De nu rådande teorierna kring småstater och deras säkerhetspolitik har kritise- rats för att vara allt för knutna till västerländska och europeiska småstater. Den här forskningen har därför undersökt orsaker och motiv för en afrikansk småstat att välja att gå in i en allians. I och med detta har säkerhetspolitiska teorier prö- vats utanför Europa och dess generaliserbarhet kunnat ökas. Genom en metodskapande och teoriprövande forskning har teorierna kring små- staters alliansval prövats i en fallstudie om Botswanas militära samarbete med Kina. Såväl Kina som Afrika är högaktuella såväl internationellt som för svensk försvarsmakt. Forskaren skapar en metod bestående av tio indikatorer för att en småstat ska välja att gå in i en allians. Resultatet av en jämförelse med fallstudien pekar på att teorierna kring småstater kan appliceras även utanför västerländska och europeiska småstater. Den skapade metoden har också framgångsrikt prövats. / This study tests the applicability of traditional small states security strategy theory to African small states. Existing theories in this area have been criticized for their focus on western and European countries particularly on the grounds of their limited applicability to other states. This method building and theory testing study searches, in existing theories of small states strategies, for reasons and probable motives why small states enter an alli- ance. The theory is tested using a case study of Botswana’s emergent relationship with China. For the purpose of the study, a new model testing alliance building tendencies was constructed. Based on this, a method of ten indicators that are pre- dictive of when a small state might choose to enter an alliance has been derived. These indicators are then used to compare Botswana’s reasons and motives to enter an alliance and military cooperation with China. The comparison finds that seven of the ten indicators could be found, one was not found and the final two could not be tested in this study. This research concludes that African small states choose alliances for the same rea- sons that western and European state do. Furthermore, this study also suggests that the model of ten indicators to test a small state’s likelihood to enter an alliance is effective.

Africa is a heterogeneous environment that is affected by natural and anthropogenic processes. This thesis uses a review method to characterize the natural environment of the continent, present possible classifications of natural conditions and to describe the transformation of this environment. The main methodological aim of the thesis was to determine areas threatened by biodiversity loss due to anthropogenic pressures based on a new classification of the natural environment on a continental level. This was executed by methods of environmental stratification and subsequent environmental classification. Thus, this thesis presents a classification of the natural environment on the basis of homogenous units determined by bioclimatic variables and terrain, which are subsequently related to the biodiversity of birds, amphibians and mammals and to an anthropogenic influence represented by anthropogenic biomes. Finally, the share of protected areas is executed in relation to this anthropogenic transformation of the natural environment. Therefore, the thesis is quite a unique approach, as it takes into account a combination of both physical and socio-economic factors at a continental level. The final output consists of a map of the anthropogenic transformation of Africa's natural environment in the...

The diploma thesis deals with the effectiveness of the completed UN peacekeeping missions in Africa from the year 2000. Firstly, a development of peacekeeping is summarized. The next part -the theoretical part- is focused on a definition of effectiveness criterion (a dependent variable), chosen independent variable and there is analysed literature which the female author used. There is explained chosen criterion for the researched peacekeeping operation - UNMEE, MINUCI, UNOCI, UNMIL and ONUB question is focused on the dependent variable - the effectiveness of the peacekeeping missions. The second research question deals withs the group od the dependent variables (Factors of effectiveness).

There has been a significant evolution in the French African policy during the presidency of Jacques Chirac. Reasons for this must be searched in the Rwandan Civil War and the genocide of 1994 which showed that Paris did not understand the political evolution in Africa. This fact was only confirmed by two crisis in Ivory Coast in 1999 and 2002. This is why the French launched the RECAMP military program. It was no more thinkable for Paris to be kept alone in a military trap in Africa. Moreover, it was necessary to change state/regime perception. Paris neither could nor wanted to be held responsible for the security of African regimes that were by power. Therefore, France started to depersonalize its African policy. Stability of the African states assured by the Africans, not the security of the African regimes assured by Paris was the goal. This shift enabled the French to have more flexible African policy. Nevertheless, they did not withdraw from Africa. Military interventions were regarded as a source of credibility both for France and for the European Union.

