Tanzanian Land Grabbing Essay Example for Free

Tanzanian Land Grabbing Essay Land grabbing is a becoming a well-known issue worldwide that is occurring persistently in Africa. Foreign investors are coming in and buying large amounts of property for personal profit. These foreign investors come from a large global range of geographic location, which includes the United States. Due to the variety of investors major differences are seen between the current situations in Tanzania compared to the situation in Kenya (â€Å"Klopp:2000: 1†). Kenya’s land grabbing is primarily focused on public market places and national forests whereas Tanzanian land grabbing is focused on the agriculture sector for Tanzania. Tanzania is looking for large-scale corporations funded by foreign investors to buy huge portions of land in order to vacate small local farmers from producing. In recent years over four million acres of land have been requested by foreign investors for both Agrofuel and food production in Tanzania. The issue becomes controversial because the government believes they are benefitting from foreign investors by lowering food prices and stimulating the economy; while it is also harmful because it exiles small local famers from their land preventing their production of crops and condensing the profits into commercial farming and personal benefit. Foreign investors and the government both have economic benefits from land grabbing. There are multiple foreign investors that have acquired land from Tanzania, such as Sun Biofuels from United Kingdom, Swedish company scenery, and Agricola from the United States. Recently the media has been primarily interested in focusing their attention on foreign investors in Agrisol. Agrisol is an Iowa based Investment Company that specializes in Agribusiness. The ultimate goal for Agrisol is to find â€Å"underdeveloped global locators that have attractive natural resources but lack in agriculture technology, farming techniques, equipment, and management†(Dan Rather Report: 2012). The three perspectives interest sights in Agrisol are Lugutu in Kigoma Province (25,000 ha), Katumba (80,317) ha, and Mishamo (219,800 ha) (Dan Rather Report 2012). Agrisol has recently purchased the land of a refugee camp in Tanzania and established agreement with the Tanzanian government that the Burundian refugees will be forced to relocate before Agrisol will start its large commercial farming. The Burundian refugees range from a total of 160,000 people and they have been living there for decades, there only mechanisms of survival is living off the land and the displacement from their farms is detrimental to their survival. Agrisol sees this agreement as positive because they purchased the land for 25 cents per acre and is supported by the government because of the potential creation of jobs and ultimately lower food prices (Dan Rather Report: 2012). The theoretical idea that is most beneficial for the government in terms of the transformation of Tanzania’s economy is to transform the country by lowering food prices and transitioning to capitalist wage labor economy. The government wants to start large-scale commercial farming in order to stop small local farmers who do not benefit the government from free riding off the land. The Tanzanian government wants to eradicate the small local farmers so that they can move out of the rural areas into the cities in order to get an education and transform their country into a capitalist economy. The Tanzanian people are skeptical of this so-called economic transformation because the foreign investors are untruthful about â€Å"boosting food security and creating jobs are totally unacceptable because there is no evidence to suggest that it would work for the people of Tanzania or for the people who have been displaced from their land. The Tanzanian National Business Council took the initiative to start developing public-private partnerships, which has been a steady reoccurrence and â€Å"is a classic case of colonialism, and is theft of the highest order† (2012, â€Å"US Firm†). The public-private partnership has the goal of creating future aid to Agrisol in three different types of production: larger-scale cultivation, such as food grains, beef and poultry production, and soy and maize production. Agrisol is on the track to launch a one hundred million dollar investment in Tanzania over the next ten years. The stated aim of the program is to â€Å"help stabilize local food supplies, create jobs and economic opportunity for local populations, and spur investment in local infrastructure