This title was first published in 2001: Does the non-farm sector offer new hope for rural Africa? In the face of economic crisis and restructuring across Africa, small-scale enterprise has come to play a central role in rural livelihood and accumulation strategies. This apparent dynamism has attracted favourable attention from development thinkers and policy-makers, who have identified non-farm enterprise as a new low-cost agent of rural development. The research in this book challenges th...

In northern Nigeria, high levels of ethnic diversity have coincided with acute polarization between Muslims and Christians, increasingly fuelling violent conflict. The climate of insecurity threatens northern Nigeria's development, accentuates the inequalities between it and the rest of the country, and undermines the attempt to stabilize democracy in the country. Externally, fears have also been expressed that Islamist movements in northern Nigeria form part of a wider network constitutin...

Africa's Informal Workers is a vigorous examination of the informalization and casualization of work, which is changing livelihoods in Africa and beyond.Gathering cases from nine countries and cities across sub-Saharan Africa, and from a range of sectors, this volume goes beyond the usual focus on household 'coping strategies' and individual agency, addressing the growing number of collective organizations through which informal workers make themselves visible and articulate their ...

It is now more than a decade since the violent Islamic group Boko Haram launched its reign of terror across northern Nigeria, claiming more than 27,000 lives and displacing over 2 million people. While its territorial gains have largely been recaptured, the insurgency rages on, devastating communities across vast stretches of the north-east and disrupting governance, livelihoods and food security, as well as posing a security risk to Niger, Chad and Cameroon.Less attention is paid t...

This book addresses the question of whether greater inclusion in the global economy offers a solution to rising unemployment and poverty in contemporary Africa. The authors trace the connection between global demographic change and new mechanisms of economic inclusion via global value chains, digital networks, labour migration, and corporate engagement with the bottom of the pyramid, challenging the claim that African workers have become functionally irrelevant to the global economy. They ...