̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Ethiopia

Of cabbages and cows: increasing agricultural yields in Africa

lw355 — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 11:17:32 +0000

̽��ֱ��humble cabbage, universally despised by British schoolchildren, has found unexpected popularity on another continent. But just as the people of Ghana have developed an appetite – and a market – for this leafy green, so too has something else: a virus carried by aphids that causes the cabbages to wilt and die

By contrast, a parasite that emaciates cattle across sub-Saharan Africa has been around for thousands of years but continues to take its toll on certain species of the animals it infects. Prominent ribs are the frequent hallmarks of trypanosomiasis – caused by the presence of a cunning parasite that evades the animal’s immune system by periodically changing its protein ‘coat’.

Meanwhile, farmers in Ethiopia are turning away from the traditional zebu cattle towards breeds that produce greater quantities of milk. As a result they are exposing their herds – and themselves – to increasing levels of tuberculosis (TB) that are brought about by intensified animal husbandry practices.

What links cabbages and cows are three programmes that hope to connect fundamental research with improving farm yields, and in so doing contribute to solving a looming pan-African problem. More than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa. And more people means a requirement for more food.

Ethiopia, for example, has the largest livestock population in Africa but, with a growing population and increasing urbanisation, even its 53 million cattle are not enough. And now efforts to intensify farming in the country are bringing a significant health concern. “ ̽��ֱ��new breeds are more vulnerable than zebu to bovine TB,” explains Professor James Wood from Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. “This may have health implications for those who work with and live alongside infected cattle, and also raises concerns about transmission to areas with previously low TB.”

Wood leads a £2.9 million research programme, ETHICOBOTS, which is looking at the feasibility of control strategies, including cattle vaccination. ̽��ֱ��programme combines partners in eight Ethiopian and UK institutions, and brings together veterinary scientists, epidemiologists, geneticists, immunologists and social scientists. “We need this mix because we are not only asking how effective strategies will be, but also whether farmers will accept them, and what the consequences are for prosperity and wellbeing.”

̽��ֱ��difference that increasing productivity can have on farmers’ livelihoods is not lost on an insect expert at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana, Dr Ken Fening, who is working on another food-related research project. Cabbages are not indigenous to the continent but have become a major cash crop for Ghanaian farmers and an important source of income for traders to markets and hotels.

“A good crop can bring in money to buy fertilisers and farm equipment, and also help to pay for healthcare and education for the family,” he says. Recently, however, fields of stunted, yellowing, wilting cabbages, their leaves curled and dotted with mould, have become an all too familiar and devastating sight for the farmers of Ghana.

From his field station base in Kpong, Ghana, Fening works closely with smallholder farmers on pest control strategies. Two years ago they started reporting that a new disease was attacking their crops. “It seemed to be associated with massive infestations of pink and green aphids,” says Fening, “and from my studies of the way insects interact with many different vegetables, I’m familiar with the types of damage they can cause.”

Farmers were typically seeing the total loss of their crops and he realised that the devastation couldn’t just be caused by sap-sucking insects. Despite no previous reports of viral diseases affecting cabbage crops in Ghana, the symptoms suggested a viral pathogen.

With funding through the CAPREx programme, Fening began work with Cambridge plant biologist Dr John Carr. ̽��ֱ��pair collected samples of cabbage plants in Ghana showing signs of disease, and also aphids on the diseased plants. Back in Cambridge, Fening used screening techniques including a type of DNA ‘fingerprinting’ to identify the aphid species, and sophisticated molecular biology methods to try to identify the offending virus.

“Aphids are a common carrier of plant-infecting viruses,” explains Carr, whose research is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council as part of the £16 million SCPRID (Sustainable Crop Production Research for International Development) initiative. “ ̽��ֱ��‘usual suspects’ are turnip mosaic virus and cauliflower mosaic virus, which affect cabbages in Europe and the US.”

“We found that two different species of aphids, pink and green, were generally found on the diseased cabbages,” says Fening. “It turned out this was the first record of the green aphid species, Lipaphis erysimi (Kaltenbach), ever being seen in Ghana.” ̽��ֱ��pink aphid was identified as Myzus persicae (Sulzer).

What’s more, the virus was not what Carr expected, and work is now ongoing to identify the culprit. ̽��ֱ��sooner it can be characterised, the sooner sustainable crop protection strategies can be developed to prevent further spread of the disease not only in Ghana, but also in other countries in the region.

