Tag Archives: Tanzania

Managing Societal Fault Lines in Africa

| June 29, 2012 at 4:20 pm


The Atlantic Council’s Africa Center hosted a discussion on the book On the Fault Line: Managing Tensions and Divisions within Societies recently.

The panel was moderated by Mary Carlin Yates, former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Africa on the National Security Staff. It included J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center; Jeffrey Herbst, President of Colgate University; Greg Mills, Director of the Brenthurst Foundation; Joel D. Barkan, Senior Associate in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Peter M. Lewis, Associate Professor and Director of the African Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University.

It discussed the findings from the case studies of Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Somalia and Somaliland, and South Africa, and the lessons to be gleaned from the experience of states which have made significant progress towards successfully managing their fault lines as well as those which, having failed to do so, have been torn by violence.

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How Ethnic Divisions Become Political Fault Lines

| April 23, 2012 at 8:23 pm


Africa Ethnic Divisions

What type of ethnic divisions and political circumstances are most likely to produce conflict?

There is no easy answer, but there are formulas that can provide a guide.

Joel D. Barkan, Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, provides a good one in his chapter on East Africa in the new book On the Fault Line: Managing Tensions and Divisions within Societies. He argues that the presence or absence of severe social divisions and their varying ‘depth’ is a function of the interplay between three variables: (more…)

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The Limits of Technology in Development

| February 13, 2012 at 9:38 am


Justin Sandefur reminds us of the limits of technology to resolving the problems of development and poverty over at CGD’s blog:

Bill Gates released his annual letter to the world, opening with a discussion of how Gates-funded agricultural research can help Tanzanian farmers.  . . . Gates’ letter is so optimistic about agricultural innovation lifting Tanzanian farmers out of poverty, it feels almost impolite to point out that the main source of poverty reduction for Tanzania farmers in the past two decades has been essentially the opposite: leaving the farm. . .

Gates’ core idea that agricultural innovation can help small-scale farmers in situ.  But this vision is at odds with the recent historical record of poverty reduction for Tanzanian farmers . . .  (more…)

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