Peter Gibbon

Stefano Ponte

Africa's role in the global economy is evolving as a result of new corporate strategies, changing trade regulations, and innovative ways of overseeing the globalized production and distribution of goods both within Africa and internationally. African participants in the global economy, now faced with demands for higher levels of performance and quality, have generated occasional successes but also many failures. Peter Gibbon and Stefano Ponte describe the central processes that are integrating some African firms into the global economy while at the same time marginalizing others. They show the effects of these processes on African countries, and the farms and firms within them. The authors use an innovative combination of global value chain analysis—which links production, trade, and consumption—and convention theory, an approach to understanding the conduct of business. In doing so, Gibbon and Ponte present a timely overview of the economic challenges that lay ahead in Africa, and point to ways to best address them.

Trading Down

Ponte (Centre for Developmental Research, Denmark) analyzes farmers' livelihood strategies during the upheavals of economic policy reforms in Tanzania. He argues that much of the debate on deregulation and market liberalization has been on a macro-level bases and has been based on aggregate data of dubious value, thus missing the realities of the farmer on the ground. He relates continent-wide information to the specificities of agricultural change, exploring agricultural change from colonial rule to the current day. Agricultural input and credit distributions systems at the district level are investigated and the implementation of liberalization policies are explored at the regional and district levels. Finally, the impact of liberalization on livelihood diversification, poverty, and inequality are portrayed. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

How Policy Reforms Affect Rural Livelihoods in Africa

Farmers & Markets in Tanzania

Benoit Daviron

This book recasts the "development problem" for countries relying on commodity exports in entirely new ways by analyzing the so-called coffee paradox--the coexistence of a "coffee boom" in consuming countries and of a "coffee crisis" in producing countries. In consuming countries, coffee continues to grow in popularity. At the same time, international coffee prices have fallen dramatically and producers receive the lowest prices in decades. As long as coffee farmers and their organizations do not control at least parts of this production, they will remain on the losing end.

Global Markets, Commodity Trade and the Elusive Promise of Development

The Coffee Paradox

Daniel Brockington

The idea and practice of the ‘green economy’ is gaining momentum, coinciding with financial instability and continued economic woe in the Global North, but generally more positive economic circumstances in the Global South. ‘Green economic initiatives’ in the Global South are multiplying, and include carbon payments, ecotourism, community-based wildlife management, sustainability certification initiatives, and offsets by mining companies exploiting new resources. These initiatives are reallocating resources, redefining inequalities and redistributing the fortune and misfortune of participants of the green economy and those excluded from it. They have also led to resistance – locally, nationally, and transnationally – and to demands for alternatives to market-driven instruments and solutions, which are generally gaining strength and coherence. The articles included in this volume bring together a multi-disciplinary team of scholars from North and South to provide nuanced analyses of green economy experiences in the Global South – analysing the opportunities they provide, but also the redistributions they entail and the kinds of resistances they face. The ultimate aim of the collection is to provide a critical, but balanced, overview of the emerging green economy in the Global South and point the way to possible adjustments, alternatives or radical resistance, depending on different situations. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

The Green Economy in the Global South

Winners and Losers in the Restructuring of the Global Coffee Marketing Chain

The 'latte Revolution'?

Lisa Ann Richey

“Has there ever been a better reason to shop?” asks an ad for the Product RED American Express card, telling members who use the card that buying “cappuccinos or cashmere” will help to fight AIDS in Africa. Cofounded in 2006 by the rock star Bono, Product RED has been a particularly successful example of a new trend in celebrity-driven international aid and development, one explicitly linked to commerce, not philanthropy. In Brand Aid, Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte offer a deeply informed and stinging critique of “compassionate consumption.” Campaigns like Product RED and its precursors, such as Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong and the pink-ribbon project in support of breast cancer research, advance the expansion of consumption far more than they meet the needs of the people they ostensibly serve. At the same time, such campaigns sell both the suffering of Africans with AIDS (in the case of Product RED) and the power of the average consumer to ameliorate it through familiar and highly effective media representations. Using Product RED as its focal point, this book explores how corporations like American Express, Armani, Gap, and Hallmark promote compassionate consumption to improve their ethical profile and value without significantly altering their business model, protecting themselves from the threat to their bottom lines posed by a genuinely engaged consumer activism. Coupled with the phenomenon of celebrity activism and expertise as embodied by Bono, Richey and Ponte argue that this “causumerism” represents a deeply troubling shift in relief efforts, effectively delinking the relationship between capitalist production and global poverty.

Shopping Well to Save the World

Brand Aid

Global value chains (GVCs) are a key feature of the global economy in the 21st century. They show how international investment and trade create cross-border production networks that link countries, firms and workers around the globe. This Handbook describes how GVCs arise and vary across industries and countries, and how they have evolved over time in response to economic and political forces. With chapters written by leading interdisciplinary scholars, the Handbook unpacks the key concepts of GVC governance and upgrading, and explores policy implications for advanced and developing economies alike. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial}

Handbook on Global Value Chains

Can developing countries trade their way out of poverty? International trade has grown dramatically in the last two decades in the global economy, and trade is an important source of revenue in developing countries. Yet, many low-income countries have been producing and exporting tropical commodities for a long time. They are still poor. This book is a major analytical contribution to understanding commodity production and trade, as well as putting forward policy-relevant suggestions for ‘solving’ the commodity problem. Through the study of the global value chain for coffee, the authors recast the ‘development problem’ for countries relying on commodity exports in entirely new ways. They do so by analysing the so-called coffee paradox – the coexistence of a ‘coffee boom’ in consuming countries and of a ‘coffee crisis’ in producing countries. New consumption patterns have emerged with the growing importance of specialty, fair trade and other ‘sustainable’ coffees. In consuming countries, coffee has become a fashionable drink and coffee bar chains have expanded rapidly. At the same time, international coffee prices have fallen dramatically and producers receive the lowest prices in decades. This book shows that the coffee paradox exists because what farmers sell and what consumers buy are becoming increasingly ‘different’ coffees. It is not material quality that contemporary coffee consumers pay for, but mostly symbolic quality and in-person services. As long as coffee farmers and their organizations do not control at least parts of this ‘immaterial’ production, they will keep receiving low prices. The Coffee Paradox seeks ways out from this situation by addressing some key questions: What kinds of quality attributes are combined in a coffee cup or coffee package? Who is producing these attributes? How can part of these attributes be produced by developing country farmers? To what extent are specialty and sustainable coffees achieving these objectives?

Annotation Preface 1. The Age of Global Capitalism 2. The New International Trade Regime 3. Global Value Chain (GVC) Analysis 4. The Rise of 'Buyer-Driven' Global Value Chains in Africa 5. Entry Barriers, Marginalization and Upgrading 6. Standards, Quality Conventions, and the Governance of Global Value 7. Trading Down? Notes References.

Stefano Ponte

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