improvements†(2012,â€Å"US Firm†). The government supports the idea that the partnership with Agrisol will be a strong foundation to establish a more successful capitalistic economy. The major issue occurring from land grabbing deals is the impact occurring farmers and markets. Local farmers are unable to compete with the technology that large-scale commercial farms have access to. The small local farmers do most of the work with basic technology which is drastically less advanced, some local farmers even go back to using their hands for planting seeds (2012, â€Å"Tanzanian National Website†). These local farmers have surrounded themselves in an area where they can survive off the land and be able to sell the rest of their surplus crops to the local market allowing them to have a sustainable income. With large-scale commercial farming being implemented into the economy, these local markets will be out of business. The government’s agreement with Agrisol, can be contradicted because it states that an exporting license seems to infer with the promise of consistent supply of food to the Tanzanian citizens. The life of the small local farmers has been disregarded and the government is uninterested in how to help them survivor. The agreement allows Agrisol be able to obtain a guarantee from the government for an exporting license that allows the continuous production of food from Tanzania even through Tanzania itself could be in a possible economic deficit and have lack of food supply for local citizens. Large scale farming in Tanzania has also caused a high risk for potential environmental issues to arise. The most significant negative factor to the environment is the over usage of the land which makes the soil unfertile and able to grow crops. In the past this occurred with the UK based company, Sun Biofuels, through their growth of Jatrohpha. The company ultimately went bankrupt and lost all of their money while in the long run the Tanzania people did not benefit at all. The government â€Å"role of state machinery (laws, institutions, resources) has changed from protection of majority small producers interests (as in 1970 and 80’s) to facilitation of the few elite and foreign companies to acquire land from communities†(Ruhiye: 2012: â€Å"Farmlandgrab. org). Sembuli Masasa is a father of seven children, who has been farming in Katumba for over forty years helps run a small nursery plant for their neighborhood, growing a range of crops from peanuts to pineapples. If US investors secure this land he and his seven children will have to move and start a new life with only $200. His nursery produced 40% of food to the district, without this nursery their neighborhood will no longer have enough food to survive and survival will be a struggle for the entire surrounding community (Dan Rather Report: 2012). Foreign investors hope that these farmers will abandon their previous lifestyle and stop supporting local markets to work for huge commercial farmers that pay minimal wage and have excessive working hours. When farmers started to work on investors plantations it decreased food production on village farms and that led to food shortages, which actually increased food prices instead of causing the predicted decrease. Regions of land then become a food deficit with no production and the citizens can then no longer afford food and their health and chances of survival becomes an increasingly higher risk. (Ruhiye: 2012: â€Å"Farmlandgrab. org†) The history of foreign investors in Tanzania is an unfortunate reality for the citizens. The people who have been living in these areas are being seeked out by foreign investors pushes them out and allows the investors to take over not only financially but also physically. The increase of large-scale commercial farming creates potential profits of $275million dollars annually, but the benefits only go to the individual private investor rather than the entire country. Even though the government is making small revenue from the deal it is not worth putting small local famers and Tanzanian locals out of their homes, which they have lived there all their life. The people are in poverty and can no longer live off the land to survive; exiling them from their land will only cause food security and chaos because they have no where to go and no other labor skills other then agriculturally based ones. These so called refugees have been apart of Tanzania much longer than these huge private investors and the government should be protecting the people of the land not exiling them from their homes and communities for a marginal profit.

