Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2004. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Development, a non-ceasing phenomenon as long as mankind has dwelt on this planet, IS a complex matter which encompasses the three bottom-lines, i.e. social, economic and environmental aspects and aims at improving the quality of life. In fact, development issues are always challenging countries and their leaders as they try to introduce strategies and projects to benefit their rural sector which constitutes, especially in developing countries, most of the population who are living in poverty and continuing to stagger in very destitute level. One of these countries is Eritrea, a nation of which more than 80% live in rural areas and which is rated one of the lowest twenty nations on the human development index (measurement of literacy, health and life expectancy status) as well as the human poverty index of which 53% of the population lived below national poverty line during the period of 1987 to 2000 (UNDP, 2002). This paper is an attempt to discuss rural development and how it is being implemented in relation to Eritrea's reconstructions and rehabilitation efforts that took place after its freedom from foreign occupation. It is an assessment on the rural projects' planning and implementation process, and eventually also looks at the impacts they have on the life of the beneficiaries. As a whole, this research paper consists of an introduction and nine chapters. It can be classified into five parts, i.e. the theoretical literature, the country's status in specific fields, the sample research areas, an overall synthesis and lastly conclusions and recommendations as one part. The theoretical background revolves around rural areas and their reasons for poverty, different development theories within which rural development could be seen as one ingredient, and focuses on participatory rural development where projects can play vital roles in changing life style especially when they are managed in an integrated way touching main areas of need. The second section of the paper is a general overview of the socio-economic status of Eritrea and some of the efforts made by the government. These are mainly the health, education, water supply, agriculture and darn construction projects, accomplished mainly by government in partnership with domestic and foreign NGOs, whereas the same time people contributed mainly in kind. In relation to these five projects the researcher has drawn up questionnaires and personally filled them in five villages, namely Sheeb, Ade-awhi, Korbariaya, Azien and Wara, while at the same time holding discussions with the beneficiaries. In this section the assessment of the people's state and their response in relation to the planning process as well as impacts of the projects on their lives have been made for every village. In other words, the chapter shows the practical data analysis of the research. The next is, in similar form, an overall synthesis of the research. The researcher weighs and analyses the results in relation to planning issues, especially how far the people played a role in participation and the extent of their influence as well as their contentment with the end result in comparison to their expectations. Moreover, it investigates the projects' impact on the environment, and their influence on the socio-economic lives of the beneficiaries, and then sees how the projects have been managed at institutional level and whether the policies that are in effect have direct influence on initiating rural development projects. Finally some conclusions are drawn and recommendations are made that could be a benchmark for further studies and provide impetus to accelerate the present rural development planning and implementation. The researcher may have overlooked some necessary elements or missed some basic factors in dealing the current way of initiating development. But with the resources were available and the time at his disposal, while faced by the limitations explained in the introductory section of the paper, the researcher has made some efforts to highlight his convictions to the best of his academic ability. The sole purpose of his final statements is based on his wish for more rural upliftment and long-term as well as sustainable benefit to the rural people of his country, Eritrea. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Ontwikkeling, 'n verskynsel wat nie ophou nie, bestaan al so lank as wat daar lewe op die planeet bestaan. Dit is 'n ingewikkelde saak wat drie aspekte behels: die sosiale, ekonomiese en omgewings aspekte en die doel daarvan is om lewensgehalte te verbeter. Ontwikkelingskwessies stel 'n uitdaging aan die leiers van lande; die regerings moet stategië uitwerk en projekte van stapel stuur wat die landelike sektor sal bevoordeel en veral in ontwikkelende lande, woon die grootste gedeelte van die bevolking op die platteland waar hulle gebuk gaan onder armoede. Eritrea is een van hierdie lande. 80% van die mense van Eritrea woon op die platteland. Etritrea word gereken as een van die twintig onontwikkelste lande op die menslike ontwikkelings indeks (wat geletterdheid, gesondheid en lewensverwagting meet) en ook op die menslike armoede indeks. 53% van die bevolking het vir die tydperk 1987 tot 2000 onder die nasionale armoedelyn geleef (UNDP, 2002). In hierdie studie word landelike ontwikkeling bespreek en hoe dit geïmplementeer is tydens die rekonstruksie en rehabilitasie pogings na die onafhanklikheid van Eritrea. Dit is 'n waardebepaling van die beplanning en implementasie van die landelike projekte en kyk ook na die impak wat dit op die lewens van die landelike bevolking gehad het. In die geheel bestaan hierdie studie uit 'n inleiding en nege hoofstukke. Dit kan in vyf afdelings ingedeel word: teoretiese literatuur, die stand van die land betreffende spesifieke gebiede, die navorsingsgebiede, 'n oorsigtelike sintese en ten laaste die gevolgtrekkings en aanbevelings. In die teoretiese agtergrond gaan dit om die landelike gebiede en die redes vir armoede, asook die ontwikkelingsteorië waarin landelike ontwikkeling gesien word as een bestandeel. Dit fokus op deelnemende landelike ontwikkeling waarin projekte 'n belangrike rol kan speel om die lewensgehalte te verbeter, veral as dit bestuur word op 'n geïntegreerde wyse en die grootste behoeftes aanspreek. Die tweede afdeling is 'n algemene oorsig van die sosio-ekonomiese stand van Eritrea en van die regering se pogings om dit te verbeter. Die vyf projekte wat betudeer is, is gemoeid met gesondheid, onderwys, water voorsiening, landbou en die konstruksie van damme. Die regering het hierdie projekte onderneem in vennootskap met plaaslike en buitelandse nie-regerings organisasies (NGOs) maar die bevolking self het ook 'n bydrae gemaak, gewoonlik in die vorm van arbeid. Met betrekking tot hierdie vyf projekte het die navorser vraelyste opgestel en dit persoonlik in die vyf dorpies naamlik Sheeb, Ade-awhi, Korbariaya, Azien en Wara voltooi terwyl hy dan ook besprekings met die bevolking gehou het. In hierdie afdeling word daar vir elke dorpie'n waardebepaling gedoen van die toestand van die mense en hulle reaksie op die beplanningsproses asook die impak van die projek op hulle lewe. Dan volg 'n oorsigtelike sintese van die navorsing. Die navorser weeg die resultate op en analiseer dit veral betreffende beplanning en tot hoe verre die mense self 'n rol gespeel het, hoeveel invloed hulle gehad het en of die resultaat aan hulle verwagtings voldoen. Die studie kyk ook na die impak van die projek op die omgewing en die invloed wat dit gehad het op die sosio-ekonomiese lewens van diegene wat veronderstel is om voordeel daaruit te trek. Daar word gekyk na hoe die projekte op hoër vlak bestuur is en of regeringsbeleid 'n invloed het op die beplanning van landelike ontwikkelingsprojekte. Dan word gevolgtrekkings en aanbeveling gemaak wat tot nut kan wees vir ander navorsers en kan lei tot beter en vinniger beplanning en implementasie van landelike ontwikkelings projekte. Die navorser het dalk per abuis sekere elemente en basiese faktore oorgesien maar met die hulpbronne en tyd tot sy beskikking asook die beperkings wat in die inleiding tot die studie bespreek word, het hy sy oortuigings op skrif gestel tot die beste van sy vermoë. Hy hoop dat sy aanbevelings sal lei tot groter landelike ontwikkeling op die lang termyn en dat die mense van sy land, Eritrea, die volgehoue voordeel sal trek.

