Received: from SOUTH-STATION-ANNEX.MIT.EDU by po7.MIT.EDU (5.61/4.7) id AA24491; Mon, 31 Oct 94 21:11:07 EST Received: from vtbit.cc.vt.edu by MIT.EDU with SMTP id AA17562; Mon, 31 Oct 94 21:11:04 EST Message-Id: <9411010211.AA17562@MIT.EDU> Received: from VTBIT.CC.VT.EDU by VTBIT.CC.VT.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 0048; Mon, 31 Oct 94 21:09:32 EST Received: from VTBIT.CC.VT.EDU (NJE origin LISTBIT@VTBIT) by VTBIT.CC.VT.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 9913; Mon, 31 Oct 1994 21:09:22 -0500 Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 21:08:00 EST Reply-To: Volunteers in Technical Assistance Sender: Technology Transfer in International Development From: Volunteers in Technical Assistance Subject: Your DevelopNet News for November To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @@@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@@ @@ @@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@ @@ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @@ @@ @@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@ On-Line News and Views on @@@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@@ @@@@@@@ @@ Technology Transfer in @@ @@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@@ @@ International Development %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @@@@@ @@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@ @@ @@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% November 1994 Volume 4, No. 11 IN THIS ISSUE POLICY WATCH Hunger and Food Security LITERATURE REVIEWS Limitations of Shrimp Farming Payphones in Mexico Sterile Fluids for Injection ORGANIZATIONS ACCION International VITA PROJECTS Private Enterprise Promotion Projects ANNOUNCEMENTS Managing Enterprise Development Crop Science for Eastern and Southern Africa Women in Environmental Management Attention, VITA Volunteers! * * * 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. * * * P o l i c y W a t c h HUNGER AND FOOD SECURITY Hunger may be humanity's oldest and deadliest enemy. What can be done to eliminate it? Has our recent experience with international development offered new answers? In her presidential foreword to the 1994 Annual Report of the Hunger Project, Joan Holmes says that to eliminate hunger the world "needs a new understanding of hunger. . .the days of dealing with hunger as an isolated moral issue are past. We must come to recognize that the per sistence of hunger is at the heart of the major security issues threat ening our planet. Hunger underlies and exacerbates the environmental damage, the rapid population growth, and the civil conflicts that domi- nate our present and threaten the future of all humanity." The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, recognizes food as an inalienable right. Yet hunger remains a world-wide problem affecting people of all ages both in developed and developing countries. Each year more than 13 million chil dren under the age of five die of malnutrition and related preventable diseases. The World Bank and the UN Development Programme estimate that worldwide, more than 1,300 million people live on the equivalent of less than $1 a day and that 700 million of them are hungry all the time; these people still lack access to adequate food and nutrition. Given the seriousness of the problem, food security must become a funda mental objective of development policies as well as a measure of their success. The chosen policies must, however, be attuned to the character istics of a country's food security problem, the nature of the food- insecure population, resource availability, and infrastructural and institutional capabilities at all levels of government and communities. Three Critical Technologies Given all of these variables, no one can prescribe a correct mix of interventions and pronounce it the magical cure for hunger. Nonetheless, there are a number of technological interventions that should be empha sized if hunger is to be alleviated. The nonprofit Campaign to End Hunger (Santa Monica, California), which educates the public on hunger and poverty issues, has defined the three critical technologies as follows: - Education. Top on the list is the provision of basic education in primary health care, particularly to women and girls. Overpopulation is a central human problem, but one of its causes is the desire of parents to guarantee the survival of some of their children. Better educated women are likely to have fewer children and take better care of the ones they have. These points received emphasis in the UN Conference on Popu lation and Development, held recently in Cairo. - Access to credit. With the introduction of simple banking technologies and access to credit -- even in small amounts -- poor people become really inspired entrepreneurs, able to feed, clothe, and house them selves and their children. VITA as well as many other organizations recognize the importance of credit and are increasingly working to make it available where it doesn't exist. Our readers are aware of VITA's many projects in credit and entrepreneurship in development. - Land reform. Land needs to be available if people are to grow the food they need. In addition, equitable distribution of large land holdings is needed so that people who work the land decide its use and the disposi tion of its yield. Land reform has been an important component of the success of many