AUN spearheads Adamawa Peace Council

I am copying an email sent me by the school about a Community Peace Council that brought together Islamic and Christian leaders with government, security, and academic representatives to condemn the recent violence. Among the initiatives they are putting forward is a "Yola Day" celebration, originally scheduled for tomorrow but now postponed for the governorship election. Alhaji Joda, quoted therein, is the Chairman of AUN Board of Directors, among many other notable positions and achievements. The email follows:

A peace-building council, a fresh initiative of the American University of Nigeria to restore communal harmony in Adamawa State, was unfolded in Yola on Tuesday, January 10. Tagged Community Peace Council, the government-backed body comprises the leadership of various interest groups.

The path-breaking meeting was convened at the instance of the AUN board chair Ahmed Joda and the University’s President Margee Ensign following last week’s unprecedented marring of the Adamawa State capital’s longstanding reputation as a bastion of peace in Nigeria’s northeast.

In attendance were religious leaders, business men and government representatives from across the state, including representatives of the Lamido Adamawa, Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) as well as those of the Christian Association of Nigeria.  Others are representatives of the Nigeria Police Force, State Security Service, Muslim-Christian Forum, the Muslim Council and the traders’ associations.

These groups jointly denounced the violent attacks in the Adamawa towns of Mubi and Jimeta, especially as the capital Yola has been reputed for peaceful coexistence from time immemorial. They also called for the culprits to be brought to book.

One week later in Jimeta

One week after the shooting in Yola and on the 4th day of the fuel subsidy strike, the Yola-Jimeta area is remarkably quiet. My family went shopping and saw that there were far fewer vehicles on the road, many shops were closed - in some cases whole streets of shops gated and locked up - and the main market itself was quieter than usual, though there still a decent amount of traffic around the stalls. It was very strange to see so little activity.

I carefully wrote down the prices of everything we bought and noted that nothing had gone up significantly. The small pouch of water that in other cities had doubled or trebled in price was still the same N5 as ever. Our huge block of mozzarella cheese was even down N500 since last time.

There were two big differences. Faro Water, the local bottling plant owned by AUN Founder Atiku Abubakar, has joined the strike, so there were no refill water jugs. One shop did still have cartons of water bottles we could buy.

Second, a couple key intersections now sport dedicated police searching every car. Each motorcyclist had to stop, dismount, and walk their bike through. Pedestrians passed with their hands in the air. Each car had to show what was in the trunk and sometimes answer questions. I may post some of it later. Most of the travellers, and our driver, laughed at most of it.

The road to the church where the shooting took place is blocked to all traffic.

Perfectly Competitive Markets get kinda boring

This semester has been hectic enough that I haven't been able to spend much time exploring the Jimeta Modern Market, where "modern" means that it's the newer location for the bazaar. So for fun and Christmas preparation, Econolad and I took a few hours yesterday to wander the stalls, find a few more gifts, and soak up some not-on-campus life.

I was very surprised to discover that the wonderful variegated kaleidoscope of humanity at the bazaar gets rather repetitive after only a short while. The market consists of several dozen virtually identical copies of the same atomistic sellers with virtually identical products. It's a perfectly competitive market. Haggling mechanism notwithstanding, I can get bananas or cloth or whatever at about the same price no matter what stall I go to, and often without haggling. One potato vendor offered me a basket for N1000 and I just walked on. His neighbor hailed me and offered N800. Had I haggled with the first vendor, I could have gotten the same price, but because we're in a nice competitive environment I didn't even have to go to that kind of effort. Price taking behavior indeed!

While great for economic theory, it made rather quickly for a very bland shopping experience. Stall after stall selling the same things they were selling on the next row over or even the next stall over gets boring. There are a small handful of unique shops - the Cake House with high quality baking goods, the Babies World with baby necessities, two of the mass of "gift shops" that actually have children's toys - and everyone else is a virtual copy of the others.

Big Bag of Africa: Agriculture and Millennium Villages

A new paper is out that finds almost zero impact from the Millennium Villages Project. Wanjala and Muradian surveyed Kenyan MVP recipients and their non-recipient neighbors in the district and found that while "the project caused a 70% increase in agricultural productivity among the treated households, tending to increase household income, it also caused less diversification of household economic activity into profitable non-farm employment, tending to decrease household income." To say Clemens cheers would not do his sentiments justice, but Blattman certainly has a more skeptical take on the paper. He shows that there may be a problem with their evaluation strategy, effectively matching away the most important gains. If so, then "MVs actually raise incomes by 10% and assets by a third." The cordial debate between Clemens and Blattman on the latter's blog is impressive and worth reading. (HT: The .Plan that got it from MR, who got it from CGD, which is where I ought to have read it in the first place.)

