Intervening in Value Chains: Lessons from Zambia's Task Force on Acceleration of Cassava Utilisation

Abstract

Smallholder farmers operate in vertical supply chains. Therefore, an understanding of key opportunities and constraints up through the value chain becomes necessary for sustaining smallholder growth. Yet market analysis is of little value unless key private and public sector stakeholders agree to implement necessary reforms. This paper advocates an approach which marries together value chain analysis with a stakeholder task force to ensure that analysis of opportunities and constraints gets translated into actions that will facilitate commercial growth. Using Zambia's cassava task force as an example, the paper describes the value chain task force method and identifies elements critical to its effective implementation.     

“Go Back to the Land!” Negotiating Space,Framing Governmentality in Lambwe Valley,Kenya 1954–75

In 1954, the Lambwe Land Trust sought to address colonial concern to contain and control tsetse fly and thus the transmission of human trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) in Lambwe Valley, Western Kenya. The Valley needed less tsetse, more people; less bush and more farmed land. Reflecting the confidence of the 1950s to control land, nature, and people, the Lambwe Valley Settlement Scheme (LVSS) was established. While other schemes in Kenya grew out of a tense period of land disputes or mega-economic development, this scheme was much more modest, ensuring that good science and good government would defeat the fly. This article elaborates on both. The first narrative examines the scientific background on trypanosomiasis and tsetse control in this region. The second focuses on the people: African settlers, colonial and African bureaucrats, representing district, provincial, and national governments, engaged in day-to-day planning. Arguments and debates ensued regarding land rights and management, involving local African council and state representatives with their constituents within the context of the settlement scheme. The archival records demonstrated the evolution of a civil society in this remote section of Western Kenya, in spite of an increasingly dominating Nairobi-based government. The records exposed local voices and local visions as ordinary people negotiated their lives in the shadow of big science, big government, and big politics.     

Coping with Conway v. Rimmer [1968] AC 910: How Civil Servants Control Access to Justice

The article, based on a review of files in the National Archives, examines the role of civil servants in claims for the suppression of state documents at trial on grounds of public interest immunity (PII). Government lawyers solicited responses from other ministries to the landmark Lords decision in Conway v. Rimmer and coordinated the civil service campaign against this unwelcome judicial intrusion into their professional domain. The decision was seen as a threat to confidentiality and the secret cultivation of administrative expertise. Academic debate on the evolution of the PII doctrine has centred on the allocation of responsibility between an overly deferential judiciary and ministerial concern to avoid political embarrassment. The role of civil servants may have been more coherent and ideologically motivated than previously appreciated. As the courts increasingly challenge government claims for suppression of material at trial, the article highlights the historical factors determining the executive's innate instinct for secrecy.