Reviewing the impact of twenty years of neo–liberalist policies on sub–Saharan Africa should make commentators wary of new fashionable theories directed at rural areas. This paper explores the relevance and potential effectiveness of the concepts of ‘rural livelihoods’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘poverty alleviation’ applied to the rural poor of sub–Saharan Africa. The concepts are considered in the light of current deagrarianising tendencies observed on the continent.
‘Deagrarianisation’ and ‘depeasantisation’ are terms used to emphasise the longterm unfolding nature of current change. Throughout the 20th century, African nation–states were identified as agrarian countries with large peasantries. Colonial governments had established and nurtured peasant agricultural production; most post–colonial African governments pursued policies aimed at extending it, many with an interest in modernising and raising peasant productivity and living standards (Bryceson, 2000a).
After more than a century of colonial and post–colonial peasant formation, rapid deagrarianisation and depeasantisation are now occurring. Deagrarianisation is defined as a process of occupational adjustment, income–earning reorientation, social identification and spatial relocation of rural dwellers away from strictly agricultural–based modes of livelihood (Bryceson, 1996). ‘Depeasantisation’ is a specific variant of deagrarianisation whereby the economic capacity and social coherence of peasantries are being progressively undermined. They literally unravel as communities. The international policy climate is directly linked to this reversal.
After outlining depeasantisation and associated social and economic trends in rural African livelihood patterns, the development debate2 is discussed, focusing on the reversal from neo–liberalism to ‘caring capitalism’ and poverty sensitivity on the part of international financial institutions (IFIs), notably the World Bank. A schematic attempt is made to dissect the various strands of thinking underlying the new concepts of sustainable rural livelihoods and poverty alleviation. The final section considers possible lessons arising from the South African depeasantisation experience, before concluding by juxtaposing current development problems in Africa with the policies being advanced to address them.
Eroding peasant agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa
During the 1980s and 1990s, the expanding enforcement of structural adjustment and market liberalisation policies in sub–Saharan African countries initiated processes of deagrarianisation implicit in the market's search for optimised returns on investment. Peasant agriculture, with its subsistence orientation and relatively low yielding, unstandardised agriculture and high transport costs, was the antithesis of the growing dominance of agro–industrial production in global agricultural commodity trade circuits (Goodman and Watts, 1997). This period marked the convergence of global deagrarianisation and African depeasantisation, reflected in steady relative decline of African agricultural exports and two dramatic surges of food imports into the continent, amidst a 30–50 per cent decline in African countries’ barter terms of trade.
The timing and impact of the IFI's structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) varied across countries. Recent Deagrarianisation and Rural Employment (DARE)1 research programme findings, based on surveys conducted in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa, indicate some of the common trends arising from SAP implementation as well as diverging tendencies. Survey data suggest that South African rural dwellers were least affected because few produced agricultural commodities for domestic or export markets. Depeasantisation in South Africa was well–advanced, with severe restrictions on the black rural population's access to land from 1913. Peasant commodity production was edged out and black rural settlements were reduced to the function of labour reserves. In contrast, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi and Zimbabwe had significant levels of peasant commodity production which were adversely affected by agricultural subsidy cutbacks.
Under structural adjustment, private traders largely displaced African parastatal marketing boards, which had serviced peasants’ input requirements, enforced commodity standards, provided single–channel marketing facilities and controlled prices. Private traders, while varying in performance, rarely provided the market efficiency that the IFIs had anticipated. Farmers’ production prices fluctuated widely as input prices spiraled upwards. In many places input supplies dried up (e.g. Jambiya, 1998; Mung'ong'o, 1998; Madulu, 1998; Meagher, 1999). This prompted farmers to switch to crops requiring fewer purchased inputs and offering quick returns or more regular, year–round harvesting. In areas of central Tanzania that had become the grain heartland of the country under the modernising postcolonial state's policy of pan–territorial pricing and input subsidies, farmers experienced the undermining of their markets as private traders ignored their existence off the main road and agricultural incomes declined by 71 per cent between 1979 and 1992 (Mung'ong'o, 1998; Bryceson, 1999). By contrast, in South Africa, rural incomes rose, but this was largely due to the removal of racial imbalances in pension payments, whilst all three survey sites witnessed a decline in field agriculture and a concentration on subsistence agricultural production and gift–giving rather than the pursuit of commercial agriculture.
Mounting evidence suggests that peasant adjustment to increasing input costs and poor market prospects have led to reallocation of land and labour away from commercial agriculture. Peasant commercial agriculture is increasingly concentrated in areas having favourable agro–climatic conditions or low transport costs. Elsewhere, farmers with very small acreages are frequently selling or renting their land to larger–scale farmers and turning to agricultural wage labour or non–farm activities (e.g. Mulat Demeke, 1997; Iliya, 1999). Complex patterns are emerging, but increasingly it is middle and higher income farmers in advantaged areas who have the capital to successfully promote commercial agricultural activities.
As peasant commercial agriculture encountered these obstacles, daily cash requirements escalated. Under SAP, education and health subsidies were removed amidst overall commodity price inflation. Imported goods, available under market liberalisation, were largely unaffordable to rural consumers. This may explain DARE survey findings, barring those from South Africa, which report a surge in non–agricultural income sources during the later 1990s – an unexpected outcome from roughly fifteen years of structural adjustment and economic liberalisation policy implementation which aimed at addressing urban bias and ‘getting the prices right’ for Africa's peasant farmers.
