Land-Based livelihoods

Abstract

African farmers and pastoralists have been meeting their everyday needs in diverse ways for many centuries. While this process has increasingly been recognized since the late colonial period, a major development since the publication of Lloyd Timberlake’s Africa in Crisis (Timberlake, 1985) has been the emergence of support to ‘livelihood security’ and the incorporation of ‘sustainable rural livelihoods’ in the rationales and thinking of government-led projects and the many international development agencies working in Africa. Researchers too have focused renewed attention on how diverse rural societies enhance their welfare and development options in many corners of the continent.