OU Attend High-Profile Summit on GVCs

At the end of October 2014, Professor Raphael Kaplinsky attended Duke University’s high-profile Duke Global Summit on Governance and Development in a Value Chain World to take part in the panel discussion, Academic Reflections on Global Value Chains.

The summit was dedicated to the discussion of global value chains – the complex patterns in which producers in different parts of the world are involved to bring products from conception to consumption – governance and development. Pascal Lamy, former Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, gave the keynote address, and the summit was attended by senior representatives from other international organisations such as the UN and the World Bank together with leading academics from around the world.

One of the major goals of the event was to bring academics and international policy leaders into conversation with each other. In the words of Gary Gereffi, the director of Duke’s Centre on Globalisation, Governance and Competitiveness and co-organiser of the event: 'We want to create a more integrated discussion between these international organisations, but also between the policymakers and the academic community. For us to pull them all together to talk about global value chains in one place –that’s unique. No one has really done it on this scale.'

Watch panel discussion: Academic Reflections on Global Value Chains.