The aim of the panel is to encourage debate that is critical of the impact of current policies on rural (economic) development in SSA, and to explore innovative approaches to theories of and policies for the poor in SSA. The organizers welcome (socio-) economic contributions to this debate.
The scope of the panel is wide to offer a forum for interlinked themes to be discussed. The central question will be how specific local economic conditions and institutions influence rural households’ economic opportunities and constraints and what this means for rural economic development in SSA. Therefore, the panel will feature papers based on new fieldwork data and, in particular, innovative approaches to sampling, economic survey design and methodology.
Themes included are, among others, resource mobilization (land, labour, capital), the role of markets (agricultural and non-agricultural product markets, labour markets, financial markets, land markets), the role of risk and uncertainty, farm and off-farm income sources, and the links between local economic conditions and national and international institutions and policies.
It is anticipated that several papers will make the case for a re-direction, as well as an increase in, government, donor and NGO expenditures. Contributions that criticize the current emphasis in the literature on small-scale self employment (on or off-farm), the role of micro-credit and micro-insurance, and the removal of 'distortions in land, labour and input markets’, will be welcomed. Discussion will focus on policy initiatives to reduce the vulnerability of the poorest people, especially rural women.
Over the past ten years Malawian peasant farming households have endured a number of material and life-threatening setbacks. The absence of subsidized fertilizer loans to farmers continues to trouble villagers a decade after their removal. Yields of both food and cash crops have been declining. Farming households’ earnings from agricultural exports and remittances decreased during the 1990s, engendering rural income diversification and deagrarianization. The creeping and then intensifed incidence HIV/AIDS infection has led to widespread debility and death. A serious famine ensued in 2001-02, which compounded mortality rates. Through all of this people continue to try to make ends meet. During the famine and its aftermath, ganyu casual labour has gained in importance as a source of income for all economically active household members, particularly women and youth. Ganyu labour is a vital support for many poor families, but evidence suggests its longer term consequences are to widen the gap between the haves and have-nots and to spread HIV infection. These risks are generally recognized so why is ganyu labour a livelihood pursuit for so many?
Serious medical conditions or a period of prolonged sickness may threaten the livelihood of people and thus setting off a poverty cycle. Health insurance is seen as a possible solution to reduce the vulnerability of poor people. But the transfer of the health insurance systems from Western countries meets with different socio-economic and political conditions in Africa. Whereas the former draws on an established and institutionalized system based on a population that works in the formal sector of economy, the formal sector insurance in sub-Saharan Africa only covers a fraction of the population. The paper will present preliminary results from an ongoing research project on health insurance initiatives in the Diourbel region of Senegal. Initiatives there are linked to women’s organizations, professional associations, religious institutions or neighbourhood circles. They are recruiting their members mainly from the informal sector. Research methodology combines gathering data with Infosure – a tool designed to collect quantitative and specific qualitative health-economy information - as well as by participant observation and focus group discussion. Discussion of the data will focus on the question whether or not the initiatives provide a new possibility for the reduction of poverty.
In the absence of extensive formal social security schemes, people living in rural areas in Uganda have to rely on informal social security arrangements, which usually take the form of small-scale social networks through which resources for social security purposes are exchanged and transferred. The scope of these informal arrangements remains, however, limited. In policy circles there is much discussion on how these informal social security arrangements could be strengthened or supplemented. NGO’s are considered to play a role in this. By presenting data from a field study in southwest Uganda, this paper attempts to assess how NGO interventions may influence the operation and dynamics of informal social security arrangements, and what this means for the social security position of vulnerable people.
Communal land in Zimbabwe is generally characterized by land shortage and increasing demand for land. As a result, communal land is increasingly becoming individualized. The existence of seemingly unoccupied plots of arable and residential land in such an environment is a surprising phenomenon. This paper seeks to explore the logic for the existence of the plots and establish whether there are any links between this and social security function of customary land tenure arrangements. The way in which this system may be used to maintain rights of vulnerable groups like women and children is of specific interest to this research.
The Ju/’hoansi are a tribe of indigenous people with a 70,000-year-old culture in southern Africa known collectively as the San. The Ju/’hoansi do not have a legal claim to their land insofar ownership of the land is concerned but in 1997 -1998 they registered their ancestral land as a conservancy which is their right under Namibian law. As a registered community-based resource management authority, the Ju/’hoansi have the right to exploit surface and water resources. However, all subsurface resources are owned by the Namibian government. The threat of diamond prospecting in Nyae Nyae is disconcerting from both a social and environmental perspective. Reliable information suggests that at least one mining company, Mount Burgess Gold Mining Company, has acquired exploration licenses for the whole of the conservancy and experts in the area agree that the potential for mineral discovery is high. The Namibian government has not had experience with mining in conservancy areas and the issue of indigenous communities receiving benefits from mining may be the next major policy and legislative issue for the Namibian government to address. This paper is aimed at those interested in exploring the possible challenges and opportunities with which the San and their supporters will be faced should the NNC become under threat from mining. It is hoped that these findings could be applied to other cases throughout current and future Namibian conservancies if precious minerals are ever discovered there.
The interlinked effects of population growth, poverty and degradation of the natural resource base in the Central Highlands of Eritrea is analyzed using a non separable village level bio-economic model. Production and consumption decisions are determined simultaneously due to imperfections in land, labour and credit markets. Results show that poverty limits the ability and willingness of landholders to invest in conservation activities.
The Milking Drylands research initiative addresses the critical issues of food security, market integration, gender roles and governance matters in a peculiar area of the world, the Somali ecosystem.
Camel milk marketing is a developing women enterprise in Somali drylands, aimed at ensuring food security, generating some income and providing a buffer to cope with critical situations. Within a livelihood perspective socio-economic processes related to camel milk commoditization are investigated, in order to assess the relevance of existing embedding institutions on the construction of pastoral markets, with a special concern for the relevance of gender roles, state control and governance. Somali pastoral market-sheds in Somalia, and Somali regions of Ethiopia (Ogaden) and Kenya (NE provinces) provide the research with three comparative Case Studies with these respects.