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Because agriculture is the economic backbone of most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Ethiopia, any meaningful sustainable development program in the continent must therefore be anchored in the sector. The concept for this study on agribusiness indicators was based on the vital role that agribusiness plays in agricultural development. The study focuses on agribusiness indicators (ABI) to identify and isolate the determining factors that lead private investors and other stakeholders to participate in agribusiness and to engage in discourse regarding its development. A more thorough empirical understanding of these determinants in turn can usefully inform the types of policy reforms that can promote agribusiness in Africa. In Ethiopia, the ABI team focused on the following success factors: a) access to critical factors of production of certified hybrid seeds, fertilizer, and mechanical input; b) enabling environment in terms of access of credit and transportation; and c) government expenditures on agriculture, and trade and regulatory policies that currently influence the agribusiness environment. The factors and indicators that the research team has included in this study are not exhaustive but rather are intended to serve as a pilot that could be scaled up to include more variables and countries. The findings of the study revealed the dominant role of the government in the seed and fertilizer markets. In the seed sub-sector, perennial shortages of both basic and certified seeds have greatly limited agricultural productivity in Ethiopia.

An iconic New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, has just been squired around the Middle East by the commander of Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for operations in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and North Africa. Now, don't get me wrong, the military and American journalists have cultivated symbiotic relations since the Civil War. It's in the nature of things. The press needs access, and the military needs public and congressional support. Quality time shared by the top U.S.military officer for this volatile region and the top foreign affairs columnist for the nation's top broadsheet makes sense.Among their whistlestops were U.S. installations in Syria. About 900 American troops are there, distributed in penny packets among seven bases. Some of these protect oil fields that supply U.S.-backed Kurdish authorities; others are in the far northeast, where they assist Kurdish units, help secure and supply the cluster of camps that house ISIS prisoners and their families and continue to hunt ISIS fighters; and still others in the southeast, at a road junction where the Iraqi, Syrian and Jordanian borders meet. This base was set up to interdict Iranian-backed forces attempting to entrench themselves in Syria and transport supplies to Lebanon.In Friedman's recap of this visit, he explained that the importance of these U.S. deployments lay in the need to fight the terrorists over there so we would not have to fight them over here. Let's say, for the moment, that there are several other rationales for maintaining troops in Syria. Iran, for example, does seek to use Syria as a land corridor to Lebanon and the Israeli-Syrian border, from which it can carry the fight to its enemy. Iran is 1,200 kilometers from Israel, so if it wants to reach out and touch someone without using ballistic missiles, it needs to be on Israel's borders. Rendering this a bit more difficult than it might otherwise be makes a regional blow-up marginally less likely. Maintaining a garrison at the oil fields is meant to secure them from capture by either ISIS or the Assad regime, against which the U.S. maintains heavy sanctions. Reserving the oil for use by Kurds, both for sale and consumption, reflects a longstanding policy that favors Kurdish autonomy in Syria. This policy preference, which owes in part to a romanticized image of Kurds as daring fighters fending off terrorist hordes to spare the U.S. an onerous burden, also dictates the use of U.S. forces in northeast Syria as a tripwire deterrent against Turkish attempts to suppress Syrian Kurds. For many members of Congress, they seem to be something like T.E. Lawrence's Bedouin insurgents in World War I, or U.S.