Key issues in regional growth and integration in Southern Africa

ABSTRACT

The decade to 2015 saw rapid growth in trade between Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. Much of this growth reflected South African exports to its neighbours of diversified manufactured goods to meet growing urban consumption and to supply inputs to mining and infrastructure. While most SADC countries, aside from South Africa, grew quite rapidly over this period, their exports remained oriented to a narrow range of minerals and agricultural commodities destined to go outside the region. Drawing from a series of sectoral studies, we assess key regional issues including the investment and production decisions of firms whose operations stretch across borders, and consider the implications for a bottom-up integration agenda that could build productive capabilities across countries. Our evaluation highlights the importance of the spread of supermarkets, the need to address transport and logistics, and value chains whose competitive advantages are inherently regional, as in the cases of poultry and mining.     

Securing small farmer participation in supermarket supply chains in South Africa

Urbanisation and a growing middle class with changing consumption patterns provide an ideal setting for supermarkets to prosper. With South Africa's urban population approaching 60 per cent, supermarket retail chains are now important players in the agro-food sector. Over the last two decades they have begun to purchase produce from in-house sourcing companies who buy mainly from large-scale farmers. Together with the strict requirements of the retail groups, this makes it difficult for small-scale farmers to supply these retailers. This paper highlights the market changes that could continue to exclude small producers from mass consumer markets. It uses a case study to show how small farmers can be integrated into the urban retail market and, using evidence from this study, proposes a number of strategies to help them participate in the mainstream agro-food supply chains and an innovative model for including them while maintaining profitable business operations.     

Analysis of the animal feed to poultry value chain in Zambia

ABSTRACT

Rapidly growing populations, urbanisation and income are together triggering increased demand for high-value agricultural commodities across Southern Africa with scope for gains from trade and regional integration. The poultry sector in Zambia, in particular, has witnessed a rapid growth triggering increased investments and competition, benefiting the consumers. Despite this growth, the sector still faces huge challenges hindering the development of the animal feed, feed input and poultry production sub-sectors. This has limited the extent of participation of the Zambian poultry industry in the regional market due to uncompetitive prices. This study analyses the animal feed to poultry value chain in Zambia, focusing on the industry capabilities with a view to enhancing its competitiveness and production for the regional market. Enhancing value chain capabilities will require improvements in productivity and production of key poultry inputs, and addressing transportation inefficiencies and coordination among governments.     

我国大型连锁超市市场营销问题与对策——以保定市为例

国内各大型连锁超市经营雷同化日趋严重,彼此之间缺乏明显的差异。随着我国零售业的对外开放,国外的大型连锁超市蜂拥而入,使原本就十分激烈的竞争变得异常惨烈,很多的大型连锁超市已经陷入了生存的困境,因此,寻求新的发展出路已经成为了我国大型连锁超市必须考虑的重要问题。为能促进大型连锁超市快速、健康地发展,提高大型连锁超市的市场竞争力,文章对我国大型连锁超市市场营销存在的问题进行了分析,并提出了相应的解决方案。     

Do Supermarkets Change the Food Policy Agenda?

Policy makers want supermarkets to serve the interests of important groups in society, especially small farmers and the owners of traditional, small-scale food wholesale and retail facilities. But consumer issues are also important, including “internalizing” the full environmental costs of production and marketing, and helping supermarkets be part of the solution to the health problems generated by an “affluent” diet and lifestyle. This paper places the supermarket debate in the broader evolution of food policy analysis, a framework for integrating household, market, macro, and trade issues as they affect hunger and poverty. Increasingly, supermarkets provide the institutional linkages across these issues.     

Determinants and Effects of Small Chilli Farmers’ Participation in Supermarket Channels in Indonesia

The number of supermarkets in Indonesia is increasing, but small-scale farmers may be at risk of being excluded from these emerging marketing channels. Drawing on data from our survey of 600 small-scale chilli farmers in West Java, we examine the factors that influence farmers’ decisions to participate in supermarket channels. We use a treatment-effect model to examine the effect of supermarket participation on income, while controlling for the possibility of selectivity bias. Our results indicate that participation in the supermarket channel significantly increases farm income, even after we controlled for differences in education, chilli-farming experience, storage-house ownership, and the distance from the farmer's house to a bitumen road.     

