An Eye on Sochi: A Sporting Chance for Challenging Sexual Rights Violations in Russia?

By Elizabeth Mills and Alison Carney

This is the first of a series of blogs that we will publish on the topic of sexuality and the law through the lens of the Olympics, as we keep an eye on the 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Russia.

With the opening of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics tonight, we explore how the Olympics have brought to centre stage the growing number of repressive laws and acts of violence in Russia against individuals on the basis of their sexuality. While the world watches Russia, we will also look to the world and ask: as these issues are brought to centre stage, what might this mean for people in countries across the Global North and South who – like those in Russia – continue to struggle to access essential and equitable resources and who continue to be denied these rights on the basis of their sexuality?

Why are we keeping an eye on Sochi? 

On 30 June 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into a law Article 6.21 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offence. This law bans the "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations to minors," condemning “non-traditional” sexual relationships, which it places in opposition to “traditional family values.” As we go onto discuss in our upcoming blog post, the notion of a “traditional family” is connected to Putin’s project for “expanding the Russian nation”, and points to a range of problematic assumptions around reproduction and rights for all people, irrespective of their gender identity and sexual orientation.

The anti-propaganda law has drawn international condemnation, particularly in light of its confluence with the 2014 Winter Olympics. In a speech to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), just before the opening of the Games today, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon criticized the escalation of violence against the LGBT community following the implementation of this bill, saying "many professional athletes, gay and straight, are speaking out against prejudice." Google pinned its colours to the mast this morning on its homepage, with a rainbow doodle featuring winter sports and the Olympic charter supporting equality.

Sexuality and the Law: Looking at Russia in Context

Although the ‘anti-propaganda’ law itself has drawn international condemnation, it cannot be considered in isolation from the increasingly repressive political environment that has, also very recently, been highlighted by the imprisonment of two (former) members of the Russian feminist punk rock protest group, Pussy Riot.

While the imprisonment of Pussy Riot and the Russian President’s support of homophobic policies like the anti-propaganda law may seem rather disparate, they do in fact have much in common.

Pussy Riot’s political ideology, which raised in part the struggle for women to access safe abortions, and the national and international mobilization against Russia’s anti-propaganda law both highlight the extent to which the Russian Parliament and President are introducing laws that place restrictions on people’s autonomy over their body.

It is this intersection – between the law and people’s ability to exercise autonomy in an environment that upholds equality – that lies at the core of IDS’s Sexuality, Poverty and Law Programme.

Not only do we see linkages across the struggle for rights linked to sexuality in Russia more broadly, but we also need to keep in mind that the most recent introduction of the ‘anti-propaganda’ law has a long history in which the Russian government and legal system has sought to close down the constitutionally enshrined rights of its citizens on the basis of their sexuality. For example, in 2011, the European court fined Russia for violating articles 11, 13, and 14 of the European Convention by banning 164 pride events and marches between 2006 and 2008. Asserting its national sovereignty, however, in 2012 Moscow went on to ban gay pride marches in the capital for the next century.

It is in this increasingly restrictive political and legal environment that Russian citizens – of all sexual orientations and gender identities – have expressed a corresponding concern around the rise of social stigma particularly against gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer people.

“Leave the children in peace”: Putin’s dangerous defiance

When challenged about the anti-propaganda law, Putin said, “people can feel free and at ease but please leave the children in peace”. In doing so, he made public his views on what the homophobic right have often erroneously called the ‘slippery slope of sexual rights’ by linking homosexuality with practices that threaten children’s wellbeing, like incest and paedophilia.

Just two days before the opening of the Winter Olympics, however, a UN children’s rights panel condemned this law, showing that it has serious and negative implications for the rights of children who may themselves be transgender, lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer, or who come from families that are not narrowly defined as ‘traditional.'

This new law has been accompanied by other fundamental violations of the human rights of LGBTQI persons in Russia, including – as described above – the banning of gay rights parades, fines for LGBTQI rights groups, intimidation and incarceration of LGBTQI activists.

Although the Russian government has claimed that athletes competing in the Olympics will not be affected by the legislation, the Russian Sports Minister has stated that if athletes of “non-traditional sexual orientation” go out in the streets and propagate their sexuality, they will be “held accountable.”

