Zambian Cotton in a Regional Context: Performance under Liberalization and Future Challenges

This paper is directed toward policy makers and private stakeholders in Zambia’s cotton sector. Its purpose is: 1) to assess key elements of the performance of Zambia’s cotton sector relative to other selected African countries; 2) to develop preliminary insights into the driving forces behind Zambia’s performance and also the threats to improved future performance; and 3) to identify key issues within the sector that merit continued applied research and dialogue with stakeholders.food security, food policy, Zambia, cotton, Crop Production/Industries, Q18,

Cotton in Zambia: An Assessment of its Organization, Performance, Current Policy Initiatives, and Challenges for the Future

This paper grows out of earlier work on cotton by the Food Security Research Project. It is directed towards policy makers and private stakeholders in Zambia’s cotton sector, and has four main purposes: (a) To provide a detailed descriptive overview of the organization of the sector and of the behavior of key public and private participants in the sector; (b) To assess cotton’s role in smallholder livelihood strategies, and its competitiveness at the farm level with a key alternative crop–maize; (c) To critically evaluate recent policy initiatives in the sector and suggest key modifications that might be needed; and (d) To identify the primary challenges that the sector faces to ensure its future competitiveness in regional and international markets.food security, food policy, Zambia, cotton, smallholder livelihood, Crop Production/Industries, Q18,

Cotton Sector Policies and Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons Behind the Numbers in Mozambique and Zambia

Research results from SIMA-Department of Statistics and Department of Policy Analysis MADER-Directorate of Economicsfood security, food policy, cotton, Mozambique, Zambia, Crop Production/Industries, Q18,

Emulating Software Defined Network Using Mininet and OpenDaylight Controller Hosted on Amazon Web Services Cloud Platform to Demonstrate a Realistic Programmable Network.

Conference paper written by masters student in satisfaction of masters degreeFollow the link at the top of the record to access the full-text of this item on the publisher's web site.In this paper, a Software Defined Network was created in Mininet using python script. An external interface was added in the form of an OpenDaylight controller to enable communication with the network outside of Mininet. The OpenDaylight controller was hosted on the Amazon Web Services elastic computing node. This controller is used as a control plane device for the switch within Mininet. The OpenDaylight controller was able to create the flows to facilitate communication between the hosts in Mininet and the webserver in the real-life network. In order to test the network, a real life network in the form of a webserver hosted on the Emulated Virtual Environment – Next Generation (EVE-NG) software was connected to Mininet.The University of Johannesburg The University of South AfricaCollege of Engineering, Science and Technolog

COTTON SECTOR POLICIES AND PERFORMANCE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA:LESSONS BEHIND THE NUMBERS IN MOZAMBIQUE AND ZAMBIA

Cotton is one of the most important smallholder cash crops in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). How to ensure input supply, credit recovery and competition is a subject of intense policy debate. This paper examines the performance of cotton sector development policies in Mozambique and Zambia. Both countries face the challenge of organizing input supply to farmers in the absence of rural credit markets, and competing in international markets distorted by production subsidies in developed countries. Both countries privatized cotton ginning in the 1990s. Emerging from civil war, Mozambique established geographical monopolies to interlink input and output markets and facilitate credit recovery. In Zambia, the government completely liberalized the cotton sector, forcing the private sector to deal with the problem of input distribution and credit recovery by itself. Despite being landlocked, Zambia's cotton sector has achieved better performance in terms of both value of cotton output per hectare and smallholder share of world market prices. An analysis of the institutional and technical factors behind the two countries' performance provides insights to guide the design of public/private partnerships relevant to many SSA countries.Cotton, Mozambique, Zambia, liberalization, agricultural policy, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries,

Ethylene Trimerization over Supported SNS and PNP Chromium Catalysts

Chromium(III) complexes with sulphur, nitrogen and phosphorus tridentate ligands were synthesized and characterized. These complexes were  supported on SiO2 and characterized by BET surface area measurements, XRF, SEM-EDX and FTIR. The complexes were tested for activity and selectivity in  the trimerization of ethylene. The substituent’s effect and influence on the sulphur on the supported catalysts were studied using the ethyl and the  decyl substituted catalysts. The influence of temperature on catalytic performance was evaluated using the PPP supported system. The most active  supported catalyst, the decyl substituted SNS catalyst, showed good activity of up to 19 500 g/g Cr h–1 and selectivity of 97.3 % to C6 products (98.2 %  1-hexene). This activity and selectivity were comparable to the homogeneous counterpart’s performance that achieved 22 000 g/g Cr h–1 and 98.2 % C6  products (96.7 % 1-hexene), which surpassed the ethyl substituted catalyst, which was not supported, under the same reaction conditions. The supported  PPP catalyst activities showed it was sensitive to higher temperatures, but this depends on the supporting technique

