Full video of the symposium is now available - Why Has Africa Been Slow in Developing its Agriculture?

A poor African farmer produces a little more corn than last year. He sells the surplus in a nearby urban market, and uses the money to purchase a shirt stitched by a local seamstress. With the bumper crop of corn, more and more farmers are interested in the seamstress' wares. The extra income allows her to buy better materials and a new sewing machine. Her business grows, and she begins to sell her work in bigger markets, further from her small village.

Years later, a poor farmer responds to an announcement for a job in a local clothing factory. The monthly wage is more than he currently makes in a year.

This is the vision that Dr. Ousmane Badiane, Africa Director for the International Food Policy Research Institute, presented to an audience of Stanford students and faculty on April 7. In a two-hour symposium entitled "Why Has Africa Been Slow in Developing its Agriculture?," Badiane outlined the steps he believes African nations must take to sustain economic growth and encourage high-value industrial development. Public investment in agriculture formed the backbone of his proposal.

Badiane said that although African nations have experienced unprecedented economic growth in the last 15 years, they still lag behind the developed world in economic sophistication. When workers leave agriculture for other sectors, he explained, the transition usually signifies economic progress.

But in Africa, too many farmers have abandoned their fields to peddle trinkets on the streets as part of a low-productivity service sector. They have left behind an underdeveloped and understaffed agricultural industry.

Agriculture has just plummeted too fast and too quickly in these countries," Badiane said. "Agriculture is not claiming the share of GDP and employment that it should."

When agriculture thrives, Badiane explained, economies grow and diversify. A wealthier rural population purchases products manufactured by urban entrepreneurs. Productive local farms buffer fluctuations in global crop output and food prices, improving security for urban industrial workers and reducing wage pressure on industrial employers.

"What agriculture needs is what industry needs," Badiane said, emphasizing that investment in one need not mean neglect of the other. "There are a lot of things you can do right by all the sectors at the same time."

In fact, according to Badiane, every $100 increase in agricultural output could result in up to a $130 increase in output from industry.

Badiane described one step that African governments have already taken to set the positive agriculture-industry feedback in motion. The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program is a cooperative effort by the African Union's 53 member nations to achieve ambitious goals for economic development and investment in agriculture by 2015.

Badiane commended the Program's unprecedented commitment to agricultural growth and its high standards for accountability, policy research, and performance review. He also praised the political momentum and unity that the initiative has generated within Africa, and the respect that it has earned in the international community.

However, Badiane admitted that agricultural growth in Africa cannot always proceed in harmony with other objectives. The need to finance agricultural research and development will put pressure on budgets for broader public welfare programs that Dr. Joel Samoff, a Stanford professor of African Studies, says most African nations simply cannot afford to de-fund.

"Most countries in Africa spend around $10 per person per year on health," says Samoff. "How do you reduce that?"

But Badiane suggested that governments may be able to address both agriculture and welfare simultaneously.

They will have to see how they can use social service budgets to sustain growth in agriculture," he said. "Look at health and education not as an entitlement, but as a tool to raise labor productivity."

Addressing the audience during a question-and-answer session following Badiane's talk, Harvard Development Professor, Emeritus, Peter Timmer drew attention to the scope of Badiane's objectives.

"You're talking about getting industry moving at the same time as you're getting agriculture moving," he noted, "and this is a very ambitious undertaking."

However, Timmer also indicated that he saw the seeds of success in Badiane's ideas. "I think we've just heard a quite profound analysis of Africa's agricultural problems, and its structural history," he said. "And a possible way forward."

Economic development is a dynamic process in East and Southeast Asia, and one that is inextricably tied to policy.

Two new groundbreaking political economy publications are now available from the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC), and a third is forthcoming in August.

Going Private in China: The Politics of Corporate Restructuring and System Reform, addresses many key reform questions faced over the past two decades by China, as well as by Japan and South Korea. Edited by Stanford China Program director Jean C. Oi, this volume demonstrates the commonalities between three seemingly disparate political economies. In addition, it sheds important new light on China's corporate restructuring and also offers new perspectives on how we think about the process of institutional change.

In Spending Without Taxation: FILP and the Politics of Public Finance in Japan, former Shorenstein Fellow Gene Park demonstrates how the Japanese government established and mobilized the Fiscal Investment Loan Program (FILP), which drew on postal savings, public pensions, and other funds to pay for its priorities and reduce demands on the budget. Referring to FILP as a "distinctive postwar political bargain," he posits that it has had lasting political and economic effects. Park's book not only provides a close examination of FILP, but it also resolves key debates in Japanese politics and demonstrates that governments can finance their activities through financial mechanisms to allocate credit and investment.

The Institutional Imperative: The Politics of Equitable Development in Southeast Asia, by former Shorenstein Fellow Erik Kuhonta, argues that the realization of equitable development hinges heavily on strong institutions and on moderate policy and ideology. He does so by exploring how Malaysia and Vietnam have had the requisite institutional capacity and power to advance equitable development, while Thailand and the Philippines, because of weaker institutions, have not achieved the same levels of success.

More detailed descriptions about these insightful volumes, as well as reviews and purchasing information, are available in the publications section of the Shorenstein APARC website.

Duncan Clark, Visiting Scholar at SPRIE and Chairman/Founder of Beijing-based investment advisory firm BDA China, spoke to a packed room at a seminar titled "Life after Google? The Way Forward for US Internet Firms and Investors in China", hosted by SPRIE, about the appeal and complexities of China's dynamic internet sector. The talk is part of SPRIE's ongoing series of speaker events, seminars and conferences entitled "China 2.0: The Rise of a Digital Superpower".

China's internet population will soon be double that of the US. China is home to a thriving market for social networking, games, e-commerce and other applications. While many individual and institutional investors in Chinese internet firms have profited from this growth, US internet firms themselves have struggled to gain a foothold. In fact a number of the most iconic internet firms in the US - including eBay, Yahoo and Google - have either pulled out of China or significantly scaled back their expectations for the market. Why?
Censorship and government restrictions are often pointed to as the principal cause. Is this justified, or does it sometimes serve as a convenient excuse for other factors such as management missteps?

Certainly Google placed blame squarely with the Chinese government, citing the growing burden of censorship and sophisticated attacks on Gmail as principal motivations for its 2010 decision to scale back its China business. In his 45-minute talk, Clark discussed the implications of Google's move, both for the company (and the benefits to its main competitor Baidu) and for a new wave of US internet companies who are evaluating the market (such as Facebook) or who have recently entered the market (such as Groupon).

Clark explored the psyche driving the Chinese government's approach to internet restrictions and the varying degrees of sensitivity associated with online activities such as social networking, email/IM, games and e-commerce. He also discussed the risks faced by Chinese internet founders/CEOs as they balance the need to serve customers and the stock market with serving the requirements and expectations of the Chinese government and the Communist Party.

The talk reviewed in turn the experience of various US internet companies in China and how elusive the right formula for success can be.

Clark concluded with a discussion of the more positive of US individual and institutional investors. While competitive risks remain substantial, backing Chinese management teams to some extent insulates investors from the vagaries of government regulation. Chinese internet firms such as Baidu, Tencent and Taobao have emerged as some of the world's most highly visited and most valuable sites. Clark explored the questions of how sustainable are their positions in China, and whether these firms can demonstrate an ability to innovate and extend their reach beyond China's shores.

Duncan Clark and Marguerite Gong Hancock, associate director of SPRIE, are continuing their research into these and other topics as part of SPRIE's China 2.0: The Rise of a Digital Superpower project. SPRIE looks forward to the perspectives of upcoming invited speakers as the program keeps apace with the fast growing but unpredictable China internet market.