What role can sport play in challenging, or even changing, repressive laws?

The international community, including the IOC have publicly condemned the law, initiated LGBTQI rights awareness campaigns and clearly stated their support for athletes of any sexual orientation. In addition, the Russian LGBT Network asked that athletes and spectators not boycott the Olympics and stated that such action would “risk to transform the powerful potential of the Games in a less powerful gesture that would prevent the rest of the world from joining LGBT people, their families and allies in Russia in solidarity and taking a firm stance against the disgraceful human rights record in this country.”

As the largest international sporting event in the world, the Olympics brings attention to the host country in a multitude of ways, in this case providing the platform to showcase Russia’s increasingly repressive laws and policies that shut down a multiplicity of rights linked to sexuality.

As the World looks to Sochi, we also need to look out at the World

Without an Olympics bringing other governments repressive policies into the public spotlight – like Nigeria and India’s recent (re)criminalisation homosexuality – there’s a risk that we might forget that this issue is far more pervasive and uncontested than one would believe from the global mobilization seen in the media against Russia’s policies.

It is against this geopolitical background that the Sexuality, Poverty and Law Programme seeks to highlight the implications of laws and policies on the lives of those who hold myriad gender identities and sexualities, and who may be discriminated against as a result.

In the next few weeks, as we keep an eye on Sochi, we will be asking: what role does this global sporting event play in the debate around human rights, sexuality, national sovereignty and transnational activism? And what role should, and can, athletes play in taking this debate forward? Importantly, we will consider, too, the longevity of the campaigns and media storm surrounding this Olympics. For those people living in and beyond Russia who continue to be marginalised on the basis of their sexuality, we ask: what will happen when the world’s gaze shifts, and the storm around the Olympics subsides?

Elizabeth Mills is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), and convenes the Sexuality, Poverty and Law Programme at IDS.

Alison Carney is a sports and development consultant, with extensive experience on the role of sport for supporting the realisation of gender equality and sexual rights. 

What’s sex got to do with it? A Synthesis of Sexuality and the Law

by Linda Waldman

For many people, sexuality is something private and personal, and something that should have nothing to do with the state.  Yet sexuality is intimately woven into questions of law, legitimacy and regulation.  Various dimensions of our sexuality are moulded by the law through the ways in which media is controlled, schools are regulated and through considerations by social services for instance.  Law also regulates our own sexuality and relationships, by defining in criminal and civil law what a family is and how it should behave, through defining childhood and adulthood, by granting – or denying – access to condoms, abortions or legalising and by criminalising particular sexual practices including sex work.

The Sexuality, Poverty and Law  Programme at IDS started in 2012 and together with our partners around the world we have witnessed significant changes to the law and its intimate relationship with sexuality in the last two years. For example, just two months time, same-sex marriage will be legal in the UK; earlier this year, in January 2014, Morocco amended its Penal Code to criminalise marital rape; last year, in November 2013, Germany became the first country in Europe to legally recognise a third sex outside of the male/female binary; and in August, 2013, New Zealand legalised same sex marriage.

But it has not all been good news.  The high profile cases of Nigeria, Jamaica, Uganda, India, and Ghana – to name a few  – demonstrate the ongoing challenges for those who risk persecution and criminalisation on the basis of their sexuality. These examples are vivid reminders that, as Kapur reminds us, ‘culture and sexuality are not uncontested categories in law’ (1999: 362). 

Law is an ambivalent source of power. On the one hand, it acts as an arbitrator of justice allowing citizens to demand their rights and secure the benefits of citizenship. On the other hand, for many people marginalised because of their sexuality, the law can be extremely restrictive - both powerful and difficult to challenge.

Following Susan Boyd, we believe that ‘it is crucial to bring the political economy of sexuality and gender more firmly into our analyses of law’s contradictory role in emancipatory politics’ (1999: 370).  With this in mind, the Sexuality, Poverty and Law Programme has sought to uncover the dynamics of law and sexuality through in-depth country case studies which make apparent the struggles and contestations taking place over sexuality and law and ask what comparative lessons can be learnt.  Five countries – Cambodia, South Africa, Nepal, Uganda and Egypt- served as case studies to explore these struggles.

