Most attempts to study the informal sector have tended to emphasize uniformity of experiences. Where an effort has been made to develop a more nuanced understanding, the assumption has always been that people move from lower to higher level activities that coincide with increased opportunities for accumulation. This report challenges both notions. Drawing on the experiences of women informal sector traders in Harare, Zimbabwe, and using a longitudinal study approach, the authors document differentiation within the sector amidst generalized decline in working and living conditions. Far from being a site of accumulation, the authors show that the informal sector during the era of adjustment is a site of bare survival in which people work ever longer hours for ever-diminishing incomes on which many competing claims are made within and outside the household.

This study investigates the gender implications of agricultural sector reform in Kenya. The author focuses on smallholder tea production with the aim of pinpointing the factors that influence the adoption of tea among male and female farmers, assessing female farmers perceptions of the changes in living standards over the research period, and suggesting appropriate policy reforms to ensure that women 's interests are taken into account in the design of agricultural reforms.

In light of the uses and misuses of history in Zimbabwean politics in recent years, this research report focuses on how versions of the country "s liberation war history have become a site of struggle over the definition of Zimbabwean national identity. As "identity politics" often do, Zimbabwean nationalism draws on a wide field of cultural symbols of identity and political discourses of inclusion and exclusion. Therefore, the report takes a cross-disciplinary approach to the issue of national identity by "mapping out" the imaginary field of Zimbabwean nationalism. This approach opens up the possibility of cross-reading the political discourses of the President and the ruling party ZANU (PF) with opposing voices such as those in the works of the author Yvonne Vera. This cross-reading shows how Vera "s novels and the political discourses participate in the struggle over Zimbabwean national identity by offering different versions of the nation "s history in the form of "patriotic history," "feminist nationalism," or narratives of difference. In this way the research report adds to our understanding of power and resistance in Zimbabwean politics of national identity.

African women’s history is a vast topic that embraces a wide variety of societies in over 50 countries with different geographies, social customs, religions, and historical situations. Africa is a predominantly agricultural continent, and a major factor in African agriculture is the central role of women as farmers. It is estimated that between 65 and 80 percent of African women are engaged in cultivating food for their families, and in the past that percentage was likely even higher. Thus, one common thread across much of the continent is women’s daily work in their family plot. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on individual African women in history, politics, religion, and the arts; on important events, organizations, and publications; and on topics important to women in general (marriage, fertility, employment) and to African women in particular (market women, child marriage, queen mothers). This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Women in Africa.

With the coup d???etat of 24 December 1999 and the politico-military conflict that started on 19 September 2002, C??te d???Ivoire broke with its tradition of political stability, which had served as a model in the West African sub-region. It is now facing an unprecedented crisis that is not only jeopardizing the continuity of the state, but has also introduced a culture of violence into the society. This study has three objectives. The primary one is to understand the nature of this socio-political crisis, and what is at stake in it. Secondly, the study examines the issue of ivoirit??. Finally, it explores the escalation of violence in this socio-political crisis and the catalogue of justifications for that violence.It is argued that the recurrence of military coups d???etat in C??te d???Ivoire signifies the delegitimization of the modes of regulation built on the tontine system, and calls for a renewal of the political grammar and socio-political regulatory modalities around integrating principles that have yet to be devised.

Presents three studies which examine the relationship between structural adjustment and changes in the social conditions of the working poor in Zimbabwe between 1990 and 1994. Includes a survey of conditions faced by formal sector workers in 18 larger-scale industrial companies in 1993, a survey of the trading patterns, consumption and intra- and interhousehold relationships of 174 urban women traders in 1992 and 1993, and a study of changes in health and health services among 327 urban households and 300 households in a peasant farming area in 1992.

A study which discusses the structural problems in Zambia and the policies of adjustment that have been tried. It also analyses the impact of various strategies with regard to external resource transfers. The results show that the scope for growth is highly dependent on the tightness of the external resource constraint, and that debt service tends to dominate the policy-making.

According to a 2018 World Bank report, Africa is the only region with more women than men choosing to become entrepreneurs – a phenomenon that is not the subject of adequate discussion. This book reveals the latest research-based understanding of the entrepreneurial activities of women in sub-Saharan Africa. Specially invited subject experts present salient dimensions of entrepreneurship by African women, from environmental factors to motivations and influencers as well as financial and non-financial constraints, and highlight the significant role of cultural differences. This book provides a mixture of theoretical, conceptual, and empirical research, and fills the knowledge gap by presenting a wide range of opportunities and challenges faced by sub-Saharan African women entrepreneurs. This book will help policy makers and academic researchers in understanding the role of institutions and entrepreneurship policy in building a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in the region.

Focuses on the place of Southern Africa in the globalized economy. Identifies the overall economic trends in the African continent and the responses, required and actual, to the impact of an increasingly interdependent world economy.

This report examines the efficacy of the agricultural sector reforms that have been implemented in Zambia since 1991/92 when the MMD government of Fred Chiluba was elected to office. On the basis of empirical material gathered in the field, the report demonstrates the limitations of the reform and identifies a number of constraints that have hampered the private sector and made the agricultural marketing system remain relatively underdeveloped.