Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Eritrea, a relatively young African nation, is one of the least developed countries in the world. Its economy is predominantly dependent on subsistence agriculture and the level and magnitude of poverty is more severe in rural areas. The formal financial sector is underdeveloped, state-owned, far from being competitive, and limited in terms of depth and breadth as measured by the relevant financial sector development indicators. To address the limitations of the formal banking sector and to help fill the financing gap, and improve the general livelihood of those at the lower income group, the Government of Eritrea introduced a Saving and Microcredit Programme (SMCP) in 1996 for which no scientific study measuring its impact has been done at the household level. The study was conducted in rural areas to find out whether the SMCP as a microfinance institution has improved the livelihood of its clients. The specific objectives of the study were to describe the characteristic feature of rural livelihoods in terms of the resources owned, the strategies pursued and outcomes achieved, identify and examine the determinants of household participation in the SMCP and finally assess the impact of participation in SMCP on household livelihoods. The study employed a quasi-experimental cross-sectional survey design involving structured and semi-structured questionnaire administered to 500 respondents of whom 200 represented the treated group and 300 the controlled group. Logit regression was employed to identify the factors that determine household participation in the SMCP. In regard to this, age of the client household, household size, marital status, level of education of the client household, the size of first round loan, entrepreneurial experience, type of loan product offered by the institution, ownership of livestock and microenterprise, the perception of the client on involuntary deposits, the occurrence of a negative events (shock) to the household and village access to electricity were found to have statistically significant effect on the household‟s probability to participate in the SMCP. Furthermore, the marginal effects were also computed to evaluate the contribution of each of these factors to the likelihood of participating in the SMCP. A propensity score matching model was applied to assess the impact of the programme on the livelihood of its clients. The findings reveal that participation in the SMCP has a significantly higher average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) households. Profits generated from off-farm and small microenterprises, the values of household and livestock assets, food and non-food consumption expenditures and nutrition quality, were found to be on average higher for the treated households than for the controlled households. Therefore, it could be argued that the provision of micro financial resources has significant positive effects on household livelihood outcomes. The study has important social and economic policy implication regarding the role of finance in rural development.

Global fisheries are in decline in response to intense pressure to feed a growing world population. Many of the world’s fisherpeople live in poverty and suffer disproportionately from this threat to global fish stocks due to competition for resources among other stressors. In recent years the Vietnamese government has encouraged small-scale aquaculture production for economic development and to mitigate declining fisheries livelihoods. Using data from the 2013 Vietnam Transitions Survey this paper examines different measures of household vulnerability to the declining fishery and the resulting uncertain economic future. Analysis reveals that the most vulnerable group among survey participants are those who depend primarily on extensive aquaculture for their household income. Despite the frequency of disease in fish, intensive aquaculture remains an attractive livelihood activity. Households are theoretically willing to face increased risk in exchange for greater prosperity, but are typically unable to do so due to cost-related barriers to entry.

The transnational network La Vía Campesina (LVC) coined the term ‘food sovereignty’, which has been appropriated by many actors seeking alternatives to the neoliberal food regime. Traspatio Oaxaqueño (TO) is a small initiative seeking to revitalize backyard agriculture and the role of women in local food systems. While TO leaders do not explicitly claim to be pursuing food sovereignty, the initiative promotes some of its key principles: (1) the empowerment of women from economically vulnerable families, by increasing their access to productive resources; (2) the preservation of the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food; and (3) the use of ecologically, socially and economically sustainable methods. Despite the fact that the initiative does not deeply challenge the neoliberal food regime, it contributes to the collective organizing and politicization of marginalized actors, allowing them to gain greater autonomy and to eventually reclaim control over food systems.

Magister Philosophiae (Land and Agrarian Studies) - MPhil(LAS) / Insecure access and limited rights to land are major factors contributing to poverty among rural women (Ellis,2000; Havnevik et al,2007). Despite that, rural women’s livelihoods are directly linked to land; they generally lack secure access to productive land. In acknowledging the inequalities in terms of land ownership among Malawians, the government of Malawi introduced a land reform project known as the Community Based Rural Land Development Project (CBRLDP) (GoM, 2002a). This study aims at assessing the effects of group-based titling of the CBRLDP on creating secure access to land and livelihoods of women beneficiaries.Using qualitative research design, methods such as in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and questionnaire surveys were used as sources of primary data and project reports while CBRLDP programme planning documents and evaluation reports as sources of secondary data were consulted. While the data shows that secure access to land could create women’s sustainable livelihoods,the study found that access to land and the livelihoods generated by the CBRLDP are gendered, for instance,there are more male beneficiaries as compared to women. With regard to women’s land rights, this study shows that women are still struggling in claiming their rights to land. Furthermore, the study found that the roles of traditional leaders in securing access to land and protecting women’s land rights within the CBRLDP remain unclear. The study also reveals that access to land alone is not enough for the creation of women’s sustainable livelihoods.