Each country was selected as it was uniquely positioned in relation to the rule of law and, in each, a different issue relating to sexuality was examined:

• In Egypt, Mariz Tadros explored the public and sexual harassment of politicised men and women before the fall of President Mohamed Morsi;
• Cheryl Overs examined Cambodia’s recent changes to the laws on sex work and human trafficking and their implications;
• In Nepal, Paul Boyce and Daniel Coyle explored the introduction of progressive legislation around sexuality in light of the country’s complex social context and contested and multiple sexual subjectivities;
• Adrian Jjuuko and Francis Tumwesige analyse the implications of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill on its legal system; and 
• In South Africa, Alex Muller and Hayley MacGregor provide an examination of the undermining of HIV-positive women’s sexual and reproductive health rights in relation to sexuality, contraception, HIV testing and fertility; while Tessa Lewin, Kerry Williams and Kylie Thomas explore criminal violence, and the associated legal processes, as experienced by lesbian women and gay men.

These diverse studies offer rich and detailed descriptions of what is happening in particular countries in relation to sexuality and law. In Uganda and Cambodia, the cases provide shockingly vivid illustrations of how citizens can be denied basic rights because their sexuality is different to that prescribed by law.  Cases from Egypt and Cambodia show complex relationships between national and international law which can be used both as a driver for repressive law or policy and as a tool to help communities and activists resist the law.  In South Africa and Nepal, the cases demonstrate the challenges of implementation despite progressive legal frameworks. 

Looking across the case studies, the synthesis (by Linda Waldman and Cheryl Overs) highlights a number of key challenges and tensions. It clarifies the need for legal training amongst activists’ and NGOs’ and for increasing their capacity to take on legal cases. It illustrates the dangers of engaging with and challenging the law; including the risks attached to strategic litigation and of dealing with corrupt law enforcement agencies. With limited resources and little capacity, these tasks are even more challenging. 

The synthesis also lays bare the ways in which law puts pressure on people to conform to societal expectations of how men and women should behave (within this binary construct) within a framework that idealises particular forms of citizenship. This creates a particular form of vulnerability and fragility that, for some, results in marginalisation from mainstream society and exclusion from opportunities to benefit from economic and social development. Assumptions about conventional gendered behaviours are, in turn, often reinforced in law making it difficult for people to stand apart from the norm.

The synthesis highlights tensions in the use of specific sexual identities – such as LGBT or gay.  These provide entry points and modalities for legal recognition and for accessing funding, but in ways that can be restrictive and exclusionary.  As such, these terms and categories are simultaneously both useful and problematic.  For this reason we argue that it is necessary for donors and others to provide opportunities to draw on international LGBT discourse, but also to recognise times when this language is inappropriate.

And yet, despite potent obstacles, there are many stories of success. The synthesis also illustrates that opportunities and spaces have opened up and provided platforms for activism and community intervention to challenge the law and to support victims of violence and discrimination. But most of all, the use of a comparative case study approach has made us realise how significant the law is for any discussion of rights in relation to sexuality.  While law is positioned as a means through which to protect people by upholding neutrality, we have found that it simultaneously regulates and intervenes in our lives at the most intimate level; and in ways that are not entirely neutral nor in ways that uphold each individual’s rights irrespective of sexuality.  In showing how the political economy of sexuality is embedded in law, we hope this work exposes law’s contradictory role in the politics of sexuality and contributes towards greater emancipation for all, regardless of their sexuality. 

African agriculture is growing, but is it transforming?

Photo: Harvesting a cereal crop in Ethiopia (ILRI / Flickr)

By Steve Wiggins , Future Agricultures member and ODI researcher

Economic development is not just about growth. It’s about transformation. Development should see changes in structures as countries move from being agrarian and rural to industrial and urban, while productivity should rise — especially for sectors such as agriculture that lag behind national averages. This has long been appreciated, but the ideas have come back into debates over African development with a vengeance in recent years. It is not for nothing that K Y Amoako called his highly active think tank the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET).

Africa is growing again, so much so that a new wave of Afro-optimism has emerged. But is Africa transforming? Too often behind the impressive growth the motors seem to be oil and mineral extraction, higher prices for farm exports, and property booms. It is far from clear that productivity is rising in ways that promise sustained growth, still less growth spread broadly that will deliver reductions in poverty.