Kenyan Supermarkets, Emerging Middle-Class Horticultural Farmers, and Employment Impacts on the Rural Poor

Are the rural poor excluded from supermarket channels in developing countries? We analyzed the farm-level impact of supermarket growth on Kenya’s horticulture sector, which is dominated by smallholders. The analysis reveals a threshold capital vector for entrance in the supermarket channel, which hinders small, rainfed farms. Most of the growers participating as direct suppliers to that channel are a new group of medium-sized, fast-growing commercial farms managed by well-educated farmers and focused on the domestic supermarket market. Their heavy reliance on hired workers benefits small farmers via the labor market.     

大型外资超市滥用市场优势地位的法律规制

针对大型外资超市滥用市场优势地位越来越严重的情况,近年来我国采取了积极的规制措施,并主要集中于法律规制、行政规制,而地方政府的规制以及行业规制起到了补充作用。但是,大型外资超市依然以各种方式滥用市场优势地位,零供矛盾没有得到彻底解决。为了增强规制效果,建议增强《反垄断法》的可操作性,完善《反不正当竞争法》,制定统一的《零售商供应商公平交易法》,发挥行业协会等非政府组织的积极作用。     

中部崛起下的武汉超市企业发展战略研究

在实施中部崛起政策的大背景下,作为全国大城市社会零售商品总额排名第六位的武汉市,其超级市场企业如何应对国外大型超市的进入,成为理论界与企业界关注的重要研究课题之一。本文概括了武汉超市的发展状况,分析了其与跨国超市之间的差距,并提出了相关的发展战略。     

Resource-based industrialisation in Southern Africa: Domestic policies,corporate strategies and regional dynamics

ABSTRACT

This article analyses policies and strategies adopted by Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe in order to develop linkage industries from the mineral sector. Whilst Southern Africa has a strongly integrated regional value chain for equipment and services related to mining, linkage development strategies in the three countries under examination have been formulated within narrow domestic frameworks. The evidence suggests that the success or failure of a resource-based industrialisation approach is country and sector specific, requiring the deployment of different and appropriately tailored policy instruments. Our research uncovered important cross-country variations in terms of opportunities created by specific mineral commodities, ambition and scope of industrial and linkage development strategies, and institutional capabilities to ensure enforcement and coherence with other policies.     

农村连锁超市饱和度研究

对农村连锁超市饱和度进行准确判断,是零售企业向农村市场扩张,实现农村零售网点合理布局的依据。文章运用农村连锁超市饱和指数法,明确了超市零售设施规模对农村超市扩张决策的影响关系;并进一步运用农村连锁超市的凯莉动态相对指标法,确定了农村连锁超市企业市场份额的最高增速点X0和最高市场份额点X1。     

Tomato Farmers and Modernising Value Chains in Indonesia

The tomato value chain in Indonesia has transformed in the last two decades. We assess this transformation here, focusing on small tomato farmers in West Java and the determinants of their market-channel choices (as well as the technology correlates of those choices). These farmers sell to traditional village traders, urban and modern wholesalers, and supermarkets, and they have all invested heavily in irrigation and rely on external inputs. We find differences among farmers selling to different market channels. To wit, non-land assets—especially irrigation—are important to farmers participating in the supermarket, or modern, channel, but farm size affects modern-channel participation only in high-level commercial zones (zones dense in infrastructure and near highways). We also find that modern-channel farmers earn more profit than farmers in other channels but do not necessarily use chemicals more intensively. Yet hardly any farmers sell graded tomatoes; the main ‘capture of rents’ goes to specialised and modernising wholesalers.     

基于低碳经济视角的大型超市逆向物流管理研究

大型超市逆向物流包括消费者逆向物流、门店逆向物流和配送中心逆向物流。低碳经济背景下大型连锁超市逆向物流的战略价值,体现为能够增强战略竞争优势和市场价值,能够提高和改善客户满意度,能够有效整合连锁超市内部资源,有助于改善企业形象和公共关系。从供应链协调整合、逆向物流运作系统构建、逆向物流信息系统构建三个方面研究低碳经济背景下大型连锁超市逆向物流体系的构建。     

Assessing opportunities and constraints related to different models for supplying wind turbines to the South African wind energy industry

We explore the opportunities and constraints in the development of a localised wind energy industry in South Africa by analysing four wind energy projects representing different models of wind turbine production as suggested by Lewis and Wiser. We find that each model has strategic challenges and opportunities, and that particularly in the early growth stage of the industry the ‘turbine assembly’ model (with low levels of local content) has important risk and financing advantages. With regard to broader socio-economic impacts, however, we confirm the expectation that the ‘full turbine manufacturing’ model (with high levels of local content) has a significantly higher job creation potential. In terms of resulting policy implications, we support local content requirements, but emphasise the need for a strategic, phased approach to the development of industry clusters, with support not only to power producers and manufacturers, but also their domestic suppliers.     

