… here.

From a BusinessDay Nigeria column:

[O]ur trade policy has remained very inconsistent many years after independence. Recent reforms – particularly the NEEDS – have however tried to considerably minimize the unpredictability of the trade policy regime by establishing a schedule to fully adopt the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) common external tariff (CET) by 1 January 2008, and respect obligations under multilateral trading systems. However, according to Afeikhena Jerome in a 2005 paper titled” Institutional Framework and the Process of Trade Policy Making in Africa: The Case of Nigeria”, “trade policy formulation and implementation in Nigeria, even though conditioned by the global context, is dominated by governmental and inter-governmental agencies whose responsibilities overlap and between which coordination is deficient. There is no identifiable source or structure of research and analytical support for trade policy making in Nigeria”.

Reminds me of a meeting I had in 2008 with a high-ranking official at the Nigerian ministry of trade. I asked whether I could get a copy of the country’s trade policy document. He said there was no document like that, and there hadn’t been one in a while.

Deborah Brautigam thinks so. And she should know, since she recently wrote a book on China in Africa, titled The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa. She said this in an interview with the Aid Watch blog:

As a donor, China’s way has several advantages. Take the way they operate. They rarely “poach” skilled staff from African ministries to work in their own offices. The focus on turnkey infrastructure projects is far simpler and doesn’t overstretch the weak capacity of many African governments faced with multiple meetings, quarterly reports, workshops, and so on. Their experts don’t cost much. In addition, their emphasis on local ownership is genuine, even if it leads to projects like a new government office building, a sports stadium, or a conference center. They understand something very fundamental about state-building — something that Pierre L’Enfant understood in 1791 when he teamed up with George Washington in newly independent America:  new states need to build buildings and dignity, not simply strive to end poverty.

Read the full interview here. I also learnt from Aid Watch that she now writes a new blog, China in Africa: The real story. The blog tells readers to, ‘Stay tuned for analysis of China’s “land grabs” in Africa, the China International Fund in Guinea and Zimbabwe, and so on.’

You probably know her. She is the award-winning author of An Elergy for Easterly, a beautiful collection of short stories. I didn’t drop the book until I finished it. Get it if you can.

She writes in Guardian of April 14:

Thirty years ago on Sunday the renegade British colony that had been Rhodesia was born as Zimbabwe. In the nightmarish events of the last 10 years the euphoria of that day has been all but lost. Certainly, the achievements of Zimbabwe in the last 30 years are in danger of drowning in the mire of statistics about rampant inflation and unemployment, in images of the political repression of a cowed populace – all taken as evidence by those Thabo Mbeki calls the Afro-pessimists. For his part, President Mugabe has certainly provided much grist to the mill of the brigade that believes Africans cannot rule themselves and that independence has achieved nothing worth celebrating.

As we say in Yoruba, One is able to see, even when one is crying.

Petina Gappah blogs here.

See here, here and here for well-reasoned arguments for why they should not. Of course, I am interested in this. I probably wouldn’t have been able to do the MA in Dev. Studies programme at Uppsala if I had to pay tuition fees.

1. How Mathematics might have caused the financial crisis

2. To which Gillian Tett says, Bad practice, not the discipline itself, is to blame for the financial crisis

3. Sex and the single black (American) woman

4. On Goodluck Jonathan’s Amanpour interview

5. Joe Stiglitz: An Agenda for Reforming Economic Theory

6. Zimbabwe hangman position vacant, applicants sought

Extracts:

Collier’s work is not informed by any explicit, overarching theory of development or any historical perspective that might inform one; nor does he offer any social analysis. There is an implicit theory of human behaviour, which is radically reductionist—individual economic self-interest rules. In this view, history appears to be a continuum of ‘14th-century reality: civil war, plague and ignorance’. But these countries had their own 14th centuries and now find themselves in the 21st, playing a highly subordinate role in global capitalism. No understanding of how they got there can ignore the impact of colonization. In Collier’s models, colonial history is reduced to two numbers, one representing the colonial power—Britain, France, Portugal, Belgium, Germany—the other, the length of time that the country was colonized. The identity of the colonizing power does have a bearing upon the ex-colonial country’s legal system, educational set-up,lingua franca and financial institutions; but it tells us nothing about the pre-colonial system, the different processes by which the European power made its peace with local rulers; nor about the ending of colonial rule, and the extent to which ruptures or continuities determined the nature of the ex-colonial state. Such considerations help to inform a richer explanation of how a country has developed, and provide a deeper explanatory framework for civil wars, social conflicts or institutional forms—social and political questions, not purely statistical ones.