The concerns were discussed last month in Nairobi at a meeting convened jointly by ACET and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). A strong driver of growth and development is manufacturing, according to evidence (pdf) from OECD countries and emerging Asia. Manufacturing, it seems, is the sector where learning takes place and where labour productivity can rise rapidly. Indeed, factories in low income countries typically show faster growth in labour productivity than similar plants in richer countries with higher labour productivity. So productivity tends to converge in industry, whereas similar convergence is notably absent when economies as a whole are considered. Not for nothing, then, do influential thinkers like Dani Rodrik see manufacturing as the escalator that raises up economies in developing countries.

For Africa, the bad news is that investment in manufacturing has been low for decades and productivity may actually have fallen over the last few decades (pdf). This is not the place to discuss Africa’s travails with manufacturing, still less to rehearse the exaggerated pessimism that China might have blocked every other country’s chance of getting into assembly — although the Jeremiahs have to explain why China’s shoe factories are moving to Addis.

Transformation and agriculture

So what does this mean for Africa’s agriculture? It is easy to be seduced by the ladder of manufacturing, by dreams of structural change, so that serious consideration of agriculture gets ditched. Yes, it is true that both empirically and normatively agriculture will get smaller and less important with development — relative to other sectors, and smaller absolutely in employment — but that doesn’t mean that this will be achieved by ignoring farming. On the contrary, one of development’s great paradoxes is that the quickest way to get out of agriculture is to raise agricultural productivity. That this will almost certainly produce the most equitable and benign transformation — it remains the case that agricultural growth reduces poverty more than any other sector in most low income countries — is a massive bonus.

A longstanding misunderstanding is that smallholder agriculture — African agriculture is overwhelmingly carried out on small family farms — is marked by stagnation in yields per hectare and returns to labour, if not outright involution, as increasing numbers of farmers try to support themselves on ever-smaller patches of overworked soil so that productivity actually falls. This simply isn’t true. Not for agriculture: it is two decades since Martin & Mitra found that total factor productivity in most countries across the world grew faster in agriculture than in other sectors. Taking the partial measure of labour productivity —arguably the most important measure since it so closely relates to incomes and wages — productivity of farm labour has typically been faster in agriculture than in other sectors over the last half-century.


Source: Compiled from Table 2 of Christiaensen, Luc, Lionel Demery & and Jesper Kuhl, 2010, ‘The (Evolving) Role of Agriculture in Poverty Reduction. An Empirical Perspective’, Working Paper No. 2010/36, Helsinki: UNU Wider

So what do we know abou the growth of productivity in African agriculture in the last two decades? A lot less than we might, since the data are so sketchy. But to the extent that official statistics on agricultural output, area cultivated and the economically active population can be trusted — give or take some generous margins of error — productivity in African agriculture is rising, and by more than the graph above might suggest. Cereal yields have risen, albeit from low levels. Here is what the numbers show for the ten New Alliance countries, plus the main (UN) regions and the continent as a whole.


Source: Compiled from FAOSTAT data

Over the last two decades, cereals yields are up by around 30% for the continent as a whole and for most regions: moreover, in half the New Alliance countries, the gains have been 50% or more.
Similar increases have been seen for labour productivity:


Source: Compiled from FAOSTAT data

 

So what? Implications for future study

We know too little about what drives such increases, where they take place, for which crops, in which regions, and for which farmers. The national stats, still less the continental aggregates, hide as much as they reveal. We know from studies of districts and villages that local booms in production take place. What we don’t know is how generalised these are, how much they are either islands of success in an otherwise little-changing sea, or harbingers of dynamism that will transmit increasingly across the countryside.

So we need to be able to track such change better. Studies are constantly made, but the challenge is draw their insights together in narratives that will be both more reliable and influential with policy-makers.

If our understanding of change on the farm is sketchy, then all the more so for changes in supply chains. What do we know of labour productivity in trading, processing, transport and storage? Next to nothing, other than case studies and anecdotal accounts that suggest some very large changes in the few chains where there has been some observation.

Getting better understanding is shackled by the enormous diversity seen across the continent, and indeed, within any given country. Geographical diversity has long been appreciated, with distinctions typically made by the quality and abundance of land and water, and physical access to cities and ports. Returning to debates is an awareness of the diversity within communities of small farmers; where great differences can be seen across smallholders in their circumstances — above all the land and water they command, and the labour, skills and capital they can deploy.

