Sub-Saharan Africa: Conflicts and Development

Author(s):  
E. Lebedeva

Political instability is growing in sub-Saharan Africa. The situation has left the Sahelian countries increasingly vulnerable to insecurity resulting from armed conflicts, terrorist activities, illicit trafficking and related organized crime, ecological crisis, «resource» wars and the like. These new global and regional challenges superimposed on traditional factors, provoking conflicts (social polarization, widespread corruption, coupled with the inability of the involved governments to deliver basic services, weak administration and other). At the same time, chronic political instability is a direct result of the lack of institutionalized political dialogue, of national consensus on strategy of national security and, also, because of the continuing unwillingness of the ruling elites to engage in the development of peripheral areas. Crises in Mali and Nigeria have clearly demonstrated the «fragility» of sub-Saharan states in the face of these threats. The scale of problems in the Sahel is so great that the United Nations has proposed a new conceptual and organizational approach to their solution. Nowhere is the development–security nexus more evident than in the Sahel. Major emphasis is placed on integrated and coordinated implementation of measures in the field of security and development in the region and regional and interregional cooperation among Sahelian, West African and Maghreb states. The UN declares a top priority of “partner peacekeeping", which is based on the cooperation of the UN as the main actor with international regional organizations – the EU, AU, ECOWAS, financial institutions and donor countries as well as other bilateral partners. Currently, ensuring a coherent and mutually supportive peacekeeping of the UN and the AU becomes most urgent issue for the organizations, since the relations between them are characterized by mistrust and tension.

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (11) ◽  
pp. 1588-1594
Author(s):  
Ogochukwu J. Sokunbi ◽  
Ogadinma Mgbajah ◽  
Augustine Olugbemi ◽  
Bassey O. Udom ◽  
Ariyo Idowu ◽  
...  

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic is currently ravaging the globe and the African continent is not left out. While the direct effects of the pandemic in regard to morbidity and mortality appear to be more significant in the developed world, the indirect harmful effects on already insufficient healthcare infrastructure on the African continent would in the long term be more detrimental to the populace. Women and children form a significant vulnerable population in underserved areas such as the sub-Saharan region, and expectedly will experience the disadvantages of limited healthcare coverage which is a major fall out of the pandemic. Paediatric cardiac services that are already sparse in various sub-Saharan countries are not left out of this downsizing. Restrictions on international travel for patients out of the continent to seek medical care and for international experts into the continent for regular mission programmes leave few options for children with cardiac defects to get the much-needed care.There is a need for a region-adapted guideline to scale-up services to cater for more children with congenital heart disease (CHD) while providing a safe environment for healthcare workers, patients, and their caregivers. This article outlines measures adapted to maintain paediatric cardiac care in a sub-Saharan tertiary centre in Nigeria during the COVID-19 pandemic and will serve as a guide for other institutions in the region who will inadvertently need to provide these services as the demand increases.


2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (912) ◽  
pp. 1067-1089
Author(s):  
Edoardo Borgomeo

AbstractThis note discusses the challenges of water service delivery before, during and after protracted armed conflict, focusing on barriers that may impede successful transition from emergency to development interventions. The barriers are grouped according to three major contributing factors (three “C”s): culture (organizational goals and procedures), cash (financing practices) and capacity (know-how). By way of examples, the note explores ways in which development agencies can overcome these barriers during the three phases of a protracted armed conflict, using examples of World Bank projects and experiences in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. Before the crisis, development agencies need to work to prevent armed conflict. In a situation of active armed conflict or when conflict escalates, development agencies need to remain engaged as much as possible, as this will speed up post-conflict recovery. When conflict subsides, development agencies need to balance the relative effort placed on providing urgently needed emergency relief and water supply and sanitation services with the effort placed on re-establishing sector oversight roles and capacity of local institutions to oversee and manage service delivery in the long term.


