Lakes Region Of Central Africa Research Articles

Suitability of root, tuber, and banana crops in Central Africa can be favoured under future climates

ContextClimate change is projected to negatively impact food systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. The magnitude of these impacts is expected to be amplified by the extensive reliance on rainfed agriculture and the prevalence of subsistence farming. In the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, smallholder farming households are largely dependent on root, tuber and banana crops. However, the potential impacts of various climate change scenarios on these crops are not well reported. Yet, data-rich insights about the future impacts of climate change on these crops and the adaptive capacity of food systems in the Great Lakes Region is critical to inform research and development investments towards regional climate change adaptation. ObjectivesWe aimed to gain insights of potential impacts of climate change on root, tuber, and banana crops in the Great Lakes Region, specifically investigating changes to localised crop suitability, planting dates, and identifying potential ‘climate-proof’ variety types of each crop for specific geographies. MethodsWe developed a modified version of the EcoCrop model to analyse the suitability of future climates for four key root, tuber, and banana crops (banana, cassava, potato, and sweetpotato) and a suite of varieties for each (typical, heat-tolerant, drought-tolerant, and early maturing). The model considers only the direct impacts of climate change on crop suitability. It does not consider how climate change impacts crop suitability by affecting the occurrence of extreme weather events or indirect effects on incidence and severity of pest and disease outbreaks. Results and conclusionsOur results demonstrate that climate change will be somewhat favourable to root, tuber, and banana-based systems, with only widespread negative impacts seen for potato. These changes should be qualified by the observation that in most cases the environmental suitability for banana, cassava, and sweetpotato will remain constant or improve if farmers shift planting schedules. Location- and crop-dependent shifts to different variety types were found to be effective in improving suitability under future climates. SignificanceData driven insights generated from this work can be used as a first step in developing spatially explicit recommendations for both farmers and decision-makers on how to adapt to climate change and plan investment in the research needed to adapt root, tuber, and banana-based livelihoods and systems to those long-term changes.

Rethinking Communal Land Governance in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa

In the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, land-use rights underwent profound changes following processes of colonization, commodification and conflict, leading to an increased individualization and privatization of tenure. Despite these evolutions, customary tenure continues to be described as a common-property system managed through a strong hierarchical and tribute-based land allocation mechanism. This central place of the commons in policy discourses either stems from a romantic, often Western, notion on communal land governance or from a neoliberal privatization discourse that frames communal land governance as chaotic and non-productive. In this article, we will use cases from Eastern DRC, Burundi and Rwanda to demonstrate how communal land governance has always existed in the region, but in modalities that do not correspond to the notions found in policy discourses. These cases demonstrate how the memory and the actual practice of communal land governance continues to play a role in contemporary land access negotiations. Through a process of institutional bricolage, the discourse of the, often imaginary, commons is used by different actors to legitimize the restructuring of land claims in their favour. Hence, the commons do not correspond to an idealized or normative situation, but they are rather a starting point to rethink land governance in a contextualized socio-historical perspective.

Genetic and antigenic variation of the bovine tick-borne pathogen Theileria parva in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa

BackgroundTheileria parva causes East Coast fever (ECF), one of the most economically important tick-borne diseases of cattle in sub-Saharan Africa. A live immunisation approach using the infection and treatment method (ITM) provides a strong long-term strain-restricted immunity. However, it typically induces a tick-transmissible carrier state in cattle and may lead to spread of antigenically distinct parasites. Thus, understanding the genetic composition of T. parva is needed prior to the use of the ITM vaccine in new areas. This study examined the sequence diversity and the evolutionary and biogeographical dynamics of T. parva within the African Great Lakes region to better understand the epidemiology of ECF and to assure vaccine safety. Genetic analyses were performed using sequences of two antigen-coding genes, Tp1 and Tp2, generated among 119 T. parva samples collected from cattle in four agro-ecological zones of DRC and Burundi.ResultsThe results provided evidence of nucleotide and amino acid polymorphisms in both antigens, resulting in 11 and 10 distinct nucleotide alleles, that predicted 6 and 9 protein variants in Tp1 and Tp2, respectively. Theileria parva samples showed high variation within populations and a moderate biogeographical sub-structuring due to the widespread major genotypes. The diversity was greater in samples from lowlands and midlands areas compared to those from highlands and other African countries. The evolutionary dynamics modelling revealed a signal of selective evolution which was not preferentially detected within the epitope-coding regions, suggesting that the observed polymorphism could be more related to gene flow rather than recent host immune-based selection. Most alleles isolated in the Great Lakes region were closely related to the components of the trivalent Muguga vaccine.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that the extensive sequence diversity of T. parva and its biogeographical distribution mainly depend on host migration and agro-ecological conditions driving tick population dynamics. Such patterns are likely to contribute to the epidemic and unstable endemic situations of ECF in the region. However, the fact that ubiquitous alleles are genetically similar to the components of the Muguga vaccine together with the limited geographical clustering may justify testing the existing trivalent vaccine for cross-immunity in the region.

