Multinationals on the Periphery

DaimlerChrysler South Africa, human capital upgrading and regional economic development

This book examines the emerging patterns of agricultural finance in Zimbabwe since the advent of the Fast Track Land Resettlement Programme (FTLRP) implemented from the year 2000, drawing from the Nairobi debates of the 1980’s on contract farming and the peasantry in Africa.

The contemporary notion of the ‘creative city’, connected to present-day regimes of digital urban creative (or smart) cities in neoliberal, city branding, place marketing, digital marketing nomads, is a dominant trope of international progress and development, and there has been a surprisingly positive, yet often uncritical uptake of the discourses of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Buzz words abound in city studies such as resilience, sustainability, innovation, and inequality, yet these are all too often framed within scientific, technical and political economy debates. As editors, we are interested in how these issues seldom appear as carefully considered questions integrated with scholarship around the social and especially the aesthetic.

This report was prepared for the Integrated Rural Development Program (IRDP). It explores the demand for and access to financial services in three pilot sites in rural Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. The study examines developments in micro-finance, best practices in a rural context and key policy issues.

The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) is South Africa's statutory reseach agency dedicated to policy-relevant social science. In 2003 the HSRC was evaluated by an independent panel appointed by the Minister of Science and Technology. This publication contains the report presented by the panel.