Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9505311939.A20189-0100000@lan.vita.org> Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 19:59:56 -0400 From: DevelopNet News <mailto:dnn@LAN.VITA.ORG> Subject: Your DevelopNet News for June To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L
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June 1995 Volume 5, No. 6
IN THIS ISSUE
EDITORIAL
Is the World a Better Place?
LITERATURE REVIEWS
Drought Trees
Information Superhighway: Africa
Finding 20,000 Nongovernmental Organizations
Recent Nutrition Workshops
ORGANIZATIONS
Microenterprise Development Worldwide
Zimbabwe's Farm Radio Network
VITA PROJECTS
Chad Project Nears Independence
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Energy Economics
2020 Vision for Food
* * *
DevelopNet News is published monthly by Volunteers in Technical
Assistance (VITA) in Arlington, Virginia, USA. For additional
information, please see the end of this newsletter.
* * *
Editorial
IS THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE?
According to J. Brian Atwood (U.S. Agency for International Development,
Arlington, Virginia), international cooperation in foreign aid has
achieved major successes. His examples highlight the importance of tech-
nology transfer:
-- In the past 50 years, infant and child death rates in the developing
world have been reduced by 50%, and health conditions around the world
have improved more during this period than in all previous human
history.
-- Life expectancy in the developing world has increased by about 33%,
and the percentage of rural families with access to safe water has risen
from less than 10% to almost 60%.
-- Smallpox has been eradicated worldwide and polio in [the Western]
[H]emisphere.
-- Oral rehydration therapy, a low cost and easily administered solution
developed through USAID programs in Bangladesh, is credited with saving
tens of millions of lives.
-- In 1980, only 20% of the world's children were immunized, today 80%
are.
-- In the past 20 years the number of the world's chronically undernour-
ished has been reduced by 50%.
-- Average real incomes since WWII have doubled in the developing world
and the world economy has grown from $3,000,000 million ($3 trillion) in
1946 to $23,000,000 million today.
-- The Green Revolution resulted in the most dramatic increases in agri-
cultural yields and production in the history of mankind, allowing
nations like India and Bangladesh to become nearly food self-sufficient.
-- Literacy rates are up 33% worldwide in the last 25 years, and the
primary school enrollment has tripled in that period.
-- In the 28 countries with the largest USAID-sponsored family planning
programs, the average number of children per family has dropped from 6.1
in the mid-1960s to 4.2 today.
-- As recently as 1981, 60% of the governments in Latin America were
dictatorships or military governments. Today, 98% of the Americas now
have democratically elected governments.
-- The UN International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade in
the 1980s resulted in 1,300 million people receiving safe drinking water
sources and 750 million people receiving sanitation for the first time.
Source: J. Brian Atwood, 1995. Remarks delivered at Georgetown Univer-
sity, Washington, D.C., 16 March.
Literature Reviews
DROUGHT TREES
Felix A. Ryan, 1994(?). Selected Drought Trees for Dry Villages. Madras
(India): Ryan Foundation (8 West Muda Street, Srinagar Colony, Madras
600 015).
This attractive booklet (48 pages, 13.5 X 21 cm) is divided into 21
sections, each describing one or more trees or shrubs, common in South
Asia, but underused in villages that could profit by cultivating them.
Its purpose is to provide concise guidance and technical information to
meet the needs of local people. The booklet's sections are also avail-
able separately as "handouts."
For each plant, there is a simple sketch, the scientific name and coun-
try of origin, the main commercial uses of the wood, fruit, or other
plant parts, other suggested uses, and suggestions for propagation. The
author also provides suggestions for "mini projects" and do-it-yourself
projects to generate income for poor people. Ryan Foundation Interna-
tional, a registered public charity, distributes its materials at very
low cost.
The author is generally careful about the accuracy of claims made for
the value of different plants. For example, in his description of
Ailanthus ("Tree of Heaven"), he discounts claims that the bark has
medicinal value. But he misses a few facts, too: in the section on the
celebrated neem tree (Azadarachta) he repeats a claim, that neem oil is
effective against leprosy, for which this reviewer knows no evidence. In
another place, he incorrectly gives the population of India as "800
crore" (1 crore = 10 million).
In spite of minor errors, the booklet is a model of what a small non-
profit organization can do at low cost to print and disseminate needed
technical information for end-users.
INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY: AFRICA
Regional Africa Symposium on Telematics for Development, 1995. [Draft]
Recommendations. Addis Ababa: UN Economic Commission for Africa.
Tony Hall, 1995. "Let's Get Africa's Act Together and Head for the
Highway. Users, Donors, and Policymakers Start Face-to-Face Networking."
Article posted 5 April on AFRICANA-L electronic mailing list by Ben
Parker <mailto:ben.parker@hornet.sasa.unep.no>.
Is Africa ready for the Information Superhighway? Some 250 information
specialists, users, donors, and policymakers addressed this question at
the Regional Africa Symposium on Telematics for Development, held in
Addis Ababa from 3 to 7 April. They met to share ideas and work out ways
of easing national regulations and user fees.
Africa has 12% of the world's people and 2% of its phone lines. Although
local calls are cheap, the average African spends less than a minute a
year on the telephone. The continent has the highest phone installation
costs in the world and it can cost $25 to send a one-page fax. Four
African countries have full Internet connectivity, 33 have internal net-
works, and fewer than 20 have no form of electronic connection. Asrat
Bulbula (Ethiopian Science and Technology Commission) said, "The cost
saving and convenience (of electronic communication) is changing our
social and office activities . . . [and the] sharing and organizing of
noncomputing resources. . . . Telematics is a need and not a choice."
The Symposium's draft recommendations (four pages) address building
political leadership in telematics for development, collaboration and
coordination, regulatory issues, training, connectivity and participa-
tion, technical innovation, and broadband and multimedia perspectives.
FINDING 20,000 NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS
Christina N. Anson, 1995. A Guide to NGO Directories; How to Find Over
20,000 Nongovernmental Organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean;
2nd ed. Inter-American Foundation (Publications Office, 901 North Stuart
Street, 10th Floor, Arlington, Virginia 22203. Tel. +1 (703) 841-3800,
fax +1 (703) 841-0973, e-mail <mailto:canson@access.digex.net>.
This tidy, 24-page pamphlet describes 42 directories which, in turn,
represent 20,000 groups of people "working to improve the standards of
living of their members, communities, and countries." Copies of the
directories can be obtained from their publishers, and this publication
provides instructions regarding each directory. Each description
includes the date of publication, the address and telephone number of
the publisher, and the count of organizations listed in that directory.
According to Anson, "The growth of NGOs in Latin America and the Carib-
bean in recent years has been nothing less than explosive."
RECENT NUTRITION WORKSHOPS
(Source: International Food Policy Research Institute, 1995. "Research
Perspectives." IFPRI Report, February, pages 3-5. (IFPRI, 1200 17th
Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036-3006. Tel. +1 (202) 862-5600, fax +1
(202) 467-4439, e-mail <mailto:ifpri@gnet.com>.)
-- Saly, Portudal (Senegal), December 1994. African food issues to 2020.
Working groups agreed that the blame for Africa's poor agricultural and
trade performance should rest equally on domestic and international fac-
tors. Africa will continue to need imported food. The participants lis-
ted strategic options.
-- Airlie House, Virginia, November 1994. "Ecoregions of the Developing
World -- A Lens for Assessing Food, Agriculture, and the Environment to
the Year 2020." The world's ecoregions (humid and subhumid tropics,
semi-arid and warm tropics, etc.) will require different combinations of
technology, policies, and institutional relations. These were summa-
rized, along with such cross-regional issues as extension systems,
modeling of agricultural and environmental interaction, natural
resources managent, and population migration.
-- Columbia, Maryland, October 1994. Farmers in Niger, Haiti, Honduras,
and many other places cooperate in natural resources management. These
efforts, although increasingly important, are not widely studied or well
documented. This workshop concentrated on research methods to produce
results and recommendations to serve the changing needs of local organ-
izations, national policymakers, and public agencies. Participants
developed guidelines for standard methods for use across a range of
resources. They agreed that monitoring of projects over time is essen-
tial to understand their effects on natural resources.
-- Accra (Ghana), December 1994. "Food Security, Nutrition, and Devel-
opment in Ghana." Participants listed important policy issues, including
macro policies, agricultural growth and transformation, production tech-
nology, and household food and nutrition practices. Agricultural growth
in Ghana has lagged behind population growth, and urbanization has
increased demands upon food-producing systems. The adoption of new
technologies remains slow, and agricultural growth is hindered by
neglect of the needs of small farms. Finally, the country urgently needs
a national nutrition policy and strategy.
