Rural employment and agricultural models

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GovInn was involved in a Conference – Debate organised by the European Parliament in Brussels on May 10th, 2017, on the strong linkages between agricultural development and job creation, notably for youth.

With between 50 to 70{4b05898ae60f9b5e2d93b69cb2027f6f0d06dfa7d8f8611bbe8472c2532adfa6} of the labour force engaged in agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, depending on the country and region (with a few exceptions), agriculture will remain a major sector for income generating activities and employment.

For the 240 million rural youth entering the labour market by 2030 in the sub-continent, different agricultural models will have different impacts on employment; and policy makers must tailor adequate public policies in accordance with the local challenges.

GovInn’s co-director, Bruno Losch, prepared a poster  with Fati N’zi-Hassane, Chief of Staff of NEPAD Executive Secretary and Head of NEPAD’s Human Capital Development Programme, Jérémy Bourgoin and Denis Pesche (Cirad). The poster was presented by Dr. N’zi-Hassane after her lecture.

 

‘The State of Foresight in Food and Agriculture: Challenges for Impact and Participation’ by Robin Bourgeois

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GovInn’s Senior Researcher Robin Bourgeois published together with Cristina Sette the article ‘The State of Foresight in Food and Agriculture: Challenges for Impact and Participation‘ in the journal Futures.

Actionable foresight for food and agriculture faces the double challenge of including, and impacting on multiple stakeholders. We present here a state of the art of participation, stakeholder inclusion and impact of 38 recent foresight studies on food and agriculture. All cases were selected through a worldwide survey in seven languages, a bibliography and multi-lingual web review, and a review by a group of foresight experts. Our results indicate that global foresight studies are led by experts or scientists from international organizations or national organizations from advanced countries, with rather limited participation of stakeholders, while more local studies are more inclusive and directly linked to policy making. Leadership in foresight by least developed countries’, farmers’ or civil society’s organizations is marginal. While there is more than anecdotic evidence of the impact of these foresight works, this is rarely documented. The paper combines literature review and case study to provide evidence on the links between stakeholder inclusion and impact and presents the Global Foresight Hub, an innovative initiative at global level for strengthening participation, inclusion and impact of foresight in food and agriculture.

Read the full article here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001632871630221X

GFAR Webinar- Farmers’ Rights: Achieving Complementarity Between the Informal and Formal Seed Systems, 30.05

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As one of the series of GFAR webinars, GFAR Secretariat is bringing together several presenters to engage the agri-food research and innovation community around the topic of Farmers’ Rights, and especially how to achieve the complementarity between the informal and formal seed systems.

To learn more about how to achieve complementarity between the informal and formal seed systems, register today for GFAR webinar: Farmers’ Rights: Achieving Complementarity Between the Informal and Formal Seed Systems. Presenters will share how this complementarity is been achieved and identify some obstacles that still need to be addressed; and an expert will share how holistic policy and legal measures are also needed, identifying their relevant elements and sharing national examples. Desired outcomes of the webinar include to i) distill information and best practices that can be applied to strengthen the complementarity between the informal and formal seed systems at national level and ii) motivate participants to work together by strengthening partnerships and collective actions, according to their own unique roles.

Farmers’ Rights: Achieving Complementarity Between the Informal and Formal Seed Systems

  • Date: 30 May 2017
  • Time: 15:00 Rome time (GMT+2)
  • Duration: 2 hours max
  • Registration open

More information and registration: https://blog.gfar.net/2017/05/10/gfar-webinar-farmers-rights-achieving-complementarity-between-the-informal-and-formal-seed-systems/

‘Foresight for all: Co-elaborative scenario building and empowerment’, by Robin Bourgeois

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GovInn’s Senior Researcher Robin Bourgeois published the article ‘Foresight for all: Co-elaborative scenario building and empowerment‘ in the journal Technological Forecasting and Social Change, together with Esther Penunia, Sonali Bisht and Don Boruk.

 

We present here a co-elaborative scenario building approach, called Participatory Prospective Analysis (PPA) and discuss its relevance for empowering local communities/organizations. This approach is adapted from the French “La Prospective”. It is used as an action research engaging local farming communities in expanding their understanding of their own futures. Three cases of local implementation at farmer community level in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines illustrate how this approach was implemented. They are part of a global project in the field of food, agriculture and rural development, aiming at balancing the capacity to use the future, which is currently not fairly distributed to the detriment of local stakeholders, organizations and communities. Our results focus on the emergence of futures literacy as a capability, its connection to local agency and societal transformation. Our discussion highlights what in this approach makes the use of scenarios empowering, beyond its participatory features. The capacity to use the future has a great potential for local agency, even if it does not guarantee that communities will have the power or the willingness to directly engage in actions. Nevertheless, this approach seems to be a promising avenue for making everyone a future-literate potential agent of change.

Read the full article here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162517305413

‘A comparison of the reconciliation barometers in South Africa and Rwanda’, New book chapter by Cori Wielenga

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GovInn’s Senior Researcher Cori Wielenga published the book chapter ‘A comparison of the reconciliation barometers in South Africa and Rwanda’ in the book ‘Rethinking reconciliation: Evidence from South Africa‘ by HSRC Press.

Processes of reconciliation, transitional justice and healing are high on the global agenda, yet questions of how to measure their effectiveness remain a challenge. The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR), based in Cape Town, South Africa, has developed a survey that measures public opinion on reconciliation in that country. The South African Reconciliation Barometer (SARB) has been implemented annually between 2003 and 2014, and measures perceptions about progress in reconciliation in South Africa over time. In 2010, a reconciliation barometer was developed and implemented in Rwanda as well.
The indicators used between the two barometers differ for each context, and therefore their findings cannot be directly compared. Instead, this chapter explores the different contexts to better understand how and why the RRB was adapted for the Rwandan context, and what the surveys say about reconciliation in each case. This exploration contributes to the debate on whether or not reconciliation can be measured and how reconciliation barometers can enhance our understanding of national reconciliation processes.