It is misleading to paint a picture of endemically low growth rates in sub-Saharan Africa, or in the other ‘bottom billion’ countries. In Africa, growth rates in the 1960s and early 1970s were comparable to those of Southeast Asia or Latin America. This was a period of African industrialization, based on import substitution; with improvements in economic management, this might have enabled several countries to take advantage of export markets. The droughts in the early 70s were a real blow, turning food self-sufficiency into food imports; most African economies were severely affected by the oil-price hikes, and still more so by interest-rate rises after 1979. But a possible industrial rehabilitation was stalled in the early 80s by World Bank and IMF opposition to ISI, and promotion instead of primary commodities and ‘getting prices right’. Collier fails to point out that African countries were forced to pursue primary-commodity exports as a consequence of World Bank conditionalities; as noted, these are not included in his list of explanatory variables. Collier takes the familiar line on trade, criticizing rich-country barriers to the exports of the ‘bottom billion’ but also, and far more fervently, tariffs set by developing countries. In his account, Africa simply ‘missed the boat’ in the 1980s and ceded global markets to Asia; only Mauritius—hardly a typical African country, if an African country at all—managed to ‘climb on board’. It was not simply low wages that attracted investment to the Asian Tigers, however, but their well-educated populations and skilled labour from the 60s on. Here again, a historically informed account of colonial and post-colonial social structures must be a factor in any satisfactory explanation.

Read the whole piece here (H/T Schauzeri).  Any analysis that fails to pay history its proper due should be suspect.

On the subject of numbers and statistical analysis. This says it quite succinctly:

Statistics are a great way of quickly conveying how a group of events, people, or things are similar and different. Mode, median and mean measure “central tendency,” and standard deviation and inter-quartile range tell you “dispersion.” With these two types of measures, you can tell me how similar people are when they choose orange juice, how different they are when they rent cars or attend movies. But you cannot tell me what “more pulp,” means to people, why a “subcompact” car turns off some people, or what people perceive the word “blockbuster” to actually mean.

In short, ethnographic research can clarify all of these deep, nuanced details that quantitative data skates over or takes for granted. Do you want to know how many people attended a “summer blockbuster?” Then by all means, count them. But if you want to know what kind of movie people believe a “blockbuster” to be, then you need to do in-depth ethnographic work.

If you are in London on June 14 and you are interested in textile recycling, see the announcement below. I will be making a presentation on Igbo trade networks and secondhand clothing

RECYCLING TEXTILE TECHNOLOGIES

A one-day workshop from 9am to 5pm, on June 14th 2010

To be held at the Pearson North Lecture Theatre, University College London

Waste is a valuable, yet often little understood, resource that may be used to subvert and reconfigure moral, legal, social and political boundaries in the pursuit of livelihoods and business success. Textile recyclers have developed a range of socio-technological practises to enable material transformations to take place that often remain invisible to those studying modern economies. This one-day interdisciplinary workshop brings together researchers working on textile recycling across disciplines and sectors, including anthropologists, geographers, historians, designers, waste consultants and consumer researchers. Through this exchange we hope to develop a greater understanding of the underlying relationships between people and things, raw materials and technologies, the emergence of entrepreneurs and innovators in social networks, and their contextual variations. For further details, please see the

Call for Papers. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/news/index.htm#19

Participants:

o    Beverly Lemire, University of Alberta, Canada

o    Olumide Abimbola, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany

o    Karen Tranberg Hansen, Northwestern University, USA

o    B. Lynne Milgram, Ontario College of Art and Design, Canada

o    Julie Botticello, UCL, United Kingdom

o    Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Tone Skardal Tobiasson, Charlotte Bik Bandlien and Kirsi Laitala, SIFO (NICE), Norway

o    Nicholas Morley, Oakdene Hollins, United Kingdom

o    Pammi Sinha and Kanchana Dissanayake, University of Manchester, United Kingdom

o    Lucy Norris, UCL, United Kingdom

Organisers:

Lucy Norris and Julie Botticello, Dept of Anthropology, UCL

Registration:

The registration fee covers refreshments and lunch with vegetarian options.

