The emergence of the so-called 'Rising Powers' - including but not limited to China, India, Brazil and Russia - represents one of the key drivers of global economic and social change. The Rising Powers and Interdependent Futures network funded by the Economic and Social Research Council includes 12 research projects at ten universities across the UK that explore these ongoing changes.
Simone Corsi, Research Fellow, Dept. of Entrepreneurship, Strategy & Innovation, Lancaster University Management School and Programme Manager, Lancaster China Catalyst programme, was interviewed after presenting at a seminar hosted by the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIOIR) on 29 February 2016. Listen to his conversation with Dr. Yanchao Li here.
Stepping aside from the International Product Life Cycle Theory (Vernon, 1966) that considered advanced economies as the only loci of innovation, scholars are now looking at the growing role of emerging economies as potential sources of global innovation. Simone Corsi draws on the concept of reverse innovation (Immelt et al, 2009; Govindarajan & Ramamurti, 2011) in its common market-based definition and expands it by adding an R&D perspective, highlighting the importance of where the innovation was ideated (R) and developed (D) as determinants for a reverse innovation. A new typology of reverse innovation is then described, identifying multiple patterns of innovation where emerging economies play an important role and framing the new concept within a global innovation setting.
Recognizing China as one of the most prominent emerging economies, the seminar at MIOIR looked at how the Chinese market can influence the innovative activities of foreign MNCs and become a source for global innovation. Four case studies of foreign MNCs and R&D activities in China were presented and analyzed. These confirm an evolutionary path of foreign R&D activities in China from an exploitative to an explorative nature, although we move away from a framework where host countries affect MNCs’ subsidiaries innovation activity based on their technological richness and diversity (Almeida & Phene, 2004; Frost, 2001) stepping into a context where Chinese subsidiaries can be considered as interpreters of local market characteristics, whose inputs configure unique innovation sources. The results show how the Chinese competitive context can trigger global innovation if stimuli are properly received at both local and corporate levels.
In December 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping flew into South Africa for the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation with great fanfare. There were lots of announcements about prospective investments across Africa. Agriculture featured prominently. But what is the real story of China in Africa on the ground, beyond the hype?
As Deborah Brautigam’s investigative research has so effectively shown, the assumptions about China’s role in Africa are often not borne out in reality. The level of investment and linked aid flows are much lower than the high numbers sometimes touted; the numbers of imported Chinese workers are much lower than often suggested; the areas of land “grabbed” for investment are small compared to the vast areas identified by some.
And, as Brautigam’s recent book shows, Africa will not be feeding China or China feeding Africa anytime soon.
Reality on the ground
We set about finding out what was happening on the ground. Working with African, Chinese and European colleagues, our team investigated Chinese engagements in agriculture in four countries – Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. All have featured prominently as priorities for Chinese investment and aid.
Our just-completed project is reported in a new open access special issue of the journal World Development. So what exactly has been going on?
This proved surprisingly difficult to find out. The data on land acquisition, investment flows and aid projects is limited and confusing. It often doesn’t add up. Ghost projects are listed that never happened, and others are missed out.
Our original idea of doing a simple geomapping exercise based on available data was quickly abandoned. Instead, we had to triangulate between multiple sources to find out what was happening where.
Certainly there is a great deal going on, and the Chinese presence in Africa is important. The Chinese role in agriculture – in terms of business investment, technology transfer, demonstration efforts, training and more – is growing, and shaping perceptions.
We chose cases across the four countries to investigate in more detail. The studies aimed to explore the detail of investments, technology projects, training and development encounters more generally.
The central question we asked was: is China reshaping African agriculture?
No singular ‘Chinese model’
The Chinese Agricultural Technology Development Centres are flagship investments. There are now 23 across Africa, funded in their first phase by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce under their aid program. They are run mostly by companies, and are linked to a commercial model for training and technology demonstration and sale.
As Xiuli Xu and colleagues show, the centres’ performance very much depends on who is running them. Different provincial companies have very different characteristics, demonstrating that there is no singular “Chinese model” of development, or state-business partnership.
We also explored a number of cases of business investments in agriculture, primarily led by Chinese state-owned enterprises. Chinese development efforts mix aid with commerce, linking both provincial and central state involvement with different businesses.
For example, as Jing Gu and colleagues explain, in Xai Xai in Mozambique, the Wanbao agricultural development company from Hubei province took over 20,000 hectares on a state farm to farm rice, and develop a contract farming arrangement with surrounding farms.
