For current attempts to upscale domestic paddy rice production by the Senegalese government to succeed, addressing land tenure issues appears to be essential. Larger holdings are necessary to allow agricultural mechanisation and to facilitate other economies of scale. In one of the main rice-growing areas of the country - Casamance, in the south - no clear strategy or will to address it is evident, however. In Lower Casamance, where paddy rice farming is characterised by small, fragmented holdings, the issue tends to be avoided or inaction conveniently parked by officials under excuses about 'difficult' populations or their 'culture'. In reality this masks well-founded tensions around this matter on both sides. Smallholders are understandably wary because of historical sensitivities over land tenure within some communities and are more generally mistrustful of state intervention in land tenure due to past abuses, some of which helped to fuel the long-running separatist rebellion in Casamance. Officials themselves recognise that tenure remains a divisive issue in the area and could cause further conflict. Elsewhere, however - notably in a large state-run project in Upper Casamance - tensions over land seem to have been less evident, ironically because there was little history of smallholder rice farming in the area.

This talk deals with urbanization, local governance of natural resources and what food insecurity means for households in Tiassalé, Côte d'Ivoire. It focuses on decision-making strategies related to the management of natural resources as well as subsequent impacts on food insecurity. The scarcity and/or precariousness of natural resources are the consequences of uncontrolled urbanization along the rural-urban continuum, which makes food production systems vulnerable.

In this context, characterized by difficulties in the access and dissatisfaction in the use of natural resources, poverty leads to serious pressure over resources, which induces changes in community rules in the handling of these resources. Tiassalé, a secondary town in Côte d'Ivoire, offers an opportunity to observe urbanization processes, natural resources governance issues, and subsequent conflicts. Furthermore, how does the governance of access to natural resources in an urban context affects food production systems along the rural-urban continuum within the communities of Tiassalé? 

In many conflict situations the world over, women and children often bear the brunt of the vicissitudes of fighting. Once women are displaced from their traditional chores of fending for their families, misery and discomfort of whole families arise; the food situation spirals out of control if the very same women are expected to contribute food to the war effort. This paper argues that, although the narratives of the Second Chimurenga/Umvukela II attribute the eventual triumph of Africans to various elite individuals and groups alike, the economics of women participation in matters of food security conspicuously escaped scholarly attention. Women, along with their children, cultivated lands to produce food indispensable for the survival of their households, in addition to which they literally cooked for the guerrillas, in which process they sometimes sustained injuries or died altogether in the crossfire when belligerents frequently opened fire throughout the long duration of the war. Glossing over this onerous task endured by women beclouds the reality that no war could be sustained on empty stomachs, which this paper clarifies. In using archival material, engaging with secondary sources and conducting interviews with women food security revolutionaries and other stakeholders, this paper concludes that the majority of women played a critical role in the war, but ultimately gained much less than they had anticipated at its inception, although only a few of them entered the political arena as public figures to which they received recognition.

The Republic of Sudan has been an economically dependent country since its political independence. Different metropoles have exploited its resources, conditioned parts of the national economy, and influenced the decision-making processes of the local urban elites. Such dependence has maintained a dual character. In the North, an export economy ruled by urban elites and connected with international markets has coexisted with a traditional sector based on subsistence economies. In the South, the economy, in contrast, has relied solely on pre-capitalist activities and has been subordinated to northern rural elites.

This article studies the evolution and role of the different urban elites that have ruled Sudan as an important aspect in order to explain economic dependence as well as armed conflicts and repression. Dependence is regarded as an important feature of the complexity of the Sudanese conflict scenario and a characteristic of its urban elites. Therefore, dependence has crystallized as an essential face of the exercise of hegemony by the urban elites in order to understand the widespread underdevelopment and food insecurity across most of the Sudanese regions.