Objectives of Economic Growth and Development Essay -- Essays Papers

Objectives of Economic Growth and Development Economic growth is defined by, among other things, material capital formation, human capital formation and the creation of innovation. Put another way, economic growth is determined by the amounts and types of capital and labor that are invested, and how they are utilized for production. The objective of economic growth through economic policy is not necessarily GDP or GNP maximization but maybe enhancing and improving quality of life or other values that cannot be measured by GDP. If we limit our outlook to economic growth itself, the questions of what to assume as the objective of economic growth and how to measure it is decided by people. It is possible and desirable, to have a scheme wherein issues that are not easy to quantify, such as quality of life, are taken into account when policy choices are prepared and decisions carried out. The idea here is only that no matter what kind of economic society one visualizes, the issues of investment of capital and available resources are of extreme importance. This is to say while the objective of economic policy is improving the welfare of citizens, it will primarily be dependent on resource investment and productivity, no matter how that improvement may be defined. Whether looking at GDP or quality of life, different levels of attainment have been achieved from nation to nation. The enormous cross-country differences in economic development and growth have led to research interest in the determinants of economic growth. Three main competing explanations exist with regards to stunted economic development and growth. The first explanation centers on the role of increased international trade. The basic idea here is that an ... ..., from the objectives of the people that live within, to its geographic location and resource holds, to the level of economic prosperity and involvement it attains, and must be treated as such. References Acemoglu, Daron (2003): Root Causes, Finance and Development quarterly magazine. Vol. 40 #2. June, 2003.(Washington:IMF) Barro, R.J. (1991): Economic Growth in a cross section of Countries, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 106 (May). Frankel, Jeffrey A., and David Romer (1999): Does Trade Cause Growth? American Economic Review, vol. 89. Rodrik, Dani and Subramanian, Arvind (2003): The Primacy of Institutions, Finance and Development quarterly Magazine. Vol 40 #2. June, 2003.(Washington:IMF) Sachs, Jeffrey (2003): Institutions Matter, but Not for Everything, Finance and Development quarterly Magazine. Vol 40 #2. June, 2003. (Washington:IMF)

Active Citizenship Coursework

This coursework is all about being an active citizen, and what it takes to be one. I will be giving an example of an activity in which I was being an active citizen. Then I will be showing how I have been an active Citizen. Brief Details of the Activity From late 2007 to the early months of 2008, I was taking part in a programme of activities known as the Duke of Edinburgh's award (D of E), at the silver level. This involved me carrying out work in different forms of activities with the aim of completing set objectives, as well as planning and training for an expedition by my D of E group to cover 14 miles in 2 days by foot. The activities context The role of other people/planning The D of E award required a lot of planning spread out over different aspects. Below I will explain the layers of planning required in order for me to have successfully completed my D of E. The first level would be organising the instructors. The instructors would have to be trained adequately in order to assist the participants. There are different areas in which they would have to be trained – they would have to have knowledge about the objectives which are required in order for participants to complete the award. Furthermore, if they area assisting with an expedition, they would have to have an even greater knowledge about what is required to complete the objective successfully (such as knowing about map reading or tents). All this training is important for them to be able to help us plan our D of E successfully. As we meet up regularly to check on the progress of our D of E, the instructors will be there to see if we are on target to achieve our set objectives, and their input can be important for us to have our D of E planned. With instructors being trained adequately, the next stage of other peoples planning would be my peers When we take part in the D of E award, we also have to take part in an expedition. In order for the expedition to be successful, a lot of different work will be needed to be carried out before we set out on our expedition. Firstly, the group needs to create a planned route that we set out on, and this requires full participation from all the group's members. After the route has been created, the next aim would be to organise where the camping location would be. Part of the team will be allocated the job of locating possible areas for the location. After possible locations are found, the group has to come together to make a decision on the best camping place, based on location, facilities (such as showers) and costs. Finally, after all the details are agreed on by the group, the instructors have to make sure the route they would take out would be feasible, based on the factors of its distance, contours (up/down hill), or if the route is safe to undertake. After the instructors have accepted the route, they will have to submit the route to the head D of E offices. This is required for the group to have their route validated, as well as