Geographical and social distinctions make it that much more difficult to build a sharp narrative about agricultural development; but the variations do at least help explain why experiences differ so markedly.

We need to understand these changes better, and their development implications, if in the debates over transformation, smallholder agriculture is not be marginalised. It may not take that much to accelerate higher productivity on small farms. If in the last two decades, some smallholders have made progress in the teeth of discouraging rural investment climates, under-investment in rural public goods, and low farm prices; then what might be achieved in an environment that is more supportive and with better prices for output? Not only will that deliver direct development benefits, but also it will make possible the long-awaited structural transformations to an urban and industrial Africa.

4 February 2014: China and Brazil in African Agriculture - news roundup

By Henry Tugendhat

This news roundup has been collected on behalf of the China and Brazil in African Agriculture (CBAA) project. For regular updates from the project, sign up to the CBAA newsletter.


Brazil, Angola and FAO sign South-South cooperation agreement
Angola, Brazil and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have signed a South-South cooperation agreement that seeks to strengthen Angolan food security by boosting its agricultural and veterinary research. Training and technical assistance for 105 Angolan staff will be provided by EMBRAPA.
(UN Food and Agriculture Organisation)

Zimbabwe adopts the Renmibi
Last week, Zimbabwe’s central bank listed the Chinese Renminbi as one of several foreign currencies that would officially be allowed to trade in the country. Zimbabwe dropped its own currency in 2009 after it soared to 231,000,000 percent in hyperinflation, and has since been using a number of other currencies such as the US dollar and the South African Rand.
(The Africa Report)

President Mugabe voted deputy chair of the AU
Zimbabwe President, Robert Mugabe, has been elected as first deputy chair of the African Union, thereby implying that he will be attending the EU-AU summit in April. The EU had not invited President Mugabe to attend. The Zimbabwe Herald sees this election as a show of strength from the AU, demonstrating that their internal governance will not be dictated from outside.
(Zimbabwe Herald)

Vale compensates displaced farmers in Mozambique
Vale agrees new compensation for residents of Moatize who lost farmland. On 23 December 290 families blocked access to the Vale mine to complain they had never been given land promised in a 2008 resettlement agreement.
(Joseph Hanlon’s newsletter 239, 28 January 2014)

Globalization with Chinese Characteristics
A special issue of the journal Development and Change was published just before Christmas on the subject of ‘Globalization with Chinese Characteristics’. It looks at the new waves of culture, capital and influence coming from China out onto the global sphere and its variations with current forms of globalisation. There are good pieces by Giles Mohan and Raphael Kaplinsky on China-Africa engagements, and I would particularly recommend the last two articles for anyone working on Chinese ethnographic studies:

• Development and Change issue – table of contents
• ‘Chinese Investors, Labour Discipline and Developmental Cosmopolitanism’ by Nyíri Pál
• ‘China Anxiety: Discourse and intellectual challenges’ by Yongjin Zhang

Is Africa about to lose the right to her seed?
Last year, Via Campesina published a report on seeds, which included a chapter on knowledge sharing initiatives between Brazilian and Mozambican farmers’ movements. The aim of the partnership was to push forward informal seed markets in the face of mounting pressure from multinational seed companies. The website Grain features an interesting article surrounding its publication.

• Grain: Is Africa about to lose the right to her seed?
• La Via Campesina: Our seeds, our future

Chinese investments in African Agriculture
The SAIS China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC will hold a conference and research workshop on 16-17 May 2014 on the theme of: “Researching China’s Agricultural Investment in Africa: ‘Land Grabs’ or ‘Friendship Farms’?” Those interested in submitting an application to present a paper should do so before the deadline on 14 Feb 2014.
(China in Africa: the Real Story)

Should the UK government promote UK businesses in developing countries?
Last week, the UK’s Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening, gave a speech at the London Stock Exchange where she spoke of increased involvement of UK businesses in development projects. UK companies such as the department store Marks & Spencer, and the supermarkets Tesco and Asda, will be working with African farm workers under this scheme. Although different in form to Brazil or China’s mixtures of aid and business, it is interesting to see how the UK’s synthesis of the two develops. The ODI blog also features a piece commenting on Greening’s speech.