Another researcher who hopes that eradication strategies will be the outcome of her research project is Dr Theresa Manful. Like Fening, she is a researcher at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana and a CAPREx fellow. She has been working with Cambridge biochemist Professor Mark Carrington on African animal trypanosomiasis.

̽��ֱ��trypanosome that causes the disease is carried by the tsetse fly, which colonises vast swathes of sub-Saharan Africa. “This is a major constraint to cattle rearing in Africa,” she explains. “Although trypanosomiasis is also a disease of humans, the number of cases is low, and the more serious concerns about the disease relate to the economic impact on agricultural production.”

Carrington has worked for a quarter of a century on the parasite that causes the disease. He understands how the organism evades the immune system of the animal by changing its coat proteins so as to remain ‘invisible’.

“When you first start working on these parasites you are enamoured with the molecular mechanisms, which we now know a huge amount about,” he says. “But then when you look at the effect on large animals like cows you realise that there is almost nothing known about the dynamics of an infection, and even whether an infection acquired at an early age persists for its lifetime.”

Manful and Carrington set about testing herds in Ghana. They discovered that several trypanosome species can be found in the cattle at one time and that nearly all cattle were infected most of the time.

For Manful, one of the important gains has been the ability to expand the research in Ghana: “I now have a fully functional lab and can do DNA extraction and analysis in Ghana – I don’t have to bring samples to Cambridge. We are teaching students from five Ghanaian institutions the diagnostic methods.” She and Carrington have been recently funded through a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Africa Award to continue their work.

“Agriculture faces increasing challenges,” adds Carr. “Bioscience is playing a crucial part in developing ways to mitigate pest impact and reduce the spread of parasites.

“We want to ensure not only that every harvest is successful, but also that it’s maximally successful.”

ETHICOBOTS is funded under the Zoonoses and Emerging Livestock Systems (ZELS) programme, a research initiative in the UK jointly funded by six research council and government bodies. Dr Ken Fening and Dr Theresa Manful were funded by the Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) and ̽��ֱ��ALBORADA Trust, through the Cambridge-Africa Programme.

Images: top: cabbage aphids (credit: Dr Ken Fening); bottom: cattle in Ghana (credit: Dr Theresa Manful and Professor Mark Carrington).

To keep up to date with the latest stories about Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

Africa’s food requirements, along with its population, are growing fast. Three research programmes ask how a better understanding of viruses, parasites and the spread of disease can pave the way to improving agricultural yields.

A good crop can bring in money to buy fertilisers and farm equipment, and also help to pay for healthcare and education for the family

Ken Fening

Hendrik Terbeck

Greengrocer at Arusha Market

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Graduate, get a job … make a difference #2

ta385 — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:00:01 +0000

Charlotte Dixon (Churchill), BA (2014) Modern and Medieval Languages

Since graduating I’ve been working with the Department for International Development (DFID). I started on the one year Graduate Scheme, working in London, but in 2015 I went to Sierra Leone as part of the Ebola crisis response. My current role is Policy and Programme Manager at DFID Ethiopia.

I've only been in Ethiopia for four months, but I’m really enjoying it so far. Day-to-day life can be challenging at times but it’s definitely worth it. No day is ever the same, so I never know quite what to expect when I head to work in the morning. When I arrived, the security situation here was quite unstable, so I haven't been able to see much of the country yet, but travel restrictions have just been lifted so I’m looking forward to being able to explore a bit more.

What Cambridge did for me

I first heard about the DFID Graduate Scheme through the Cambridge Careers Service. After going along to a talk they had organised with alumni already working for DFID, I knew it was the career for me.

Studying at Cambridge has helped me because it teaches you how to think on your feet and work under pressure. I studied French, Spanish and a bit of Portuguese. I don’t use them in my day-to-day job, but the fact that I have studied languages in the past has definitely helped me to pick up Amharic (the official language of Ethiopia). There are quite a lot of opportunities to use languages in international development - I hope to work in a French-speaking part of Africa in the future.

Outside of work, learning languages has definitely enriched my life, giving me a greater understanding of other cultures and, most importantly, giving me an excuse to travel to countries like Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Guatemala.

My motivation

I always knew that I didn’t want to pursue a conventional career in the corporate world - I wanted to do something that would make a difference. I also knew I wanted a career that would allow me to travel.