2021 ◽  
pp. 048661342110039
Author(s):  
Gönenç Uysal

The growing economic and political roles of the so-called emerging powers in sub-Saharan Africa have attracted particular attention following the apparent decline of Western powers in the face of the global economic crisis of 2007–2008. The AKP’s “proactive” foreign policy has manifested Turkey’s burgeoning role in the region. This paper draws upon Marxism to explore the diffusion of Turkish capital and the enhancement of military relations in the region in harmony and in contradistinction with Western and Gulf countries. It discusses the AKP’s proactive foreign policy vis-à-vis sub-Saharan Africa as a particular sociohistorical form of sub-imperialism that is characterized by and reproduces economic and geopolitical rivalries and alliances among Turkey and Western and Gulf countries. JEL Classification: F5, P1, O1


Author(s):  
Charles Forsdick

The bagne retains an ambiguous status as a lieu de mémoire, in part because of its predominantly extra-metropolitan location, in part because most understandings of the institution rely heavily on representations freighted via literature, film and graphic fiction. In French Guiana and New Caledonia, the bagne was nevertheless the major driver in the attempted mise en valeur of those colonies in the face of varying degrees of resistance to settlement. Moreover, France’s carceral archipelago extended beyond those key sites to include penal colonies in North and Sub-Saharan Africa as well as Indochina. The essay scrutinizes the rich body of material that has served as a vehicle for memories of the institution, but uses a focus on contemporary memorial practices in French Guiana and New Caledonia to suggest a distinct divergence in forms of interpretation, especially regarding the place of the penal colony in colonial expansionism. Although until recent years the bagne has often acted as more of a postcolonial lieu d’oubli, in a context of complex postcolonial politics and of growing interest in penal heritage its status as a lieu de mémoire is becoming increasingly apparent.


2000 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Kirschke

Transitions to multiparty politics occurred throughout Sub-Saharan Africa with remarkable speed in the early 1990s, linking the region to the broader ‘third wave of democratisation’ which, from 1974, progressively marked many areas of southern Europe, Latin America and post-communist Europe. Unlike most earlier cases of political reform, however, the changes in Sub-Saharan Africa demonstrated a strong external orientation. A unique combination of donor pressure, internal opposition and ‘snowballing’ led regimes to rapidly introduce multiparty politics regardless of whether ruling elites in fact supported democratisation. The particular constraints surrounding these transitions place much of Sub-Saharan Africa at high risk of civil violence. Drawing on the cases of Cameroon, Rwanda and Kenya, this article argues that, during transitional periods, the greater the conflict between ruling elites and opposition forces, and the greater the pressure which regimes face to proceed with reform, the greater the likelihood that states will sponsor ‘informal repression’, covert violations by third parties, to regain political control.


Subject Outlook for the copper sector in sub-Saharan Africa. Significance Africa's copper production is forecast to be marginally lower in 2016 at 1.823 million tonnes, compared to 1.895 million tonnes in 2015. This is due to production cutbacks implemented in the face of continued weakness in international -- especially Chinese -- demand. A slight rise in prices earlier in the year was not sustained, dampening the economic prospects for major exporting countries. Impacts The deaths of several miners at a Glencore mine in Zambia may push the government to enforce tougher safety requirements. Miners are unlikely to restore all the jobs shed during the current slump, extending the region's unemployment problem. Divisions within the Congolese opposition on whether to negotiate with Kabila on the delayed polls will exacerbate political tensions.


2017 ◽  
pp. 173-190
Author(s):  
Filip Kaczmarek

This analysis of the situation of Sub-Saharan Africa states shows that it is impossible to achieve permanent, sustainable development in the conditions of war or other military conflicts. External aid for such countries is first and foremost humanitarian aid. Although such aid is necessary and helps save human lives, it does not eliminate the reasons for conflicts and is unable to ensure stable development. In the states with the worst situation, humanitarian aid does not have a significant influence on reducing migration trends. Before permanent development occurs, conflicts have to be efficiently resolved and their reasons eliminated or radically limited. The social and economic development of SSA states, which are currently suffering from armed conflicts and instability, is therefore primarily dependent on political rather than economic solutions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 01-06
Author(s):  
John Moyegbone

