Talk:Value Chain Development

From microLINKS Wiki

Welcome to the discussion space. To add a comment, click on the "edit" tab, hit return a couple times after the last comment, and type away.

PLEASE SIGN your comment by using the code: ~~~~. Thanks! Copop 16:45, 1 March 2009 (EST)

For practitioners on the ground, I believe it would be helpful to have a specific link to a "tools" section. A "Tools" section could be included in the "Resources" section, making it "Resources and Tools." Within the Resources page, there could be a separate section with tools. I understand that many of the tools are found within the Resources page and other sections. However, for "on the ground" practitioners, I think it would be helpful to provide them with easier access to concrete tools.

I will preface my comments with I understand that this is a work in progress. In the main page for BEE it does mention formal and informal regulations, yet there is nothing presented on the informal regulations of VCs. The poor are excluded and marginalized often because of the existing social institutions which support their exclusion. Informal regulations can exclude people from credit and education which affects access to technology and technical assistance for product development. The formal regulations are influenced by the existing contextual social institutions. Douglas North talks about this in his work (NORTH, D.C. 1999. Understanding the process of economic change. London: The Institute of Economic Affairs; NORTH, D.C., 1998. The new institutional economics and third world development. In: HARRISS, J., HUNTER, J. & LEWIS, C. M., eds. The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development. London: Routledge, pp. 17-26--these are a couple of examples).

If the purpose of the Wiki is for people in the field to have access to information, it seems then that by not presenting the informal regulations to be as critical as the formal regulations we are saying that they are not important and thus these aspects are ignored in any VCA. There is lots of information on how gender regulates markets, we don’t have much on ethnicity, race or religion—but I think that there can be some way of presenting how to take these into consideration when doing a VCA and how these factors are also integral to how BEE functions.

The piece on BEE and conflict--does not highlight informal regulations--when in fact, conflict is known to arise out of power dynamics that originate from the social institutions within a specific context-- certain groups have access to certain resources and conflict arises because of lack of access to the resources-- of course this is a simplification and Collier does a much better job at providing more details. cheers - mary morgan

Thanks so much for your comments, Mary. We are looking into putting together a Tools section as you suggest.

And I absolutely agree with your comments on the BEE page. We have some people working on BEE now who are comfortable addressing regulatory reform, but as you say, there is so much more to the enabling (or disenabling) environment than that. This hole in the wiki is what we want to work on next -- let's talk about how we can draw on the wealth of knowledge I know you have in this area.

Warm regards - Ruth Campbell Rcampbell 23:52, 12 March 2009 (EDT)

Does anyone have links to peer-reviewed academic research on value chain development? I've heard a lot of news on value chain development from the practitioner side, but little from ivory tower academia. Anything by way of RCTs or robust evaluations on the relative return on this type of investment?

Your help appreciated!!! ~~~~ Michael149 18:24, 21 April 2009 (IST)

Value chain analysis has been a key tool in most of the analysis I have done over a very long time ... and I would very much like to see value chain analysis applied to every fund flow that is emerging from Washington and other development resources centers. We are not going to have mush sustainable socio-economic progress until there is more investment and less consumption expenditure and much more metric about the value of what gets done. My work in global health suggests there are huge fund flows and still a terrible level of disease ... with not too many people looking at the way there could be paradigm shift. What am I missing?