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In Search of a Development Paradigm: Two Tales of a City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Gene Ellis
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics, University of Denver, Colorado1

Extract

One of the most pressing problems confronting development planners in Africa is how to increase local supplies of fuelwood. As explained in a donorcommissioned report at the begining of the current decade:

1. Not nearly enough trees are being planted to meet future rural and urban needs: during the next 20 years, ‘annual fuelwood planting will need to increase by about 15 times over current levels’, and even this assumes optimistically that ‘up to a fourth of future fuelwood demand will be met by conservation or… alternative fuels’. In fact, negligible resources are being devoted to establishing new ‘plantations of any significant size’.2

Type
Africana
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

Page 677 note 1 This study was aided by a Faculty Research Grant from the University of Denver, and was discussed at the Workshop on Energy, Forestry, and Environment held by the U.S. Agency for International Development Bureau for Africa, Nairobi, 6–11 December 1981.

Page 677 note 2 Frances A. Gulick, ‘Suggested Approaches for CADA Initiatives in Fuelwood Production’, U.S. A.I.D./Africa, Washington, D.C., 18 October 1980, p. iii, citing the World Bank's Renewable Energy Task Force survey of needs in 10 countries (Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Gabon, Mali, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Burkina Faso, then known as Upper Volta), where fuelwood accounts for 90 per cent or more of all energy consumed.

Page 677 note 3 Ibid. p. iv.

Page 677 note 4 Ibid. p. 14. According to James W. Howe and Frances A. Gulick, ‘Firewood and Other Renewable Energies in Africa: a progress report on the problem and the response’, Overseas Development Council, 31 March 1980, p. 21: ‘A recent case history from a Kougougou (Upper Volta) regional development project, assisted by FAO/UNDP funds, illustrates the fact that, without manpower, transport and gasoline, foresters, however well motivated, cannot be expected to service and supervise even small-scale planting programs successfully.’

Page 677 note 5 Gulick, op. cit. p. 12.

Page 678 note 1 Fred Weber, ‘A Reforestation Project in Algeria: what it may mean to future forestry and conservation activities in sub-Saharan Africa’, U.S. A.I.D./Africa, 12 February 1981. In Brazil, where the Government had chosen to create plantations rather then follow the path of community forestry, the public subsidy alone ranged from $1,235 to $2,025 per hectare, thereby giving this plantation project ‘the dubious distinction of being one of the most costly man-made forests in the world’, according to ‘The Socio-Economic Context of Fuelwood Use in Small Rural Communities’, U.S. A.I.D. Evaluation Special Study No. 1, August 1980, p. 113.

Page 678 note 2 Gulick, op. cit. p. 13.

Page 678 note 3 The term ‘contagion’ refers to the spread of technologies by emulation alone, and was first used in this sense, as far as I know, by William Gross, then head of Volunteers for International Technical Assistance.

Page 678 note 4 The information in this section is based on the following: Pankhurst, Richard, Economic History of Ethiopia, 1800–1935 (Addis Ababa, 1968), pp. 247, 705, and 707;Google Scholar the National Academy of Science's Ethiopian case-study, Firewood Crops: shrub and tree species for energy (Washington, D.C., 1981);Google ScholarHorvath, Ronald J., ‘Addis Ababa's Eucalptus Forest’, in The Journal of Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa), 6, 1968, pp. 1319; and from limited observations during field-work in 1970–1 and 1975.Google Scholar

Page 679 note 1 There is evidence that all developed countries, whether socialist or capitalist, have found it necessary to provide public funds for agricultural research and development; apart from the fact that the initial costs are so high, the flow of information cannot readily be privatised to create sufficient incentives. For a discussion of the dilemma which the production and utilisation of knowledge creates for private enterprise, see Johnson, Harry G., ‘The Efficiency and Welfare Implications of the International Corporation’, in Kindleberger, Charles P. (ed.), The International Corporation: a symposium (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 3556.Google Scholar

Page 679 note 2 Horath, loc. cit. p. 17.

Page 679 note 3 Jacobs, Jane, The Economy of Cities (New York, 1970), ch. 1.Google Scholar

Page 679 note 4 See Hoben, Allan, Land Tenure among the Amhara of Ethiopia: the dynamics of cognatic descent (Chicago and London, 1973),Google Scholar and Bauer, Dan Franz, Household and Society in Ethiopia (East Lansing, 1977), for an examination of several land-tenure systems and their impact on innovation.Google Scholar

Page 679 note 5 Firewood Crops, p. 180.

Page 681 note 1 For a description of the technology and uses of remote sensing, see Haack, Barry N., ‘Landsat: a tool for development’, in World Development (Oxford), 10, 10, 1982, pp. 899909. My thanks go to the Regional Remote Sensing Facility in Nairobi which provided the photographs.Google Scholar

Page 682 note 1 Ethiopian National Energy Authority, ‘Biomass Fuels Supply and Marketing Review. Interim Report on Biomass Fuels Production, End-Use Efficiency, and Sales Mechanisms’, Addis Ababa, April 1988, written by Robert A. Chronowski, under the direction of Lemma Eshetu of E.N.E.A. Although the authors clearly note that their findings are less than statistically robust because of the logistical diffculties encountered during the three-week survey, I have taken the view that the reported evidence is worth summarising.

Page 682 note 2 Ibid. p. 1.

Page 682 note 3 Ibid. p. 26.

Page 682 note 4 Ibid. p. 15.

Page 682 note 5 Ibid. p. 9. The price series upon which the data are based were taken from the World Bank and from the C.E.P.P.E. Addis Household Fuel Survey, Addis Ababa, 1986.

Page 682 note 6 Ethiopian National Energy Authority, op. cit. pp. 3 and 13–14.

Page 683 note 1 Ibid. pp. 3 and 10.

Page 683 note 2 Ibid. p. 6, my emphasis.