War and Famine in Africa

Overview

Up to half of all the people who suffer from food insecurity in Africa have been affected by war. Local conflict is a long-term and growing problem, made worse by the continent’s shrinking resource base. In War And Famine In Africa, Mark Duffield shows how internal wars are fought on a terrain of semi-subsistence economies, with the result that traditional strategies of coping with famine are destroyed. Populations are displaced on a massive scale, and whole ethnic groups can be destroyed. He illustrates also how war accentuates the transformation of family and gender relations which were already underway as a result of enviroeconomic stresses.