Applying to Cambridge

I was lucky that quite a few people I knew from my school were also applying to Cambridge, so it didn’t feel quite so daunting, but I still remember it being a long and stressful process. ̽��ֱ��college I went to, Churchill, had a really good mix of people which made it really easy to settle in.

Cambridge graduates enter a wide range of careers but making a difference tops their career wish lists. In this series, inspiring graduates from the last three years describe Cambridge, their current work and their determination to give back

Studying at Cambridge teaches you how to think on your feet and work under pressure

Charlotte Dixon

Charlotte Dixon working in Sierra Leone

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Opinion: Why Ethiopia is on track to become Africa’s industrial powerhouse

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 09:01:23 +0000

Ethiopia seems to be attracting the attention of economists interested in Africa, and for good reason. Except for Rwanda, Ethiopia is the only African country whose economic growth has been consistently high for more than a decade without relying on a natural resource boom.

Between 2004 and 2014, per capita growth in Ethiopia was 8% per year. This was the highest on the continent during this period, and is impressive by any standard.

̽��ֱ��growth has been attributed mainly to a construction boom and increased agricultural productivity. But manufacturing has also been vital. It has grown at 11% per year and manufacturing exports increased more than elevenfold. This was largely thanks to the increasing export earnings of the footwear and apparel industries. ̽��ֱ��growth represents more than a doubling of manufactured exports’ share in total merchandise exports, which itself more than quintupled during the period.

Nevertheless, manufacturing as a share of gross domestic product in Ethiopia remains 5%, well below the African average of 10%. ̽��ֱ��country also scores below the African average on diversification, export competitiveness, productivity and technological upgrading.

Despite this, it’s not a long-shot to predict that Ethiopia will catch up with countries like China and Vietnam in some low-tech manufacturing industries in the near future. These are industries for which labour costs are very important. And right now you’d be hard pressed to find a country in the world that has cheaper labour than Ethiopia. Even beyond these obvious industries, there are reasons to believe that Ethiopia might be on the right track to catch up with more advanced economies.

̽��ֱ��developmental state

First is the country’s developmental orientation. In many ways it resembles that of successful catch-up experiences in East Asia, such as Korea and Taiwan, with a relatively “authoritarian corporatist” structure and centralised economic planning.

Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s recently deceased prime minister who ruled from 1995 to 2012 and whose legacy remains strong in today’s ruling political coalition, repeatedly expressed admiration for the East Asian experience. He stressed that its success was based on a prudent combination of market forces and state intervention. ̽��ֱ��state not only provided basic infrastructure and services but also a conducive environment for the private sector.

̽��ֱ��second reason to be optimistic about Ethiopia’s prospects is the impressive industrial policymaking capability it has accumulated since the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front government came to power in 1991.

̽��ֱ��quality of this capability becomes clear if you read the Growth and Transformation Plan covering 2010-2015. According to economist Kenichi Ohno the plan is unusual in its brevity, coherence and strategic direction. Priority manufacturing industries were designated based on resource availability, labour intensity, linkages to agriculture, export potential and relatively low technological entry barriers. They include apparel and textiles, agro-processing, meat processing, leather and leather products, and construction.

Supporting institutes have been set up for each industry to coordinate the value chains effectively, for example by ensuring efficient supply of inputs to manufacturers and to assist firms with technological upgrading.

Two state-owned banks, the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia and the Development Bank of Ethiopia, provide most credit to firms in these industries. Foreign banks are simply not allowed to operate in Ethiopia. ̽��ֱ��understanding is that they will be allowed in only when domestic banks have developed the capacity to compete.

Education and infrastructure

While the Ethiopian government is formulating policies to support specific industrial sectors, for most of the past 20 years the federal budget has been devoted to policies that are more “horizontal” in nature, like education and infrastructure. Results so far are impressive.

Enrolment in primary schools has increased from below 20% in the early 1990s to about 94% in 2012. ̽��ֱ��number of universities has increased from one in 1990 to more than 30.

And the government has invested massively in infrastructure development, focusing on transport and power generation. ̽��ֱ��road network expanded from 26,550km to 53,997km between 1997 and 2011. ̽��ֱ��country is set to quadruple its power generation capacity when the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile is finished in 2017/18. One of the largest hydroelectric power stations in the world, the dam will generate 6,000MW.

