Posted on 12/15/2012 11:28:52 AM PST by JerseyanExile
Cereal fields in Ethiopia's Arusi-Bale plains, where the commodity exchange has facilitated trade between buyers and sellers.
While government leaders, NGOs and corporations devise strategies to churn out more food for future generations, Eleni Gabre-Madhin is taking a different approach. Concerned by a 2002 famine in her home country of Ethiopia that followed bumper crops in 2000 and 2001, the Stanford-educated economist decided it was time to go beyond food production and take a hard look at distribution.
The result? Africa's first commodity exchange. As the founder and outgoing CEO of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), Gabre-Madhin established a reliable interface for buyers and sellers to meet – an idea that has inspired other African countries to follow suit. Gabre-Madhin won the Yara award at the African Green Revolution Forum in Arusha, Tanzania, for her role in transforming Ethiopia's commodity market.
What prompted your decision to found Africa's first commodity exchange in Ethiopia? I had been doing research on grain markets and other agriculture markets in Africa for many years and, as it happened, I did my PhD on grain markets in Ethiopia. One of the things I kept seeing over and over, which I'd seen in other parts of Africa, was just how difficult it was for buyers to find sellers and sellers to find buyers, and how difficult it was to enforce the contract.
So these are all the problems in the supply chain that make us poor and make us food insecure. If people can't get grain where it's produced really efficiently to where it's needed, then you have markets that are segmented. You have pockets of surplus where prices collapse and places in other parts of the county where prices shoot up because there's a deficit and there's no grain coming in.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Wow! Africa has just caught up with the 18th century!
I am sure Willie’s bodyguard walks around with nothing.
2nd hand buzz?
Ethiopia is the only nation in all of Africa that is worth a damn.
LOL. Think a little older. There were commodities exchanges in the Roman Empire.
Posted on the wrong article. Sorry.
And before that, in the Indus Valley.
Ethiopia Ministry of Foreign Affairs establishes foreign aid
Ethiopia Offers Aid To Detroit
"We should educate and help the impoverished," said a spokesman.
" Africa's first commodity exchange "
Yeah, but better late than never. Good article.
Good, Africans solving African Problems! Its a bit 18th Century but it worked and may improve the lot of Ethiopians, maybe protect them from starvation. Good-—looking within to solve problems rather than asking for a hand out.
Somehow, the IMF will swoop in to ‘help’. There is big money to be made in the Poverty Industry. This exchange could muck it up for some entities. Go, Ethiopia, earn your success!
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