Chinese economic expansion in Africa is a widely discussed topic, but less academic attention is being paid to the role China plays in African security. Since the late 1990s Chinese activity in Africa had been growing rapidly. Beijing's interests are predominantly economic, mostly represented by market seeking and foreign direct investments, and political, generally perceived as a mutual support in international organizations. The thesis focuses on the traditional principle of non-interference in how Chinese policy towards African security has been evolving together with growing Chinese interests on the continent. The People's Republic of China influences African security matters in four areas: diplomatic involvement, arms deals, support and financing, and military cooperation. By analyzing those areas with a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, concrete cases have been identified, when China interfered in internal affairs of particular states, thus altering its policy of non- interference towards more pragmatic and case by case based approach.

Inledning: Sedan Bosmandomen 1995 har antalet afrikanska fotbollsspelare som kommer till Sverige ökat. Skogvang (2008), Scott (2015) och Najarian (2015) berättar att det är ett problem med att minderåriga fotbollsspelare från Afrika luras över till Europa av ohederliga agenter för att de ska få provspela med professionella fotbollsklubbar. Istället för provspel slutar det allt för ofta med att agenter tar fotbollsspelares pengar och lämnar dem i ett främmande land utan pengar eller dokumentation (Skovang, 2008, Scott, 2015, Najarian, 2015). Problemen uppstår när talangerna blir allt yngre och migrerar utan att ha presterat i hemlandet. Syftet med vår studie är att undersöka varför afrikanska fotbollsspelare kommer till Sverige och hur de upplever de olika migrationsfaserna. Metoden var en intervjustudie med semistrukturerade intervjuer, där två avtalslösa professionella afrikanska fotbollsspelare intervjuades. Teorin som användes för att kunna besvara vad det var som motiverade fotbollsspelarna att migrera till Sverige var Lee´s (1966) teori om push- pull. Resultatet: visade att det som ofta får spelarna att lämna Afrika är fattigdom i hemlandet och pengarna är det som motiverar spelarna att migrera och fungerar som en pull-faktor. Fotbollsspelarna upplevde även en problematik i att anpassa sig till det svenska samhället som till exempel hur de betalade räkningar. Studien bidrar till en ökad medvetenhet för klubbarna som bestämmer sig för att värva in unga afrikanska fotbollsspelare och om vilka resurser som behövs för att spelarna ska kunna prestera på toppnivå. De behöver hjälp av antingen en heltidsanställd likt det AIK har eller ett system med värdfamiljer likt det som finns i England.

This working paper is intended as an overview of the Soviet Union’s and Eastern Europe’s aid to and cooperation with Africa in the field of higher and professional-technical education during the Cold War. For a long time, both this and other important chapters of the Eastern bloc’s relations with Africa and more broadly with the Third World had been either neglected or completely dismissed. In post-Cold War scholarship, the prevalent notion was that the Soviet-style political and economic model “was responsible for many grievous economic ills in the Third World in the second half of the twentieth century” and that it “shattered all possibilities of democratic rule, prosperity, and social stability”. The overall contribution of the Eastern bloc in the development of the Third World was considered as either negative or insignificant. Even a radical political economist like Andre Gunder Frank could affirm in 1989 that “much Third Worldist socialist rhetoric is just that, and no more”, and add that “the East has supported superstructural change in the South with words and sometimes arms”.

