Village Projects Observed in Eritrea: Post-Conflict Pathways towards Democratic Rural Development

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Gregory Cameron

Abstract

Eritrea’s rural development trajectory has fallen short of fully meeting the basic needs of its peasants and pastoralists, let alone national food security objectives. This article builds on earlier research on rural development projects in a select number of villages. These projects were primarily characterised by a state-centric technocratic logic that did, to some degree, embed “hard” infrastructure in the villages, but which paid less attention to building village-level capacity or organisational autonomy. Looking beyond these impasses, the present article suggests an inward-oriented national development model centred on the home market, rural co-operatives, and food sovereignty. As yet ‒ at the time of writing ‒ another major war afflicts Eritrea and Ethiopia, the presence of the political will for such a transition is by no means guaranteed.

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How to Cite
Cameron, G. (2022). Village Projects Observed in Eritrea: Post-Conflict Pathways towards Democratic Rural Development. Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, 10(1), 61–88. https://doi.org/10.26806/modafr.v10i1.416
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Articles
Author Biography

Gregory Cameron, Dalhousie University, Canada

He is Associate Professor of Political Science and Rural Development Studies at the Faculty of Agriculture, Dalhousie University in Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada. Before returning to Canada, he taught political science at the University of Asmara, Eritrea from 2002 to 2006. During the late 1980s and a good part of the 1990s, he worked in Tanzania with the co-operative movement on the islands of Zanzibar.