The dissertation addresses the communication issues of interconnecting the different government sectors LANs, and access to the global Internet. Network capacities are being purposely overengineered in today's commercial Internet. Any network provider, be it a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP) or Information Technology Service department at government sector, company or university site, will design network bandwidth resources in such a way that there will be virtually no data loss, even during the worst possible network utilization scenario. Thus, the service delivered by today's end-to-end wide area Internet would be perfect if it wasn't for the inter-domain connections, such as Internet access link to the ISP, or peering points between ISPs. The thesis studies the performance of the network in Eritrea, displaying the problems of Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wide Area Networks (WAN) and suggesting initial solutions and investigating the performance of (WAN) through the measured traffic analysis between Asmara LAN and Massawa LAN, using queuing theory system (M/M/1 and M/M/2) solution. The dissertation also uses OPNET IT Guru simulation software program ·to study the performance of LAN and WLAN in Eritrea. The items studied include traffic, collision, packet loss, and queue delay. Finally in order to follow the current trends, we study the performance ofVOIP links in Eritrean WANs environment, with a focus on five different link capacities: 28 kbps, 33 kbps, 64 kbps, and 128 kbps for voice and 256/512 kbps for voice and data. Using the R value as a measure of mean opinion score (MOS), we determine that the 33 kbps link would be adequate for Eritrean WANs. / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2006.

This paper reviews environmental impact assessment (EIA) policy and practice in Eritrea against a set of evaluation criteria. These include: institutional aspects of the EIA system (policy development, legal basis for EIA, institutional strength and responsibilities for EIA administration, and resources adequacy); the EIA process (screening, scoping, EIA study, documentation, review, decision-making, and monitoring and auditing); and other features of the EIA system (coverage, consideration of alternatives, public consultation and participation, system monitoring, the cost and benefit of EIA system and strategic environmental assessment (SEA)). To assess the extent of EIA practice, the EIA report review criteria developed by the Impact Assessment Unit (IAD) of Oxford Brookes University were used to review case studies of two sectoral EIA reports: the Massawa International Airport Project and the Keren Water Supply Project. Additionally, a literature review was undertaken and interviews with different stakeholders were conducted to collect the required information. The review indicated that, in principle and at a policy level, the current EIA system in Eritrea meets ten of the 17 evaluation criteria, partially meets three and fails to meet four. The major weakness relates to the legal provisions for EIA;. adequacy of resources (human and environmental data/information); centrality of EIA findings in decision making; and the formal provision for SEA for programmes, plans and policies. In practice, however, the overall EIA system in the country is weakly established. Thus, to strengthen the current EIA system in the country increased environmental awareness, continuous training in EIA for government officials, consultants, and research and educational institutions is required. Most importantly, revision and subsequent proclamation of the draft legislation is required to provide a sound legal basis for EIA in Eritrea. / Thesis (M.Env.Dev.)-University of Natal, 2003.