Record heat in Zimbabwe killed several hundred livestock recently due to lack of water and good grazing land. Climate change is of course suspected to have contributed. The difficulty is in identifying how many cattle would have died had temperatures been just 1 degree Celsius less, or how much more likely this event was as a result of climate change.

In Nigeria, there are increasing tensions between cattle-herders and farmers in Abia as cattle are reported to have destroyed crops worth millions of Naira (tens of thousands of US dollars). Note, the article has a heavy pro-farmer bias.

Closer to my home, a new national government program in Adamawa State hopes to increase farmer yields by 300% with improved varieties of sorghum. The project is led by Prof. Babtunde Obilana, who plans that the government will buy more of the sorghum to use for its school feeding program.

Meanwhile, the LDS Church has a third stake in Port Harcourt. A stake is a group of congregations, and this means that church membership in and around Port Harcourt has grown by around 50% since 2002 when the last stake was created. It is very likely that new stakes will also be formed in Benin City, where the three current stakes have grown to some of the largest in the Church worldwide and could easily be split into 5-6 stakes.

Mozambique's national statistics arm has a new report showing that 99.9% of their agriculture is for subsistence only.

Botswana's government tries to make sure that government subsidies don't go to farms that are not being actively used, a process called black listing. This article discusses blacklisting figures for the last few years and the costs involved.

Supply and Demand in the Jimeta Market

In defining demand curves and supply curves both for my principles and intermediate microeconomics students, the phrase I have consistently used goes something like this: You tell me what the price is, I will tell you how much I demand/supply. That's just the way I think about it. I go to a store or a merchant, ask the price, and decide how much I am willing to buy at that price. You make me a wage offer, I decide roughly how much to work.

Now we haggle over price and I still have the same model in mind: we agree on a price, and then I decide how much to buy. If the price is high, I will buy less from you than if the price we agree on is low. I had a very unfortunate debate on this with a broiler chicken merchant a few weeks ago. We settled on a price and I told him I wanted 7 chickens. His English wasn't very good and thought I was haggling to get the price down another 400 Naira. Anyway, I was only allowed to purchase one, which greatly confused me.

The Lovely and Gracious, however, has a different strategy that is proving to be much more effective. Thankfully, because I've been snowed under in grading work, she's the one who's been doing the shopping. She and the merchant start haggling over price, then she tells them just how much she wants to buy. Impressed by learning we are willing to buy more than one, they are then willing to lower the price a little more, saying with a smile, "You will come and buy all your _____ from me, yes?" The meat guy, the green bean guy, the banana guy, they're all getting to know her lovely (and gracious) face, and to give better prices for regular customers.

Lit in Review: Nigerian Agriculture 2

Birol and many coauthors presented a paper a year ago on the place of poultry in African livelihoods. More specifically, they are "Investigating the Role of Poultry in Livelihoods and the Impact of HPAI on Livelihoods Outcomes in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria." That is, what would happen to Africans who raise chickens if their flocks were hit by a Highly Pathogenic bird flu?

Most policies that deal with bird flu focus on the supply side problem (replacing the value of lost birds). "According to the records of the World Bank-funded Avian Influenza Control Program, between February 2007 and January 2008, N623,077,880 (US$4,215,683) has been paid to compensate farmers whose birds were culled." They point that there is also a demand side: less demand for the remaining birds whether or not HPAI actually happens when people are afraid it might happen. Even households with no sick birds lost more than two-thirds of their poultry income from the first outbreak in 2006. 75% of poultry farmers either bought no new birds or left the industry,

HPAI is "endemic" in Nigeria, and with Ghana on the migratory route, it has also had three outbreaks. However, because they find that poor people in Nigeria use a variety of livelihoods strategies, even a bad outbreak of HPAI won't affect them much in their total portfolio. Among their policy recommendations is to help increase livelihood strategy diversity - give people more opportunities to earn money.

However, I would point out that one of the reasons they pursue diverse livelihoods strategies is because of the risk involved in trusting in any one activity. They are unable to access better (more productive, more efficient, more remunerative) production strategies because something like HPAI would wipe them out. This keeps average incomes lower and perpetuates poverty and low mobility. Steps to reduce the uncertainty of any activity they already use would make it more attractive and reduce their loss aversion.

