How African innovation can take on the world. Africa must shift to technology-driven development, says Professor Calestous JumaInvest in biotechnology, and adapt learnings to other sectors, he saysAfrica must support tech startups and help them to scale up Editor's note: Calestous Juma is professor of the Practice of International Development and faculty chair of Innovation for Economic Development Program at Harvard Kennedy School. He co-chairs the African Union's High-Level Panel on Science, Technology and Innovation, and is author of The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa. Twitter @calestous (CNN) -- In this period of gloomy economic forecasts, Africa's rise has become a widely discussed international policy topic. The sweeping optimism about Africa's economic prospects has been reinforced by 2013 projections that the continent will grow faster than the world average. The content of the growth, however, has been a source of discomfort among African leaders.
Read this: 10 African tech startups you need to know Training. Entrepreneurship. Book Chapter, The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa, pages 142-165 January 2011 Author: Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa Belfer Center Programs or Projects: Agricultural Innovation in Africa; Science, Technology, and Globalization; Science, Technology, and Public Policy Other Chapters in The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa: The creation of agricultural enterprises represents one of the most effective ways to stimulate rural development.
This chapter will review the efficacy of the policy tools used to promote agricultural enterprises, with a particular focus on the positive, transformative role that can be played by the private sector. Agribusiness and development Economic change entails the transformation of knowledge into goods and services through business enterprises. 1. For Academic Citation: Governing Innovation. Book Chapter, The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa, pages 166-203 January 2011 Author: Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa Belfer Center Programs or Projects: Agricultural Innovation in Africa; Science, Technology, and Globalization; Science, Technology, and Public Policy Other Chapters in The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa: African countries are increasingly focusing on promoting regional economic integration as a way to stimulate economic growth and expand local markets.
Through extensive examples of initiatives at the national or cross-border levels, this chapter provides cases for regional collaboration or scaling up national programs to regional programs. The entire chapter may be downloaded below. For more information about this publication please contact the STG Coordinator. For Academic Citation: Strengthening the Capacity of Agriculture Innovation Brokers. | plaas.org.za. The Surprising Source of Great Results: Attention and Mindfulness. According to Otto Scharmer, the quality of our attention shapes the quality of our results. A rather unusual thought in our Western management world. How does it work? While Scharmer shows a very practical and viable path to enhance the attentional quality of people in an organization in his Theory U, I want to explore possible mechanisms from a psychological perspective in this blog post and look at available empirical evidence.
Otto Scharmer’s Causal Chain In a recent paper, Otto Scharmer describes that despite of the many books available on management and leadership, there is still a dimension we know very little about: “The blind spot in current leader’s thought is that they know all about what leaders do and how they do it – but not know about the source level, that is, the inner place or state of awareness from which leaders and social systems operate.”
Otto Scharmer then lays out the following causal chain: Individual Level: Mindfulness Practice Enhances Social Competence. | plaas.org.za. This Future Agricultures Consortium Working Paper examines the micro-politics of Malawi’s Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) and the roles of agro-dealers as potential anchors or drivers of a ‘uniquely African Green Revolution’. The drive toward the development of a viable network of agro-dealers is a direct consequence of the failure of the liberalisation of the agricultural sector to trigger a vibrant private sector-led market. The agro-dealer initiative was introduced to address the question of missing markets for the rural farmer and deal once and for all with the question of pervasive food insecurity in Malawi.
While agro-dealership has tremendous potential to facilitate private sector led agricultural growth and development, the implementation of FISP has substantially altered the operative context for agrodealers. These challenges can be dealt with by the design and enforcement of a robust policy and institutional framework for agro-dealership. Plaas.org.za | Planners Network. The Seventh Generation Can labor and community learn to dance together? By Marie Kennedy & Chris Tilly General Building Power: The Los..
Summer 2013: Conference Recap Conference Recap Bruce Dale: A Planner’s Life by Tony Schuman Orange, New Jersey: Making a Place by Margaux Simmons and Jamy Lasell.. Spring 2013: The American South Seventh Generation The South: The Race Culture Sustained by William M. Winter 2013: New York Seventh Generation New York City after Sandy: Who Benefits, Who Pays and Where’s the Long-Term Planning? Fall 2012: Communities and Design Seventh Generation Is the AIA a Place for Design that Matters? Summer 2012: Los Angeles-What Future for the “City of the Future”? Seventh Generation How Imperial Decline Contributes to Urban Decay in Los Angeles (644 KB) by Dick Platkin Focus on Los Angeles..
Spring 2012: Occupy! Seventh Generation Occupy Urban Planning! Winter 2012: Manufacturing: New Industries, Progressive Approaches? Fall 2011 Manufacturing. Urban Agriculture: What Cuba Can Teach Us. Everyday, in the city of London, 30 million meals are served. That’s millions of trucks arriving to millions of stores and restaurants in a complex, tightly scheduled orchestration of production, transportation, and distribution. We take it for granted that this system will never fail. But what would happen if these trucks were stopped? As unrealistic as it sounds, it’s happened – and not so long ago. In 1989, over 57% of Cuba’s caloric intake was imported from the Soviet Union.
As our world becomes increasingly urbanized, our farms increasingly endangered, and our reliance upon fossil fuels increasingly undesirable, the question of how we will feed billions of future city dwellers is no mere thought experiment – it’s an urgent reality. The story of Cuba offers us an interesting question: What would our cities look like if we began to place food production/distribution as the primary focus of urban design? More on how Food can shape our cities, after the break… Food and the City As Ms.