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The New Scramble for the African Countryside
Author(s) -
Dzingirai Vupenyu
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
development and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-7660
pISSN - 0012-155X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-7660.00304
Subject(s) - battle , indigenous , natural resource , economic growth , odds , private sector , rural area , natural resource management , formative assessment , political science , business , public administration , sociology , geography , economics , law , medicine , ecology , pedagogy , logistic regression , archaeology , biology
There is in Africa, as in other parts of the third world, a desire for environmental management that simultaneously incorporates and benefits all stakeholders, including private businesses and villagers. While these partnerships continue to displace the failed state‐centric management of the African landscape, research to document their local‐level impact is still formative and developing. This article is an attempt to examine the new environmental management partnerships emerging in southern Africa's countryside. It argues that these new interventions not only fail to deliver benefits to villagers: more importantly, they curtail the long‐established rights to land and other natural resources of indigenous communities. While villagers may engage in a battle to recover these rights, it is a struggle in which the odds are stacked against them, and which the private sector and its partners are set to win.