It has not been easy. There have been a number of changes in company leads, disputes with local communities, and shifting alliances with local elites, as Kojo Amanor and Sergio Chichava set out.
The training of government officials is an important aspect of the Chinese engagement in Africa. More than 10,000 are trained in numerous courses in China each year, many in agriculture. This far exceeds any training initiative of any western aid programme.
Henry Tugendhat and Dawit Alemu explored the impacts of these courses, participating in training in China, and interviewing officials who had returned home to Ghana and Zimbabwe. While there have not been many immediate impacts, the longer-term building of relationships and the exertion of “soft power” diplomacy is important.
The role of informal Chinese migrants
Chinese migrants supply specialist Chinese foods to burgeoning expatriate populations.Reuters/Noor Khamis
Perhaps the most far-reaching but least understood dimension of Chinese involvement in African agriculture is the growing number of informal migrants getting involved in the agri-food sector, from farming to processing to retail to restaurants.
Seth Cook and colleagues investigated this in Ethiopia and Ghana. They discovered a range of activities: relatively few farmers, but growing investment in supplying specialist Chinese foods to burgeoning expatriate Chinese populations.
Those involved are very often migrants who came as part of Chinese government contracts, and have since established business connections and stayed, encouraging others to join them from China.
Through our work, we were able to gain a snapshot of the early stages of Chinese engagement in African agriculture. Our results show successes as well as failures. But Chinese engagement is certainly not yet at the scale sometimes assumed.
In the longer term, activities may accelerate as more opportunities open up. But China is also changing. As its economy restructures to a “new normal”, there are different demands. Food will certainly remain one, but this is not likely to come from Africa.
As a new global power, China will want to maintain business, aid and diplomatic relations with Africa, and sustaining relationships will be important. China plays the long game, and our studies were observing just the opening stages.
A new Open Access Special Issue in World Development based on our work on the changing role of China and Brazil in Africa’s agriculture is now available (links to individual articles are below, and also via here).
The work was developed under the ‘China and Brazil in African Agriculture’ project of the Future Agricultures Consortium. The project was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (grant: ES/J013420/1) under the Rising Powers and Interdependent Futures programme.
The research involved studies in Ghana, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, as well as China and Brazil. There were over 20 research collaborators involved, from Africa, China, Brazil and Europe, and it was a massively rich, if sometimes challenging, experience. Our research looked at 16 different case studies, involving a mix of agricultural investments by private and state owned enterprises, tri-lateral development cooperation efforts, technology demonstration initiatives, training programmes, as well as ‘under-the-radar’ involvement in agriculture by Chinese migrants.
There was no single story emerging, but a complex set of engagements, which contrast in important ways with existing patterns of western-led development and investment, and offer important opportunities for reflection and learning. These 8 papers (along with over 20 other Working Papers on the project website) are the result. Do download, read and send us feedback! It’s been a lot of work putting them together!
The papers examine how agricultural technologies, practices and policies travel across the world as part of investment and development cooperation. Technologies and policies always have histories, and emerge in particular social and political contexts. Yet China and Brazil both argue that theirs are perhaps especially relevant to Africa, given common agroecological conditions, and similar histories of agricultural development. We were interested in finding out how things travelled, and what happened during the journey.
Of course the transfer of technologies and policies, as we’ve long known, is not simple or linear. Assumptions are often deeply embedded (such as what a farmer is, what scale is appropriate, and how different sorts of technology are important), but they do not always translate into new contexts. Not surprisingly, despite the claims, not everything generated in Brazil and China has landed easily in Africa. There have been rejections, resistances, and so revisions and recastings; all of which highlight the importance of ‘development encounters’ and the negotiations about knowledge (and technology, practice, policy) that must go on during development cooperation – whether with a western aid agency or with Brazilian and Chinese actors.
Together, the papers show how historical experiences in Brazil and China, as well as domestic political and economic debates, affect how interventions are framed, and by whom, and so influence what technologies are chosen, which investments are funded, and who gets trained. The papers argue for a focus on the encounters on the ground, moving beyond the broader rhetoric and generic policy statements about South-South cooperation. For example, a key feature of Brazilian and Chinese engagements in African agriculture is the role of state-business relations in shaping and steering development; something that other agencies such as DFID interested in the role of the private sector, and public-private partnerships, might usefully learn from.