Synthesis and characterization of amine-functionalized supported phosphine catalysts and their application in ethylene oligomerization

A series of phosphorus and nitrogen-based ethylene oligomerization ligands of the type Ph2PN(X)PPh2 where X = i-propyl, n-butyl, ethylbenzene and  cyclohexyl substituents are reported. These ligands were functionalized to enable tethering on amino-silica. The free ligands, amino-silica and the  tethered ligands were characterized by BET, XRD, IR, TGA and NMR. The catalysts were tested for ethylene oligomerization using Cr(acac)3 (acac =  acetylacetonate) as the precursor and MMAO (modified methylaluminoxane) as the activator. The activity and selectivity of these catalysts to 1-octene was  monitored at 45 bar ethylene in the temperature range of 45–100 °C. The activity of the supported catalysts was comparable to their homogeneous  counterparts, surpassing them in some cases and selectivities to 1-octene in the C8 products were as high as 99 wt%. The steric effect of the substituent  on the ligand as well as that of the support was found to influence the activity and product distribution

Settlement in Transition: a Transformation of a Village into a Small Town in Western Sudan

UN-Habitat projects Sub-Saharan Africa’s global share of the urban population to increase from 11.3% in 2010 to 20.2% by 2050. Yet little is documented about the underlying urbanization processes, particularly of emergence of small towns. This article uses household interviews, focus groups, observation, and secondary data to examine the spontaneous transformation of a western Sudanese village, Shubbola, into a small town. We use changes in building construction approach, materials, and style as an indicator of development and provide rare documentation of the process, the main actors, choices taken, timescales, and outcomes of the rapid urbanization of Shubbola between 2006 and 2013. Housing transformation was variable but involved a gradual process of replacing traditional non-durable building materials (wood and straw) with modern durable ones (sun- or fire-cured bricks, cement blocks, and metal roofs). Unlike traditional top-down models of urbanization generally driven by government investment, Shubbola epitomizes an organic, bottom-up process dependent on self-reliance and agriculture development fueled by remittances from urban-based relatives. While many small towns with similar origins fail to do so, Shubbola already provided important urban services to its inhabitants and surrounding rural areas. The study enhances understanding of small towns and underlying urbanization processes and their contribution to often neglected bottom-up, low-cost processes that do not fit traditional top-down models. It also contributes to literature and policy on sustainable cities and their role in sustainable development as encapsulated in UN Sustainable Development Goal 11. The study contributes to understanding the processes and implications of rapid urbanization in the Sudan and Africa and other world regions

Smallholder Income and Land Distribution in Africa: Implications for Poverty Reduction Strategies

This paper provides a micro-level foundation for discussions of income and asset allocation within the smallholder sector in Eastern and Southern Africa, and explores the implications of these findings for rural growth and poverty alleviation strategies in the region. Results are drawn from nationally-representative household surveys in five countries between 1990 and 2000: Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Zambia. The paper addresses five major points: (1) why geographically-based poverty reduction or targeting strategies-e.g., focusing on marginal areas-is likely to miss a significant share of the poor in any particular country regardless of targeting efficiency in these areas; (2) why current enthusiasm for community-driven development approaches will require serious attention to how resources are allocated at local levels; (3) why sustained income growth for the poorest strata of the rural population will depend on agricultural growth in most countries, even though the poor generally lack the land and other productive resources to respond directly or immediately to policies and investments to stimulate agricultural growth; (4) why agricultural productivity growth, while most easily generating gains for better-off smallholder farmers, is likely to offer the best potential for pulling the poorest and land-constrained households out of poverty; and (5) why meaningful poverty alleviation strategies in many countries will require fundamental changes to make land more accessible to smallholder farmers. This could be accomplished through various processes, including improvement in land rental markets or perhaps land redistribution. We briefly elaborate on each of these findings.Food Security and Poverty, Land Economics/Use,

Smallholder Income and Land Distribution in Africa: Implications for Poverty Reduction Strategies

Farm Management, Food Security and Poverty, Downloads July 2008-July 2009: 15,