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Paper short abstract

This study investigates African agriculture's multifunctionality based on economic, social, and environmental dimensions using the AMAI and k-means clustering. Findings identify four groups, offering insights for sustainable development, tailored policies, and Korea-Africa collaboration.

Paper long abstract

The compounding challenges of polycrisis—including climate change, conflicts, energy crises, and political instability—are intensifying, transcending borders, and impacting nations globally. These crises, encompassing socio-economic inequalities and food insecurity, demand holistic and adaptive approaches to sustainable development. Agriculture, while traditionally viewed as a source of food production, also fulfills multifunctional roles across economic, social, and environmental dimensions. This study evaluates the multifunctionality of African agriculture across three dimensions: the economic dimension, focusing on food security, rural economy, and agricultural R&D; the social dimension, emphasizing rural population, cultural values, infrastructure, and women and youth; and the environmental dimension, addressing sustainability, biodiversity, and climate change adaptation. Utilizing expert assessments, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was employed to prioritize these dimensions—economic (0.497), environmental (0.303), and social (0.194). Based on these priorities, the African Multifunctional Agriculture Index (AMAI) was developed to assess 54 African countries between 2016 and 2020. Using AMAI scores, k-means clustering identified four distinct groups: Social Resilience Prioritizers, Ecological Sustainability Improvers, Balanced Development Seekers, and Capacity Development Challengers. Each cluster highlights unique capacities and priorities for addressing interconnected agricultural crises, without implying a hierarchy among them. These findings provide a robust framework for tailoring policy recommendations and development strategies that emphasize economic resilience, social equity, and environmental sustainability. This study further offers critical insights for designing inclusive and systematic rural development strategies, particularly for advancing Korea-Africa collaboration and fostering adaptive responses to the polycrisis.

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Paper short abstract

The paper investigates the potential of traditional agricultural knowledge in Southern Africa for increasing food sovereignty in contexts of an accelerating climate crisis and asks how local practices can be scaled up and become politically influential.

Paper long abstract

The productive capacity of African smallholders is increasingly under threat from climate change as well as the global food regime dominated by industrial monocultures and few large corporations. To increase food sovereignty on the continent thus remains of utmost importance – as one step towards a transformation of the global food regime, and to address the yield gaps that remain vast in many countries in the region. So far, existing government and international support schemes for smallholder farmers are tied to a “Green Revolution” approach through the provision of chemical fertilisers and hybrid seeds, underpinned by the promotion of industrial technologies. These, however, are ill-suited to make farming more environmentally sustainable or farmers more independent. Locally adapted, less commercialised methods and inputs would be better suited for this but are often crowded out.

Against this background, my paper investigates the role that traditional knowledge can play in increasing food sovereignty in Southern Africa, a region that has been hard hit by recurring droughts over the past few years. Various small-scale initiatives exist that aim to work with, and promote, Indigenous agricultural knowledge and my paper asks how these practices become politically influential; how they are shared, scaled up, and can possibly instigate macro-level change. Based on ongoing research in Botswana and Zambia, and using a prefigurative politics framework, the paper discusses emerging findings and presents a larger research agenda of interdisciplinary collaboration with participatory methodologies, in order to also bring practical benefits to the farming communities themselves through mutual learning.

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Paper short abstract

Explore the ecological and livelihood outcomes of Indigenous cultural burning practices in the Rupununi, Guyana. By integrating community perspectives with ecological data, we aim to inform sustainable fire management policies that enhance biodiversity, resilience, and local livelihoods.

Paper long abstract

Indigenous practices help protect biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and promote ecological resilience. However, Indigenous voices and Traditional Ecological Knowledge have been largely ignored in national fire management and land use policies, with fire suppression often leading to more intense wildfires in fire-prone regions. This research explores the role of Indigenous cultural burning practices in land management in the Rupununi, Guyana, amidst the challenges of rural tropical regions facing environmental degradation, economic instability, and social inequities. Using ecological data on vegetation recovery and insights from Indigenous communities, the study evaluates the effectiveness of cultural burning in improving biodiversity, supporting livelihoods, and enhancing ecological resilience. This research aims to integrate Indigenous knowledge into sustainable fire management policies, addressing both ecological recovery and community needs. Key objectives include understanding the impact of fire intensity on vegetation structure and regeneration, and identifying community indicators of effective burns, such as improved hunting, crop growth, and wildfire prevention. By co-developing recommendations with Indigenous communities in Guyana, this research seeks to promote fire management strategies that respect local cultural values and ecological balance in the context of global crises.

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Paper short abstract

This paper examines Nepali migration experiences by drawing on meanings and imaginative aspects of migration and development among Nepalis, which are continually (re)shaped through everyday commitments, and pursuits within (re)imagined spaces of the rural, urban, and bidesh (abroad or elsewhere).

Paper long abstract

This paper examines Nepali migration by analysing notions of space and bikas (development) to understand how it shapes the everyday experience of migration among Nepali migrants and their families within (re)imagined spaces of the rural, urban, and bidesh (abroad or elsewhere). It discusses localised meanings and understandings of bikas that extend on migrant experiences and aspirations, and examines how it underlines migratory undertakings and intersect within spaces of rural, urban and bidesh. While space is a difficult concept to grasp– often full of abstractions (Creswell, 2008) and increasingly understood in conjunction with power and knowledge (Lefebvre, 1991), investigating complex meanings of difference and interconnectedness of multiple spaces within migration experiences offer a useful lens for analysing migration and development in Nepal. Migration as a social phenomenon sets distant places in closer relation to each other, thus creating specific relational spaces, which unfold at the crossroads between individual agency, collective imagination, and global migration (Bruslé and Varrel, 2012). Hence, this paper also extends on social imaginaries and imaginative future(s) related to migration and spaces to ascertain complex meaning making processes to glean understandings of development. By espousing migration as a collection of experiences in diverse spaces, this paper highlights how localised ideas of development are interwoven within migratory aspirations and undertakings in Nepal, and how movements between these spaces ongoingly shape and reshape one another.