-backed Montagnard guerillas in the Vietnam War. For them, abandoning the Kurds to the tender mercies of Turkey, or compelling them to seek protection from the Assad government, would be immoral and shred America's reputation as a reliable ally. (See under: Munich.) Trump, marching to the beat of a different drum, pointed out that the Kurds "didn't help us in the second world war, they didn't help us with Normandy as an example… ." The U.S. role in helping local forces and NGOs manage the ISIS detention centers and refugee camps as well as the slow process of the repatriation of Iraqi detainees, is meant to contribute to Iraqi stability, in which the U.S. has a stake. The fact that these bases are magnets for attack by Iran-backed militias is arguably a factor that outweighs any of these other considerations.One can have this or that view on the validity of these rationales or the salience of these objectives for core U.S. strategic interests. If the Turks and their radical Arab militias rip into the Kurds to get at the PKK, as they have done twice already, U.S. strategic interest is unlikely to suffer very much. If ISIS fighters escape the camps in Syria, Iraqi forces with U.S. help could probably limit the threat to Iraqi stability. The U.S. installation at al-Tanf in the southeast can be bypassed by Iran-backed militias via an Assad-controlled base at al bu-Kamal, a bit northeast of al-Tanf, so the U.S. base there might have outlived its usefulness. Of course, on any given day there are about 30,000 U.S. military personnel in the region, as there have been for decades, so 900 isn't a particularly impressive number. It's a good example of limited interests served by a commensurately limited commitment. Whether to stay or go comes down to a narrow judgment call.But of all the factors to consider there is one that does not merit concern: the idea of fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here. It's a vacuous meme trotted out to defend the controversial commitment and use of forward deployed forces and creation of distant security perimeters. If you were a Briton in September 1939 facing the German juggernaut, Friedman's old chestnut would have been pretty compelling. But since World War II, its specific gravity has dissipated. During the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson defended the U.S. commitment by asserting that the countries of southeast Asia were like a row of dominos; if south Vietnam were to fall, it would tip over all its neighbors until all of Asia was communist. The problem, he explained, was that "Everything that happens in this world affects us because pretty soon it gets on our doorstep." Anyone who was politically sentient at the time was bombarded by Friedman's repurposed, shopworn epigram. Yet, the dominos never fell following the U.S. pullout and the collapse of South Vietnam; in the fullness of time, we never had to fight them over here and the only stuff on our doorstep are Amazon boxes. President George W. Bush, in a major speech at the 89th Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in 2007, declared "Our strategy is this: we will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America." But the insurgency in Iraq was created by the 2003 U.S. invasion, which decapitated the regime and destroyed the capacity of the state to manage the country's affairs, while unleashing Shi'a power and Iranian influence. This ignited a brutal Sunni insurgency carried out, in part, by tens of thousands of soldiers the U.S. threw out of their barracks and left to fend for themselves in an anarchic and violent environment. The ideology and strategy of both Shi'a and Sunni insurgents had nothing to do with al-Qaida, let alone engaging SWAT teams in Dallas, or stealing our lawn furniture, as one of my former counterterrorism colleagues put it. Their concerns were local. Al-Qaida sought to attack the great power, the "far enemy," that underpinned the "near enemy," namely the conservative monarchy ruling Arabia. Al-Qaida in Iraq, ISIS, the Mahdi Army and Iran-backed militias fought a battle for power on their turf and against an occupying army, not an expeditionary war against the U.S. homeland. The mayhem, moreover, had nothing to do with 9/11. The fact that there was never another al-Qaida attack was not because the U.S. invaded Iraq; it was because of al-Qaida's inability to follow up on its spectacular success. And that was a function of the loss of its support network in the U.S., the decimation of its top tier, and the swift tightening of security at U.S. borders. Now we are told once again that U.S. troops have to be somewhere else to prevent fighters operating in that space from coming to the United States and waging war here. The designated enemy in this case is the Islamic State, an organization that has inspired or arranged successful attacks in Europe but not in the U.S. It would be foolish to assume that no one in the organization dreams of murdering Americans in their beds. But they lack the capacity to do so and, more importantly, have urgent local goals that soak up resources, planning and organizational capacity, and face serious local constraints. There is a legitimate debate about the presence of U.S. forces in Syria. But it should be premised on the value of the real things at stake and the cost of protecting those stakes. It should not be distorted by old canards intended to inflate threats to the American homeland.

