Paper short abstract:

The recent coup d’état in Guinea-Bissau has increased the stress on livelihood strategies of the populations. Despite the “irrelevance of the state”, the turbulences surrounding the conflict affect urban and rural populations. This paper explores the linkages between conflict and food security.

Paper long abstract:

The recent coup d'état in Guinea-Bissau has brought to the fore the close linkages between political and military instability, conflict, livelihoods and food security. Despite the fact that the state is considered for most irrelevant, instability and conflicts adds to the pressure on already stretched livelihoods strategies both the urban and rural societies. The dynamics of societies are linked to global, national and local dynamics. Political instability and conflict is yet another flow that conditions the internal dynamics of societies. Societies react by resisting, adapting, migrating, but if the stress is too intense or too long, these societies may loose their resilience capacity.

This paper explores the channels through which the conflict in Guinea Bissau interacts with rural societies and food security. One of the linkages is established through the disruption of one of the main economic activities, that of the cashew trade. In Guinea-Bissau most of the population is involved in cashew production which provide a vital source of income. On the other hand the dependency on the cashew sector, extremely vulnerable to global and local dynamics, may also weaken the capacity to address conflict and instability. Shifts in global cashew production and the economic crisis also send shock waves to Guinea-Bissau. Other turbulences occur due to retraction in another major inflow, foreign aid, and increases in another, drug trafficking, causing serious tensions on society. To understand these dynamics, the paper analyses how internal actors, processes and forces influence the outcome in terms of livelihoods.