What motivates people to migrate? How do they decide to leave their homes, maybe to never return? These are some of the questions addressed in the two studies featured in this issue. The theses were reviewed by Jan Pronk, former Netherlands minister of development cooperation and UN special representative in Sudan, and currently professor at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, and Nicky Pouw, director of the graduate programme of international development studies at the University of Amsterdam.   read more >>

Postmodern perspectives on local court justices under Zambian customary law Zambian customary laws and practices, which dominate personal law, are patriarchal in leaning and biased against women. An explanation that has been given for this is that customary laws are unwritten and administered by a male-dominated local court system of untrained judges, the so-called ‘Justices’.   read more >>

Societies depend on agricultural innovation processes for food security, on local, regional and global scales. Crop genetic resources, embodied in the seed planted by farmers, are integral components of these processes. Africa in general and Ethiopia in particular have an immense wealth of crop genetic resources. The continent’s genetic resources are, however, subject to serious erosion and irreversible losses due to policy, institutional and market failures. It is, thus, both a challenge and an opportunity for African countries to design conservation policies that enable their agriculture-based economies to make the best use of their crop diversity.   read more >>

South Africa is a notoriously violent country, and most violent acts are committed by men. This thesis therefore examines violence in South Africa through a focus on South African men, investigating the role that violence plays in the formation and maintenance of their masculine identities.   read more >>

Transformation of the family in urban Mali, with a focus on intercontinental mobility This thesis is about the transformation of family relations in urban Mali, with a focus on intercontinental mobility. The main question is in what ways family relations are transforming, both in urban Mali and for Malian migrants in Europe, and what insights this offers for the use of the concept of family in social sciences. This could be an interesting addition both for migration studies, which do not always go very deeply into family relations, and for studies about social changes in modern Africa.   read more >>

Membership choice from a transaction cost economics perspective Coffee farming in Rwanda is an important sector that contributes highly to the economy in terms of employment and income, especially for small farmers in rural areas. In order to improve coffee production in terms of quantity and quality, farmers are encouraged to form and join cooperatives. Cooperatives establish washing stations for the purpose of producing high-quality coffee that is competitive on the international markets. Consequently, farmers can increase their bargaining power and earn higher prices for their produce.   read more >>

Violence, boundaries, identities and the adaptation of culture Twenty years of civil war in northern Uganda has, like so many other conflicts around the world, caused mass scale destruction and disruption to the lives of the civilians engulfed in it. Both the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda have inflicted grave atrocities upon the Acholi people of northern Uganda, including rape, mutilation, torture, murder, beatings, arson and looting. Furthermore, up to 90% of the population in Acholi-land is confined to Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps. These camps are characterized by a severe lack of food, sanitarian facilities, healthcare and security. Camp life has stopped people from cultivating their land, destroyed the family and clan structures previous village life was based upon, and has meant that many cultural practices cannot be performed.   read more >>

Due to the significant cost of transport in the sugar industry, a model, named FastTrack, was developed to investigate infrastructure planning opportunities. The model mathematically incorporates road construction and maintenance costs, terrain and land-use maps, vehicle performance specifications and annual sugarcane volumes to determine the most cost-effective route, per vehicle type, from a production region to a mill. Route planning using geographical information systems (GIS) is a standard approach for determining the optimum alignment for pipelines, roads and canals. Theory of this approach was reviewed to create a foundation for the development of FastTrack.   read more >>

Multi-discursive perceptions on the movement patterns of internally displaced persons, Northern Uganda In August 2006, the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army signed a ceasefire agreement, putting a hold on 20 years of violent conflict in Northern Uganda. The conflict uprooted 1.6 million people. They found havens in congested and hazardous internal displacement camps in the region. The Government of Uganda declared the war to be over and the region to be safe enough to return home. However, in Acholiland, people appeared to be hesitant to return.   read more >>

The experiences and needs of HIV positive adolescents in care and treatment in the Western Cape province of South Africa This thesis explores the experiences and needs of adolescents growing up with human immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV) in South Africa. The project was motivated by the fact that HIV positive adolescents are becoming a more prominent group in the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. Horizontal transmission of the virus among young people continues to present a problem, and with the increasing availability of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), vertically infected children are entering adolescence in greater numbers than ever before. Experience from the developed world indicates that providing effective care and treatment for adolescents is a challenging task. However, there is a paucity of research on the lives of HIV positive young people in the context of sub-Saharan Africa.   read more >>