Cement and floriculture

Feeding on the boom in construction, cement production has grown dramatically since 1999. ̽��ֱ��average annual growth of cement production has been more than twice the world average. As a result, Ethiopia is now the third largest cement producer in Africa.

State support has been both direct and indirect. Direct measures include entry incentives for domestic firms, like long-term loans for capital investments, easy access to mining resources and the allocation of foreign currency on a preferential basis.

Additionally, government provision of transport and energy has been crucial.

Like the cement industry, the Ethiopian floriculture sector has made important contributions to overall economic development.

Cut flower exports increased from three tons in 2003/04 to more than 50,000 tons in 2011/12, substantially raising export earnings. From 2007 to 2012, the sector’s employment doubled from 25,000 to 50,484. ̽��ֱ��industry grew from a single firm in 2000 to about 100 in 2014.

̽��ֱ��industry has also created indirect jobs through the expansion of horticulture. Related activities, such as packaging production, cold chain logistics and air transport have all benefited.

While Ethiopian firms initially kicked off the floriculture industry, foreign firms have increased their investment. In 2012 they accounted for 63% of all firms operating in the sector.

This foreign investment has contributed to technological development and improved market access.

Foreign investors say Ethiopia has become an attractive investment location because of natural endowments such as land and altitude, cheap labour and government incentives. These incentives include tax holidays on profits for up to five years, duty free privileges on all capital goods and the provision of construction material.

Subsidised loans have been the prime source of long-term investment financing for firms in the floriculture industry. Almost two-thirds of firms in the industry have relied on loans from the Development Bank of Ethiopia. And private banks, seeing the success of these loans, have also started lending to the industry.

Sectors destined for future success

Both the leather products and the textile and apparel sectors have been designated as top priority manufacturing industries in the recently released five-year development plan (2015 to 2020). One reason for this is because they have strong linkages with the agricultural sector as they use inputs from the livestock and cotton sectors. They are also both labour intensive, thus absorbing labour from the agricultural sector, and have major export potential and low entry barriers.

To become internationally competitive, the Ethiopian government has invited foreign investors to provide much-needed investment capital and technological capabilities. A slew of incentives has been created to induce these firms – as well as domestic ones that can meet international standards – to export. These include:

subsidised land rent in industrial zones;
generous credit schemes;
100% exemption from the payment of duties on imported capital goods and raw materials for the production of exports; and
five-year tax holidays on profits.

Export figures from the past two years indicate positive trends for both industries. But the results are not yet near where they need to be to make a significant contribution to structural change.

However, considering all the positive signs, Ethiopia might very well be on its way to become Africa’s industrial powerhouse.

This article is an edited extract from Transformative Industrial Policy for Africa, a report produced by Ha-Joon Chang, Jostein Løhr Hauge and Muhammad Irfan on behalf of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Jostein Hauge, PhD candidate, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Muhammad Irfan, PhD student, A Political Economy of Subsidies and Countervailing Measure in International Trade and Development - Issues of Policy Space and the WTO's SCM Agreement, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Jostein Hauge and Muhammad Irfan (Centre of Development Studies) discuss Ethiopia's economics growth over the last decade.

DFID - UK Department for International Development

Cementing Ethiopia's progress

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Four decades after Haile Selassie’s death, Ethiopia is an African success story

cjb250 — Thu, 27 Aug 2015 08:28:41 +0000

Ethiopia has changed beyond all recognition since the death of its last emperor, Haile Selassie, 40 years ago. Haile Selassie was surreptitiously murdered at the age of 83 by the military revolutionaries who had overthrown him a year earlier. Though t-shirts bearing his familiar features are to be seen on the streets of Addis Ababa, the days of the empire have gone and there is no move to restore it.

Gone too is the Derg, as the military regime was called. It attempted to build a communist state on the ruins of the empire, like its backers in the then USSR. Though it built what initially seemed to be an effective dictatorship, it was unable to cope with the economic incompetence of state socialism – symbolised for the outside world by the great famine of 1984 – or the resistance aroused by brutal top-down central rule.

