Author: Lia Beyeler

Africa, Food security, Français

Nourrir sa population constitue le principal secteur d’activité de l’économie de l’Afrique de l’Ouest

par Laurent Bossard, Directeur, Secrétariat du Club du Sahel et de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CSAO/OCDE)

(English version follows)

Cover image FREn inaugurant la nouvelle collection  « Notes Ouest-africaines » du Secrétariat du CSAO/OCDE, T. Allen et P. Heinrigs nous proposent une réflexion sur les opportunités de l’économie alimentaire de la région. Une occasion utile et nécessaire de se tourner vers le passé pour mesurer l’ampleur des mutations du monde réel… et de celles des idées.  

Je fais partie de ceux qui ont l’âge de se souvenir de l’agriculture ouest-africaine – sahélienne en particulier – au milieu des années 1980. Nous constations – déjà – la puissance de la croissance démographique. Entre 1960 et 1985, le nombre de sahéliens avait doublé et la population urbaine avait été multipliée par cinq. Et l’agriculture ne suivait pas le rythme. Abstraction faite des aléas climatiques (on sortait de la grande sécheresse de 1983), la tendance sur 25 ans était à l’augmentation des importations à un rythme de l’ordre de 8% par an. Jacques Giri dans son livre « Le sahel face aux futurs » paru en 1987, tirait la sonnette d’alarme : « Le système de production alimentaire sahélien est demeuré très traditionnel dans son ensemble, très vulnérable à la sécheresse et peu productif : il ne s’est adapté ni en quantité, ni en qualité, aux besoins (..). La région est de plus en plus dépendante de l’extérieur et en particulier de l’aide alimentaire. Le retour à des conditions climatiques plus favorables n’a pas fait disparaître cette dépendance ».  Continue reading “Nourrir sa population constitue le principal secteur d’activité de l’économie de l’Afrique de l’Ouest”

Lia Beyeler
SDGs

An Action Plan for the SDGs

By Doug Frantz, Deputy Secretary-General, OECD

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Two numbers convey the dramatic truth and enormous challenge behind the Agenda for 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

  •  One billion people live on less than USD 2 a day.
  •  1% of the world’s population consumes roughly 30% of its resources.

Think about those numbers. They are absurd. But they can be changed if the world comes together to achieve the SDGs set forth by the United Nations in September 2015.

What does this mean in practice? The starting point is recognising that every country has a solemn responsibility to do its best to meet the goals. We are all developing countries in the eyes of the SDGs. No country, rich or poor, has the luxury of doing nothing. Continue reading “An Action Plan for the SDGs”

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SDGs

The European Space Agency and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s)

By Johann-Dietrich Wörner, Director General, European Space Agency 

What do space and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have in common? What they have in common may be as remote as outer space but several examples illustrate the opposite. Space does matter for the SDGs. Since its creation in 1975, the European Space Agency (ESA) has developed a wide range of space programmes that provide useful contributions for sustainable development. And this is becoming even clearer now with the 2015 adoption of the SDGs  [1]. Consider just a few examples related to some of the 17 SDGs: Continue reading “The European Space Agency and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s)”

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Asia

Developing countries and the renewable energy revolution

By Prof. John A. Mathews, Professor of Strategy at Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney, Australia and author of Greening of Capitalism

There was a time when arguments about development and energy were seen as different discourses. They came together in the familiar call for poor people in developing countries to have access to electricity. As for energy needed for industrialisation, fossil fuels – with all their burdens on the balance of payments and geopolitical entanglements – were tapped to fill the need.

To be sure, the Western world as it industrialised over the past 200 years enjoyed enormous benefits from fossil fuels. The transition to a carbon-based economy liberated economies from age-old Malthusian constraints. For a group of select countries representing a small slice of the global population, burning fossil fuels enabled an era of explosive growth, ushering in dramatic improvements in productivity, income, wealth and living standards. Continue reading “Developing countries and the renewable energy revolution”

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Development finance

Unlocking Private Finance in Frontier Markets

By Dr. Nancy Lee, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Millennium Challenge Corporation

The development landscape has changed fundamentally. Private actors and private finance increasingly drive development, and annual private financial flows to developing countries now amount to more than five times official aid flows. Potential sources of development funding — institutional investors, impact investors, foundations, diaspora communities, sovereign wealth funds — are not lacking.

