Who will make the ‘best’ use of Africa’s land? Lessons from Zimbabwe

Conflict over African land – between smallholders and large industrial farmers and between domestic farmers and global agribusinesses – raises key questions about who will make the best use of African land and which farmers do most to decrease poverty and produce more food, industrial inputs and exports. Zimbabwe has already gone through two major changes in land occupation, and thus provides an important test of what is the ‘best’ use of the land. Three measures of ‘best’ use have been cited in Zimbabwe: reward for military victory, poverty reduction and agricultural production. Initial evidence indicates that commercial smallholder production is a better use of the land than larger, more mechanised farming.     

Who Are We? Who Are They? The Real Facts of a Globalized Chimerica

China's remarkable progress has shown that modernity does not only belong to the West. At the same time, China's modernization has been largely fueled by direct investment of foreign firms which also dominate key technologies and critical positions in the global supply chain. In this section we get the real facts on the interpenetration of China and the global economy. A leading Chinese entrepreneur and thinker puts modernization with Chinese characteristics in historical perspective. One of China's leading dissidents assesses the arrest of Ai Weiwei.