Waged: £25 and Unwaged: £18

Please contact Julie Botticello on ucsajbo@ucl.ac.uk to reserve your place. The deadline for registration is *7th of June 2010.*

Programme:

9.40 – 10.00    Registration & Coffee (in the North Cloisters)

10.00 – 10.10    Welcome: Danny Miller; Introduction: Lucy Norris and Julie Botticello

Session 1:         Building networks and breaking boundaries

Chair: Danny Miller

10.10 – 10.40    Beverly Lemire, Textile Networks and Textile Meanings: the European Secondhand Trade in Historical Perspective,   c1600-1850

10.40 – 11.10    Julie Botticello, Negotiating Status and Value: Processing Rags for Global Export

11.10 – 11.40    Lynne Milgram, Mobilizing Livelihood, Centering Margins: Women and the Transnational Hong-Kong Philippine Used  Clothing Trade

11.40 – 12.00    Coffee Break (in the North Cloisters)

Chair: Nicky Gregson

12.00 – 12.30    Karen Tranberg Hansen, From Family Business to International Empire: Global Networks in Secondhand Clothing Trading

12.30 – 1.00    Olumide Abimbola, Igbo Trade Networks and Secondhand Clothing

1.00 – 1.15    Discussion

1.15 – 2.00    Lunch (in the North Cloisters)

Session 2:          The return of recycling technologies

Chair: Dinah Eastop

2.00 – 2.30    Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Tone Skardal Tobiasson, Charlotte Bik Bandlien, Reinventing Old Solutions to New Problems?

2.30 – 3.00    Nick Morley, Pulp Fiction? Re-innovating Paper Manufacture from Textiles

3.15 – 3.30    Coffee Break (in the North Cloisters)

Chair: Susanne Küchler

3.30 – 4.00    Pammi Sinha, Kanchana Dissanayake, Local Knowledge and Skills in Remanufacturing Fashion

4.00 – 4.30    Lucy Norris, Remains or Resource? Alternative perspectives on dirt and the success of used clothing transformations in  India

4.30 – 5.00    Final discussion

We are grateful to the Journal of Material Culture for their contribution to the workshop. The event is taking place as part of the Waste of the World  programme funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC RES 000-23-0007).

Details about the conference will be available shortly on the UCL’s anthropology department conference web page: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/conferences/index.htm

Maps and Directions:

Pearson North Lecture Theatre, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/efd/roombooking/building-location/?id=003 , is located in the Pearson Building, off Gower Street, in the Northwest corner of the main quadrangle. Registration on the day will take place in the North Cloisters, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/efd/roombooking/photo/?room=13363&building=MABNS , which is under the dome in the UCL main building, on the eastern edge of the main quadrangle.

To reach UCL, the most convenient underground stations are Warren Street (for Northern and Victoria lines) and Euston Square (for Hammersmith and City, Circle and Metropolitan lines). The venue is also within walking distance (5-10 minutes) of Goodge Street and Russell Square underground stations, and Euston, King’s Cross, and St Pancras underground and mainline stations.

For a UCL Campus map:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/maps/

For an underground map:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/gettingaround/1108.aspx

For transport within London:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/

For information on travelling into London from various Airports:

http://www.visitlondon.com/ or http://www.ukguide.org/

The list of podcasts I download just increased by one. Last week’s edition of This American Life, really great podcast, had a story about how hookworms helped someone overcome allergies (Chris Blattman blogged it here). Since the story is taken from a Radiolab episode, I decided to try Radiolab out. Just finished listening to the current episode, on limits, and it is really good stuff.

Still on the topic of hookworms. My mother said that she never gave any of her children boiled water when we were growing up; just water straight from the tap. According to her, that is one of the reasons we have really strong immune system. None of us has ever had typhoid, for instance.  This would seem to support the hookworm guy’s claim. You can listen to the edition of This American Life here. In case you are wondering, I grew up in a small, Nigerian town.

Links on how to subscribe to Radiolab podcasts is here.

1. Market and Society: The Great Transformation Today, edited by Keith Hart and Chris Hann.

2. Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa, by Jane Guyer.

3. Culture, Society, Economy: Globalization and its Alternatives, by Don Robotham.