Scientists Doing History: Central Africa and the Origins of the First Plague Pandemic

Historians trace the first plague pandemic, which began with the Plague of the Byzantine emperor Justinian in 542, back to a disease reservoir in the remote Great Lakes region of Central Africa. Contemporary sources, however, spoke only of its coming from the Red Sea region. The idea that the Great Lakes plague reservoir was responsible for the ancient outbreak arose with the discovery of that reservoir by the bacteriologist Robert Koch in the 1890s and was further developed by biochemists in the mid-twentieth century and geneticists at the turn of the present century. More recent study of the plague bacterium suggests, however, that the African strain of Yersinia pestis arose only about five hundred years ago and is unrelated to the ancient strain responsible for the first pandemic. India was probably the source of both the plague of Justinian in the sixth century c.e. and the Great Lakes plague reservoir in the nineteenth century.

Gender Participation and Decision Making in Crop Management in Great Lakes Region of Central Africa

In Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), increased crop productivity is fundamental to accelerating economic growth and improving the well-being of rural households, especially women and children, who are normally resource constrained. This article examines the degree to which women participate in farm management and decision making for crop production activities, and the socioeconomic factors that influence their participation. Our study found out that farms managed by women are cultivated much less intensively than male-managed farms, because of the limited ability of women to acquire technological inputs such as fertilizers and improved seeds. While legumes are grown by both men and women, cassava seems to be “a women’s crop,” both in terms of cultivation and harvesting. We found that accessibility to rural credit, extension services, social capital in the form of groups, and engagement in off-farm activities are critical for stimulating women’s participation in crop production activities. Therefore, women must be empowered through programs designed to promote crops that interest them. They should also be provided agricultural services such as credit to encourage the acquisition of production-enhancing inputs to increase crop yields.

Digging into the past: critical reflections on Rwanda's pursuit for a domestic mineral economy

Since 2009, mineral development and trade strategies in the Great Lakes region of central Africa have been tied more closely to security rather than to economic development agendas. This shift has resulted largely from the emergence in 2009 of a ‘conflict minerals’ label coined by Western advocacy organizations, aimed at limiting armed groups access to mineral resources. The ‘conflict minerals’ debate perpetuates a dual single-story narrative to do with mining, namely: firstly, the single story of the region – one in which minerals, particularly those from artisanal and small-scale mining, are a source of capital for armed conflict and outside state building; and secondly, the single story of Rwanda – one in which the country compensates for its lack of significant mineral wealth by sourcing from neighbouring countries. This paper looks at Rwandan mining history prior to the genocide, and reforms since 2000, challenging the dual single-story narrative, and showing how a focus on the security imperative to delink mining from conflict poses severe limitations to the long-term growth of the these economies.

Prominent peripheries: the role of borderlands in Central Africa's regionalized conflict

The Great Lakes region of Central Africa has been beset by conflict for close to two decades now. Aside from the unprecedented humanitarian consequences, the most striking feature of the violence has been its profoundly regional character. This paper seeks to explore how one might better understand the spread and cross-border nature of conflict in this region. It argues that the dominant contemporary model for explanation of regional conflict, with its overwhelmingly state-centric orientation, is inadequate in providing a comprehensive understanding of the structure of this type of violence. Rather, the so-called peripheries of states – borderlands – need to be taken as not only the starting point, but also the actual central referent point when it comes to regional conflict analysis. This paper demonstrates how the regional conflict involving the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda is constituted in part through phenomena located in the borderlands. These are unique cross-border dynamics that emanate from the presence of the borders themselves, and the borderlands' positions of being on the margins of states; they operate in the form of destabilizing socio-political and military–economic networks. Ultimately, the extreme regionalization of conflict in areas such as that of the Great Lakes of Central Africa cannot be properly understood without consideration of the role played by such borderland dynamics.