countries in alleviating hunger, primarily because peo ple who own land are far more likely to care for it and to seek higher productivity, since they will themselves benefit from the increased production. Swapping "Debt for Development" The Campaign to End Hunger has suggested another solution, to be effec ted through governments. This is the swapping of debt owed to the United States and other developed countries, in exchange for the agreement of the debtor country to put an equal amount into a special development fund. The funds set aside can be applied to the education of women and to microenterprise loan programs. They could alternatively be applied to extension services that will allow biological and soil-science experts to teach farmers better ways to farm so that their yields can be improved. Finally they can be applied to water and sanitation, agrofor estry, primary health care and a number of other projects aimed at improving standards of living. These "debt for development swaps" are a very new idea without much of a track record, but seem to hold great promise. Perhaps hunger will never be eliminated from any population but, if adopted on a broad scale, the approaches described here could signifi cantly reduce it on a global basis. Information: Campaign to End Hunger, 365 Sycamore Road, Santa Monica, California 90402; tel. + 1 (310) 454-3716; fax +1 (310) 454-6207. Helen Rooke, The Hunger Project, 15 East 26th Street, New York, New York 10010; tel. +1 (212) 532-4255; fax +1 (212) 532-9785; e-mail . L i t e r a t u r e R e v i e w s LIMITATIONS OF SHRIMP FARMING Jonas Larsson, Carl Folke, and Nils Kautsky, 1994. "Ecological Limita tions and Appropriations of Ecosystem Support by Shrimp Farms in Colombia." Environmental Management, vol. 18, no. 5 (September / October), pages 663-676. Coastal shrimp farming has increased greatly in many parts of the world in the last 10 years. Usually, mangrove areas are selected, and the operation requires feed, seed, and clean water. Wastes produced by the shrimp must be processed before release. The environmental effects of a shrimp farm are not confined to the area it occupies: there is also a decided impact on the surrounding areas. For a semi-intensive farm, the total "ecological footprint" is 35 to 190 times larger than the farm itself. The energy requirements are unexpectedly large: a typical farm uses 295 joules of energy for each joule of shrimp protein produced, a larger ratio than most other manufacturing industries. Moreover, more than 80% of the needed energy comes from ecosystems outside the farm. Indeed, shrimp farming ranks as one of the most resource-intensive food producing systems, which makes it an "ecologically unsustainable throughput system," according to Larsson and his colleagues (Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics and Stockholm Univer sity, Sweden). Shrimp farming has collapsed, or farms have been aban doned for environmental reasons, in Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand. The unfavorable environmental impact of shrimp farming may be largely offset by careful management of the mangrove areas. Good planning and management must involve local communities and resource users. PAYPHONES IN MEXICO "Chip-Card Payphones to Bolster TELMEX Network." Pyramid Research Latin America (1994), vol. 2, no. 1, p. 6-8. Improving public access to payphones is a high priority in Mexico. In the three-year period ending 1993, the privatized utility company TELMEX increased the number of installed payphones from 83,000 to 150,000. But vandals damage the equipment and thieves remove it. In urban areas, about 4% of the 90,000 payphones are out on any given day for these rea sons. About 25% of the total budget for public telephones is allocated for maintenance and repair of existing equipment. In a country aspiring to modernity on a constrained budget, what is the technological remedy for this colossal waste? For one thing, TELMEX now plans to install payphones in "safer" areas, including bars, pharmacies, and restaurants, and use chip-card phones which are less vulnerable to vandalism. The company planned to install 30,000 new chip-card public telephones in the first half of 1994. By the end of the year, TELMEX hopes to have two public telephones in service per 1,000 inhabitants. The long-term goal, set for the end of 1998, is five per 1,000. Ninety percent of the phones installed will be of the chip-card type. STERILE FLUIDS FOR INJECTION "Small-Scale Manufacture of Pharmaceutical Preparations in Developing Countries," 1994. WHO Drug Information, Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 42. The availability to health officers of moderate volumes of sterile fluids for injection often presents a serious problem in Third-World countries, many of which have no indigenous pharmaceutical industry. So these countries must rely on imported products. In other countries, hospital dispensaries are responsible for providing good-quality pack aged fluids, often on a very restricted budget. Fortunately, it is often possible to meet rigorous safety standards just by scaling down the production process to less than 100 liters, a volume that can be managed with small-scale stills and sterilizers. Trained personnel are needed whose pride in personal achievement will extend to carrying out standard operating procedures. This short article from the World Health Organization