There is an unrecognised but vast ‘hidden middle’ of private sector businesses operating in Africa between agricultural producers and food consumers. This is made up of a range of private actors providing transport, trading, brokerage, finance, storage, warehousing, processing and … Continue reading → …
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ZimbabweLand
Zimbabwe’s resettlement experience from 1980 to 2000
My recent blog on ‘phases of land reform’ focused on the post-2000 land reform period, but of course there was resettlement before 2000 as part of the post-Independence land reform efforts from 1980 to 2000. This too had phases, again … Continue reading → …
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Robin Palmer – the original land campaigner and scholar activist
Robin Palmer sadly died on February 19th. Historian, lecturer, land campaigner, NGO worker and consultant, he was the original scholar activist. The large numbers of tributes that have been shared on many platforms (see here and here) are witness to … Continue reading → …
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Phases of Zimbabwe’s land reform: a shifting political economy
When many people make grand proclamations about Zimbabwe’s land reform, there is often very little specificity – both of where and when they are talking about. For the post-2000 land reform is not an event, but a process – with … Continue reading → …
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Conversations on Zimbabwe’s land reform: “well, it’s a bit more complex than that….”
I am often involved in conversations with people who are intrigued that I work on land issues in Zimbabwe. Such conversations frequently lead off with something along the lines ‘Oh it was such a terrible thing, wasn’t it?’. Their assumptions … Continue reading → …
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Livelihoods analysis and agrarian political economy: a new podcast
At the end of last year, I had a great week at PLAAS (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies) at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town discussing with a great cohort of post-grad students working on … Continue reading → …
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Livestock populations decimated by ‘January disease’ in Zimbabwe: diverse local responses
In the last few years, Zimbabwe has lost around half a million cattle to the tick-borne disease, theileriosis, better known as January disease, or in our study areas as ‘cattle covid’. This loss has had a huge impact on people’s … Continue reading → …
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How some tractors and a dead lion met in Harare: a new geopolitics in Africa?
In a bizarre ceremony recently, Zimbabwe’s president Emerson Mnangagwa offered a stuffed lion to the visiting Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko. In exchange, Zimbabwe received $66m worth of agricultural equipment for the agricultural mechanisation programme, notably tractors made at the famous … Continue reading → …
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Negotiating ‘belonging’ in Zimbabwe’s land reform areas
Much of the debate about land reform in Zimbabwe focuses on the material, livelihood consequences of getting new land and its politics, but what does it feel like? How does land reform alter the sense of belonging to a place, … Continue reading → …
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Preparing for the next pandemic: lessons from Zimbabwe
There is a lot of talk about pandemic preparedness, but what does it mean? Too often there are narrow, medicalised versions – focused for example on drug stockpiling, vaccine banks and so on. A forthcoming COVID Collective report – Pandemic … Continue reading → …
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