Browsing by Author "Hakizimana, Cyriaque"

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    Agricultural commercialisation in Meru County, Kenya: What are the policy implications?
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2016) Hakizimana, Cyriaque
    Our study aimed to engage these debates. The study was carried out in Kenya’s Meru County and examined three agricultural farming models: outgrowers, medium-scale commercial farms and a plantation. This was part of the ‘Land and Agricultural Commercialisation in Africa’ research project conducted in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. The study provides a comparative perspective across the models on land, labour, employment, livelihoods and economic linkages. It used a mixed methods approach, including qualitative and quantitative methods and detailed life histories.
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    Agricultural commercialisation in Meru County, Kenya: What are the policy implications?
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2016) Hakizimana, Cyriaque
    Kenya’s highlands have a long history of agricultural commercialisation, from colonial times to the present. Policies from 1895 to the 1930s were aimed primarily at developing European settler agriculture, which formed the backbone of Kenya’s colonial economy. The first major land reform took place on the eve of Kenya’s independence in the mid-1950s. Famously known as the Swynnerton Plan, this colonial agricultural policy intended to create an African middle class of commercial farmers through land consolidation that would pioneer an agrarian transformation based on cash-crop agriculture.
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    Can smallholder avocado production reduce poverty and improve food security through internal markets? The case of Giheta, Burundi
    (Taylor & Francis, 2018) Hakizimana, Cyriaque; May, J.
    The role of agriculture in rural development is widely documented in literature. Many analysts regard agriculture, specifically smallscale agriculture, as an effective instrument for poverty reduction and food security, particularly in rural communities of developing countries where large numbers of poor people are concentrated. However whether the focus of such production should be on export crops or for domestic food security remains an issue for debate. Using the avocado industry in Giheta-Burundi, this paper argues that some emerging tree crops such as avocados present enormous opportunities to income generation and food security for small-scale farmers. This paper suggests that small-scale avocado farming presents the economic, market and health potentiality to contribute to a viable and sustainable rural economy through internal markets thereby reducing levels of poverty and malnutrition in this area. From a policy perspective, the paper suggests that the avocado sector needs to be supported by both the private and public sectors, irrespective of whether the crop is consumed, traded domestically or exported. Increasing the capacity of avocado production and trade will then enable small-scale farmers and vendors to gain greater income from this sector.
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    The implications of the mobility of South African capital for rural youth in Africa: The case of Zambian sugar
    (2015) Hakizimana, Cyriaque
     Developing young people as independent farmers and producers, capable to establish land-based livelihood at their own and on their own terms, seems to be the most desirable option to ensure the rural futures of rural young people in Africa.
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    Land and agricultural commercialisation in Meru County, Kenya: evidence from three models
    (Taylor & Francis, 2017) Hakizimana, Cyriaque; Goldsmith, Paul; Nunow, Abdi Aralle; Roba, Adano Wario; Biashara, Jane Kathure
    What are the relative pros and cons of different pathways of agricultural commercialisation in Africa? This paper examines aspects of three commercial farming cases, each of which represents one of the three most dominant models of commercial agriculture – small-scale outgrowers, medium-size commercial farms and a large estate – in the high-potential area of Meru County in Kenya. The paper provides a comparative perspective across the cases, examining their outcomes in terms of land relations, labour, livelihoods and local economic linkages. The study used a mixed-methods approach, including a household survey and a range of qualitative methods including detailed life histories. We find diverse dynamics across our cases: increasing land consolidation spurred by the rising class of commercial coffee farmers, but also land fragmentation as a result of population pressure and prevalence of inheritance as a pathway to land acquisition in the case of horticultural outgrowers. The plantation generates relatively better paid employment for permanent skilled workers, while the commercial farms create employment for casualised, insecure and poorly paid seasonal labour. These labour regimes are highly gendered. The outgrowers combine family and hired labour. Across the three cases, farmers diversify income between on-farm and off-farm sources. The commercial and outgrower farms are dynamically integrated into the local economy, while the estate is less so. These features of the three models generate processes of social differentiation, which are reshaping the agrarian structure and rural economy in Meru County.
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    The New Alliance on food security and nutrition: What are the implications for Africa’s youth?