The research aim was to assess the vegetation and soils of the Rora /' Habab plateau, Eritrea and to develop methods of propagating the native tree species, juniper and olive. The research consisted of vegetation and soil surveys, interviews with local people, archival research, and experiments on propagation of olive and juniper. Junipers are now confined to the north of the plateau. Olives are more abundant in the north but have very few individuals in the centre, where there are many dead trees, or south. Soil erosion was ubiquitous and often severe. Soil morphology and nutrient status were related to vegetation, topography, land use, and erosion status, and varied greatly over short distances. Soil texture was coarser and most chemical factors (except total Ca and exchangeable Na) were lower in the south. Organic C, total N, exchangeable Ca, percent day, CEC and the sum of bases were higher in soils from grazed land than in cultivated fields. Germination of olive seeds was 92% when the endocarp was removed; stratification had little effect. Rooting of olive stem cuttings attained 76% under mist when parent plants were fertilised and cuttings were treated with rooting hormone. Germination for juniper was 56% after stratification at 5°C for 30 to 60 days. Juniper stem cuttings rooted in only one of three experiments, where rooting was 78% in a well ventilated, cool, low-mist environment. Olive seedlings which were fertilised and watered every 7, 14, or 21 days for two months, were taller, had lower root:shoot ratios and soil moisture than unfertilised plants. Fertilised seedlings watered every 28 days died. Root volume was less for plants watered every 21 days but watering interval had little effect on other variables in unfertilised seedlings. Ecological restoration is urgently required to rehabilitate the Rora plateau, which has Africa's most northerly remnant juniper / olive woodlands.

Thesis (MAgric (Agricultural Economics))—University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / The natural resources mainly land, forests, and grazing lands in the Highlands ago-ecological zone of Eritrea are in a severely degraded state. And much of these common pool resources comprise commons i.e. they are managed under the common property rights management regimes. “The tragedy of the commons”, model suggests that all commons will inexorably suffer overexploitation and degradation. Contrary to this deterministic proposition, however, common property theory argues that the ‘tragedy’ is not due to inherent flaws in the common property rights management regimes, but because of institutional failure to control access to resources, and to make and enforce internal decisions for collective use. If the commons dilemma situation exists- i.e. ‘tragedy’, then the underlying problem is the degeneration of the existing common property rights resource management regime into open-access-like regime—a condition that can potentially trigger “the tragedy of the commons”. The question of how to deal with the problem of the commons is, therefore, primarily an issue of the existence of efficient institutions. The prevailing severe degradation of the common-pool resources in the Highlands of the country thus calls into question the robustness of the common property rights regimes that are in place for the governance of these resources. This thesis attempts to address this important problem specifically in relation to forest and grazing land common pool resources. A case study based on a single-case qualitative and exploratory-explanatory research design was carried out in a village located in the Highlands of the country. Data were collected through various forms of interviews (semi-structured interviews, in-depth interviews, key informants interviews, group discussions, and informal conversational interviews), direct observation, and document review. The data, gathered largely through using these separate lines of enquiry, were crosschecked to provide a triangulation of methods and to strengthen the validity and reliability of the data. The empirical findings reveal that existing common property rights management regimes for the management of the local common pool resources of the case study area have weakened over time. These findings indicate that, there is a significant incongruence between appropriation and provision rules. And this is manifested in terms of appropriation externalities and demand side and supply side provision externalities. This situation implies that existing local institutional arrangements i.e. common property rights management regimes in the case study area are not sufficiently robust to solve common pool resource appropriation and provision externalities. Though generalisation cannot be made beyond the case that was studied, there are several lessons that may be drawn from this field analysis, which may have valid implications for the natural resources management challenges and opportunities of the entire Highlands agoecological zone of the country.