The special issue asks if a new paradigm for development cooperation is emerging, and argues that we must move beyond the simplistic narratives of either mutual benefit and ‘South-South’ collaboration or ‘neo-imperial’ expansion of ‘rising powers’. As the introductory paper argues, we need a more sophisticated account than this simplistic binary, and to “look at the dynamic and contested politics of engagement, as new forms of capital and technology enter African contexts”.
Do read, share and comment on the papers. We hope they will generate a debate about the role of the ‘rising powers’ in African development, and help us move towards a more nuanced appreciation and away from the rather simplistic frames that have dominated the debate to date. This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland
Scale Enterprises, Shri. Kalraj Mishra, inaugurating the conference
The Centre for Responsible Business (CRB) along with its partners organised a three-day international conference on Sustainability Standards at Hyatt Regency, New Delhi, from 18th - 20th November, 2015. With 50 partners, 23 sessions and 500 plus delegates & speakers, India and Sustainability Standards: International Dialogues and Conference 2015, was a landmark event that succeeded in achieving its goal of convening international and Indian stakeholders to initiate dialogue, build understanding, and exchange proposals centered on paths forward on sustainability across a range of industry sectors, commodities and themes. Some of the key partners of the three-day event included the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change, Government of India, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Government of India, ISEAL Alliance, UNICEF, UNDP, C&A Foundation, OECD, GIZ and Alliance for Integrity.
Dr. Bimal Arora, Chairperson, Centre for Responsible Business (CRB) setting the context for the conference said, “Sustainability standards offer the frameworks for businesses to set their sustainability agendas and provide tools to drive sustainable processes within their organization. Business community must play a proactive role and overcome challenges to take leadership roles in supporting these processes. Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) provide these guiding frameworks to businesses and complement government policies. For Standards to be credible, however, multi-stakeholder engagement is required, especially with businesses which are expected to implement these standards. Hence we found it useful to put together this platform to bring together policy makers, businesses, standard setting bodies, civil society and the academia to address challenges and design way forward for standard setting and their implementation in the Indian context.”
Dr. BimalArora, Chairperson, Centre for Responsible Business, welcoming the gathering to the 3-day conference
The conference agenda was meticulously designed and structured in three parts to enable active exchange and learning, as well as space for developing roadmaps across themes and sectors. Plenary Sessions of the conference with high profile Indian and international business leaders and policymakers and international speakers set the context on issues around the development and implementation of sustainability standards in India. A series of thematic and sector-specific Roundtables and Workshops were planned over 19th and 20th November and occupied the majority of the conference agenda. These roundtables and workshops were convened by interested international and Indian organizations and standard setters, as conference partners and co-hosts, to focus on specific issues, opportunities, challenges, and needs for the given sector, theme and topic. The final section of the conference returned to plenary and offered an opportunity to share, learn about and engage on the outcomes of the roundtables and workshops and set the agenda for way forward to be followed through in 2016 and beyond, and take stock in a conference annually.
Chief Guest of the Inaugural function, Hon’ble Minister Shri. Kalraj Mishra lauded CRB and Bimal Arora for the pro-active role being played by the organization in defining the contours of the discussions on sustainability standards in India. The Minister further mentioned that he would extend all possible support to the organization in its efforts to scale up business sustainability in India. Guest of Honour, Hon’ble Minister Shri. Suresh P Prabhu said, “When we talk about sustainability, it means different things to different people and the concept of sustainability has a very important social dimension. Standards should be an ambition that eventually can be codified into something that can be applied in the Indian context.”
Perhaps for the first time, sustainability standards have been perceived and deliberated as a journey to achieving sustainability goals, rather than mere compliances. The perception has moved beyond a mere check-box compliance-based approach. The eminent speakers emphasized the importance of sustainability standards in India and highlighted how India is being continuously watched by the World due to its key role in the global supply chain.
Roundtable on Inidan Multinationationals and Sustainability,
Co-hosted by University of Manchester
University of Manchester and CRB co-hosted a dedicated roundtable on Indian Multinationals and Sustainability during the conference and invited presentations by and conversations with Indian Multinationals on their internationalisation strategies and engagement with sustainability standards and collaborative sustainability initiatives in India and globally. The AMBS and Global Development Institute (GDI) at the University of Manchester are jointly leading an ambitious and exciting research project around globalizing firms from emerging economies and their engagement with Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) and Collaborative Sustainability Initiatives (CSI). This research project is part of the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) larger research programme, ‘Rising Powers and Integrated Futures’ (see http://www.risingpowers.net). The session convened by Prof Rudolf Sinkovics from the Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS) and moderated by Prof. Pawan Budhwar from Aston Business School, saw a presentations from senior sustainability managers from companies like Essar, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL), Tata Sustainability Group (TSG) and Ambuja Cement.
