Sahel social cohesion research in Burkina Faso and Niger: Working Paper

Sahel social cohesion research in Burkina Faso and Niger: Working Paper
Author: Pul, Hippolyt
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2023-05-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Intervention Context: WFP’s activities in Burkina Faso and Niger focus on fragile agrarian communities in the Sahel, where cyclical floods and droughts combine with decreasing soil fertility and increasing desertification, among other challenges, to aggravate food and livelihood insecurity. Increased competition for land for food crops and pastures as well as water for domestic, productive, and livestock use, intensify conflicts over ownership and usage rights for land and the commons such as forests. in particular, this competition has heightened conflicts between farmers and herders. Layered on these localized conflicts are recent increases in human safety and security concerns related to the spread of attacks by violent extremist groups across the eastern flanks of both countries. The increasing frequency and intensity of these attacks have led to the loss of lives, property, and the displacement of large groups of people. The attendant deepening of food, livelihood, and human insecurities has contributed to a rural exodus of men and women to cities and other economic enclaves in search of alternate sources of food and income. The arrival of displaced persons fleeing the attacks has increased pressure on already limited food stocks and other assets of host communities. COVID-19 added another layer of vulnerability. In addition to the disease burden, lockdowns and restrictions on the movement of persons affected the ability of communities to travel to engage in nonfarm economic activities for supplementary income and food. This greatly affected the food and livelihood security systems of the populations in these already impoverished and fragile communities.

Sahel social cohesion research in Burkina Faso and Niger: Research Brief

Sahel social cohesion research in Burkina Faso and Niger: Research Brief
Author: Pul, Hippolyt
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 22
Release: 2023-05-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

The World Food Programme (WFP) supports communities to mitigate the impact of and build resilience to natural and human-made shocks and stressors that contribute to food insecurity and destabilize people’s livelihoods. WFP’s interventions, therefore, aim to equip communities with the knowledge, skills, and tools to avert or mitigate the impact of cyclical natural events such as droughts and floods through asset and capacity building in affected communities. In the Sahelian areas of Burkina Faso and Niger (as part of a broader regional program also covering Chad, Mali, and Mauritania), WFP promotes climate-resilient agricultural infrastructure and systems to help address issues of land degradation, deforestation, dwindling pasturelands, and depletion of water sources, which all trigger competition for productive resources and migration of people and livestock into better-resourced areas. The interventions also aim to address the impacts of violent conflict from within and outside communities in the Sahelian belt of the two countries, especially those related to extremist groups operating in the area. Though primarily designed to increase community assets for productive purposes, WFP’s support for the rehabilitation of lands, construction of water-harvesting and retention structures, reforestation and protection of farmlands and pastures, and soil fertility improvement interventions also aims to increase the availability of, reduce intergroup competition for, and ensure equitable access to these resources. In this way, WFP hopes to reduce conflicts over community resources. The use of participatory and collaborative processes for mobilizing and engaging communities should also contribute to increased dialogue within and between different communities and promote peaceful coexistence among the different groups. In particular, the requirement of collaborative approaches to development of communal assets is intended to create spaces of encounter and dialogue that could ease tensions, promote equity in the distribution and use of the created assets, and build relationships among various stakeholders and community groups to ensure that actions for resilience building have the support of government, development partners, and other decision-makers at several administrative levels.

Drivers of youth engagement in agriculture: Insights from Guatemala, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda

Drivers of youth engagement in agriculture: Insights from Guatemala, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda
Author: Babu, Suresh Chandra
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 29
Release: 2021-03-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Engaging burgeoning youth populations in developing country agriculture is seen as an important strategy toward effective, efficient, and sustainable food system transformation. Yet the policy, institutional, technological, and capability barriers and ways to overcome them for successful participation of youth in agriculture are not fully understood. We use a conceptual framework that identifies key pathways to prosperity for youth and classifies contextual and driving factors that contribute to the success of youth engagement in agriculture. The framework comprises four broad categories of strategic interventions: policy and socioeconomic environment; institutional; technological/business infrastructure; and individual skills and capacities. In the context of this framework, we then present insights from cases of youth participation in agriculture in five countries: Guatemala, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda. The countries and cases were purposively selected as part of ongoing research on youth engagement in agriculture. Policies and strategies play an important role in creating an enabling environment for youth engagement in agriculture, including by fostering transparency and accountability in the policy system and promoting youth engagement in the private sector through agricultural extension and other services. Institutions and intermediaries provide financial support, training, and access to market for youth entrepreneurs. Support in these areas should be strengthened. Systems approaches, such as multi-stakeholder platforms, provide holistic support to young agripreneurs (entrepreneurs in agriculture), but require effective coordination. Similarly, information and communication technologies can play a facilitating role by providing platforms to network and receive updated market information but need to be significantly scaled up. Individual capacities can drive youth engagement in agriculture and agripreneurship but must continue to be built up through expanded education and training on technical and functional skills. As policymakers and program managers search for interventions that can promote youth involvement in agriculture in their own countries, the insights from the five countries examined that are presented in this paper may be useful for identifying context-specific challenges and pathways to successful youth engagement in agriculture in their own countries. The framework presented here can be applied to study youth engagement issues in any country or in sub-national, decentralized contexts to generate evidence to guide the design of youth-in-agriculture development programs. There is a need to support, strengthen, and implement the driving factors identified in this paper for expanding youth engagement in agriculture.

Politics, Property and Production in the West African Sahel

Politics, Property and Production in the West African Sahel
Author: Tor Arve Benjaminsen
Publisher: Nordic Africa Institute
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2001
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9789171064769

Through a number of case studies from the West African Sahel, this book links and explores natural resources management from the perspectives of politics, property and production.

Realizing the Full Potential of Social Safety Nets in Africa

Realizing the Full Potential of Social Safety Nets in Africa
Author: Kathleen Beegle
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2018-07-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1464811660

Poverty remains a pervasive and complex phenomenon in Sub-Saharan Africa. Part of the agenda in recent years to tackle poverty in Africa has been the launching of social safety nets programs. All countries have now deployed safety net interventions as part of their core development programs. The number of programs has skyrocketed since the mid-2000s though many programs remain limited in size. This shift in social policy reflects the progressive evolution in the understanding of the role that social safety nets can play in the fight against poverty and vulnerability, and more generally in the human capital and growth agenda. Evidence on their impacts on equity, resilience, and opportunity is growing, and makes a foundational case for investments in safety nets as a major component of national development plans. For this potential to be realized, however, safety net programs need to be significantly scaled-up. Such scaling up will involve a series of technical considerations to identify the parameters, tools, and processes that can deliver maximum benefits to the poor and vulnerable. However, in addition to technical considerations, and at least as importantly, this report argues that a series of decisive shifts need to occur in three other critical spheres: political, institutional, and fiscal. First, the political processes that shape the extent and nature of social policy need to be recognized, by stimulating political appetite for safety nets, choosing politically smart parameters, and harnessing the political impacts of safety nets to promote their sustainability. Second, the anchoring of safety net programs in institutional arrangements †“ related to the overarching policy framework for safety nets, the functions of policy and coordination, as well as program management and implementation †“ is particularly important as programs expand and are increasingly implemented through national channels. And third, in most countries, the level and predictability of resources devoted to the sector needs to increase for safety nets to reach the desired scale, through increased efficiency, increased volumes and new sources of financing, and greater ability to effectively respond to shocks. This report highlights the implications which political, institutional, and fiscal aspects have for the choice and design of programs. Fundamentally, it argues that these considerations are critical to ensure the successful scaling-up of social safety nets in Africa, and that ignoring them could lead to technically-sound, but practically impossible, choices and designs.

Islam and Muslim Life in West Africa

Islam and Muslim Life in West Africa
Author: Abdoulaye Sounaye
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2022-12-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3110733358

The book offers an examination of issues, institutions and actors that have become central to Muslim life in the region. Focusing on leadership, authority, law, gender, media, aesthetics, radicalization and cooperation, it offers insights into processes that reshape power structures and the experience of being Muslim. It makes room for perspectives from the region in an academic world shaped by scholarship mostly from Europe and America.

Global Trends 2040

Global Trends 2040
Author: National Intelligence Council
Publisher: Cosimo Reports
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2021-03
Genre:
ISBN: 9781646794973

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

World Development Report 2011

World Development Report 2011
Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2011-05-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0821384406

The 2011 WDR on Conflict, Security and Development underlines the devastating impact of persistent conflict on a country or region's development prospects - noting that the 1.5 billion people living in conflict-affected areas are twice as likely to be in poverty. Its goal is to contribute concrete, practical suggestions on conflict and fragility.