• Justine Greening’s speech
• ODI blog

Rethinking agricultural extension

Zimbabwe's agricultural extension service, Agritex, was the pride of Africa in the 1980s, before the ravages of structural adjustment hit in the 1990s. There were extension workers throughout the countryside, and a network of subject matter specialists, most highly experienced and qualified. The quality of the training and advice offered was unparalleled anywhere on the continent, and for a time the service was well resourced with extension workers reasonably paid and with transport and so able to move around.

Today the extension service is a sorry reflection of past glories. Many qualified staff left or passed away (the ravages of HIV/AIDS hit many government services very badly), posts are unfilled, the transport capacity virtually non-existent and the ability to offer up-to-date advice severely hampered by the parallel decimation of government research services. Most farmers rely on private input suppliers, agrodealers and their neighbours for advice these days. Of course there are extension workers in the field, and they are usually extraordinarily committed and informed, despite the poor conditions of their posts. In the communal areas many get additional incentives from NGO programmes, often diverting their work to projects like conservation agriculture or group gardening.

I had some interesting discussions recently with a number of former Agritex staff and resettlement farmers about what they thought of the service today, and what they thought about its future, particularly in the post land reform era. They reminisced about the past of course, and acknowledged how effective Agritex had been, but they were also sanguine about the future. What do the 'new farmers' really need?

The discussion identified three important things: information (and particularly up to the minute market and price data), brokering (between farmers and contractors, suppliers, markets and service providers, to ensure that deals struck are fair and regulated) and business management skills (they were confident about agronomy, but not running a business, even a small one: managing accounts, cash flows, investments and the rest). This is a very far cry from the standard Agritex approach, based as it was on the old World Bank Training and Visit system, and of course with its roots in the colonial era with the post of 'Chief Instructor of Natives' held by the famous American missionary, E.D. Alvord for many years. Today the emphasis should be very different, my informants suggested.

This would require a total rethink of Agritex, and agricultural extension in general. Indeed a department in the Ministry of Agriculture may not be the appropriate organisational vehicle at all. My informants pointed out that the new farmers, compared to their compatriots in the communal lands, were younger, better educated, more mobile, and with good access to town. They all had mobile phones, and many had smartphones with Internet access. Many were making money, and had investment, marketing and business planning decisions to make, often juggling an agricultural enterprise with other activities. Many women were independent operators, or took on particular roles within a more complex business than the standard communal area farm.

Of course not all resettlement farms are like this, just as not all communal area farms are classic family smallholder farms focused on subsistence agriculture with some off-farm activities. There is a huge diversity, and tailoring approaches to extension and development more generally to different groups is essential. In our study in Masvingo we identified 15 different livelihood strategies across the sample of 400 households in 16 sites that we clustered into four broad types. In a recent DFID-funded initiative three categories are identified that roughly chime with our livelihood types: market oriented surplus producers, smallholders who are surviving and are in need of livelihood support, and those who are struggling and in need of social protection.

Our discussion focused on the first, and some of the second, group. But this is a big and growing proportion of the new farming population, and the one that is really going to get agriculture moving. While social welfare approaches are clearly necessary, if there are to be long-term transitions out of poverty and onto growth paths that are sustainable backing those who are engaging with markets, developing their farms, and investing should be a priority. And supporting such people with the type of service that meets their needs I would argue is a useful public service. Some of it of course could be paid for in time, but as a strategic government investment it could easily be justified.

The new DFID programme is being implemented by FAO, and appears to be focused on 'training' focused on building ‘resilience’ through ‘climate smart agriculture’, with a range of high-sounding objectives set. But is this going to be old-style training, rekindling the glory days of 1980s Agritex (although in this case implemented by NGOs) and focused on instruction and demonstration around farming techniques (including conservation agriculture)? Or will it be building capacity around the priorities of information, brokering and business that we identified? There has been a repeated default in new programming by aid agencies as well as government to return to the past, and not rethink for the future. This is $48 million of UK taxpayers’ money, so let's hope it is better focused than previous efforts, and helps to rebuild an agricultural research and extension capacity in Zimbabwe that is fit for its new purposes.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and originally appeared on Zimbabweland