Prior to the war in Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian interests had already been deadlocked in a heated battle. But this clash wasn't being waged on the streets of Kyiv, it was being fought on K Street in Washington D.C. The combatants donned suits, not camouflage. Their targets weren't hardened military units, they were U.S. policymakers in Congress and the executive branch. Their goal wasn't total victory, it was to win hearts, minds, and, above all, votes for their cause. This was the lobbying battle before the Ukraine war. As I documented in a Quincy Institute brief, this David vs. Goliath style battle between a small, relatively low-funded, but remarkably zealous Ukrainian lobby had largely been thwarted by a multi-million dollar lobbying and PR campaign by Russian interests. But when Russian President Vladimir Putin made the disastrous decision to invade Ukraine two years ago, this Russian influence advantage in D.C. quickly evaporated. Within a week of the war's onset, U.S. sanctions effectively decimated Russia's influence in Washington, forcing a number of top lobbying and public relations firms to sever ties with their Russian clients. Since then the Ukraine lobby has been largely unopposed in its efforts to steer U.S. foreign policies related to the war. The Ukraine lobby has helped pave the way for more than $100 billion in U.S. assistance to Ukraine and meticulously crafted the media narrative to maintain U.S. public support for Ukraine's war effort.The Ukraine Lobby Since the War BeganIn the two years since the war in Ukraine began, 46 different firms or individuals have been registered under FARA to represent Ukrainian interests. This includes lobbying heavyweights like BGR Government Affairs, Hogan Lovells, and Hill & Knowlton, as well as international public relations firms like Qorvis Communications. In total, these firms have received nearly $10.92 million from Ukrainian clients since 2022, according to FARA data compiled by OpenSecrets. Just as in the year before the war — when FARA registrants reported conducting 13,541 political activities on behalf of their Ukrainian clients — the Ukraine lobby has been working feverishly since the war began. A Quincy Institute analysis of FARA records found that, since the war began, Ukrainian interests have reported doing more than 12,000 political activities on behalf of Ukrainian interests, primarily contacting Congress, the executive branch, and media outlets. By far the busiest firm working on behalf of Ukrainian interests has been Yorktown Solutions, which has represented the Federation of Employers of the Oil and Gas Industry of Ukraine, the Civil Movement For a Just Ukraine, and the Primary Trade Union Organization of State Enterprise National Nuclear Energy Generating Company, better known as "Energoatom."For just one of these clients — the Federation of Employers of the Oil and Gas Industry — Yorktown has reported doing 8,296 political activities since the war began. To put that remarkable workload in perspective, it equates to an average of more than 11 emails, phone calls, and meetings completed every day on behalf of just one client. No other foreign client registered under FARA has had more work done on their behalf in the past two years, according to a Quincy Institute analysis of FARA records.Since the war began, Yorktown hasn't hidden the fact that one of the primary objectives behind all this work is to increase U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. "We've gone from energy security to security," Daniel Vajdich, President of Yorktown Solutions, told Politico less than a month after the war began, explaining the firm's shift away from lobbying related to the Nordstream 2 pipeline and towards acquiring U.S. military assistance for Ukraine. Vajdich added that, "It is 24 hours, even when we're sleeping the phone is on, and the phone is going off, and there are phone calls from Kyiv, and there are phone calls from others here in Washington both in and out of government … We speak to the administration. We speak to Capitol Hill. We certainly speak to media as well."In addition to its Ukrainian clients, Yorktown has also been working feverishly for the Centre for a European Future, reporting more than 4,000 political activities on behalf of the Belgium based non-profit whose objectives revolve heavily around Ukraine and include, "rebuilding Ukraine," "joining NATO," and "securing compensation for the war."The Pro-Bono Push for UkraineAt just under $11 million in reported FARA spending by Ukrainian clients since the war began, the Ukraine lobby isn't funded at the level of perennial influence powerhouses in Washington, like Saudi Arabia, whose lobbying and public relations firms have received more than $70 million from the Kingdom since 2022, according to OpenSecrets. But, the actual dollar amount of spending on lobbying, public relations and the other influence efforts done on behalf of Ukrainian interests is deceptive, as many individuals, and even some of the most prominent lobbying firms in D.C., have been working for Ukraine