Tag Archives: Vietnam

Ugandan seed distributors aren’t adulterating seeds, it’s probably a problem of handling and storage

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This is from a new paper by Alicia Barriga and Nathan Fiala in World Development:

Results from the tests showed very high levels of DNA similarity (above 98%) and good performance in general, but highly variable quality in terms of the ability of the seed to germinate under standard conditions. We do not see differences in average outcomes across the distribution levels, though variation in seed performance does increase further down the supply chain.

ugandaseedsThe results of the tests point to potentially important issues for the quality of seeds. The variation in germination suggests that buying a random bag of seeds in this particular distribution chain can matter a lot for farmer’s production. The high rate of seed similarity suggests that the main concern among policy makers and researchers, that sellers add inert or low-quality material to the seeds, is likely not the case, at least for the maize sector in the districts we study. However, given the remoteness of these districts and the lack of any oversight in these areas, we believe the results are likely a lower bound for the country as a whole.

The supply chain analysis suggests that the quality of seed does not deteriorate along the supply chain. The quality is the same, on average, across all types of suppliers after leaving the breeders. However, we observe high variation of seeds’ performance results on germination, moisture, and vigor, suggesting that results are more consistent with issues of mishandling and poor storage of seeds, possibly related to temperature or quality controls, rather than sellers purposefully adulterating seeds. Variation on these indicators is usually associated with mishandling during transportation and storage.

As the authors note in the paper, African governments and their external donors have put a lot of effort in “certification and labeling so as to reduce the possibility of adulteration by downstream sellers”. Obviously, e-labels and systems of verifying seed authenticity in the fight against adulteration are important. But equally important is an understanding of how the seed distribution system works. And that is one of the major contributions of this paper. Corruption is not always the problem.

Read the whole paper here.

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Interestingly, Uganda bests both Kenya and Tanzania on productivity in the cereal sector (I made the graph using FAO data). Despite starting off with relatively lower productivity and having gone through civil conflict beginning in the late 1970s, Uganda has since around 2007 clearly separated itself from both Kenya and Tanzania (and appears to have plateaued). Productivity in Kenya peaked in the early 1980s and has pretty much stagnated since. Tanzania’s figures appear to be trending upwards having collapsed in the early 2000s. There is likely an element of soil quality and general aridity involved in these trends. According to the FAO, Kenya and Tanzania use fertilizer at significantly higher rates than Uganda. For comparison, cereal yield in Vietnam is about 2.7 times higher than in Uganda.

 

What if China had conquered the world?

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Reading Howard French’s fantastic book on how China sees itself in the world got me thinking about this question. Here’s an excerpt from the chapter on Vietnam:

While China failed in its ultimate task of once and for all wiping out Vietnamese culture and along with it any notions of separateness, during its twenty-year occupation (1407-1427) it succeeded to a degree that any of the world’s present-day nation builders could only envy in grafting onto Vietnam a new ruling culture based on neo-Confucianism, intensive agriculture and rigorous and energetic bureaucracy. It was this culture of governance that ironically allowed the Vietnamese state to render its own society much more “legible,” to borrow the language of the Yale Political Scientist James C. Scott, meaning enabling it to administer, police and especially tax its population more thoroughly.

Everything Under the Heavens is a must-read not only for those interested in comparative colonialism, but also for those who want to make sense of how China’s rise this time round might shape world history. It also a great primer on understanding East Asian inter-state relations. Being a journalist, French offers a great balance between extensive research and accessibility to audiences of varying familiarity with the subject matter.

Highly recommended.

A slightly different story on administrative unit proliferation

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The emerging stylized story about administrative unit proliferation in the developing world is that it is often a result of political machinations by national and local elites intent on creating new units for marginalized groups and for the ruler to buy votes; and that such proliferation only serves to re-centralize actual power — see for example these really cool papers by Grossman and Lewis (on the specific case of Uganda), Mai Hasssan (on the use of new districts to buy votes in Kenya) and Kimuli Kasara (also on how heightened electoral competition after 1992 accelerated the process of administrative unit proliferation in Kenya).

But there is also a slightly different, and in some ways complementary, story.

Regarding the creation of new provinces in Vietnam, Edmund Malesky notes:Screen Shot 2015-07-09 at 12.30.20 PM

The timing of provincial separations after Party Congresses, the dominance of Non-state Provinces despite little change in national output, and the decisive political outcome of this dominance at the 2001 Party Congress bolster the argument that reformers had an explicit electoral strategy in calling for the splitting of provinces in 1996. By creating new Non-state Provinces, modernizers believed they could influence the outcomes of future CCOM debates about
grand strategies and smaller NA debates about implementation of these new policies. While rhetorically it was easier to argue for new provinces based on efficiency, it would seem they were studying maps of
district economic composition and creating new reform-oriented
provinces out of SOE-dominated areas.

The key difference between administrative unit proliferation in Vietnam and Uganda (and Kenya before 2010) is the electoral connection (an aspect that, in my view, is missing in the current literature). Because the provinces had votes (in party congresses and plenums), the creation of new Vietnamese provinces had significant implications for the de facto distribution of power in both Hanoi and the periphery (and in Malesky’s story, made reforms possible). Provincial splits in Vietman were therefore not just about patronage and marginalized groups, but also about securing a win for the reformist bloc at the centre.

This might not be the case in countries where new units can be created without altering the balance of power in the party congress or parliament — either because such action does not create new electoral districts; or the president gets to nominate or can credibly influence the election of the representatives of the new districts. For this reason, I would predict that Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa (whose subnational units are electorally significant and have a fair amount of fiscal autonomy) are unlikely to create new primary subnational units willy-nilly.

Political Engineering and Defense Contracts in the United States

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Here’s a paragraph from James Fallows’ great piece on the American Military in The Atlantic:

Screen Shot 2015-01-03 at 12.09.53 PM

Source locations for parts of the F-35 (more than 90 Congressional districts)

A $10 million parts contract in one congressional district builds one representative’s support. Two $5 million contracts in two districts are twice as good, and better all around would be three contracts at $3 million apiece. Every participant in the military-contracting process understands this logic: the prime contractors who parcel out supply deals around the country, the military’s procurement officers who divide work among contractors, the politicians who vote up or down on the results. In the late 1980s, a coalition of so-called cheap hawks in Congress tried to cut funding for the B-2 bomber. They got nowhere after it became clear that work for the project was being carried out in 46 states and no fewer than 383 congressional districts (of 435 total). The difference between then and now is that in 1989, Northrop, the main contractor for the plane, had to release previously classified data to demonstrate how broadly the dollars were being spread.

More here.

Quick hits

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If I were the president of the DRC, I would be seriously researching how Charlemagne did it (the medieval King ruled over a land mass the size of the DRC), how Brazil did it (their green revolution was a success) and how Vietnam is doing it (some people call it little China). I can bet my grad school stipend for next quarter that the younger Kabila has no local brain trust (who needs one if the Brussels boys can jet in and out of Kinshasa with copious amounts of “advice” on development??). The lets-just-stay-afloat-with-foreign-aid paradigm that informs governance in Africa is a guarantee that 50 years from now Africa will still be the poster child for bad governance and socio-economic underdevelopment.

Also, I just discovered a blog by The Bank’s chief economist for Africa region. Check it out (via Blattman).

Lastly, Wronging Rights has a post on the series of post by Texas in Africa on how social science works.