I was surprised at the Jimeta modern market this Saturday. I went to the corner where the broiler chickens are and spoke to a poultry seller. I asked him for seven of his nine chickens so my family would be able to get some food storage together. He refused to sell me more than one. It took some time and discussion before he realized that I was not trying to buy his one broiler for only N700 ("No, I want 7") and for me to realize that he would only sell me one for N1120. This being the first time I had ventured out to buy my own chicken, I don't know how much of a pattern this is. Had my Hausa or his English been better, I might have made some headway in understanding what was going on.

Some statistics:

Some food prices in Yola

Right now, the official exchange rate between Naira (Neye-rah) and US Dollars is around 150, and that is the number I'm going to use to translate prices here. I have been mildly surprised to find remarkably steady prices (over a 3 week period, granted) when I buy things from different vendors who will haggle.

6-7 oranges is $1.33 in the modern market and outside of the expat stores and from some random vendor along the roadside.

A loaf of bread is $1.10 with anyone I've talked to. I forget what oranges cost in the US, but that's less than half the price of a loaf of bread, and it's really good bread. It holds up well, it's soft, it's sweet [my Lovely and Gracious does not always appreciate that sweetness], and often it's a bit larger than what they offer in the States.

Half a watermelon is $2.67. A rather small cabbage is $0.67; a more normal one is $1.00.

Then there are the items in the expat stores:

A small jar of peanut butter (Skippy) is $3.33, a touch expensive, but a large jar is a shocking $12.

Cans of peaches or pears are $2 each. These two foods are Econolad's staples at the moment, so we're very familiar with the price.

Given we're in an area with a high percentage of Muslims, pork products are not widely to be found. A tin of ham costs $4.67. You can also find Spam, but I don't remember the price off the top.

Tuna fish is either $1.33 or $2 depending on the can's brand.

Corned beef is $3.33 or $6 depending on the can's brand.

That, of course, is not counting the box of expired instant mashed potatoes for $8.

Thai rice (110 pound bag) at $0.50/pound

We were worried we would have no cheese, but the first day I found an enormous block of slightly sharp cheddar for a mere $56.

Today I Saw

Yesterday I walked from the university to the club and back, and today I walked to Luka's market from home and back. I am slowly realizing that, while I am expected to greet every male I come across -- even people on motorcycles nod or wave -- I really oughtn't greet the women on my own initiative. I am also discovering that I'm not very polite here yet: I have yet to learn to say "You are welcome" when greeting someone, even at my own doorstep.

Yesterday I saw a man sleeping on his motorcycle. I was impressed with the balance required.

Today I saw 10 goats in a 15 minute walk.

Today I saw the Friendship Guest House, whose motto is "... where hospitality ends!" It made me think of Germany, which has the odd ability to exemplify hospitality and guest-friendliness, but somehow customer-friendliness escapes them.

Today I saw a man sleeping on a blanket on the dirt, waiting for someone to come by and show interest in the 5 cages of song birds he kept by the side of the road.

Today I saw a woman carrying unidentified things to a medium sized fire, which I can only deduce she was using to create ashes for soap or charcoal.

Today I Saw

Yes, we are now blogging live from Yola, Nigeria where I now work at the American University of Nigeria. We arrived in Yola Sunday, I went through orientation yesterday, and here I am at work. Sorry for the long hiatus but it is amazing just how involved a process it is moving to Africa...

One of the things I looked forward to about being here for the next three years is providing myself a real set of experiences in a developing country. Among the difficulties I have had as a newly-minted development economist has been the lack of such experience and relying on other people's accounts to understand "what Africa is like," as impossible as that actually is.

So without pretending to describe "what Africa is like," I am opening a new feature here on things that caught my eye in Yola. Mostly they will be part of The Other, yes, I know. Sorry about that. But this is what I saw on my drive to work today:

Today I saw a roadside shopowner - one of the dozens upon dozens lining the main roads - sweeping the red dirt off the road to make his stall more attractive.

Today I saw a fellow on a motorcycle - another thing there are dozens upon dozens of - whose passenger was holding up a wheelbarrow behind the bike (making it an in-line three-wheeler motorcycle).

Today I saw the Adamawa State extension centre. I'm going to have to go back to take a closer look.

Every time I'm on the road, including today, I saw the tire shack. One of the roadside shopowners has some motorcycle tires hanging from the wooden frame of his store and a small stack of car tires by it. For some reason it's the single most fascinating store to me.

Today I saw several pharmacies. The most interesting was named "Just Mediocre Pharmacy." Some people might be tempted to make a quip that there is real honesty in advertising, but that may not be assured; it could be a Pretty Terrible Pharmacy in disguise. I'm planning on visiting to find that out too someday.