Hazards and Opportunities: Farming Livelihoods in Dryland Africa. Lessons from Zimbabwe

Climatic variability, poor soils and increasing resource pressures are undermining people‘s ability to make a living in the drylands of Africa. Yet they continue to respond to these pressures by innovating and managing risks and uncertainties in creative ways. This book explores how such processes can be supported and the policies needed to ensure sustainable livelihoods in Africa‘s drylands.

Table of Contents:
Contents 1. Exploring risk and uncertainty 2. Farming livelihoods in southern Zimbabwe 3. Money and markets 4. Agriculture in a variable environment 5. Risky decisions 6. Making the most of spatial variation 7. Managing soil fertility 8. Exploring experimentation 9. Multiple actors, multiple perspectives 10. Coping with drought 11. Cattle and drought 12. Policies for an uncertain world

About the Author :
Rajesh Tandon is the founder and executive director of PRIA (Society for Participatory Research in Asia), and has been an activist-scholar for the past three decades, focusing on issues such as citizenship and participatory governance, participatory research and building civil society alliances. In addition to his writing and scholarship, he has served as a civil society leader in India and internationally, including serving as a founding member and chair of CIVICUS, programme director of the Citizens and Governance Programme of the Commonwealth Foundation and chair of the Montreal International Forum (FIM). He has been active participant in the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability and served as co-convenor of the working group on globalising citizen engagements. John Gaventa is a Research Professor and Fellow in the Participation, Power and Social Change Team at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. A political sociologist by training, he has written widely on issues of power, citizen action, participation and democracy, including the award winning Power and Powerlessness in an Appalachian Valley (1980) and Global Citizen Action (co-editor, 2001). He also has been active with a number of NGOs and civil society organisations internationally, including the Highlander Centre in the United States and Oxfam in the UK. He is the director of the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability and served as co-convenor of the working group on globalising citizen engagements.

Review :
'Fluctuating environmental and economic risks in Africa's drylands mean that there can be no standard prescriptions for these areas. This important book shows how this apparently pessimistic conclusion can open up opportunities for local innovation and adaptation.' - Chris Eldridge, Save the Children Fund, Southern Africa Office 'This book helps those of us who are faced with the question: why has so much national and donor investment in African argricultural research produced such poor results? Sold empircal data is used to cogently argue that adaptive management of agricultural research is needed to understand the cultivator's adaptive management of agricultural practices.' - Dr Louk Box, Director, European Centre for Development Policy Management 'This study of small-scale dryland agriculture has enormous implications for agricultural and natural resource policy that justifies the inclusion of farmers as active partners in the formal research and extension porcess.' - Professor D Michael Warren, Director, Center for Indigenous Knowledge for Agriculture and Rural Development 'Of tremendous value not only to research and extension staff seeking participatory approaches with rural households, but provides the core of a transformational approach, using the knowledge and experience of rural families in the development of their own communities.' - E Dengu, Country Director, Intermediate Development Group, Zimbabwe