, Marketing, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Widening the Screen: Orthodox Protestant Film Viewers in The Netherlands and the Appropriation of Meaning in Relation to their Religious Identity

Erwich, R. [Promotor]Ganzevoort, R.R. [Promotor

Bilingual Preschoolers ’ Speech is Associated with Non-Native Maternal Language Input

Published online: 11 Nov 2018Bilingual children are often exposed to non-native speech through their parents. Yet, little is known about the relation between bilingual preschoolers’ speech production and their speech input. The present study investigated the production of voice onset time (VOT) by Dutch-German bilingual preschoolers and their sequential bilingual mothers. The findings reveal an association between maternal VOT and bilingual children’s VOT in the heritage language German as well as in the majority language Dutch. By contrast, no input-production association was observed in the VOT production of monolingual German-speaking children and monolingual Dutch-speaking children. The results of this study provide the first empirical evidence that non-native and attrited maternal speech contributes to the often-observed linguistic differences between bilingual children and their monolingual peers