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>The market versus the mall
>Whenever I travel out of Accra towards Ghana’s central or west coast, I pass through Kaneshie station – which is really a large market with a bus station attached. It looks chaotic, but is actually...
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>What I miss about West Africa – and what I don’t
>I’m spending a few weeks in northern England, preparing for a move to London. After a few days I am used to the weather again; but in other respects the UK feels quite alien. Here are a few things...
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>Cocoa prices hit a ‘record high’– or do they?
>The Financial Times reports a sudden increase in the cocoa price, as bad weather and black pod disease lead to lower-than-expected deliveries to ports in Cote d’Ivoire. Good news for cocoa farmers,...
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>Sustainable cocoa isn’t all it seems
>The movement to certify cocoa has taken two steps forward in recent months. Consider these two stories: 1. Mars, which is the world’s largest end-user buyer of cocoa, has promised to certify that...
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>Climate change migrants in Ghana
>When you travel north in Ghana, the climate becomes drier and the villages poorer, until you end up in the Upper East and Upper West regions – friendly, slow-moving places, dry for most of the year...
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Agriculture links of the week
1. The Wall Street Journal on why US policy on biofuels is counterproductive and self-defeating (unless you believe its only objective is to raise corn prices); producing 10 litres of ethanol from corn...
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Agriculture links
First, an interview with Roy Steiner at the Gates Foundation about the African green revolution. Roy helped arrange funding for Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency, where I used to work, and...
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Sanniquellie and Schengen
Last weekend I travelled to Nimba County in rural Liberia. It took seven hours to get there from Monrovia: the roads have been graded recently, so even when you’re off the paved highway you can make...
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The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition: a necessary step, or a...
The past weekend saw a nutrition summit in London. The conference recognised what economists and development practitioners have known for a long time: hunger and malnutrition are usually caused by...
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Rice prices and West African production
Steve Wiggins and Sharada Keats at the Overseas Development Institute have just put out a briefing on ‘The end of cheap rice’. They argue that the high rice prices of 2007-08 that I have written about...
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