供应商战略性细分管理研究

供应商对企业经营绩效具有重要作用。供应商管理历来是企业管理的重要组成部分。目前,结合企业实践对供应商管理的研究比较少。借鉴营销管理中的市场细分理论,本文提出从战略角度对供应商进行细分,并针对不同的细分供应商,应用不同的管理方式进行管理,以达到企业绩效最优。     

Teachers’ unions and industrial action in South African primary schools: Exploring their impacts on learning

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates a disruption hypothesis that student learning is lost as a direct consequence of teacher strike action in South Africa. At face value estimates from a within-student across-subject analysis suggest that teacher strike participation negatively affects learning for students in the poorest three quarters of schools. Strike action also limits access to nutrition as school closures prevent student participation in daily school feeding programmes. However, despite controlling for student and school level factors that may drive teacher selection into strike participation, unobserved teacher characteristics continue to bias estimates. Assuming that selection on observable characteristics can tell us something about selection on unobservable characteristics, there is an implied negative selection of teachers into strike participation.     

Who’s Who in Global Value Chains? A Weighted Network Approach

This paper represents global value chains (GVCs) as weighted networks of foreign value added in exports, which allows for the identification of the specific roles of countries and for the quantification of their relative importance over time. A major structural change occurred in the beginning of the century as GVCs steadily turned into global networks, amid an unprecedented growth of value-added flows and the rise of China as a major player. First-order network metrics highlight the vital but also distinct roles of Germany, the US, China and Japan in the international organisation of production. Germany is very relevant both as a user and as a supplier of foreign inputs, whilst the US acts mostly as a supplier of value added to other countries. Second-order properties of networks shed light on the complex architecture of GVCs, notably in terms of cyclical triangular relationships. Germany’s GVCs mostly root in direct relationships, whilst Japanese ones typically involve more than two countries.     

社区超市的生存优势和经营策略研究

社区超市是建在家门口的商店,是介于大型综合超市和便利店之间的一种商业业态。由于独特的地理位置,社区超市有着与众不同的经营优势和特征。文章从社区超市的生存发展角度,分析了社区超市的几大生存优势,结合我国的国情对社区超市的经营策略进行了研究,并从经营时间、商品、价格、服务、品牌等方面提出了相应的对策和建议。     

Institutions and participation in global value chains: Evidence from belt and road initiative

The “One Belt and One Road” (OBOR) initiative proposed by China aims to promote highly efficient resource allocation, deep regional integration, and extension of global value chains (GVCs). The main challenges faced by OBOR include large variations in regional institutions and a high degree of political instability among OBOR countries. This paper examines the linkage between regional institutions and GVC participation. First, we show that OBOR countries have much weaker institutions and less GVC participation than non-OBOR countries. Second, we find that institutions play important roles in GVC participation in both OBOR and non-OBOR countries. Improved regulatory quality, political stability, government effectiveness, and rule of law can significantly promote GVC participation in institutionally sensitive industries. Finally, a firm-level analysis that is based on the World Bank's Enterprise Survey Data indicates that better quality local institutions encourage firms to participate in GVCs.     

Urban Shopping Patterns in Indonesia and Their Implications for Small Farmers

In developing countries, the expansion of supermarkets and other modern food retailers has raised concerns about the potential impact on traditional retailers and fruit and vegetable farmers. Will small farmers, in particular, be squeezed out of this growing, remunerative market by the quality standards imposed by supermarkets? In an attempt to answer this question, we analyse data from a stratified random sample of 1,180 urban households in Indonesia. We find that only a small share of fruits and vegetables are purchased from modern outlets, even among high-income urban households. On the basis of the relation between income and shopping patterns in our data, we project that even after 15 years of income growth, supermarkets will account for less than 40% of urban food spending. The impact of supermarket standards on small farmers may be less dramatic than has been feared.