Have a look at the book here: http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/product.php?productid=2349&js=n

Participants of the conference "ONE World No Hunger" hand over the "Berlin Charter" to Minister Muller.

The Berlin Charter on “Creating opportunities for the young generation in the rural world”

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Bruno Losch, GovInn’s co-director, participated in the International Conference on The Future of the Rural World (Berlin, April 27-28) organized within the framework of the German G20 Presidency.

Bruno Losch was part of the International Advisory Committee in charge of drafting the Berlin Charter: “Creating opportunities for the young generation in the rural world“. The Charter was discussed through an open web based dialogue, amended, and then submitted to the Conference. Participants worked in six parallel thematic Charter Fora which provided final revisions. Bruno Losch was the advocate of the Charter Fora session on Entrepreneurship, jobs and skills. His testimony was shared along with the other advocates – including University of Pretoria’s Sheryl Hendricks – in a video presented to the audience.

The Charter was then approved by the Conference (the final version is here) and handed over to Dr. Gerd Müller, German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Charter calls on all stakeholders – national governments, development partners and finance institutions, the private sector, civil society and youth  – for transformative change and to commit to significant, quantified and time-bound targets in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It particularly addresses the situation of people suffering hunger and undernutrition and the need for concerted political and humanitarian actions to immediately end the current food crises situations in Africa.

The Charter focuses on the critical importance of access to innovative education and training as well as information and communication technologies (ICTs) for youth and young entrepreneurs. It reminds the role of infrastructure and services in rural areas and the necessary change of perspective about the potential of rural areas in school, politics and the media. As highlighted by Losch, an important result of the Berlin Charter is that “it puts upfront the need to reinvest and invest in development strategies. We need to understand the processes underway in order to engage in better policy making”.

Bruno Losch also particpated in a parallel panel session titled “Decent Jobs for Youth in the Rural Economy” organized by FAO and ILO. More information can be found on the International Labour Organisation website.

For more information of the initiative, visit the website for the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the website of the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security.

 

Cape Town Book Launch: “The World after GDP”

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You are invited to join us on 11 May 2017 at 18:00 for the Cape Town launch of GovInn director Prof. Lorenzo Fioramonti‘s latest book, “The world after GDP”. The launch will take place at 129 Rochester Road, Observatory.

ILO Employment Research Brief

“+789 Million and Counting: the sub-Saharan African Equation”: ILO Employment Research Brief by Dr Bruno Losch

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ILO (the International Labour Office) just released an Employment Research Brief titled: “+789 Million and Counting: the sub-Saharan African Equation” prepared with Bruno Losch, GovInn’s co-director.
This 8-pager is based on an ILO working paper published last November by Bruno Losch (Structural transformation to boost labour demand in sub-Saharan Africa: the role of agriculture, rural areas, and territorial development”). This brief focuses on SSA’s equation of providing quality jobs for a rapidly expanding and young labour force, in a context of limited economic diversification, critically challenged education systems, and under the constraints of increasing competition and climate change. 789 million is the expected increase of SSA’s labour force by 2050 and represents 62{4b05898ae60f9b5e2d93b69cb2027f6f0d06dfa7d8f8611bbe8472c2532adfa6} of the labour force growth worldwide.

The employment challenge in Africa is persistent and unique. It is not solely a challenge of unemployment, but one of providing quality jobs for a rapidly expanding, and markedly young, labour force. This research brief explores the opportunities that economic diversification offer to foster structural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa. It highlights three interconnected actions needed to achieve this goal: (i) supporting evidence-based multi-sectoral development strategies; (ii) supporting family farmers and diversification of rural incomes; and (iii) strengthening rural-urban linkages and promoting territorial policies.

 

To read the full document, see below: ILO_Research BRIEF Losch

Repositioning Europe in the study of regions: comparative regionalism, interregionalism and decentred regionalism by Frank Mattheis

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GovInn’s Senior Researcher Frank Mattheis published the article ‘Repositioning Europe in the study of regions: comparative regionalism, interregionalism and decentred regionalism‘ in the Journal of European Integration.

The constitution of European Union (EU) studies has long been an exclusionary process, both dealing extensively with internal debates and arguing for an own discipline within or even next to political sciences and international relations. Due to the self-centredness on the vivid development of the EU, other regions were largely disregarded when it came to theory building or only taken into account later as comparators.

 

Read the full article here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07036337.2017.1317985

‘Rwanda & South Africa: a long road from truth to reconciliation’ by Cori Wielenga, The Conversation, 06.04.2017

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GovInn’s Senior Researcher Cori Wielenga published the article ‘Rwanda & South Africa: a long road from truth to reconciliation‘ in The Conversation.

Rwanda took a different path. It focused on establishing individual perpetrators’ accountability for genocide crimes. Many were unsettled by this rigorous quest. There were calls for Rwanda to mimic South Africa and take the route of amnesty in exchange for truth. That would have assumed the wounds of the violent massacre of possibly a million people in three months were identical to the wounds of apartheid. I don’t want to suggest for a moment that wounds left by Rwanda’s genocide were harder to heal than those left by apartheid. But it’s critical to understand that they left behind different kinds of devastations.

Read the full article here: https://theconversation.com/rwanda-and-south-africa-a-long-road-from-truth-to-reconciliation-75628