Resource Alienation, Militarisation and Development

220 Pages·2011·0.85 MB·English

Resource Alienation,
Militarisation and Development
Case Studies from East African Drylands

Edited by
Mustafa Babiker

Proceedings of the Regional Workshops
on East African Drylands
(Khartoum and Addis Ababa)

Organization for Social Science Research
in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA)
© 2002 Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern
Africa (OSSREA)

OSSREA acknowledges the support of Ford Foundation, Swedish
International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida/SAREC),
Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation (NORAD), The
Netherlands' Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and International Development
Research Centre (IDRC).

All rights reserved. Published 2002
Printed in Ethiopia

Text layouts: Alemtsehay Zewde

Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa
P.O. Box 31971, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Fax: [phone]
E-mails: [email protected]
pub. [email protected]
Contents
List of Tables v
Preface vii
Introduction
Mustafa Babiker 1
1. Studies of pastoral nomadism in the Sudan: An overview
Idris Salim al-Hassan 27
2. Land alienation in Borana: Some land tenure issues in a
pastoral context in Ethiopia
Johan Helland 47
3. An overview of root causes of problems that currently affect
Borana pastoralists of southern Ethiopia
Getachew Kassa 67
4. Survival under stress: The Rufa’a al-Hoi of the southern Funj
in the Sudan
Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed 77
5. Traditional pastoralism along the Nile belt in northern Sudan
and prospects for the future
Omer A. Egemi 97
6. Scarcity and conflict in pastoral areas: A look at the other side
of the coin
Peter O. Otim 105
7. Replacing the pastoral staff
Frode Storäs 119
8. Coping by smuggling in the Horn of Africa: Sudan as a focal
point
Mohamed Hashim Awad 129
9. Land-related disputes: The case of Zege peninsula, northern
Ethiopia
Rahel Mesfin 137
10. Wisdom and skills: How traditional farmers and pastoralists
respond to hazards in the Sahel
Abdel Rahman Abbaker Ibrahim 151
iv
11. Dryland farming in Sudan: Low inputs and low sustainability
Siddig El Tayeb Muneer 161
12. De-stigmatising food-for-work in rural public works:
Implications for food security and rural development
171
Mustafa Babiker
13. Nomads’ education and the mobile school in the Sudan
Suaad Ibrahim Eisa 183
14. Tumbak production and marketing in Sudan: A case study of
Kafoat, northern Darfur
Mohamed El Tayeb Abdalla 193
v

Tables
Chap. 4
Table 1 The contribution of the agricultural sector to the GDP
(in million Pounds) ..................................................... 87
Chap. 5
Table 1 Population and H/H size by major settlement clusters,
1998 ............................................................................ 99
Table 2 Animal population grazing in the area during kharif ..... 100
Table 3 Sources of water supply in the area ................................ 100
Table 4 The herding cost per month per animal, 1998 (LS) ...... 101
Table 5 Livestock ownership per household .............................. 103
Chap. 11
Table 1 Livestock ownership ...................................................... 164
Table 2 Household annual income by source .............................. 165
Table 3 Households’ annual expenditure in dry farming areas
in Nile River and North Kordofan States ...................... 166
Table 4 Households’ annual expenditure on different food
items in the dry farming areas in Sudan ..................... 166
Chap. 12
Table 1 El Odaya integrated resource management project
food-for-work activities, 1995 .................................... 175
Chap. 13
Table 1 Distribution of teachers and pupils by sex and
percentages of females to males in the States of
Darfur, 1996/1997 ....................................................... 186
Table 2 Distribution of schools and pupils by sue in greater
Darfur (1993/1994) and Darfur States (1996/1997) 190
vi
Chap. 14
Table 1 Tumbak crop registered at El Fasher Tumbak Auction
market, 1996 ............................................................. 194
Table 2 Type of labour used in production activities .................. 197
Table 3 Frequencies of channels of distribution of tumbak and
onion ........................................................................... 200
Table 4 Tumbak and onion returns (S£) ...................................... 200
Table 5 Tumbak and onion production and sales in 1996 ........... 201
Table 6 Preferences for cultivating tumbak and vegetables ........ 202
Table 7 Returns on peanuts and tomatoes (£S) ........................... 202
Table 8 Tumbak Auction Market income in 1996 (S£) ............... 204
Figure
Fig. 1 Channels of Distribution ................................................ 199
vii
Preface
The East African Drylands Research Programme is a collaborative venture
between the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), University of Bergen,
Norway, and the Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and
Southern Africa (OSSREA), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The programme involves
researchers from Ethiopia, Norway, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Its major
objective is to produce development-relevant information on East African
drylands. Taking a broad view rather concentrating on the issue of crisis
management, the programme focuses on the spatial and temporal dimensions of
resource management. A number of workshops had been held dealing with the
issue of human adaptations in East African drylands.
This is the third of the proceedings published within the East African Drylands
programme. The first one, Managing Scarcity: Human adaptation in East African
Drylands (edited by Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed and Hassan A. Abdel Ati) was
based on a workshop in Addis Ababa (24-26 August 1995), and was published in
1996. The second one, Pastoralism and Environment: Experiences from the
Greater Horn of Africa (edited by Leif Manager and Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed)
was based on two workshops, one in Addis Ababa (10-14 November 1997), and
another one in Jinja, Uganda (8-10 March 1998). In the intervening period, we
have had two workshops, one in Khartoum (8-9 December 1998), and another
one in Addis Ababa (9-11 March 2000). The papers presented in the proceedings
have all been read and discussed in one of those two last workshops.
Many of the authors have contributed papers in all the workshops; each paper,
therefore, represents a step forward based on earlier papers and leading to the
next one. However, each paper also deals with a particular issue, and should be
read as an independent contribution. Hence, although it is important to be aware
of the internal dynamics of the drylands programme workshops as a context for
generating themes, we also hope that the papers in themselves reflect significant
progress in our understanding of the dynamics of human adaptations in East
African drylands.
Leif Manger
Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed

FROM DECLINE TO SURVIVAL IN EAST
AFRICAN DRYLANDS: AN INTRODUCTION
Mustafa Babiker
The driving force behind much research on East African dryland
pastoralism is a set of powerful, widely perceived and, at times, emotional
images about its future. Many anthropologists, sympathetic to pastoral
peoples, have repeatedly warned of the approaching end of pastoralism.
In most cases, any trend towards the integration of herding with
cultivation is interpreted as a loss of resources necessary for pastoral
survival. However, such interpretations and the associated worries about
the future of pastoralism are, of course, not without reason. In the Sudan,
for example, the 1944 Soil Conservation Committee had recommended
that where pastoralists are in direct competition for land with cultivators,
it should be the policy that the rights of the cultivator be considered
paramount because his crops yield a bigger return per unit area (El Tayeb
1985, 35). This view echoes Sir Charles Eliot’s, then High Commissioner
to the East African Protectorate, who, more than 50 years earlier, strongly
asserted the demise of pastoral people in Eastern Africa. He predicted that
their way of life would not be sustained in the face of the advances of
Western ideas and technologies; the future lay with the cultivator, not with
the herder (Anderson 1993, 121).
Moreover, worries about the future of pastoralism were further
consolidated by the observed tendency in post-colonial development
policies that invariably displayed a strong bias in favour of arable
cropping in terms of jurisdictional, technical and economic assistance.
The official engrossment with the question of how to restrict pastoral
mobility and the associated settlement plans, added a further dimension to
the concern about the future of pastoralism. The implications of such
developments for the ‘traditional’ systems of pastoral production and
resource management were posited as one of crisis: a ‘crisis in survival’.
The recurrence of droughts and famines in recent decades has lent great
support to the prediction that pastoralism is on the verge of extinction
(Baker 1977; Carr 1977; Morton 1988, 1993).
2 Resource Alienation, Militarisation and Development

This introductory chapter attempts to contribute to the ongoing effort
(Anderson 1993; Niemeijer 1996) to obliterate perhaps the two major
hurdles in the progress of our understanding of the dynamics of human
adaptation in East African drylands. These are the persistence of ‘crisis
scenarios’ and the insistence on a ‘herder/farmer’ dichotomy when the
future of pastoralism is problematic in the context of a resource
competition and conflict. Thus, the following section of the paper
questions the methodological foundations of the ‘crisis scenarios’. The
section that follows examines the relationship between farming and
herding and shows how it is far more complex to be captured in a simple
‘herder/farmer’ dichotomy. The final section provides some concluding
remarks and their implications for future research and policy.
1. THE CRISIS SCENARIOS
In recent decades, increasingly optimistic scenarios for the future of
pastoralism began to emerge. This is especially true in the case of
research inspired by the revival of ‘actor-oriented’ perspectives and the
academic recognition of the so-called ‘indigenous knowledge’ systems as
opposed to the different brands of structuralism, which dominated
research in the 1970s. It is admitted that the ‘…pastoralists have
historically experienced many cycles of herd growth and collapse, good
weather and bad weather, and high and low prices for their products’
(Barfield 1992, 216). Yet, they ‘...have proved remarkably resilient in the
face of both natural and man-made disasters and there is no reason to
believe that the end of pastoralism is near’ (Hogg 1992, 135). Despite this
optimism, gloomy scenarios are persistently held by many students of
pastoral societies: ‘…many an anthropologist is deeply concerned about
the fate of the people among who her or his work was done but still say
that those people can take care of themselves. This view is nonsense: in
every case that I know of, pastoralism is losing ground’ (Aronson 1984,
74).
Many of the crisis scenarios, however, are rooted in a narrative that tells
how things were in earlier times when the pastoralists lived in harmony
with their environments; how the state, aid agencies and the pastoralists
themselves have undermined that harmony. The persistence of the crisis
scenarios is attributed, therefore, to the assumption that it serves well the
interest of donor agencies and national governments in perpetuating