Primary Eye Care (PEC) provides the essential cares of the eyes and visual pathways at the Primary Health Care (PHC) level in order to prevent avoidable visual impairment and blindness. The aim of this study is to review the need for integration of PEC services into PHC in Nigeria healthcare system – with focus oF Delta State. A narrative review approach was used in evaluation of community needs, government and PHC facilities. Published literatures from around the world including in Sub-Saharan Africa and Nigeria was done through web search and Mendeley reference library. The evaluations show that there is ability and willingness to integrate PEC into PHC. Yet, there is observable mismatch in capacity vs. opportunity or a knowledge and attitude gap. In Delta State on Nigeria, there appears to be specialist Eye-care providers located in just 24% of the local government areas and absolutely none (zero %) at any PHC facility. In the rural communities, there is the barrier of affordances including problem of access, but the PHC staff can be equipped to provide basic services such as educational, preventive and referral services that non-governmental organisations have done. Therefore, integration of PEC into PHC at the community level is possible.


2021 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sehar Ezdi ◽  
Sabrina Pastorelli

This paper investigates gender preferences for offspring within the native French population and among immigrants from North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey and Vietnam-Cambodia-Laos in France by combining the Family and Housing Survey (2011) and the Trajectories and Origins Survey (2008). In so doing, it is the first paper to examine the persistence (or lack thereof) of gender preferences among immigrants in France. This allows the findings of the paper to serve as a tool for monitoring the immigrant integration process in the country. Using (multilevel) logistic regressions to examine transitions to second and third child births contingent upon gender of existing children and by migration status provides two main results. First, regarding evidence of gender preferences, the results show: mixed gender preferences and weak daughter preference among native French women when transitioning to the third parity; mixed gender preferences among second-generation Turkish immigrant women when transitioning to the third parity; and a daughter preference for second-generation North African, Sub-Saharan African and Vietnamese-Laos-Cambodian immigrant women when transitioning to the third parity. Second, for the immigrant sample, these preferences emerge in the face of declining fertility, across subsequent generations of immigrants, and on average as a deviation from their country of origin gender preferences. This not only points to the malleability of gender preferences for offspring but also lends credence to both the selection and adaptation hypotheses in explaining immigrant integration in France.  


Author(s):  
Igor Cusack

Any account of women and food history in sub-Saharan Africa must be complicated by two main factors: first, the multitude and complexity of African societies and their interactions with the different colonial powers over five centuries, and, second, by an underestimation of the importance of women’s activities by researchers imbued with colonial patriarchal ideologies. In prehistoric and precolonial times, only glimpses of women’s roles in food production and gathering can be seen, drawing on evidence from historical linguistics, ethnography, anthropology, and archaeology. What evidence there is suggests that women’s participation in these tasks was important. The written account of Ibn Battutah and the oral epic of Sundiata provide some information about what was eaten and Sundiata does point to women’s major role in growing food and in cooking. During the colonial period, from about 1500 to the 1960s, many accounts from different parts of sub-Saharan Africa stress how women played a dominant part in the farming, processing, preparation, and cooking of food. There was a varied and often complex division of labor between men and women. Instead of the more rigid gendered private/public divide often seen in the West, women in Africa have engaged in wider roles in the public sphere, for example, in the processing of food for sale. There are some indications that women’s work was changed by the introduction of new crops from Asia and the Americas. Colonial governments favored men working on cash crops so that women focused even more on the provision of food for the family. Women also showed great adaptability in assessing and using new technologies such as peanut processing machines. Cooking has remained predominantly a woman’s occupation in sub-Saharan Africa and a divide between a “high” cuisine, mainly in the hands of men outside Africa, and a “low” or humble cuisine, has not developed. Cookery books are very useful sources for evidence of the history of women’s domestic role. Those published for European settler wives in the colonial period were focused on the housewife rooted in the home and this ideology of domesticity can be found in the cookery books of postcolonial Africa. After independence, the ruling elites of African nations set about constructing discourses of national identity, flags and anthems particular to each nation, and women have contributed to this nation-building by assembling national cuisines. Since the 1980s, an epidemic of obesity has occurred in many African urban areas, with associated chronic disease, which women have suffered more than men. An ideal image of a plumper body, along with the introduction of “fast food,” has contributed to this situation. Women have also been disadvantaged by cultural food taboos in which certain foods are prohibited to them.


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