-- Annapolis, Maryland, December 1994. Nontimber tree products were the
focus of this workshop. Participants pinpointed issues related to tech-
nologies, market development, and environmental impact. Forest clearing
by poor people, who need fuel or space to grow crops, is a growing trend
and it is becoming critically important to find environmentally sustain-
able economic activities for them and their families. Case studies
included the palm wine industry in Central Africa, eucalyptus products
in India, and woodfuel products in Malawi and Niger.
Organizations
MICROENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT WORLDWIDE
Throughout the developing world, microcredit programs are using lending
and village banking to reach the very smallest enterprises. Even in such
comparatively affluent countries as Finland and the United States of
America, particular banks are targeting low-income, urban enterprises
for urban development, using models based on Third-World successes. In
North America, the Small Enterprise Education and Promotion Network
(SEEP) membership includes 38 private development organizations that
support micro and small enterprise programs in the developing world.
SEEP provides coordination and information services to its members.
A recent report from the SEEP Network summarized microenterprise devel-
opment worldwide. East African organizations provide small loans, and
some of them serve remote rural areas. But in West Africa, credit is not
readily available in the informal sector. In Latin America, loans to
community organizations are efficiently distributed, and borrowers are
organized in groups to guarantee repayment, but small-scale lenders tend
not to survive. Lender survival is also an issue in Asia.
Information: The Small Enterprise Education and Promotion Network, c/o
PACT, Inc., 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, New York 10017. Tel. +1
(212) 697-6222, fax +1 (212) 692-9748.
ZIMBABWE'S FARM RADIO NETWORK
Livai Matarirano, 1994. "The Farm Radio Network; Communication With a
Difference." Ecoforum (Nairobi), volume 18, no. 3, pages 6-7.
No wonder a group of 48 women in Mhondoro, Zimbabwe, sits under a tree
every Monday afternoon to discuss technologies. These are described in
packets from the Farm Radio Network in Harare, the country's capital.
The network is an information exchange in East and Southern Africa. In
spite of its name, it does not have a radio station or pay reporters.
Since 1992 it has distributed four packets a year, each containing about
10 regional scripts, to its "communicators". Some scripts are developed
in Harare; others are based on packages from the Developing Countries
Farm Radio Network, a Canadian nongovernmental organization.
The Harare organization aims to reach small-scale farmers with new tech-
nologies and information on everyday issues, through the efforts of com-
municators and participants. These persons, currently more than 300 in
Zimbabwe and nine neighboring countries, are carefully selected and
their activities are followed up annually. They are kept on the active
list only if they contribute ideas and actually disseminate materials.
Rural communicators are broadcasters, health workers, farming advisors
and extension workers, training center staff, journalists, teachers, and
farmers themselves. Each package contains the latest communicator news-
letter, which is designed to reduce the isolation of communicators from
each other.
Dissemination of the materials reaches millions of small-scale farmers
with transcripts, translations into local languages, poems, posters,
videos, plays, puppet shows, and extension classes. The selected tech-
nologies must meet rigid standards regarding the need for them, the cost
and availability of resources needed to use them, simplicity, ease of
communication, and capacity for generating feedback.
Livai Matarirano's short article may make some readers wish for more
detailed information. Fortunately, the article includes a brief bibliog-
raphy that lists evaluative studies.
Information: Livai Matarirano, Farm Radio Network (Eastern and Southern
Africa), P.O. Box 308, Harare, Zimbabwe. Tel. and fax +263 (4) 495-317.
VITA Projects
CHAD PROJECT NEARS INDEPENDENCE
VITA's Private Enterprise Promotion Project (VITA/PEP) in Chad has been
serving the needs of a large number of small, medium, and microenter-
prises for more than ten years. Since 1984, the project has helped the
country's private sector in and around N'Djamena and Moundou, extended
agricultural loans to farmers in the town of Bongor, and opened a micro-
lending "window" to reach the informal sector. VITA/PEP's statistics are
impressive: It has created some 6,080 jobs and has made 9,648 loans for
a total of $5,538,467, more than 70% of which have gone to women.