This paper examines the Eritrean-Ethiopian border conflict as a modern case study concerning the shortcomings of international law. It examines the history between the two countries and how the conflict emerged despite strong social and cultural ties between the two. After a 30-year long war where Eritrea gained its independence, a brief period of peace was overcome by war and tension. A United Nations (UN) commission tasked with distributing the disputed lands to its rightful owner ruled that the lands belonged to Eritrea and the UN Security Council (UNSC) agreed to enforce this ruling. Ethiopia re-occupied it and the UNSC has yet to act. This essay looks at a range of international legal theories and tries to explain this case using these concepts. These include realism, neo-realism, liberalism, constructivism, and critical legal studies. This paper concludes neo-realism and critical legal studies accurately depict the events. This paper looks at the shared characteristics between these two theories and what they tell us about the status of international law. These findings indicate imbalanced power structures and a world where the powerful can impose their will on the weak with little ramifications.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University / As the title of this thesis indicates, this work deals with the former Italian Colonies during the period of 1945-50. Economically speaking all three territories are of little value. Their importance lies in the strategic position they occupy. All three, Eritrea, Libya except for the Fezzan, and Italian Somaliland came under British Military Administration on or before 1943. In 1945 the Council of Foreign Ministers took up the problem, but due to disagreement among the Big Four (United Kingdom, United States of America, France and the Soviet Union), and due to the many and sometimes unfounded claims of some other nations, the problem of the Italian Colonies defied solution. Despite the initial failure, the Council of Foreign Ministers did not give up hope, but instead it kept on working on the problem till 1947 when the Big Four powers, in the Treaty of Peace with Italy, made the latter country renounce all rights and claims to its former possessions in Africa and at the same time agreed to hand over the problem to the United Nations General Assembly in case of failure to agree among themselves within one year of the coming into force of the Treaty of Peace with Italy. [TRUNCATED]

Diss. (sammanfattning). Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniv. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Despite its reputation for instability and weak states, the continent of Africa has seen very few attempts at secession. The 1960s saw the early attempts of Katanga and Biafra to split away from their host states, only for these attempts to be crushed in short order. Since then there have only been a handful of notable attempts at secession: the early attempts by the Southern Sudan to split from the North, the secessionist desires of Cabinda to separate from Angola, the Casamance separatists of Senegal, and finally the long and still unrecognized separation of Somaliland from the failed state of Somalia. What is notable is that none of these have borne permanent fruit despite the persistence of the separatist fronts (although the Southern Sudan may now finally be embarking on its own separate existence). In each case, from Katanga to Somaliland, the theoretical state has encountered resistance on the national, regional, and global scale to their existence and have never yet been recognized. However, despite these setbacks, there currently has been one successful secession in Africa: that of Eritrea. Eritrea faced the same political and military difficulties that all other secession attempts have faced in Africa. Their host state of Ethiopia was perhaps the most revered on the continent and throughout the thirty year conflict had the international support of alternatively the United States and the USSR. The Organization of African Unity and its members remained unrelentingly in favor of territorial integrity for all African States. The Eritreans could not even gain regional recognition for their struggle. Despite all of this, they prevailed in their thirty-year struggle for independence. Critical to their success were four interwoven factors that allowed them to overcome those barriers that had stopped their secessionist predecessors: the anomalous history of Eritrea and Ethiopia, the Eritreans' practice of the theories of protracted war, the simultaneous social revolution the Eritreans carried out, and finally the Eritreans' pragmatic relations with their surrounding dissident groups. This work argues that these four central factors were the keys to Eritrea's aberrant and so far unique victory in their struggle for secession. / text

The aim of this study was to evaluate the export promotion services of Eritrea according to the theories presented in chapter two and come up with recommendation suitable to the Eritrean case. It was found that national export promotion policies would not provide any benefits or lead to increased exports if they are not supported by export promotion policies and programmes at the industrial and enterprise level. Although the Eritrea's national economic policy states 'it is aimed for export-oriented growth', nothing has been done to upgrade the competitiveness of SMEs or increase their exports. The main reason is the unavailability of the export promotion programmes and policies at the industrial and enterprise level. The elements of export promotion services include information provision and export finance assistance. Export information is crucial to the growth of exports of SMEs. Export finance is aimed at providing the financial and insurance needs of exporting firms. The main goals of Export Promotion are to contribute to overall economic improvement of a country, and the subsequent increase for the standard of living of the population. This is achieved through increased export of the country's products. SMEs in Eritrea are facing many interrelated problems. Given their great contribution to the economy and the opportunities available in the world market, motivating them through export promotion and other services could be the best way to make them competitive. In this regard the following three points are recommended as the best ways of enhancing the competitiveness of SMEs. First the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) should have to have a general policy framework as well as programs specifically designed for SMEs development, which could serve as a general framework and a reference for policies and development efforts targeting SMEs. Second the MTI should establish and implement a strategy for SMEs export promotion aimed at increasing the SMEs export through the provision of necessary services. Finally firms themselves should also develop more responsive and proactive management, skilled labour, advanced equipment, and efficient production and marketing plans in order to withstand competition at home and abroad. / Thesis (MBA)- University of Kwazulu-Natal, 2005.