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Director's Column
It is impossible to begin my first Director's Column without first acknowledging the great debt which our Centre owes to two people. The first is Professor Robert Steel, CBE, who as Principal played such an important part in supporting the idea of a Centre for Development Studies, and helping to make it a reality. Professor Steel's recent honour is a national recognition of this and his many other contributions. The second is my predecessor as Director, Charles Elliot, whose energy and enthusiasm were central to the rapid growth of the Centre over the last five years. I am very grateful to him for the flourishing state of the Centre, and trust that I can follow his good example during my own stewardship.
A special word of thanks is also due to Jim Whetton, who as Acting Director between Charles' departure to Christian Aid in August last year and my own arrival in mid-December, managed the Centre very ably.
This year has been a year of change in many ways. The College has welcomed Professor Biran Clarkson on his successful experience at the University of Southampton, the new Principal has encouraged us to renew and extend our commitment to research, so that our teaching is constantly informed by the most up-to-date results in our field. He has made it clear that neither the Centre nor the College, can be content to live off its past achievements. More must be done to re-affirm and extend the Centre's reputation as a lively and productive group of development specialists.
The Centre has already begun its response to this challenge, both in the area of research and of consultancy. The Overseas Development Administration of the U.K. Government has agreed to support our research on the simulation of an international tea agreement. As at April, 1983, some £17,000 had been committed by the O.D.A. to this project. By March, 1985, when it is hoped to complete the research, a further £26,000 will have been granted. This demonstration of confidence is much appreciated.
The topic of this research should be of great interest to Third World countries such as India, China, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Taiwan and Argentina. The aim is to build a simulation model of world markets for tea, so that the precise consequences of an international commodity agreement on tea can be calculated rapidly and fed back into the negotiation process. If successful, this will be action-oriented, on-line research of very valuable kind. The exciting thing is that the same kind of methodology can be applied to numerous other primary commodities of interest to Third World countries as well.
On the consultancy side, in the next twelve months, I expect to be working on a report for the Evaluation Unit of the O.D.A. A small portion of U.K. overseas aid (about £41m in 1980/81) is spent under the "aid and trade" scheme. This scheme is intended to finance developmentally sound U.K. exports which otherwise would not take place. The aim is to serve the mutual interest of aid donor and aid recipient - export-promotion for the former combined with development-promotion for the latter. But how does the scheme work in practice? That is what I hope to discover for the O.D.A. by making a detailed study of six projects financed under the scheme. I expect this work will bring me to, amongst other places, Zambia and Tanzania in the course of the next year.
We have recently been visited by Dr. Terry Spens, the Social Development Adviser of the ODA. This gave us an opportunity to review with her our existing courses on the social side, our Master's degrees in Social Planning and in Social Sector Management and Planning and our Diploma in Social Policy and Administration. We also discussed the Centre's future plans for a number of possible short courses related to social development. It proved to be a very helpful exchange of views, with a number of suggestions made and accepted for improving the appropriateness of our teaching.