pro-bono. In fact, of the 46 different firms and individuals that have been registered under FARA to represent Ukrainian clients, 29 have done the work for free.Working for Ukraine pro-bono became somewhat trendy in the Washington influence industry shortly after the war began. Many of the firms registered under FARA to represent Ukrainian interests for free, however, appear to have done little work on behalf of Ukrainian interests. Some reported just a handful of contacts with congressional offices on behalf of Ukraine. Another reported a "one day pro bono effort" for a Ukrainian Parliamentary Delegation to the U.S. In one infamous case, a firm registered under FARA claiming to be working pro-bono for the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations, only to deregister just days later after the ambassador publicly explained that he was not actually working with the firm. On the other hand, a number of lobbying and PR firms have done a considerable amount of work for Ukrainian interests at no charge to their clients. A Quincy Institute analysis of FARA records found that Plus Communications tops this list with nearly 3,000 political activities reported in its pro-bono work for the Ukrainian PR Army, a non-profit organization that purports to help, "global media tell the accurate story of this war through the perspectives of Ukrainian experts, authorities, and witnesses." Plus Communications' work involved pitching interviews with prominent Ukrainian officials to seemingly every mainstream U.S. media outlet, including Fox News, The Washington Post, and NPR. Another major pro-bono endeavor is being run on behalf of the Ministry of Culture and Informational Policy of Ukraine, specifically in relation to the ministry's "Advantage Ukraine Initiative," which seeks to attract international investment in Ukrainian industries, with the top choice being the defense industry. Several firms are registered under FARA to support this pro-bono initiative, including Hill & Knowlton Strategies, Ogilvy Group, and Group M. The latter has reported nearly 300 emails to major media outlets, most of which were in reference to "ad materials" for Advantage Ukraine. The firm's FARA filings show these ads include slogans like, "Davos is over. The opportunities in Ukraine have just begun," and "Imagine an investment where you get applauded by shareholders AND the public?"Group M's collaborator on the Advantage Ukraine Initiative, Ogilvy Group, is also one of several firms that have been working pro-bono for Ukraine while taking money from firms that are profiting from the Ukraine war. As Eli Clifton and I previously reported for Responsible Statecraft, Hogan Lovells, BGR Government Affairs, Mercury Public Affairs, Navigators Global, and Ogilvy Group have all done pro-bono work for Ukraine interests while also lobbying on behalf of weapons makers that could profit from the war.The Ukraine Lobby TodayWhile the size of the Ukraine lobby has decreased since the early months of the war, 18 firms are still registered under FARA to represent Ukrainian interests. Most of them are still doing the work pro-bono, and many of them remain intent on shaping U.S. foreign policy to Ukraine's favor. More so than at any time since the war began though, they're having to fend off an American public which increasingly believes the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine. How this tension pans out remains to be seen, but there is little doubt that the Ukraine lobby has all the ammunition it needs to continue winning the lobbying battle in Washington.

This is a first for Indonesia: Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH) is the only household-targeted social assistance initiative to have designed randomized impact evaluation into the initial allocation of the program. This brings three major benefits for policymakers: 1) the evidence available for evaluating the impacts of the PKH program on household welfare is extensive and sound; 2) the program design and the impact analysis design have generated additional excitement, both nationally and internationally, about the program, its goals and social assistance initiatives in general; and 3) the results and underlying data will be made publicly available, which has already spurred interest in additional evaluations that will stock the shelves of social assistance policy research libraries. PKH's success in delivering real benefits to the very poor and in changing behaviors deserves further support and encouragement. PKH's initial weaknesses in implementation and delivery deserve continuing attention and thoughtful solutions for greater effectiveness. The Government of Indonesia (GOI) plans on expanding the PKH program to as many as three million households; while it is doing so, it should continue to refine implementation, coordinate and collaborate with affiliated service providers in health, education, and local government services, and continue developing a corps of organized, enthusiastic, and skilled facilitators who can assist very poor households in achieving healthier behaviors.