This dissertation focuses on understanding the socioeconomic impacts of Community Based Conservation (CBC) initiatives on rural livelihoods. CBC initiatives promise to abate the negative impacts of top down or centralised fortress conservation approaches that have for many decades, hindered rural people from accessing and benefiting from natural resources, and incited land-use conflicts. Yet, despite these promises, the inherently political nature of natural resource governance brings challenges to the implementation of the scientifically designed conservation interventions. It was in the interest of this dissertation, therefore, to compare and contrast the policy premises and the reality on the ground by analysing the socioeconomic impacts of CBC initiatives on rural livelihoods. The research explored Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs), a community based wildlife management initiatives in Tanzania, where the policy promises participating communities improved access to resources and better benefits retentions. Through political ecology lenses, the research collected and analysed both quantitative but largely qualitative data. Results show that WMAs foster a very limited ownership, participation and collective action at the community level. WMA governance continues to follow a logic of central government control over natural resources and the associated benefits. The WMAs are rife with conflicts and contestations over grievances that remained unsettled since its establishment a decade back. The grievances are accentuated by growing land pressure resulting from an increase in human, livestock and elephant populations, in combination with infrastructure improvements and support for agriculture-led development. Besides WMA governance offers very little or nothing to residents and village leaders in the participating communities who appear hostages in a situation where interests in human development and conservation are pitted against each other. Residents are not compensated for crops and livestock losses and/or human injuries and death caused by wildlife, while very little WMA resources and revenues are directed toward the protection of crops and livestock against wildlife. The current situation, therefore, not only makes a mockery of the notions of community-based conservation but also pinpoint to the tendency of global and national actors promoting conservation in Tanzania and elsewhere to misrepresent or ignore the local realities that defy official policy promises. Further, the results reveal that WMAs concentrate licit benefits to few elites and criminalises rural peoples’ customary livelihoods and claims of rights to natural resources. This leaves the majority of rural people who endure the cost of conservation in forgone individual livelihoods interests, such as farmland and pasture for livestock, and wildlife damages on crops, livestock, and people, to rely on illicit access mechanisms. This has, in turn, led to violent confrontations between game scouts and people, and protests and struggles to re-gain legal access. But at a more general level, the conflicts created/exacerbated by the WMA regimes erode rural peoples’ trust and willingness to support conservation. It is difficult, therefore, to argue that WMAs are community-owned conservation initiatives until a genuinely devolved and more flexible conservation model is implemented to give space for popular participation in rule-making and resource allocation. This means, in order to advance conservation-development agenda, conservation policies need to understand rural peoples’ needs and address them not only as ‘add on’ but at their very core. CBC interventions must also recognise customary claims to land and use of natural resources, and make sure that benefits accrue from conservation activities trickle down to the household level. Thus, throughout the analysis of WMAs as a CBC interventions on human-dominated landscapes, this dissertation unveils the following key issues: i) property rights and rule enforcement agency, a persistence challenge in CBC interventions, and ii) governance rationality and limit to governance, a novelty field in policy sciences, focusing on the need to contemplate and synthesise in a more acute and systematic way of understanding the policy promise and human limits to govern ourselves out of environmental problems. To conclude, this dissertation proposes a logical framework for the analysis of CBC intervention through a landscape approach lenses and offer recommendations for development and research.

The effects of climate change and global warming and the conversations surrounding it are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. The future predictions of the impact of climate change on the planet present daunting challenges for people around the globe, especially for the Mediterranean littoral, which has been labeled as a climate "hot spot". The paper focuses on the effects of climate change on migration patterns in the Mediterranean region to understand what a warmer future in the Mediterranean may look like to develop policies and strategies that may mitigate some of the more negative outcomes. The paper's main objective is to answer the following question; what are the links between migration patterns and climate change in the Mediterranean region? To the question, it is important to first define and place the theoretical framework firmly in the context that the paper is covering, such as the political, economic, social, environmental and demographic factors. Once these factors are defined, they are applied to real-world case studies in the form of North Africa and Syria through Black, Adger, et al.'s framework of drivers of migration through qualitative and quantitative data that comes from secondary resources. After analysing and comparing the two case studies the results showed that...

Critics of the liberal peace paradigm call for the consideration of local realities in order to come to a more sustainable, comprehensive form of peace – which is not imposed by external actors. The “local” is generally seen as the place where bottom-up or grassroots peace is developed in contrast to the liberal peace proposed by external international agents. Whereas critical peacebuilding literature stresses the difference between the “liberal” and the “local” and acknowledges the incoherence of liberal actors, much less attention has been paid to differences and variations within the “local” sphere. Drawing on empirical research in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) we argue that the “local” is much more complex than presumed by many critics of the liberal peace. We argue that a) the local is fragmented and actors and issues are highly contested; b) neither actors nor discourses are purely local; and c) the very idea of a coherent collective local agency is contested locally.