directs attention to the importance of pharmacists in developing-country health establish ments, and to a set of published guidelines for small-scale hospital production of moderately large volumes of parenteral fluids, issued last year by the International Pharmaceutical Federation. O r g a n i z a t i o n s ACCION INTERNATIONAL ACCION International, founded in 1961, is a private, nonprofit organi zation dedicated to reducing poverty and unemployment throughout the Americas. Through affiliates in fourteen Latin American countries and the United States, ACCION provides small loans and basic business training to the self-employed poor. The loans and training enable the mechanics, vendors, carpenters, seamstresses, cobblers and other microentrepreneurs who represent ACCION's clientele to expand their businesses and contribute to their countries' long-term economic devel opment. ACCION has field offices in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. Information: Vivienne Azarcon, ACCION International, 733 15th Street NW, 7th Floor, Washington, DC, 20005; tel. +1 (202) 393-5113; fax +1 (202) 393-5115; e-mail <72603.620@compuserve.com>. V I T A P r o j e c t s PRIVATE ENTERPRISE PROMOTION PROJECTS VITA currently operates long-term private enterprise promotion (PEP) projects in Benin, the Central African Republic, Chad, Guinea, and Kenya. At present it is discussing with donors the design and implemen tation of another three enterprise projects. PEP is a new area of activity for many organizations. Much of the new emphasis on the small and micro business sectors of developing countries stems from the realization that they are a dynamic and vitally important component of these countries' economies. This understanding has made them the target of PEP programs, supported by major policy makers and donor organizations. VITA has recognized the role these businesses play in promoting national employment, nurturing future generations of busi ness people at all levels, and fostering new sources of economic activ ity; thus, VITA has been helping them for 35 years. In the beginning, VITA worked at private enterprise creation in the developing world by providing businessmen and aspiring entrepreneurs with whatever technical information they needed through its Technical Inquiry Service. The commitment to promote enterprise, however, solidi fied in 1984 after it starting its first long-term PEP field project in Chad. The average annual income in Chad is $100 or less, making it one of the poorest countries in the world. Starting in 1978 and right up to the commencement of project activities, the country had been experiencing intensified civil strife. Coupled with the collapse of the world cotton market, the strife had weakened Chad's economic base and devastated its fragile food production capacity. Over the years, the VITA project has helped to start up new enterprises, restart those interrupted in the hostilities, and expand those in operation. VITA also got the chance to witness first-hand the effect that PEP had in restructuring Chad's economy. VITA's implementation of that field project strengthened its belief that economic vitality plays a critical role in the improvement of living standards. This, in turn, leads to better education, health care, family planning, environmental protection and community involvement. Recogni zing this, VITA moved to help private enterprises more aggressively by establishing an enterprise development service that designed and imple mented long-term projects. When such donors as the US Agency for Inter national Development, the World Bank, and the UN Development Programme grew to realize that perhaps no aspect of development is more important than economically empowering the individual, funding for private enter prise projects escalated and so did VITA's involvement in their implementation. Mohammad Shah, VITA's staff Program Officer for private enterprise pro jects, says: "Each project is customized in approach and emphasis and tailored to the local economy and the opportunities present. VITA's pro jects provide the type of technical, management and credit assistance needed to help those that need it most increase their income, assets, skill and productivity. They work to enhance economic growth by contrib uting to fuller employment and fostering new and dynamic sources of economic activity." In designing its projects VITA tries to ensure that each project doesn't operate in a vacuum. As Shah points out, "VITA has always been committed to the notion that programs designed to redress one development problem should not exacerbate another. VITA recognizes the critical link between enterprise development activities and such pressing development concerns as environment, agricultural productivity, gender issues, and sustaina bility, and uses existing complementarities to augment project results." Information: Vicki Tsiliopoulos, VITA A n n o u n c e m e n t s MANAGING ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT As was discussed earlier, development agencies and nongovernmental organizations are introducing more programs to promote small-scale enterprises and income-generating activities. There is growing concern, however, that these programs are not being managed effectively or cost efficiently, or even meeting the needs of the target group. In response to this concern, from 7 May to 2 June 1995 the Cranfield School of