Africa's growing demand for food has been met increasingly by imports from the global market. This, coupled with rising global food prices, brings ever-mounting food import bills. In addition, population growth and changing demand patterns will double demands over the next 10 years. Two key issues must be addressed: (a) establishing a consistent and stable policy environment for regional trade in fertilizers; and (b) investing in institutions that reduce the transaction costs of coordination failures. Many countries have enacted new fertilizer laws in recent years, but few have provided the resources to define and enforce regulations through standards and testing capacity. This report shows that reducing regulatory burdens on fertilizers and the consequent increase in use of fertilizers will have substantial impacts on returns to farmers, with consequent impacts on poverty. The report highlights the range of barriers to food trade in Africa along the entire value chain. The issues pertain to many ministries and agencies within government: trade, agricultural, health and safety, transport, and finance. This in turn requires a "whole of government' approach to freeing up food trade, which will require strong and effective leadership to articulate the rationale and sustain the momentum for reform. Leaders must also address the hard choices that will arise in dealing with the political economy constraints that have until now blocked the capacity of Africa to exploit its enormous potential to feed Africans.

This paper provides an overview of land reform in South Africa from 1994 to 2011, with the focus on the land redistribution. The government policies and associated implementation since 1994 have not generated expected social and economic results for a number of reasons. Even where land has been transferred, it appears to have had minimal impact on the livelihoods of beneficiaries, largely because of inappropriate project design, a lack of necessary support services and shortages of working capital, leading to widespread underutilization of land. There is no evidence to suggest that land reform has led to improvements in agricultural efficiency, income, employment or economic growth. Therefore, the current approach, based on acquisition of land through the open market, minimal support to new farmers, and bureaucratic imposition of production models loosely based on existing commercial operators, is unlikely to transform the rural economy and lift people out of poverty. The paper argues that there are two important missing aspects in the land reform program. First, there is an absence of any viable small-farmer path to development, which could enable the millions of households residing in the communal areas and on commercial farms to expand their own production and accumulate wealth and resources in an incremental manner. Making this happen would require radical restructuring of existing farm units to create family-size farms, more realistic farm planning, appropriate support from a much-reformed state agricultural service, and a much greater role for beneficiaries in the design and implementation of their own projects. Second, what is clearly missing from the governance tradition is the sustained focus on implementation, resource mobilization, and timely policy adjustment. Much more will be required for land reform program to contribute significantly to economic growth and to the redistribution of wealth and opportunities to the majority of the population.

The post-2015 development agenda is being shaped as we speak. The role of identity and identification and its importance to development outcomes places it within the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda—specifically as one of the proposed SDG targets (#16.9), but also as a key enabler of the efficacy of many other SDG targets. Although there is no one model for providing legal identity, this SDG would urge states to ensure that all have free or low-cost access to widely accepted, robust identity credentials. Regardless of the modalities to achieve it, the recognition of legal identity – together with its associated rights – is becoming a priority for governments around the world. Political will is central, and the SDGs – unwieldy as they may seem today – provide a useful reference point for accountability. But new approaches expand the horizon of what is possible, and should serve as a stimulus to development ambition. Seizing these opportunities requires strong leadership, a supportive legal framework, mobilization of financial and human resources, and – critically – the trust of each country's residents. Incentives, technology, foreign assistance and reforms will all be critical in achieving tangible results. Equally important is coordination at the global, regional and national levels, to ensure inclusive oversight and concerted global action. Support from donors and other development partners is widely diffused. It could focus more strategically on building core systems for registration and – equally important – ensuring that these extend into effective and inclusive systems to support development.

The Country Opinion Survey in Albania assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Albania perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in Albania on 1) their views regarding the general environment in Albania; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in Albania; 3) overall impressions of the WBGs effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in Albania; and 4) their perceptions of the WBGs future role in Albania.

There is a growing body of practice and literature on the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in preventing and responding to violence. There is also a lot of excitement and corresponding literature about the role of the internet in non-violent change and democratization. The use of mobile phones, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and user-generated content (UGC) like blogs and YouTube videos in the protests in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as throughout the wider middle-east and North Africa (MENA) region have shown how ICTs can complement and augment the exercise of rights to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of peaceful assembly. This literature focuses on the use of ICTs before and during conflict, for example in conflict prevention and early warning. What about the use of ICTs in post-conflict situations; after the negotiation of peace agreements? How can ICTs be used in post-conflict interventions; more specifically in post-conflict peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction and recovery? What role of can be played here by social media and user-generated content?