Reginald Herbold Green

The heritage of war and state collapse in Somalia and Somaliland: Local-level effects, external interventions and reconstruction

Somalia and Somaliland are both inhabited basically by Somaliswith small Oromo minorities in both, and a large Swahili minority in the latter. Both have multiple clans, sub-clans, lineage and blood groups and in both Islam is central to social values. Somalia had no history of a stable state before Italian rule but Somaliland did (Haud-Hargeisa-Berbera-Arabia trade axis centred). The United Republic of Somalia (rejected in the referendum by Somaliland) passed from political instability to two decades of Said Barres increasingly centralised and repressive dictatorship which waged war against the North-west (Somaliland) and North-east (Bosaso) as well as against Ethiopia. The dictatorship collapsed in 1991 basically because of the 1987-91 Somaliland Liberation war. The economies of Somalia/Somaliland turn on pastoral production, commerce and remittances. These have recovered in part in Somalia and fully in Somaliland. However, only a fraction of the Barre regimes dissolution of service delivery and user fr...

Rehabilitation, sustainable peace and development: Towards reconceptualisation

Rehabilitation after violent conflict is today relevant to many countries - especially but not only in SSA - and hopefully will become so for more. It is in generally too narrowly specified, too short term and too fragmented with no macro strategic or conceptual frame. Further it is usually based on quite inadequate knowledge of the history, priorities and dynamics of the afflicted country. Rehabilitation has-or should have-interacting economic (especially livelihood rebuilding), social (stress and perceived inequity reducing) and political (reconciliation and legitimacy restoration not least by rehabilitating basic service access including user friendly, personal security oriented civil police and magistrates courts system). In severely war impacted countries these are likely to be among the most economically efficient ways to regaining growth and restructured economic development as well as of rebuilding social and political reconcilliation and religitimisation.

Politics, power and poverty: Health for all in 2000 in the Third World?

Health for All by 2000 could become a reality in the Third World countries. On present resource allocation, medical professional and political patterns and trends that is unlikely to happen in more than a few countries. For it to happen requires basic priority shifts to universal access primary health care (including preventative). The main obstacles to such a shift are not absolute resource constraints but medical professional conservatism together with its interaction with elite interests and with political priorities based partly on perceived demand and partly on (largely medical) professional advice. These obstacles are surmountable-as illustrated by divergent performances among countries--but only if education, promotion, efficiency in terms of lives saved and healthy years gained, community participation and political activism for Health for All are more carefully analytically based and pursued more seriously and widely than they have been to date.

Bureaucracy and law and order

These are voices of two very ordinary Africans: one in a war-ravaged land vying with Afghanistan and Angola for the most devastated and with Ethiopia for the poorest titles; the other in a poor, isolated (the end of beyond even in most Tanzanian perspectives) district overrun by refugees who outnumber residents. These are two people who have seen only too much of ineffective government and violence even if the philosophical debate on good governance might seem confusing and confused from their — necessarily — temporally and spatially limited perspectives.

Sub-Saharan Africa in depression: The impact on the welfare of children

Abstract This paper analyses the impact of the economic crisis on the welfare of children in Sub-Saharan Africa, an area which includes most of the least developed and most severely affected countries. These countries are characterized by: low levels of skilled personpower, dependency on their primary product exports, small industrial sectors, a lagging food production growth, a high proportion of rural population and a child dependency ratio that is virtually 1 to 1. The situations of Nigeria, Zambia and Tanzania are examined in detail. In Zambia where there is substantial evidence of worsening of the condition of children in the 1970s, the most urgent requirement is additional resources, particularly foreign exchange. Such is also the case with Tanzania, while Nigeria does have the resources to develop a more coherent economy and finance basic services adequately.

Rehabilitation: strategic, proactive, flexible, risky?

Rehabilitation after armed conflict is a direct intellectual descendant of thinking about rehabilitation after natural calamity. It is related, generally, to poverty reduction and, operationally, to associated action at the micro level. This history has limited its strategic conceptualisation and, in particular, its links with reconciliation and state re-legitimation and also with macro-economic stabilisation and renewed growth. In post-war--or more generally, a lull in conflict with the potential to become permanent--a countrys rapid, focused, prioritised action within a strategic framework is urgent. It is not risk-free for political and natural disasters as well as for those with economic and social bases. Flexibility, learning from initial experience and asking intended household beneficiaries about their needs in advance can reduce risk as can pre-positioning of contingency or standby resources to avert post-war calamities (for example, drought, flood) and catastrophes (renewed violence) from delaying and discrediting rehabilitation efforts.

Structural adjustment in Ghana

Abstract Ghanas structural adjustment programme has been hailed as an impressive success story, with rises in GDP, exports, net inward financial transfers, food production and real minimum wages, and decreasing inflation. However, there are still gaps and problematics — both in terms of production economics and human and social failures — which require attention if these gains are to be secured and issues such as absolute poverty, life expectancy, literacy, education and health are to be addressed. This article looks at gaps and doubts in production and productive efficiency, and indicates the way forward for Ghanaian policy if this success story is to be continued.

The World Bank’s Agenda for Accelerated Development: Dialectics, Doubts and Dialogues

The 1981 appearance of the World Bank’s review of and prescription for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) — Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda For Action (AD) — has certainly attracted more attention, discussion and diatribes than any other economic study on Africa. It is perceived by analysts and decision-takers concerned with Africa — African and external, friend and foe — as of critical importance even if their assessments of it range from a new source of revealed wisdom through a secular variant on the Book of Revelation to a recipe for accelerated starvation. Is this amount of attention justified and, if so, why?

Toward a rational and equitable new international economic order: A case for negotiated structural changes

During 1973–74, oil prices rose three-and-a-half to four times, causing income and production in the developed countries to fall, with serious setbacks in those developing countries without oil. The increase in oil prices had meant a shift of about 2 per cent of global income to the oil-producing countries, the OPEC group, with about three-quarters of this coming from the developed countries and about a quarter from developing countries without oil, the non-OPEC group. This redistribution briefly raised hopes for some major changes in the global economic system and, for two or three years, there was even the beginning of some negotiations on the need for NIEO, a New International Economic Order. A working party was created in IDS to explore possibilities and proposals. This included 15 persons, including Barbara Ward (a Governor of IDS), Rob Wood of ODI, Paul Streeten of Queen Elizabeth House and 12 others, mostly from IDS. The proposals were given coherence and written up by Reg Green and Hans Singer of IDS.

Southern Africa: that the people may be fed

Abstract In 1992 the failure of the 1991–1992 rains confronted Southern Africa with its worst drought and famine threat in living memory. The response nationally, regionally and internationally — while lagged and below targets — was better than in most emergencies. Whether delivery and distribution will be adequate to avert massive famine remains uncertain, especially with respect to Mozambique. Broader questions of national and, especially, international response to recurrent, predictable emergencies arise. In particular standby rather than one-off approaches, the inclusion of rehabilitation and vulnerability reduction, more national capacitation and less fragmented external intervention appear to deserve urgent attention.