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Poverty has long been a developmental challenge in the Global South in general and in sub-Saharan Africa in particular. With a fifth, mainly from the rural areas of the world, living below the poverty datum line, the world has a huge challenge to reduce poverty, worse still to eradicate it from the face of the earth. A target was set through the 2000-2015 United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and subsequently through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to reduce poverty by at least half by the years 2015 and 2030 respectively. In pursuing this goal, livelihoods of poor people though meeting with serious challenges, especially in rural areas, play a major role. This book explores the role played by people-centred Public Works Programmes in the fight against poverty and the development of rural communities in Africa. Whereas a number of countries in Africa have been approaching the issue of poverty through several interventions including Public Works Schemes, it is sad to note that poverty still tops the rankings among numerous economic and social challenges facing the continent. One wonders whether the public works strategy is misguided, misconstrued or mismanaged considering that its main objective is to make the unemployed more employable through the provision of temporary employment and training opportunities. The book concludes that Public Works Programmes, if well managed and people-centred, are one of the best ways to alleviate and even eradicate poverty in rural Africa, as it allows governments to make partnership with people, and facilitates implementation while giving space for economic self-sustenance, growth and development.
This volume critically interrogates, from different angles and dimensions, the resilience of conflict and violence into 21st century Africa. The demise of European colonial administration in Africa in the 1960s wielded fervent hope for enduring peace for the people of Africa. Regrettably, conflict alongside violence in all its dimensions physical, religious, political, psychological and structural remain unabated and occupy central stage in contemporary Africa. The resilience of conflict and violence on the continental scene invokes unsettling memories of the past while negatively influencing the present and future of crafting inclusive citizenship and statehood. The book provides fresh insightful ethnographic and intellectual material for rethinking violence and conflict, and for fostering long-lasting peace and political justice on the continent and beyond. With its penetrating focus on conflict and associated trajectories of violence in Africa, the book is an inestimable asset for conflict management practitioners, political scientists, historians, civil society activists and leaders in economics and politics as well as all those interested in the affairs of Africa.
Nemeso - a four eyed man-lived in southeastern Zimbabwe in the mid-17th century. Stories about him are widely known by the Duma in southeastern Zimbabwe as he left a legacy, a delicious dish - of edible stinkbugs locally named harurwa. These insects, believed to be a gift to Nemeso by the ancestors, thrive in a grove (jiri) where no one has been allowed to meddle since the time of Nemeso, the medium through whom the stinkbugs were gifted to the living by the living-dead. The insects are a source of livelihood for the Duma people and for people beyond, and serve as a drive for forest conservation in the area. The wealthy stories of Nemeso's life have been passed on through oral tradition. This book, generated from an ethnographic reconstitution in southeastern Zimbabwe, documents the stories in a lively and fascinating thirst quenching manner.