The Centre for Responsible Business (CRB) provided a historic opportunity: to promote pathways to sustainability in India and globally. Company executives gathered with government officials and civil society leaders along with Indian and international standard setters, policymakers, businesses and civil society organizations, to look at how sustainability standards can be adopted, implemented or adapted to promote better environmental and social practices in India, including in the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) world as part of the global production networks and value chains.
Scholars from various disciplines have been pondering about how to grasp the impact of business on society. Most people would agree that it is desirable for business to contribute to wider society, but how should such a contribution be defined? Is it donating toys to a local kindergarten? Or are we talking about multinationals transferring technology to a developing country through foreign investment? Or about Nike and Levis auditing working conditions in their supply chain? To clarify the definition, we suggest that the extent to which companies help alleviating social constraints may be a useful way to think about business’ contribution to society.
Such a focus on addressing social constraints may help to clarify discussions across a number of disciplinary areas. Fields as diverse as international business, global value chains, social entrepreneurship, or corporate social responsibility all address the business-society relation from different angles. International business often looks at business’ social impact in terms of spill-over effects of foreign direct investment on the domestic economy, or in terms of corporate social responsibility initiatives helping acceptance of multinationals entering a country. Experts on global value chains describe how social upgrading can improve working conditions and income of workers. The social entrepreneurship literature discusses mutual value creation in bottom of the pyramid markets, enabling poor consumers and firms to benefit at the same time. Discussions on business and human rights ask whether corporate social responsibility initiatives go beyond improving a company’s image and can actually result in “doing well by doing good”. All would like to achieve a positive impact of business on society, but how exactly such social value creation can be defined stays unclear.
We argue that ideally a positive contribution of business to society consists of promoting social and economic human rights. This follows Todaro & Smith’s (2011) core values of development: sustenance, self-esteem and freedom from servitude. To see how such a contribution can be reached, it may be helpful to see society as a complex adaptive system, drawing on complexity science and systems theory. From such a perspective, a single constraint may keep the system from functioning and prevent it from reaching certain development outcomes we would like to see. Then, for businesses to contribute to the outcome of human rights, they need to address the social constraint(s) that are the root cause(s) holding back development in a specific community or society. Only addressing a symptom of the underlying social constraints will not really help because it will not change anything about how the system as a whole functions. For example, handing out free food to homeless people may help to alleviate hunger momentarily, but does nothing to address the underlying root cause or social constraint that makes these people live on the streets in the first place. Hence, such an action will not create lasting value for society.
How can a focus on underlying social constraints look like in practice? In our fieldwork in India we met a social entrepreneur who managed to address the root cause of poverty in a rural community. In this case, many young people in the community were living in poverty even though they had high levels of education. Social norms obliged graduates to return to their families in the village after finishing their studies in the city, even though there were no adequate jobs available for them at home. Recognising the social constraint of labour immobility among young people, the social entrepreneur founded a business process outsourcing company based in that rural area. The business model was based on providing services remotely via the internet, while drawing on the local pool of educated but immobile labour in the community. As a result, the underlying root cause of poverty, i.e. young people being unable to move, was addressed and the business contributed to realising subsistence and self-esteem needs in the community.
Summing up, we propose that seeing social value creation in terms of alleviating social constraints is a helpful starting point for comprehending how business can contribute to realising human rights in society. Further research will be needed to explore how such social constraints can best be operationalised, and how social and economic human rights can be broken down further for the purpose of this discussion.
For further details, see:
Sinkovics, Noemi, Rudolf R Sinkovics, Samia Hoque, and Laszlo Czaban (2015), "A reconceptualization of social value creation as social constraint alleviation," Critical Perspectives on International Business, 11 (3/4), 340-363. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/cpoib-06-2014-0036
Mozambique has one of Africa’s lowest electrification rates. The national grid reached just 23% of the population in 2012. Around 68% of Mozambicans live in widely dispersed rural areas making extending access to electricity difficult. The national grid infrastructure is extremely limited and increasingly struggling to cope with rising demand.