make the personnel undertaking the award eligible for the insurance required to do the expedition. This final stage of the planning required lots of paperwork to certify the route to meet the criteria required, such as organising the insurance for the group. [improvement – possibly choose skills I have not already undertaken] What I have done for the award There is a large area of work which I have done in order for me to have achieved the award. My first step towards achieving the award is to sort out my activities I will be undertaking to meet the set objectives of the D of E – the skills, service and physical sections. In my skills service, I had the aim to encourage the discovery and development of practical and social skills and personal interests. I decided to play the piano for my skills section. Choosing to have piano lessons for my skills section was handy, as I already played the piano. I found there were lots of benefits I had when I undertook piano for my skills. It helped me a lot to manage my time, as playing the piano wasn't just about piano lessons, but also find the time to practice. For my service section, I decided to help the Bronze D of E group – the group that were starting doing their D of E for the first time. I helped them forwards in achieving their D of E, especially preparing them for their expedition, giving them advice or skills on map reading, setting up tents, lighting stoves (which could potentially be a hazardous task), and what to bring in your rucksack. I found that doing this voluntary work for my service was really enjoyable, as well as making me an active citizen by supporting and helping others in their goals. Finally, for my physical section, I decided to choose tennis lessons. I feel that choosing tennis for my physical recreation was a good choice, as it was something new, and it gave me a challenge. At the beginning, my tennis was not that good, but after a few months of playing, my tennis has improved. I thoroughly enjoyed taking out those activities, it provided me with an enjoyable, challenging and rewarding programme of personal developments, which has improved my character, given me more self-confidence, and given me a sense of responsibility. What taking part means to me, and what I have learnt Taking part in the D of E means a lot to me. It means that I have achieved a lot personally, and have more confidence in myself. I didn't believe that it was possible for me to walk 14 miles in 3 days, carrying a 25kg rucksack on my back, but I have proved to myself that it is possible. Taking part has given me a range of experiences that I can learn from and improve. One of the experiences I have taken on board is for me to plan prior the routes I take – not just in an expedition, but in life. In one situation, I was stranded on a steep scree face, which I could not climb up. I was map reading, and I took a wrong route, and ended up slipping down a steep hill. I eventually managed to get back up to the top by changing my approach to the situation, but it was a scary experience, unable to crawl back up the hill. I have learnt that your major decisions should be made as soon as they can. Another lesson I have learnt whilst on the expedition is that if my approach to a problem, I need to change it in order to successfully achieve my goals. With this knowledge I have gained, if I were to encounter a similar situation like that one, or if I may encounter another one whilst doing my Gold D of E very soon, I would change my approach to find a solution, such as instead of me trying to climb back up, I could climb safely down and find a rendezvous point for my group. Another situation my group faced was right at the end, after walking around 13 miles, we thought we were in the right place for meeting the instructors, but we found out that we were lost. In this situation, we were very demoralized, exhausted and close to tears. After using the GPS, we found we were about another 2 miles from where we were meant to be. We had to co-ordinate the GPS reference with our OS map, and found out a new route we would have to take. Our legs were so tired, and we were cold, but we all decided to keep each other in good moral so we at least had the mental state to make it. Finally, about another half hour later, we made it to the end, as a group. After this experience, I have learnt that you don't have to make things harder then they are, and you have to make sure that the whole group is fine, because if just one person doesn't want to participate, then it could jeopardize the efforts from the rest of the team. Here we had to make sure that everyone was fine and was willing to carry on walking – otherwise if we didn't arrive back as a group, then they would have failed us for not sticking together, and we would have to re-do our entire expedition. If on my Gold D of E, or anywhere in my life I am working with a group, I have learnt to make sure that everyone in the group is ok, otherwise we won't be as productive as if they are working Problems suffered whilst undertaking the D of E When undertaking any D of E activity on any level, there are always going to be problems. The most common problems suffered were when my group was undertaking the expedition. As the expedition requires a lot of a person, both physically and mentally, it means that you have to prepare yourself; but however much you try to anticipate those problems, some problems which can not be anticipated may happen. One common example of this is when doing an expedition. You can anticipate the fact that there is a large amount of walking, but you can't anticipate the exhaustion you feel if you don't regularly walk that distance.