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2016) Hakizimana, Cyriaque
    The ‘New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition’ (hereafter the ‘New Alliance’) is a partnership which was established between selected African countries, G8 members, and the private sector to ‘work together to accelerate investments in agriculture to improve productivity, livelihoods and food security for smallholder farmers.’ Announced by President Obama at the 2012 G8 Summit, the initiative aims at the fundamental transformation of Africa’s agriculture through market mechanisms based on large-scale land-based investments. Its pioneers anticipated that the initiative would simultaneously increase food production/ availability and food accessibility/affordability through market conduits, thereby lifting millions of rural Africans out of poverty.
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    The new alliance on food security and nutrition: what are the implications for Africa’s youth?
    (Future Agricultures Consortium, 2016) Hakizimana, Cyriaque
    Young people are a growing proportion of Africa’s population and most live in poverty in rural areas. Despite urbanisation, in absolute numbers the rural youth are growing and agricultural development needs to prioritise opportunities for them to create land-based livelihoods. Large-scale land-based investments that allocate land and water to private companies are often justified with the promise of job creation, but typically create fewer jobs than the land-based livelihoods that they displace. Private investments in agriculture need to be designed to create opportunities for young people to create livelihoods for themselves and their families, both in primary production and also in upstream and downstream enterprises. Implementation of the New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition needs to avoid large-scale land-based investments and facilitate the process of developing young people as independent farmers and producers capable of establishing landbased and rural non-farm livelihoods on their own, and on their own terms.
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    The New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition: What are the Implications for Africa’s Youth?
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2016) Hakizimana, Cyriaque
    The ‘New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition’ (hereafter the ‘New Alliance’) is a partnership which was established between selected African countries, G8 members, and the private sector to ‘work together to accelerate investments in agriculture to improve productivity, livelihoods and food security for smallholder farmers.’ Announced by President Obama at the 2012 G8 Summit, the initiative aims at the fundamental transformation of Africa’s agriculture through market mechanisms based on large-scale land-based investments. Its pioneers anticipated that the initiative would simultaneously increase food production/availability and food accessibility/affordability through market conduits, thereby lifting millions of rural Africans out of poverty. To achieve this goal, its proponents put much faith in the private sector as the key driver of the initiative given the sector’s endowments in terms of financial resources, human capital, technological resources, intellectual property, market access, cutting-edge business practices, in-country networks and other expertise related to food security. Some critics of the New Alliance, however, challenged this initiative on grounds that the pursuit of the profit generation and developmental goals are incompatible and mutually exclusive in essence, and the combination of these two can’t and will never work for the benefit of the poor, as the latter will always be adversely incorporated into the former.
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    Space, markets and employment in agricultural development: South Africa
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2015) Neves, David; Hakizimana, Cyriaque
    Growth in the agricultural sector has long been assumed to automatically benefit the rural non-farm sector, mainly through production or consumption ‘linkages’, including expenditure by farmers and their workers. However the economic and employment benefits of agriculture depend crucially on the spatial patterns of agricultural production, processing and marketing (and their linkages to local markets). These policy findings draw on detailed area-based research examining agriculture, along with its upstream and downstream ‘linkages’, in the Weenen district of KwaZulu-Natal (Neves & Hakizimana, 2015). The district is home to both large and small-scale commercial farmers primarily engaging in horticulture. The research examined the economic and employment contribution of agriculture, and its impact on the larger RNFE.
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    Space, markets and employment in agricultural development: South Africa country report
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2015) Neves, David; Hakizimana, Cyriaque
    Throughout much of the developing world, including sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture is frequently viewed as central to efforts to foster development and reduce poverty. Key conceptual and policy issues accordingly raised in relation to agriculture include questions, such as: Who engages in agriculture? What and how do they farm? What gains do they derive? Who is employed and under what conditions are they employed? While these questions are concerned with the direct impact of agriculture, the developmental potential of agriculture also inheres in its relationship to the larger rural non-farm economy (RNFE). Agriculture is hence most likely to contribute to forms of inclusive, pro-poor development, if its growth is accompanied by expansion of the non-farm economy. The present report considers these issues, including the impact of agriculture on the broader rural economy, in relation to South Africa. Central to this enquiry is the larger structure of South Africa’s RNFE, including the manner in which agriculture influences it. The report therefore describes the findings of research undertaken on the spatial and institutional articulation of markets, settlements and livelihoods, in order to examine the relationship between farm and non-farm activities. This is done to facilitate reflection on the contribution (and prospective contribution) of the non-farm economy on rural employment and livelihoods. These are questions of theoretical and policy salience, not only because of their implications for understanding agriculture and the RNFE, but also for a more expansive consideration of livelihoods, poverty and employment.