This resistance was led by the movement for the independence of the northern province of Eritrea. One of the most effective insurgencies the world has ever seen, it brought down the Derg in the province in 1991. Eritrea has since tragically degenerated into an African North Korea, which has succeeded only in providing a massively disproportionate number of the refugees now besieging Fortress Europe. ̽��ֱ��government of the rest of Ethiopia – by far the largest part of the country – fell to an allied guerrilla movement, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

̽��ֱ��Tigray People’s Liberation Front initially alarmed the international community by proclaiming Enver Hoxha’s socialist Albania as the example which it wished to emulate. It was saved not least by its leader, Meles Zenawi, who emerged as perhaps the most original and intelligent African ruler of the last 50 years.

̽��ֱ��Meles years

Meles rapidly recognised that crude authoritarianism offered no formula for governing a country as diverse as Ethiopia, and introduced a system that promised each of its “nations, nationalities and peoples” a high degree of internal self-government, extending to a right of self-determination, “up to and including independence”.

̽��ֱ��actual level of autonomy has fallen well short, and opposition is subverted or suppressed, but there is nonetheless a measure of federalism in which the peoples of each region are at least governed by members of the same group as themselves. Together with a senseless war in 1998-2000, launched by newly independent Eritrea, this has helped to promote a revived sense of Ethiopian nationalism.

Most remarkable of all, however, Meles' economic development programme has turned the country into one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa, with levels of GDP growth over the last decade at or close to 10% – without the oil or mineral wealth that have largely powered growth in other parts of the continent.

Ethiopian real GDP growth

Investment in infrastructure and especially roads, which are vital to development in Ethiopia’s mountainous terrain, has been the key. Education has also received a boost, together with public health, where the country’s efficient and generally honest (though undoubtedly bossy) administration has helped to encourage foreign aid donors.

Yet the centrepiece is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, currently under construction on the Blue Nile close to the Sudanese border. Due to complete in 2017, it promises ample power for Ethiopia and much of northeast Africa. Smaller hydroelectric schemes on the Gibe river in the south of the country are already coming on stream.

Landlocked since Eritrean independence, and denied use of Eritrean ports since the 1998-2000 war, Ethiopia’s external trade is highly dependent on the microstate of Djibouti. It is constantly looking for alternative outlets, one of which may be the projected LAPSSET corridor to Kenya. Most remarkable of all, Ethiopia has secured Sudanese and even Egyptian acquiescence over the intensely sensitive issue of the management of the Nile waters.

Ethiopia has likewise established its position as the regional diplomatic centre, and in some eyes even as the regional hegemon. Swift alliance with the United States and its allies in the “global war on terror” made it the key in Western eyes to regional stability in a conflict-ridden part of the world, and helped to avert sanctions for undemocratic governance.

When opposition parties threatened to win an election in 2005, the results were reversed, and subsequent elections most recently in 2015 have been closely controlled. As the headquarters of the African Union, Addis Ababa is the diplomatic capital of the continent, and the government has played an active and responsible role in attempting to resolve conflicts in neighbouring Somalia and South Sudan. Friendly relations are also maintained with China, which serves as the model for Ethiopia’s market-friendly but state-controlled development programme.

̽��ֱ��way ahead

Undoubted dangers remain. One major hazard was skilfully managed in 2012, when Meles died and was peacefully replaced by Hailemariam Desalegn, a technocrat from a region of southern Ethiopia historically excluded from positions of power. Yet inevitably he does not command the same authority as Meles, and domestic government turns on complex behind-the-scenes negotiation between political stakeholders. What appears to be a smoothly running operation may risk fragmentation.

And though the regime is formally committed to equal participation in government of the country’s diverse groups, both the largest and most centrally placed group, the Oromo, and also the country’s Muslims feel relatively disadvantaged and may cause instability. Earlier in August, the mainly Coptic Christian country gave long jail sentences to 18 Muslim nationals for acts of terrorism.

̽��ֱ��border between a historically dominant state and the private sector meanwhile remains uncertain, with control of telecoms a key prize. Ethiopia has yet to develop the productive export-oriented enterprises that its growth plans demand, and has tended to favour foreign firms over encouraging a potentially threatening domestic business sector.

Ambitious development schemes have also understandably aroused environmental concerns. Nonetheless, from the perspective of the revolution that overthrew Haile Selassie in 1974, and still more the disastrous famine a decade later, Ethiopia’s progress has been spectacular.

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Christopher Clapham, Professor Emeritus at the Centre of African Studies, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge looks at the changes that Ethiopia has undergone since the assassination 40 years ago of its last emperor, Haile Selassie.

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Haile Selassie by Lucien Aigner

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