Humans have always interacted with plants for thousands of years ago. The origin of plant domestication is a clear example of human-plant mutualism. This mutual relationship has gradually developed into a co-entangled relationship where both symbionts benefit each other in an environment. The evidence of this relationship is confirmed by the use of plants across the globe, which constitutes a critical component in the livelihoods of people. It is likely to have been the case during the Iron Age period in Southern Africa, particularly in southwestern Zimbabwe where diversity of plant resources and other economic activities supported the Early farming communities in a variety of ways. Unfortunately, the available information about plant use, the role of crops and wild plants beyond diet and subsistence is widely dispersed. Studies that adequately analyse plant remains from Early Iron Age sites to understand the purpose of plants especially wild in the daily livelihoods of early farming communities is lagging. The labour and decision making invested in the selection, management, gathering, processing and consumption of these plants is not known. This research explored an analysis of archaeobotanical remains at Mtanye site, one of the early farming communities in Gwanda, southwestern Zimbabwe. Ethnobotanical and archaeobotanical techniques, as well as further microscopic analysis of seeds in the laboratory, were performed. The assessment of ethnobotanical examinations and archaeobotanical remains concluded that plants were vital to Mtanye community’s daily livelihoods, by offering an essential contribution to social, religious and economic development in the face of environmental challenges. The people at Mtanye treated crop cultivation and gathering of wild plants with more considerable ingenuity just like other sectors of their economies. Considering that the environment was not conducive for adequate crop farming, the intensive use of wild plant resources likely underpinned their ability to survive in a semi-arid environment for a prolonged time.

This thesis examines the rise and fall of a coconut-based enclave economy in the administrative post of Micaúne in the district of Chinde, Zambézia Province. Residents of Micaúne derived their livelihoods from the coconut economy for over a century. My research is based on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between 2010 and 2014 over a period of eight months in this administrative post. Although coconut had been a familiar crop to people in the Micaúne area for centuries, it became central to the local economy only after the advent of colonial settler capitalism in the 1880s. I argue that the longevity of the coconut economy, and the stability and predictability that it brought to Micaúne residents, were the outcome of its embeddedness in the local social organisation and mode of production. From the last decades of the 19th century, Micaúne's economy was dominated by Société du Madal, initially a French-owned company that established coconut plantations in the area and produced commodities derived from the coconut palm for sale on international markets. Madal became a 'total institution' in Micaúne because it was the major landholder, employer of local labour, supplier of goods through its shops and the main purchaser of coconut from growers in the area. This study suggests that a 'customary' law relating to inheritance in Micaúne reinforced the centrality of the coconut economy in local society for much of the 20th century by making specific reference to the inheritance of trees. The implication of this law was that control and ownership of trees rather than land was the major determinant of local livelihoods. But as in any enclave economy, when the resource on which it is based is depleted, the collapse of the whole system is inevitable. In the case of Micaúne, an ecological crisis in the 1990s, in the form of a plant disease known as Coconut Lethal Yellowing Disease (CLYD, infected and killed most of the palm trees, both on Madal's and local families' land, which were the backbone of the local economy. As a result, the company-based welfare system that Micaúne residents enjoyed for more than a hundred years disappeared overnight, a catastrophe that caused unprecedented uncertainty and despair in the area. The local people's main sources of income and employment shrank and there have been many confirmed reports of hunger and starvation amongst the Micaúne population in the 2000s and after. In sum, the majority of Micaúne residents are now 'food insecure', except for a few who are local businessmen and people employed by or getting stipends from the state. It is evident from my research that attempts by the government and NGOs to promote food security initiatives failed to solve the problem. On the contrary, these initiatives have fuelled a growing demand for land, which has led to its increasing commodification (including the emergence of an illegal land market). This development has also triggered emergent claims of land ownership based on a new notion of autochthony. A clear distinction between 'natives' and non-'natives' (newcomers) is now being drawn in Micaúne. Claiming to belong to the category of autochthons is seen as a basis for entitlement to prior rights over resources such as minerals recently discovered in the district. I argue that the promise of minerals resources might explain why, despite the extremely harsh living conditions that local residents have faced since the demise of the coconut economy, they have decided to remain in this area while scouting in the interim for alternative livelihoods options, which are limited to subsistence farming and fishing, and petty trade. They seem to be waiting for the materialisation of big investments in mineral resources or in other development initiatives often touted by the central government in Mozambique. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Anthropology and Archaeology / DPhil / Unrestricted