Understanding Owner vs. Parent in Delphi Applications

Every time you place a panel on a form and a button on that panel you make an invisible connection. The Form becomes the owner of the Button, and the Panel is set to be its parent. Every Delphi component has an Owner property. The Owner takes care of freeing the owned components when it is being freed. Similar, but different, the Parent property indicates the component that contains the child component. Parent Parent refers to the component that another component is contained in, such as TForm, TGroupBox or a TPanel. If one control (parent) contains others, the contained controls are child controls of the parent. Parent determines how the component is displayed. For example, the Left and Top properties are all relative to the Parent. The Parent property can be assigned and changed during run-time. Not all components have the Parent. Many forms do not have a Parent. For example, forms that appear directly on the Windows desktop have Parent set to nil. A components HasParent method returns a boolean value indicating whether or not the component has been assigned a parent. We use the Parent property to get or set the parent of a control. For example, place two panels (Panel1, Panel2) on a form and place one button (Button1) on the first panel (Panel1). This sets Buttons Parent property to Panel1. Button1.Parent : Panel2; If you place the above code in the OnClick event for the second Panel, when you click Panel2 the button jumps from Panel1 to Panel2: Panel1 is no longer the Parent for the Button. When you want to create a TButton at run-time, it is important that we remember to assign a parent - the control that contains the button. For a component to be visible, it must have a parent to display itself within. ParentThis and ParentThat If you select a button at design time and look at the Object Inspector youll notice several Parent-aware properties. The ParentFont, for example, indicates whether the Font used for the Buttons caption is the same as the one used for the Buttons parent (in the previous example: Panel1). If ParentFont is True for all Buttons on a Panel, changing the panel’s Font property to Bold causes all Buttons caption on the Panel to use that (bold) font. Controls Property All components that share the same Parent are available as part of the Controls property of that Parent. For example, Controls may be used to iterate over all the children of the windowed control. The next piece of code can be used to hide all the contained components on Panel1: for ii : 0 to Panel1.ControlCount - 1 do   Ã‚  Panel1.Controls[ii].Visible : false; Tricking Tricks Windowed controls have three basic characteristics: they can receive the input focus, they use system resources, and they can be parents to other controls. For example, the Button component is a windowed control and cannot be the parent to some other component - you cant place another component on it. The thing is that Delphi hides this feature from us. An example is the hidden possibility for a TStatusBar to have some components like TProgressBar on it. Ownership First, note that a Form is the overall Owner of any components that reside on it (positioned on the form at design-time). This means that when a form is destroyed, all the components on the form are also destroyed. For example, if we have an application with more that one form when we call the Free or Release method for a form object, we do not have to worry about explicitly freeing all of the objects on that form—because the form is the owner of all its components. Every component we create, at design or run time, must be owned by another component. The owner of a component—the value of its Owner property—is determined by a parameter passed to the Create constructor when the component is created. The only other way to re-assign the Owner is using the InsertComponent/RemoveComponent methods during run-time. By default, a form owns all components on it and is in turn owned by the Application. When we use the keyword Self as the parameter for the Create method—the object we are creating is owned by the class that the method is contained in—which is usually a Delphi form. If on the other hand, we make another component (not the form) the owner of the component, then we are making that component responsible for disposing of the object when it is destroyed. As like any other Delphi component, custom made TFindFile component can be created, used and destroyed at run time. To create, use and free a TFindFile component at run, you can use the next code snippet: uses FindFile;...var FFile : TFindFile;procedure TForm1.InitializeData;begin //form (Self) is the Owner of the component   //there is no Parent since this   //is an unvisible component.   FFile : TFindFile.Create(Self) ;   ... end; Note: Since the FFile is created with an owner (Form1), we dont need to do anything to free the component—it will be freed when the owner is destroyed. Components Property All components that share the same Owner are available as part of the Components property of that Owner. The following procedure is used to clear all the Edit components that are on the form: procedure ClearEdits(AForm: TForm) ;var   Ã‚  ii : Integer; begin   Ã‚  for ii : 0 to AForm.ComponentCount-1 do   Ã‚  if (AForm.Components[ii] is TEdit) then TEdit(AForm.Components[ii]).Text : ;end; Orphans Some controls (such as ActiveX controls) are contained in non-VCL windows rather than in a parent control. For these controls, the value of Parent is nil and the ParentWindow property specifies the non-VCL parent window. Setting ParentWindow moves the control so that it is contained in the specified window. ParentWindow is set automatically when a control is created using the CreateParented method. The truth is that in most cases you do not need to care about Parents and Owners, but when it comes to OOP and component development or when you want to take Delphi one step forward the statements in this article will help you to take that step faster.