Around 80% of the country’s residents rely on biomass resources like wood, charcoal and leaves as their sole energy source for cooking and heating. Ironically, this widespread energy poverty is happening against the backdrop of plentiful natural resources. In the past decade, significant coal and gas resources have been discovered.
The wealth generated by this extractives boom represents a significant opportunity for Mozambique. It could provide the chance to address long standing challenges around limited electricity access and widespread energy poverty. Electricity needs to be sustainable, accessible and affordable to all. It should not be the sole preserve of industrial consumers or those in urban areas.
The politics and economics of electrification
The Mozambican state has increasingly prioritised the extension of the grid to rural spaces. Yet this effort has left the country with a critically under-maintained network. There is also a heavy reliance on a single energy source, hydro power. Administrative, transmission and distribution losses – totalling 27% of power generated – exacerbate the country’s increasingly acute energy shortage.
Mozambique’s electricity quantity and quality deficit could emerge as the biggest constraint to continued economic growth. Rural electrification projects are thus heavily backed by donors who see them as a promoter and enabler of economic development. What is rarely discussed with clarity is who and how many will benefit from rural electrification.
Complex financial and technical considerations are involved when extending a grid. This includes the cost and difficulty of extending the network across vast distances and varied landscapes. Yet it is also very much a political and economic process. It involves choices around tariffs, subsidies and which areas to electrify and when. Such decisions have an impact leading up to local and national elections.
Electrification has thus become a source of business for private companies connected to Mozambique’s elites. Many of these firms have been awarded contracts without competition or with little transparency.
Decentralisation and renewable energy off-grid
In the past few years the state has been increasingly supportive of decentralised energy projects. This is seen as the most effective way to extend rural electricity access given the high costs and complexity of grid extension. These initiatives include mini-grids supplied by solar energy or micro hydro-power.
A mini-hydro system in Milange district, Zambézia province.Joshua Kirshner
Such measures are viewed as a small-scale solution with potentially positive distributional and environmental effects. There is little expectation that renewable energy sources alone will universalise electricity access. Or eliminate energy poverty for that matter.
Since the early 2000s, renewable – particularly solar – energy has been included in projects using localised mini-grids or standalone systems. These projects seek to provide electricity for administrative centres like hospitals, clinics and schools. This process has been led by the state’s National Energy Fund.
Our research suggests that this model has so far succeeded in expanding electricity access in far-flung rural areas. The problem is that it is often undertaken with little capacity building. Local communities are also not always consulted properly or given a chance to participate in planning and implementation.
The fund’s approach is typically top-down. It relies heavily on state procurement and donor funding. It’s focused on the centralised delivery of electricity. It also focuses on connecting rural institutions. Typically it has often been more concerned with raising the number of connections than with understanding how energy matters in people’s daily lives.
Democratising energy access
There is a pressing need to democratise energy access using off-grid, decentralised power generation. This would enable communities to have greater control and sovereignty over energy. The country also needs to reform and develop its key energy institutions.
The challenge is not the predominantly technical one of expanding generating capacity. This is how it is often presented by state agencies and donors. Rather, it lies in developing and coordinating state institutions and orienting policy to deliver electricity to those who need it most. Open public debate about what and who energy is ultimately for is a necessity.
Our research highlights the value of community engagement in designing and developing rural energy projects. This approach helps to foster greater local ownership. It will also empower ordinary Mozambicans and impart important skills. This is an essential step in ensuring sustainable energy access for all.
By Rory Horner In a new article published via Territory, Politics, Governance, Rory Horner reviews emerging evidence of the growth of South-South trade and argues for the need to move beyond win-win notions from development cooperation to highlight the commercial realities and very uneven geographies and development outcomes associated with this new economic landscape.
The new geography of trade More than a decade ago, UNCTAD declared that “a new geography of trade is emerging and reshaping the global economic landscape”. In 2012, a milestone was passed with the value of trade between developing countries (South-South trade) overtaking developing country exports to the global North.
Various indicators confirm this shifting geography as demonstrated in the below table. Claims such as those outlined in the UNDP’s The Rise of the South or the increasingly widespread notion of an “Africa Rising” are reflected in the growing share of global GDP generated in the global South. South-South trade is growing significantly, while the geography of demand is also changing – with import demand increasing rapidly within the global South. Notably, these trends are led by the rising power economies of Brazil, India, China and South Africa.