Manners and Customs of Literary Appropriation: Mirrors of Ink from Borges, Burton and Lane

Abstract The Mirror of Ink is the enchanting tale that Jorge Luis Borges claimed to have excerpted and translated from Richard F. Burton’s The Lake Regions of Central Africa. Norman Thomas di Giovanni has discredited that attribution, going so far as to say that the story had nothing to do with Burton and that Borges had never even read the cited book. He said that the story was entirely of Borges’ own creation, except for the dominant motif which was sourced from Edward William Lane’s Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. Di Giovanni’s declarations, however, may not be completely true. This article reveals the true extent to which Borges borrowed from Lane’s text and it establishes an indisputable connection between The Mirror of Ink and Burton’s translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night.

Effects of Transaction Costs on Choice of Selling Point: A Case of Smallholder Banana Growers in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa

This article examines the effects of transaction costs on the choice of marketing channel by smallholder banana producers (i.e. travel to the market to sell their produce versus selling at the farmgate). A probit analysis is used to identify the factors which determine the choice of a selling point. Variables capturing transaction costs are used in the analysis and these relate to searching for a trading partner, gathering information about the transaction, contracting, negotiating, monitoring and enforcing of contracts. The findings reveal that collective action, gender of household head, degree of dependence on the crop, geographical location and access to price information significantly affect the choice of selling point. This suggests that policies aimed at establishing market information systems, promotion of collective action among smallholder farmers, increased investment in rural infrastructure and achieving gender balance in trade are important.

Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Propaganda System

Elsewhere we have written that the breakup of Yugoslavia "may have been the most misrepresented series of major events over the past twenty years." But the far bloodier and more destructive invasions, insurgencies, and civil wars that have ravaged several countries in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa over the same years may have been subjected to even greater misrepresentation. To a remarkable degree, all major sectors of the Western establishment swallowed a propaganda line on Rwanda that turned perpetrator and victim upside-down.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Genetic diversity, inter-gene pool introgression and nutritional quality of common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) from Central Africa

The Great Lakes region of Central Africa is a major producer of common beans in Africa. The region is known for high population density and small average farm size. The common bean represents the most important legume crop of the region, grown on over a third of the cultivated land area, and the per capita consumption is among the highest in the world for the food crop. The objective of this study was to evaluate the genetic diversity in a collection of 365 genotypes from the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, including a large group of landraces from Rwanda as well as varieties from primary centers of diversity and from neighboring countries of Central Africa, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, using 30 fluorescently labeled microsatellite markers and automated allele detection. In addition, the landraces were evaluated for their seed iron and zinc concentration to determine if genetic diversity influenced nutritional quality. Principal coordinate and neighbor-joining analyses allowed the separation of the landraces into 132 Andean and 195 Mesoamerican (or Middle American) genotypes with 32 landraces and 6 varieties intermediate between the gene pools and representing inter-gene pool introgression in terms of seed characteristics and alleles. Genetic diversity and the number of alleles were high for the collection, reflecting the preference for a wide range of seed types in the region and no strong commercial class preference, although red, red mottled and brown seeded beans were common. Observed heterozygosity was also high and may be explained by the common practice of maintaining seed and plant mixtures, a coping strategy practiced by Central African farmers to reduce the effects of abiotic and biotic stresses. Finally, nutritional quality differed between the gene pools with respect to seed iron and zinc concentration, while genotypes from the intermediate group were notably high in both minerals. In conclusion, this study has shown that Central African varieties of common bean are a source of wide genetic diversity with variable nutritional quality that can be used in crop improvement programs for the region.

In Whose Interest Do We Work? Critical Comments of a Practitioner at the Fringes of the Liberation Paradigm

`De-ideologizing reality' is an urgent task within the psychology of liberation. Ignacio Martín-Baró characterized it as a process of conscientization that unmasks power interests underlying knowledge production, retrieves the `original experience of the people', and returns that experience in the form of `objective data'. In contemporary humanitarian trauma work in crisis areas, however, psychology often masks global power structures and further stigmatizes and alienates `victims' from their communities and their original experience. I draw upon my work as a psychologist, theologian and freelance consultant in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa to analyse two case studies. I use these examples to analyse and critique the underlying power discourses implied in definitions of `victimhood' in humanitarian interventions and identify contradictions that challenge liberation thinking as well as demystify feminist agendas. I conclude by calling for a change of perspective and of professional attitudes that can be realized through engaging a de-ideologizing approach towards global psychosocial trauma interventions.

