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Marketing channels of agricultural surplus is important for improving food security in most African countries. The cooperative business form offers one way for smallholder and intermediate size farmers to sell their surplus. Twelve Tanzanian cooperatives were studied by semi-structured interviews to find out if the cooperative business model can reduce poverty and address food security. Four types of cooperatives were identified: traditional cooperatives, reforming cooperatives, new cooperatives and co-operatives with some innovations. Both cases of poorly working unions and more recent success stories were found. Features characterizing good cooperative work in Tanzania were identified. Recommendations on policy level how to support cooperative action is given.
Team
John Sumelius; Faustine K. Bee; Suleman A. Chambo; Shimelles Tenaw; Stefan Bäckman,
Urban poverty in developing countries is fuelling the rapid growth of informal settlements which the UN defines as ‘slums’. Governments want to redevelop valuable slum land in the city centre for official and commercial purposes and to resettle slum dwellers to modern high-rise condominiums outside the city center, but target populations (former slum dwellers) are not always being reached by these programs. We focus on the cities of Addis Ababa and Dar es Salaam and ask: What are the exclusionary processes and forms of political economy that give rise to urban poverty in both of these cities? What are the best methods for understanding the lives of the highly mobile poor and elucidating the often hidden and invisible processes of resource flows, networking, and creation of privilege? More specifically, we investigate the reasons for why the poor are not being resettled in condominium housing, and whether the mismatch between the government’s original plan and the actual outcome arise from (a) policies and decisions which have, intentionally or unintentionally, excluded the urban poor, or from (b) the choices made by the poor themselves, because the new condominiums do not meet their needs (for livelihoods, social networks, access to services, etc. Our research methods are ethnographic: primarily in-depth, semi-structured interviews, including life history interviews.
Team
Prof. Laura Stark, Prof. Elias Yitbarek, Dr. Tiina-Riitta Lappi, Dr. Susanna Myllylä, MS Yonas Alemayehu, MS Imam Mahmoud, MA Jyri Mäkelä
CAAST-Net Plus is a network of 25 partner organisations from all over Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, working together to support bi-regional cooperation in research and innovation. Building on the activities and outputs of the CAAST-Net project (2008-2012), CAAST-Net Plus aims to: Encourage more and better bi-regional STI cooperation for enhanced outcomes around topics of mutual interest, and particularly in relation to the global societal challenges of climate change, food security and health. Foster discussion among stakeholders for gathering informed opinion and experience about the bi-regional cooperation process, formulating and disseminating it in such a way as to be admissible to the formal bi-regional STI policy dialogue process and to programme owners. ?Through informing the bi-regional policy dialogue for mutual learning and awareness, through building support for coordinated and innovative approaches to bilateral funding of bi-regional cooperation around global challenges, brokering the public-private relationship to foster improved uptake and translation of bi-regional research partnership outputs into innovative technologies, good and services, and through dedicated mechanisms to encourage bi-regional research partnerships, CAAST-Net Plus will make invaluable contributions to the quality and scope of the Africa-Europe STI relationship for mutual benefit.