Summary indicators of the shifting geography of income and trade in the world economy:
Then
2012
South % of global GDP
21.7 (1980)
35.8
Export as % of GDP for Southern countries
16.7 (1981)
29.5
South % of world exports
29.6 (1980)
44.7
South-South % of global trade
11.7 (1995)
25.5
North-North % of global trade
51.2 (1995)
33.9
Source: Horner (2015, 7)
South-South trade raises the exciting prospect of moving beyond the more unequal and hierarchical North-South trade relationship. Specifically, South-South trade has been heralded as “vital for development” (OECD, 2006) and such trade integration viewed as “key to rebalancing the global economy” (UNCTAD, 2011). Much of the excitement in relation to South-South trade draws on “win-win” ideas of horizontal, more equal interaction drawn from the arena of development cooperation. Given that North-South trade has been characterised by high levels of inequality and hierarchy, the implicit suggestion is that South-South may offer at least some better opportunities.
Many of these optimistic viewpoints are somewhat speculative, however. It is questionable whether and how the intended “win-win” notions of South-South development cooperation translate into the commercial realities of South-South trade. The now quite significant body of research on China, and to a lesser extent India, in Africa suggests that while trading relationships may overlap with some of the intended aims of South-South cooperation, the associated impacts are not necessarily win-win. New hierarchies can characterise these relationships, leading to some suggestions of forms of neo-colonialism.
An emerging agenda on South-South value chains and production networks Research on global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks (GPNs) can move beyond some more macro-scale, geopolitical interpretations to take an actor-centric approach to understand the variegated, region and industry-specific development implications of trade. However, such research has, to date, largely had a North-South orientation, focussing on those firms and farms in the global South participating in chains and networks mostly governed by lead firms from the global North.
Emerging evidence on South-South value chains also highlights two competing possibilities. As summarised in the table below, nascent empirical evidence has charted the potential for easier access to South-South markets in comparison to those of the global North, but also the new competition and unevenness within the South.
Emerging evidence on South-South value chains and production networks:
Pros: More accessible markets
Cons: Greater competition
Volume/price
Greater volumes
Lower prices, more competitors
Standards
Lower requirements
Lower requirements may be short-lived
Upgrading
Learning and functional upgrading opportunity
Uneven capabilities among firms to benefit
Dependency
Diversification of end-market risk
Potential new dependency
Source: Author’s construction
Governance of, and upgrading within, South-South value chains and production networks are two issues which deserve particular attention. In relation to private governance, new lead firms from the global South are playing increasingly prominent roles in coordinating trade. With firms from outside the global North comprising an increasing share of the world’s largest firms, it is necessary to understand the forms of governance these firms exert, including through private standards requirements. Public governance, a less focussed-on topic within GVC and GPN research, is also crucial to understand in terms of the varying capacity of state policymakers to shape South-South GVCs and GPNs. Upgrading opportunities deserves attention, including in relation to the possibilities arising from different end markets and the associated strategies required. With increasing heterogeneity within the South, the differential possibilities for upgrading, but also the possibilities for downgrading and negative outcomes from South-South trade warrant attention.
In June 2015, I organised an early career conference on this theme of “Global production networks and new contours of development” at the University of Manchester. We had 20 presentations from early career scholars moving beyond the North-South orientation of much research on GVCs and GPNs.
In two ongoing projects, I am now researching more deeply the nature of South-South production networks and their development implications, through an investigation of the economic, social and political relationships that constitute India’s “pharmacy to the developing world”. In South Africa, funded by a British Academy small research grant, I am exploring the various engagements of Indian firms and their local development implications. In East Africa (specifically, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania and with the support of a Regional Studies Association early career grant), I am investigating the challenges for local pharmaceutical production and its viability vis-à-vis competition from Indian supply. The initial stages of these projects confirm comparatively lower entry barriers in such production networks, and find quite diverse implications for local stakeholders – with key differences, for example, between local industrial and consumer interests. Such outcomes fall in various positions along the spectrum between the two polar extremes of the discourse on South-South relations – as “win-win” development cooperation or neocolonialism.
Ultimately, new research can move beyond the win-win notions often drawn from an earlier era of South-South cooperation to unveil the commercial realities, varied outcomes and very uneven geographies of expanding South-South trade.