Defining morality: dfid and the Great Lakes

This article examines the work of the UK government's Department for International Development (dfid) in the Great Lakes region of central Africa. It traces the formulation of policy and compares it with dfid's operations in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from 1997 to 2001. Drawing on research from the region and the UK, the article argues that dfid's ‘new humanitarianism’ offers little new, and that the spoken poverty agenda is misleading. It concludes that, while dfid's moral terminology suggests that there is a framework for response, in fact dfid defines what is ‘good’ and redefines events—including its own activity—to fit with it.

Burundi’s Transition: A Beacon For Central Africa

Abstract: On 19 August 2005, more than nine-tenths of the members of both houses of Burundi’s legislature capped a free electoral process by choosing Pierre Nkurunziza to serve as the country’s next president. The implications of this event in this small, conflict-ridden state on the northeastern shore of Lake Tanganyika could reverberate positively throughout the Great Lakes region of central Africa and beyond. While Burundi’s democratic reconstruction is far from complete, the election suggests that even the most violent and sorely divided societies can be restored, given sufficient political will and generous resources to support the process of negotiation and change.

Accounting for Horror: Post-Genocide Debates in Rwanda, and: Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (review)

Reviewed by: Accounting for Horror: Post-Genocide Debates in Rwanda, and: Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire Phillip A. Cantrell II Eltringham, Nigel . 2004. Accounting for Horror: Post-Genocide Debates in Rwanda. London: Pluto Press. 232 pp. $79.95 (cloth) $24.95 (paper). Umutesi, Marie Béatrice . 2004. Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 258 pp. $65.00 (cloth) $19.95 (paper). Few parts of the world have endured more postcolonial conflict and disorder than the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. In 1994, Rwanda experienced one of the century's worst genocides, following decades of strife since the country achieved independence from Belgium. The eastern regions of the [End Page 131] Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire) that are nearest to and bordering Rwanda, in particular North and South Kivu, have been the scene of almost continual chaos and civil war since 1997, resulting in close to four million deaths. In the past ten years, millions of Africans have suffered predation at the hands of soldiers and rebel militias. One of them was a Rwandan refugee named Marie Béatrice Umutesi, who fled across the DRC on foot from 1994 to 1997, ultimately arriving in Kinshasa, from where she secured passage to Belgium. Her memoir of the journey, Surviving the Slaughter, originally published in France in 2000 as Fuir ou Mourir au ZaVre, translated by Julia Emerson, reveals the depth of human suffering resulting from the Rwanda–Congo crisis and the political complexities surrounding it. Umutesi's story reminds readers of the anguish experienced by all sides in the Rwandan conflict and its aftermath. Nigel Eltringham, who performed doctoral research in Rwanda and among Rwandan exiles in Europe, offers a different perspective on the genocide in Accounting for Horror: Post-Genocide Debates in Rwanda. As a worker for three years in postgenocide Rwanda with a conflict-resolution NGO, he is well suited to offer a scholarly work that examines the historical thought processes in Rwanda that led to the genocide. He also seeks to understand the way the genocide is viewed in post-1994 Rwanda. Taken together, Eltringham and Umutesi offer a more complete picture of the level of human suffering experienced in the Rwanda–Congo crisis and a fuller understanding of why it happened. In 1959, Belgium yielded self-government to Rwanda and Burundi. In the years that followed, both countries endured almost perpetual conflict between their two main ethnic groups, the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi. In Rwanda, conflict simmered intermittently until 1994, when the assassination of Rwanda's Hutu president, Juvénal Habyarimana, sparked a conflict that ultimately cost the lives of more than 800,000 Rwandans. The massacre, carried out by the interahamwe militias and regular army units (the Forces Armées Rwandaise [FAR]), was directed mostly against ethnic Tutsi. Many in the West viewed the conflict dichotomously, as between Hutu and Tutsi, and explained it as a reversion to tribalism, but Umutesi and Eltringham illustrate that the conflict was far more complicated. Umutesi recalled her youth in postindependence Rwanda by observing, "I had to realize that I was Hutu. All Rwandans share the same language and culture, and there is no specific region that is identified with an ethnic group, no 'Hutuland' or 'Tutsiland'" (Umutesi, p. 6). Eltringham supports this assertion by demonstrating that ethnicity in Rwanda was a historical construct, aided and abetted by the colonial authorities. He suggests that the while the terms Hutu and Tutsi are significant, in precolonial times they were understood as social distinctions, and only later evolved into ethnic stratifications: "Both over time and at any given moment in time the terms 'Hutu' and 'Tutsi' were polyvalent—there was no single meaning valid for the whole territory at any one time" (p. 13). [End Page 132] The 1994 genocide ended when the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), led by current Rwandan President Paul Kagame, intervened with force, stopped the bloodshed, and established a government of national unity. The RPA was the military arm of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a political faction made up of Tutsi exiles living in Uganda and backed...

