Over the past two decades, the rangelands of Eastern Africa have experienced sweeping changes associated with growing human populations, shifting land use, expanding livestock marketing and trade, and greater investment by domestic and global capital. These trends have coincided with several large shocks that were turning points for how rangeland inhabitants make a living. As livelihoods in the region’s rangelands transform in seemingly paradoxical directions, away from customary pastoralist production systems, greater insight is required of how these transformations might affect poverty and vulnerability. This article reviews the state of what is known regarding directions of livelihood change in the rangelands of Eastern Africa, drawing on case studies of structural change in five settings in the region. It considers the implications of long-term change, as well as the emergence of very different livelihood mixes in pastoral rangelands, for efforts to reduce poverty and vulnerability in these places.
This article revisits debate about the root causes of civil wars with the aim of providing a coherent framework for addressing such drivers and building sustainable peace. It is argued in this article that the civil war is better explained by the absence of resilient social contract rather than the dominant theoretical perspectives that attribute causation of civil wars to grievances or greed. The resilient social contract framework with its three postulated drivers is used in this article to provide a better diagnosis of civil wars and mechanisms for nurturing enduring peace. Sudan and South Sudan that have been susceptible since their independence to recurrent civil wars provide good cases for testing the social contract framework. This entry argues that the ruling elites in both countries have adopted unitary autocratic system of government that failed to forge a social contract that builds trust between citizens and governments and among citizens as well as failing to address the core conflict issues. The pathway for sustainable peace in the two Sudans is to forge a new resilient social contract that addresses the core conflict issues through inclusive and responsive political settlements and social contract-making mechanisms, inclusive and effective institutions and expanding and deepening social cohesion.
Civil wars have become common and widespread, particularly in Africa. Civil war negatively affects rural livelihoods and contributes to increased vulnerability. Yet, there is limited understanding of how people survive in such circumstances. This article attempts to offer a nuanced understanding of the level of resilience and vulnerability during Sudan's civil war in the 1990s. The main thesis of this article is that households exposed to prolonged conflict undertake livelihood strategies that are effective under certain conditions and less effective in other settings. The households exposed to exogenous counter-insurgency warfare are found to be more resilient than those exposed to endogenous counter-insurgency warfare. Also, a negative relationship between wealth and vulnerability is found in the context of exogenous counter-insurgency warfare, while a positive relationship between wealth and vulnerability is observed in the context of endogenous counter-insurgency warfare, with the non-poor becoming more vulnerable than the poor. The findings of this paper may have some value for informing policy decisions and practical humanitarian approaches during civil war.
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