Management is offering a short course designed to improve the management skills of those involved in enterprise development and pro vide an opportunity for those working in different agencies and NGOs to work together with other practitioners and project managers from around the world. Participants will be given a chance to review current devel opments, analyze common problems and evaluate alternative approaches, and explore further strategies. Trainees are expected to be directly involved in the running of small business programs and income generating activities. They are also expected to already have some understanding of the needs of entrepreneurs and the operational aspects of running a small business program. Information: Jenny Wheeley or Jackie Bilton, Enterprise Development Cen tre, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield, Bedford MK43 0AL, U.K.; tel. +44 (234) 751122; telex 826559 CITMAN G; fax +44 (234) 751806. CROP SCIENCE FOR EASTERN AND SOUTHERN AFRICA The University of Malawi has announced that from 19 to 24 February 1995 it will sponsor the Second International Crop Science Conference for Eastern and Southern Africa. The purpose of the conference will be to bring together crop scientists from Eastern and Southern Africa to eval uate, discuss, explore, and identify priority areas for crop science research in the region. The conference will also seek to promote regional cooperation among scientists and identify and examine issues related to women's participation in agricultural development. Conference participants are expected to include farm managers, government offici als, agro-industry staff, and natural and social scientists. Information: S.S. Chiotha, Conference Chairman, University of Malawi, P.O.Box 278, Zomba, Malawi; tel: +265 522-222/622/327; fax: +265 522- 046, 523-225; telex: 44742 CHANCOLL MI or 45214 UNIMA MI. WOMEN IN ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT From 10 July to 23 September 1995, Ian MacDonald Associates (Brighton, U.K.) will offer a course to develop the knowledge and skills for the effective planning and management of environmental programs in which women play an integral part. The course is intended primarily for women working within governmental and nongovernmental organizations concerned with creating a sustainable environment. The course will work towards the ideal of the inclusion of gender analysis into all mainstream environmental planning and thus welcomes male participants. Topics covered will include how to maintain a sustainable environment and resource management. Information: Marie Fry, Ian MacDonald Associates, 36 Robertson Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 5NL, U.K.; tel: +44 (273) 559000; fax: +44 (273) 500045. ATTENTION, VITA VOLUNTEERS! Are you a VITA Volunteer? If so, VITA would appreciate knowing your e- mail address. Please send a message with your e-mail address and full name to Brij Mathur at . Thank you. * * * HOW TO JOIN VITA'S ELECTRONIC FORUM VITA's free, public, online discussion forum, DEVEL-L, provides for the exchange of ideas and information on a wide range of issues and topics related to technology transfer in international development; for exam- ple, technologies, communications in development, sustainable agricul- ture, women in development, the environment, small enterprise develop- ment, meetings, and book reviews. Subscribers to DEVEL-L automatically receive this newsletter and can download documents free from a special archive by using FTP requests or e-mail messages. To join the forum, send this command or message that reads: SUB DEVEL-L (your real name, without parentheses) to this address: or . You can receive the same benefits by joining the newsgroup bit.listserv.devel-l. You can subscribe to DevelopNet News without joining the discussion forum by sending the following message to the same address: SUB DNN-L (your real name, without parentheses) Please do not send these messages to VITA. * * * DevelopNet News is an electronic newsletter published monthly by Volun- teers in Technical Assistance (VITA), a private, nonprofit, interna- tional development organization located in Arlington, Virginia. The newsletter needs your stories: you are invited to send them to the edi- tor in electronic form. Your redistribution of DevelopNet News is encouraged. Kindly send us a message on the approximate size of your mailing list; it will be helpful in our planning. President: Henry R. Norman Acting Editor: Vicki Tsiliopoulos Editorial Assistant: Rafe Ronkin, VITA Volunteer VITA specializes in information dissemination and communications tech- nology. It offers services related to sustainable agriculture, food processing, renewable energy applications, water sanitation and supply, small enterprise development, and information management. It has pro- jects in 6 African countries. VITA's publications, on a variety of practical subjects, are designed to assist persons and organizations in developing countries. You can request a descriptive publications list by postal mail, phone, or fax. Be sure to include your postal address. Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), 1600 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 500, Arlington, Virginia 22209. Tel. +1 (703) 276-1800, 24-hr BBS: +1 (703) 527-1086 [up to 9600, N,8,1], fax +1 (703) 243-1865, telex 440192 VITAUI, cable VITAINC, e-mail: Internet , FidoNet 1:109/165 .