The challenge is to harness more of these flows for poorer countries and for investments with more development impact — which is central to the conversation at this month’s World Economic Forum on Africa in Rwanda. Even motivated investors face two critical impediments: (1) weak and sometimes toxic policies and investment climates and (2) underinvestment in the supply of bankable projects. Continue reading “Unlocking Private Finance in Frontier Markets”

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SDGs

The role of South-South co-operation in the implementation process of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

By Gina Casar, Executive Director, Mexican Agency for International Development Co-operation (AMEXCID)   The outcome document of the 2009 High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Co-operation in Nairobi remains the most internationally acknowledged document in this matter. It says that South-South co-operation is a “manifestation of solidarity among peoples and countries of the South” (article 18), “takes different and evolving forms, including the sharing of knowledge … Continue reading The role of South-South co-operation in the implementation process of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

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Africa, Building resilience, Food security

AGIR: Resilience, a buzzword or a long-term commitment?

By Julia Wanjiru, Sahel and West Africa Club Secretariat (SWAC/OECD) After three years of consultations following the adoption of a regional roadmap for the Global Alliance for Resilience (AGIR), the West African region can proudly announce that all 17 Sahelian and West African countries have embarked on an ambitious process to define their national resilience priorities (NRP-AGIR). To date, six countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Côte … Continue reading AGIR: Resilience, a buzzword or a long-term commitment?

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Latin America and the Caribbean, SDGs

Partnering with philanthropy to optimise a country’s resources: Mexico’s case

By Emilie Romon of the OECD Development Centre’s Global Network of Foundations Working for Development (netFWD)

The Government of Mexico is stepping up its engagement with its philanthropic sector. Three factors fuel this decision. First, the share of official development assistance to middle-income countries, such as Mexico, is expected to significantly decrease in coming years. In 2014, the donor community decided to increase support for least-developed and fragile states rather than middle-income countries.

This means Mexico is exploring new ways to optimise all available public and private resources for development. Second, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) endorsed in 2015 call for public and private actors to better pool and co-ordinate their resources if they are to achieve the goals. And third, as the co-chair of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation, which promotes multi-stakeholder partnerships with foundations and other non-state actors, Mexico wants to lead by example. Indeed, Mexico’s move towards its domestic philanthropic sector could not be more timely. Continue reading “Partnering with philanthropy to optimise a country’s resources: Mexico’s case”

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Africa, Food security, Français

Entretien: Sahel, Plan d’action pour un engagement renouvelé 2015-2020

Entretien avec M. Jean-Pierre Marcelli, Directeur du Département Afrique, Agence française de développement (AFD) L’Agence française de développement (AFD) a élaboré un plan d’action pour opérationnaliser sa stratégie au Sahel pendant la période 2015-2020.1 À travers ce plan, elle développe des propositions pour une action plus lucide, plus ambitieuse et plus adaptée aux contextes sahéliens en pleine mutation. Dans une logique de stabilisation d’ensemble, le … Continue reading Entretien: Sahel, Plan d’action pour un engagement renouvelé 2015-2020

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Migration

Global Skill Partnerships: A proposal for technical training in a mobile world

By Michael Clemens, Center for Global Development Migration can have benefits for everyone involved, but this is far from automatic. It requires new institutions, institutions designed for a world that moves. We propose Global Skill Partnerships (GSP) as a new way to make skilled migration more beneficial to migrant-destination countries, origin countries and migrants. A GSP is an up-front agreement between employers and/or governments in destination countries … Continue reading Global Skill Partnerships: A proposal for technical training in a mobile world

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