In 1977 Somalia invaded Ethiopia hoping to seize the Ogaden, an Ethiopian region predominantly inhabited by ethnic Somali. Histories of this event are rare and focus exclusively on the political and military aspects of the conflict. This is not surprising given the Cold War backdrop of the conflict. This article, however, shifts the focus away from the political towards the personal. Focus here is on the different roles Ogadeni women took up in the Somali-Ethiopian war, also known as the Ogaden war. Through interviews with former actors in the conflict it became clear that women occupied a range of roles in the war, varying from victims or care-givers to active participants in militias and front-line combat. In conflicts today, Somali women still retain many of these roles. Originally some Somalis did oppose this state of affairs, today most seem to have accepted the phenomenon of female actors in the Ogaden war, even though that approval can be linked with a political agenda. Both Ogadeeni and Somali women were active in the war, transcending Somali clan lines along the way. Accounts of the women interviewed illustrate the effects of their choice to participate in the Ogaden war.

Scope and objectiveDrylands are areas where evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation during part of or the whole year (Kassas, 1995).They cover 40% of the Earth's surface and house about 2.1 billion people in nearly roo countries, including Ethiopia (UNEP-DDD, 2012).In terms of aridity, dry lands are defined as regions where the ratio between long-term annual precipitation and potential evapotranspiration between 0.05 and 0.65.They include hyperarid, arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid zones (Thornthwaite, 1948; UNEP, 1994).For these zones, water availability and biomass production are restricted and mostly confined to a short rainy season.As a result, the carrying capacity of the ecosystems is rapidly exceeded by the human exploitation of natural resources, especially in poor countries with fast demographic expansion and deficient exploitation techniques (Kassas, 1995).Furthermore, the resilience of drylands is often reduced by the occurrence of recurring droughts and severe desertification, which threatens sustainable development in these fragile environments.Gully erosion is acknowledged as a key erosion process whereby land degradation in dryland environments occurs (Figure l).In a review, Poesen et al. (2002) conclude that gully erosion contributes to 50% to 80% of overall sediment production in drylands.Sediment yields are locally very variable, but may be as high as 12.1 ton ha• 1 y-1 in Ethiopia, 3.4 ton ha• 1 '{ 1 in Kenya, 32 ton ha• 1 '{ 1 in Niger, 16.1 ton ha• 1 '{ 1 in Portugal, 64.9 ton ha• 1 y 1 in Spain and 36.8 ton ha• 1 ' { 1 in the USA (Poesen et al., 2003).Understanding historical and present-day gully erosion is therefore essential when addressing the consequences of future land use and climate change scenarios (Poesen et al., 2003;Valentin et al., 2005).For instance, land managers need to foresee the effects

In most of the literature on the subject, urban and rural areas are presented as real physical entities that are geographically determined. Obviously such an approach is important and necessary, but in this contribution I want to draw attention to ‘the urban’ and ‘the rural’ as ideas, as items of cultural landscape rather than as physical facts. This will result both in a history of ideas and a social history of the war in Angola as experienced by civilians from the south-eastern part of the country. The article is based on a case-study that deals with the history of south-east Angola, an area that was in a state of war from 1966 to 2002. In the course of the 1990s I spoke with immigrants from this region who were resident in Rundu, Northern Namibia, mostly as illegal refugees. In our conversations the immigrants explained how the categories ‘town’ and ‘country’ came into being during colonialism and what changes occurred after the war started. They argued that during the war agriculture in the countryside became well-nigh impossible and an opposition between ‘town’ and ‘bush’ came into being that could have lethal consequences for the civilian population living in the region. This case-study on south-east Angola shows the importance of a historical approach to categories such as ‘urbanity’ and ‘rurality’ as such categories may undergo relatively rapid change – in both discourse and practice.

In Tanzania, commercial vegetable production is practiced in urban areas and is of great importance for vegetable supply to the urban population.Cultivation is generally intensive, paying special attention to improved seeds, watering and fertilization for maximizing yield.On the other hand, leafy vegetables are fast growing annual crops requiring intensive application offertilizers.This practice often leads to over fertilization, in particular N being the most often the limiting nutrient in crop production.Subsequently, high N supply makes the leafy vegetables susceptible to nitrate accumulation.Although the nitrate in itself is generally considered to be oflow toxicity to the human body, its reduction to nitrite and conversion to nitrosamines by reacting with amines and amides make it toxic.In addition, agricultural activities are linked to environment pollution, making fertilization practices an important environmental issue.This study aimed at using Morogoro municipality as a model to assess the vegetable farming practices utilizing animal manures as nutrient sources on soil fertility status, vegetable yield, nitrate accumulation in leafy vegetable crops, mineral N in soil profile and nitrate delivery to the water catchments in Tanzania.Soil fertility management practices investigation was attained through an interview of forty seven households.To investigate soil fertility status, soil samples were collected from 55 vegetable fields that are fertilized with manure and analysed for selected fertility indicators.Also N mineralization potential of chicken manure (CHM)/cattle manure (CAM) applied to soil surface or incorporated into soil as practiced by farmers in the study area was studied during a 56 days laboratory incubation experiment under controlled conditions.The influence of N source, N levels and harvesting dates on chinese cabbage and amaranthus yields, agronomic N use efficiency, nitrate concentrations and the patterns of mineral N in soils under field conditions were determined.This was done based on vegetable management practices by farmers.Two N levels from chicken manure (CHM) and cattle manure (CAM) per vegetable were

This article first describes the New Policy Agenda (NPA), a market-based ideology influencing donor agencies’ strategies for international development. The article then continues to discuss how community-based women organizations (CBWOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) evaluate their collaborations or ‘partnerships’ in practice in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya. We tested the research hypothesis that the NPA reduces the likelihood of achieving equitable partnerships because of its insistence on ‘contracting’ partners, i.e. creating a patron-client relationship. This was carried out through qualitative research consisting mainly of semi-structured interviews and participatory observation with NGOs and CBWO representatives working in Kibera. Research results show that the contract conditions for CBWOs to enter into a partnership may reduce the chances of the most vulnerable groups in society of obtaining assistance. This ‘contracting’ relationship may also cause a loss of CBWO members’ motivation. The NPA and its emphasis on saving time and money also has a negative impact not only on the external development actors’ knowledge about the development context, but also on the multiple accountabilities in a CB WO-NGO partnership, on the quick-fix nature of the solutions applied to remedy the Jack of accountability and on the practical implementation of ‘participatory development’ in Kibera.

The first chapter presents a historical overview of research on African freshwater molluscs, introducing the main genera that compose the freshwater molluscan community of most African ecosystems. It demonstrates the requirement of accurate information on the palaeoenvironments where freshwater molluscs lived and their palaeobiogeography to obtain insight into patterns and processes of diversification.