Satellite observations of Lava Lake activity at Nyiragongo volcano, ex-Zaire, during the Rwandan refugee crisis.

In June 1994 the summit crater of Nyiragongo volcano, located in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, began to fill with new lava, ending nearly 12 years of quiescence. An earlier eruption of the volcano in 1977 had culminated in the catastrophic draining of a lava lake through fissures in the crater wall, feeding highly mobile lava flows which reached the outskirts of Goma and killed more than 70 people. By July 1994, as many as 20,000 Hutu refugees were arriving in Goma every hour, only 18 km south from the summit of Nyiragongo. The exodus brought more than one million people to the camps near the town raising fears of a repeat of the 1977 eruption. This paper examines the role that satellite remote sensing could have played in surveillance of the volcano during this time, and demonstrates the potential for monitoring this and other volcanoes in the future. Images recorded by the spaceborne Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR)--freely available over the Internet--provide semi-quantitative information on the activity of the volcano. The aim of this paper is to promote the wider use of readily available technologies.

The Burundi and Great Lakes Project of the Center for Preventive Action, Council on Foreign Relations: An Example of NGO Cooperation

This paper discusses the Project on the Great Lakes region of Central Africa of the Centerfor Preventive Action of the Council on Foreign Relations. It focuses more specifically on an evaluation of the Great Lakes Policy Forum, which was established in January 1995 and coordinates conflict prevention activities in the Great Lakes region of US-based organizations.

Western Women in Colonial Africa

Inspired by her own contact with Africa, Caroline Oliver has written biographies of five intrepid women who traveled through the interior of Africa during colonial times. Two were explorers. Alexine Tinne led her own expedition up the Bahr el Ghazal tributary of the Nile. The second sketch traces the expeditions of Florence Baker who accompanied her husband on two hazardous journeys to the lake regions of Central Africa. Oliver portrays Mary Kingsley, an intellectual who walked alone through the West African forests doing ethnographic research. The closing biographies are of two missionaries; Mary Slessor, who became the first female magistrate of the Okon district of Calabar, and Mother Kevin, who established many schools throughout East Africa. Oliver brings to her writing the special enthusiasm gained from having seen the African backgrounds in which these women lived and worked.

The Health of Mother and Child in Rural Central Africa

In the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, the population suffers from severe proteo-caloric malnutrition, with adverse affects on maternal and child health. Improvement of maternal nutrition would lead to rapid consecutive pregnancies, reducing the length of time each child could be breastfed and reducing the protein available to each child. Hence, the authors recommend modern birth spacing methods in combination with programs to improve the health of mother and child.

The Lake Regions of Central Africa. A Picture of Exploration

Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–90) was an explorer who began his career in the Bombay army in 1842. While in India he developed his linguistic talent, mastering more than forty different languages and dialects. He turned to writing books in the 1850s and over the remaining forty years of his life published dozens of works and more than 100 articles. In this two-volume work, published in 1860, Burton discusses geographical and ethnological matters, while also giving space to the 'picturesque points of view which the subject offers' in recounting his journey to Zanzibar and around the lakes in present-day Tanzania. Volume 2 sees Burton arrive at Lake Tanganyika, and much of this volume is dedicated to his exploration of this freshwater lake and investigation of the way of life of the inhabitants of its shores. He also includes an appendix of commerce in the region.