Since 1990, VITA/PEP has initiated a new, critical process: the transi-
tion from a supported project to an independent financial institution.
To this end, VITA has fostered organizational commitment in local staff
and developed the institutional capabilities that are required for a
successful enterprise. With VITA's help, the project established organ-
izational objectives and priorities and installed cost-effective finan-
cial, administrative, and managerial operating systems. In June 1993,
with the appointment of Evariste Kebba to the post of Project Director,
the management of operations was transferred to a Chadian.
Recently VITA requested from USAID a final two-year grant to make the
transition. The grant will support operations and logistics in the main
office in N'Djamena and in the Moundou office. It will also be used to
cut down costs associated with the provision of technical assistance,
help the project broaden its client base, and finance its legal transi-
tion to independence.
Among the issues that are faced with the transition, the most urgent is
the adjustment of its interest rate. The project must successfully lobby
the government for an increase, because the current 13% annual interest
rate will not allow it to cover its operations and possible loan losses
or maintain old equipment, much less invest in expanded plant and equip-
ment facilities.
VITA recently sent Cary Raditz (Energy Market Resources, Silver Spring,
Maryland), an international banking and financial consultant, to Chad to
assess the project and provide advice on the transition. Raditz recom-
mended that the project raise its interest to 24%. In analyzing whether
this would lower the demand for project services, he argued: "[A]ccess
to credit is more important than price . . . a small merchant might take
goods on consignment from a wholesaler for a week and pay 1,200 CFA
(approximately $2.50) for what he could buy for 1,000 [CFA] in cash.
This is the equivalent of 20% a week, 80% a month, 960% annually, non-
compounded. Unless marketplace suppliers lower their price margins to
compete, VITA/PEP can provide valuable credit services to its borrowers
and earn enough to survive and grow."
Overall, Raditz was optimistic about VITA/PEP's ability to complete its
transition. According to him, the qualifications of its new Director,
who understands commercial finance and has a private-sector commercial
banking background, and the interest that VITA has maintained over the
years in propagating appropriate technology, will greatly boost this
effort.
Information: Mohammad Shah
Announcements
ENERGY ECONOMICS
>From 5 to 8 July, the International Association for Energy Economics is
sponsoring a conference on harmonizing energy policy, environment, and
sustainable economic growth in the 21st century. The conference will
explore all facets of energy -- oil, natural gas, electric, hydro,
renewable, and nuclear -- and the requirements for energy generation in
each of these areas. The keynote address, focusing on sustainable global
energy policies for the 21st century, will be delivered by U.S. Vice
President Al Gore. General sessions will cover a number of topics inclu-
ding restructuring and competition in electricity; country energy and
carbon dioxide restraint plans; implications of integration and polit-
ical reform on world energy; economics of global climate change policy;
global financing of clean-energy technologies; and integrated assess-
ments of climate change policy. Concurrent sessions will cover a host of
issues ranging from technology growth to energy markets and emerging
policies for energy conservation and environmental protection in selec-
ted regions.
Information: David Williams, International Association for Energy Eco-
nomics, 28790 Chagrin Blvd, Suite 210, Cleveland, Ohio 44122-4630; tel.
+ 1 (216) 464-5365; fax +1 (216) 464-2737.
2020 VISION FOR FOOD
"A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment" is the title
of an international conference to be held 13 to 15 June 1995 in Washing-
ton, D.C. It will address the question, "How can the global community
feed itself and prevent hunger to the year 2020 and beyond without
destroying the natural resources on which the world depends for food,
biodiversity, industry, and recreation?" More than 400 participants from
50 countries are expected to participate, and the conference is intended
to provide direction to policymakers from developed and developing coun-
tries about where to invest their limited resources.
The conference is sponsored by the International Food Policy Research
Institute and the National Geographic Society. Although there is no
registration fee, space cannot be guaranteed to those who have not
registered in advance.
Information and registration: Barbara Rose, International Food Policy
Research Institute, 1200 17th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036. Tel.
+1 (202) 862-5670, fax +1 (202) 467-4439, e-mail <mailto:ifpri@cgnet.com>.
* * *
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DevelopNet News is an electronic newsletter published monthly by Volun-
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Editorial Assistant: Rafe Ronkin, VITA Volunteer <mailto:rronkin@vita.org>
VITA specializes in information dissemination and communications tech-
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