<p>This dissertation challenges dominant food security discourses and practices that seek to address food insecurity through technoscientific approaches to agricultural production. Situated in Vietnam’s An Giang province in the Mekong River Delta, this work ethnographically explores and historically grounds global, national, and household scalar implications of these same discourses and practices on rice farmers’ livelihoods. The central research question that guided this project asks: if farmers are producing security for the nation, then why do they remain food insecure? Through a 16-month ethnographic study utilizing a mixed-methods approach I combined participant observation, household surveys, semi-structured interviews, and participatory mapping with rice farmers, farm laborers, and local and national government officials in order to address this question from a historically and ethnographically ground perspective. I show how Vietnam’s history of hunger and famine, experienced most recently in the late 1970’s, colors the nation’s current and future agricultural development. Focused on a future of rural development, economic growth, and values of modernity, new models of agricultural production are implemented across the Mekong River Delta to ensure the nation’s self-sufficiency in producing “enough” rice and food. Amongst these strategies, intensive triple cropping rice practices, food safety certifications and practices, and an increased reliance on agro-chemicals has resulted in differing farming practices and mixed impacts on farming livelihoods. I leverage a feminist political ecology and science and technology studies framework to foreground the rice farmers’ perspectives and differed experiences, while tracking the rooted inequalities within government policies, market logics, and social relationships. In three articles, I (1) examine differential experiences of state-based agricultural models and their impact on farmers’ livelihood security (2) trace how dominant discourses raise questions about individual and state responsibility; and (3) explore emergent farming livelihood opportunities and challenges within late socialist agricultural development. Drawing on ethnographic accounts and experiences, particularly from farmers, results showed that these dominant discourses that narrows food security to only be governable through techno-scientific approaches and agricultural practices are insufficient to address farmers’ insecurity.</p>

Today, many pressures (socio-economic, resource scarcity, policy, and regulation) make fishers and their communities vulnerable on a variety of fronts. These pressures threaten fishing communities along the South African coast. Both natural and social changes in the traditional handline fishery affect the social-ecological system of a region as a whole. Fishers need to cope with these local global changes and require systems that support their strategies to achieve resilience. Furthermore, stressors that drive variability in the fishery system occur on multiple temporal and spatial scales thereby exposing fishers and communities to multiple stressors. The impact and interplay of these stressors at multiple scales need to be taken into account to develop a clear understanding of social-ecological linkages if sustainable livelihoods are to be promoted and guaranteed. There is however a shortage of appropriately scaled, context-specific data that is needed to inform various decision-making processes. To this end, participant-led research was conducted in six communities in the Southern Cape, where 50 participants were interviewed over a period of 6 months in 2013/2014. The interviews were an attempt to gather and record perceptions and knowledge regarding stressors that are responsible for the social- ecological system and ultimately affect the fishers' ability to fish successfully. Based on this knowledge, the research was aimed at gaining insight into what strategies are currently employed to ensure sustainable livelihoods. The data presented does not only offer valuable insights into the day-to-day experiences of the group of fishers, but also expose various knowledge gaps that exist in micro-scale interactions that influence the fishery system. This is achieved by first providing an analysis of various stressors, which include the impacts and responses to climate variability, challenges presented by policy and regulatory frameworks, social and economic considerations, challenges presented by infrastructure and political considerations. The adaptation, coping, and reaction strategies implemented are analysed using a place-based context and variability of strategies employed between each specific place is discussed. Apart from highlighting knowledge gaps, the development of a more complete understanding of current reacting, coping and adaptive strategies as well as the drivers behind the decisions contained in this thesis, provides valuable insight into a fishery system that is not well-described which underscores the need for context-specific research at smaller scales.

Student Number : 0413841X - MA research report - School of Social Sciences - Faculty of Humanities / People living and working on commercial farms in South Africa are the poorest and most vulnerable group in the labour market. They rely on multiple livelihood strategies to alleviate risk and to survive. Wages from their employment in agriculture usually constitute their primary source of income and therefore play an important part in their livelihood strategy, as does their dependence on the farmer for housing, food, credit and access to services. The livelihood strategies of these poor people have been disturbed by the introduction of the Sectoral Determination for the Agricultural Sector, which prescribes a minimum wage for farm workers. It is especially the most vulnerable workers who are hit by the farmers’ reluctance to grant them the same benefits as they received before. The law thus only succeeds in supporting those workers who are better educated, healthy and able to manage the higher amount of cash wage in a responsible way. It is necessary to protect those who are made worse off through the legislation by a comprehensive rural development strategy. Such a development strategy must target those factors keeping the poorest farm workers vulnerable and struggling for survival.

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