An Ansoms

LAND RUSH

LAND RUSH is a board game that allows participants to critically assess the ways in which different social classes face both opportunities and constraints in securing land rights and in managing the acquired land sustainably in an extremely competitive environment. The game illustrates three characteristics of contemporary land dynamics in an altering world. First, the logics of smallholder farmers are largely oriented towards risk diversification, and often contrast with those of current agrarian policies of most international and national policy makers, oriented towards maximal production and commercialization. Second, the rules of the game in the land arena are not uniformly defined, but are characterized by a reality of legal pluralism. Third, access to or exclusion from land is the result of a negotiation process in which actors with unequal power relations interact and compete with each other. Better-off actors have a comparative advantage in negotiations over land rights. However, poorer actors still exert agency, although in constrained ways.

The Evolution and Characteristics of Poverty and Inequality in Rwanda

In September 1999, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund launched a new programme named the ‘Poverty Reduction Strategy’. It was presented as a new financial framework with the primary purpose of ‘fighting poverty’. With over 32 countries at the implementation phase of the PRSP,1 this new strategy has become an important conditionality, as crucially it provides access to financial aid from the PRGF2 and the HIPC3 initiative.

Statistics versus livelihoods: questioning Rwanda’s pathway out of poverty

ABSTRACT Recent statistics indicate that poverty in Rwanda decreased impressively between 2006 and 2014. This seems to confirm Rwanda’s developmental progress. This article however argues for a more cautious interpretation of household survey data. The authors contrast macro-level statistical analysis with in-depth field research on livelihood conditions. Macro-economic numbers provide interesting information, however differentiated evidence is required to understand how poverty ‘works’ in everyday life. On the basis of the Rwandan case study, the authors conclude that because of the high political stakes of data collection and analysis, and given that relations of power influence the production of knowledge on poverty, cross-checking is crucial.

Modernising agriculture through a ‘new’ Green Revolution: the limits of the Crop Intensification Programme in Rwanda

Over the past decade, African agriculture sectors have been the object of numerous initiatives advancing a ‘new’ Green Revolution for the continent. The low productivity of African smallholders is attributed to the low use of modern, improved agricultural inputs. In short, African countries are expected to catch up with the Green Revolution in other parts of the world. This paper is a contribution to the debate on the new African Green Revolution. We analyse the Rwandan Crop Intensification Programme (CIP) as a case study of the application of the African Green Revolution model. The paper is based on research at the macro, meso and micro levels. We argue that the CIP fails to draw lessons from previous Green Revolution experiences in terms of its effects on social differentiation, on ecological sustainability, and on knowledge exchange and creation.

DEVELOPMENT MONOPOLY: A Simulation Game on Poverty and Inequality

DEVELOPMENT MONOPOLY is a simulation game that allows players to experience how power relations influence the agency of different socioeconomic groups, and how this can induce poverty and inequality. Players alter the original rules of the MONOPOLY board game so that they more accurately reflect social stratification and inequalities in the context of developing countries. After the game, the players reflect on how they could be made more inclusive and pro-poor. In an individual debriefing, they are invited to think about the connections between game dynamics and contemporary evolutions in developing countries. In a final collective debriefing phase, participants discuss the ways in which the simulation experience enhanced their understandings of poverty and inequality.

Introduction: Why Stories Behind the Findings?

Academic literature rarely gives an account of the ‘story behind the findings’, meaning the ethical challenges and emotional pitfalls that you, the researcher, are confronted with before, during and after the field experience. These quagmires have a potentially profound impact upon both the research process and its findings. They deserve proper attention, not only to fathom the inevitable bias in researchers’ position in the field and to assess the quality of the research findings, but also to illustrate that the facade of ‘scientific validity and neutrality’ often hides a pragmatic approach that has shaped the empirical research process. As Wilkinson writes, ‘both as social scientists and as human beings, we have a responsibility to “tell it as it happened,” rather than how we would have liked it to be’ (2008, p. 60). Acknowledging this does not degrade the quality and value of empirical data; instead, it places the results of field research into broader socio-political context regardless of the academic discipline that produced the findings.

Views from below on the pro-poor growth challenge: Agrarian policies in the context of rural Rwanda

Republication of Ansoms, A. (2010) “Views from below on the pro-poor growth challenge: The case of rural Rwanda”, African Studies Review, 53 (2): 97-123.

Land relations and local livelihoods in the Great Lakes Region

In this chapter, we analyse the contemporary challenges with regard to land relations and local liveilhoods. In the first part, we give a short overview of the various evolutions that characterise land relations in the Great Lakes Region. In the second and third parts of the chapter, we look into the scholarly debates on the future of small-scale farming and the necessity for, and type of, agrarian and land reforms that are needed in the current context. In the final part of the chapter, we illustrate how the chapters in this section of the volume contribute to these scholarly debates, and most importantly, how they help us to unravel the complex web of land dynamics in the Great Lakes Region.

Land rush: simulating negotiations over land rights

LAND RUSH is a board game that allows participants to critically assess the ways in which different social classes face both opportunities and constraints in securing land rights and in managing the acquired land sustainably in an extremely competitive environment. The game illustrates three characteristics of contemporary land dynamics in an altering world. First, the logics of smallholder farmers are largely oriented towards risk diversification, and often contrast with those of current agrarian policies of most international and national policy makers, oriented towards maximal production and commercialization. Second, the rules of the game in the land arena are not uniformly defined, but are characterized by a reality of legal pluralism. Third, access to or exclusion from land is the result of a negotiation process in which actors with unequal power relations interact and compete with each other. Better-off actors have a comparative advantage in negotiations over land rights. However, poorer actors still exert agency, although in constrained ways.

NEGOTIATING ON POVERTY: A Participatory Poverty Assessment Simulation Game

NEGOTIATING ON POVERTY is a collective game that allows participants to discover the concrete difficulties in assessing the multiple dimensions of poverty Participants are divided into groups of seven to simulate a participatory poverty assessment (a social wealth-ranking exercise) that takes place in an imaginary small village in some developing country. The game allows participants to gain an insight into the ways in which power asymmetries, economic interdependencies, gender relations, and personal affinities at the local level shape perceptions on poverty.