DARE evidence of the mid–to–late 1990s indicates that most households now have one or more non–agricultural income sources, and between 60 to 80 per cent of their income derives from these sources. This contrasts with findings from earlier rural survey reviews (1980s and early 1990s) that estimated roughly 40 per cent of African rural household income derived from non–farm sources (Haggblade et al. 1989; Bagachwa, 1997; Reardon, 1997; Ellis, 1998). The declining agricultural commodity production and expanding participation in non–agricultural activities suggested by DARE findings are mirrored in other recent studies (Seppälä, 1996; Francis, 1998 and 2000; Kinsey, 2000; Ponte, 2002).
Implemented to rectify parastatal misdeeds and improve prices and commodity supply to peasant farmers, structural adjustment and market liberalisation largely abandoned small–scale producers to the forces of the global market (Bryceson, 2000a). The removal of agricultural subsidies and pan–territorial pricing, combined with larger producer price fluctuations over time and space relative to inflationary prices for consumer goods have created a high–risk, low–return environment in which many small–scale peasant farmers cannot compete. They are abandoning commercial agriculture, whilst far fewer locationally–advantaged large–scale farmers are now capable of combining economies of scale in crop production with capital–intensive non–agricultural activities (Iliya and Swindell, 1997; Meagher and Mustapha, 1997; Berkvens, 1997). Small peasant farmers have to scramble to diversify their incomes. They do so amidst a crumbling physical and service infrastructure and with little or no formal training in non–agrarian activities.
The policy context: rising producer prices or rising producer poverty?
In the name of improving producer prices for peasant farmers, neo–liberalism has severely weakened the continent's agrarian foundation. Neo–liberalism's lasting imprint on sub–Saharan Africa will almost certainly be an acceleration of deagrarianisation and depeasantisation. Intrinsically, there is nothing detrimental about this – indeed all thriving industrial economies have undergone a similar experience. The issue, however, is the welfare and preparedness of existing populations currently experiencing depeasantisation.
The content of neo–liberal policies is generally well known, but less critically reviewed are the reasons given for the failure of neo–liberalist policies in sub– Saharan Africa. These expose the inadequacies of the policies and belie the spindoctoring employed to justify and perpetuate policies that were clearly not generally benefiting rural populations.
Explaining away policy failure
During the 1980s and early 1990s, neo–liberalist policies were consistently advanced as the means to ensure successful economic performance as opposed to African state policies that were restrictively biased towards urban populations or even the governing elite themselves. While African governments, following colonial precedents, posited the state as the motive force in the economy, IFIs, promoting neoliberalism, gave precedence to the market in all spheres of economic activity. It was the ‘efficient’ market versus the ‘corrupt’ state, the two juxtaposed as institutions producing diametrically opposed outcomes. Only latterly was consideration given to economic roles that the state could possibly perform better than the market given its structural position (World Bank, 1997).
IFIs, particularly the World Bank, erected notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ governments in terms of African governments' varying willingness to accept IFI–prescribed structural adjustment policies. Certain governments, like Ghana, and later Tanzania and Uganda, were held up as models of reform, though their model economic performance was rarely sustained for more than a couple of years (World Bank, 1994). Levels of debt deepened amidst fluctuations in national output, particularly agricultural output – an indication that increasingly less–capitalised peasant agricultural output varied primarily with fluctuating rainfall and different environments rather than in response to the promised high producer prices of structural adjustment. SAP and economic liberalisation resulted in a plethora of changes in rural productive and marketing infrastructure that often increased rather than reduced production risks.
As more and more African governments complied with IFI policy dictates, the gradient of good–to–bad African governments collapsed and was replaced by the view that the timing and coordination of SAP programmes was at fault (Booth, 1991; Mosley, 1994). Again African governments bore the brunt of the blame since the problems were explained by their inept management. As SAP and economic liberalisation policies became continentally uniform and IFI policy enforcement focused on privatisation, the lack of an enabling environment and social capital were identified as major impediments to economic performance. The catch–all term ‘enabling environment’ was used to refer to a welter of non–economic phenomena including African social and legal institutions and cultures whose deficiencies were held to generate high risks for business and to preclude western–type contractual agreements.
While the World Bank publicly pursued its obsession with ‘bad government’, critics argued that such mistrust of government was blind to the circumstances under which public servants actually worked (Tendler, 1997). NGOs like Oxfam mounted trenchant campaigns to expose the impoverishing effects of structural adjustment, providing evidence that the poor were the first to suffer from government cutbacks and cost–recovery programmes in health and education. Thus, by the latter half of the 1990s, the tables turned. NGOs and organised grassroots movements called for World Bank accountability, especially, but not exclusively, in relation to the environment (Fox and Brown, 1998). Within the World Bank, the dominance of neoclassical economists was questioned, led by sociologist Michael Cernea, who convinced Wolfensohn, the Bank's new president, to mainstream social development concerns (Fox, 1997). External and internal pressure led the World Bank to demonstrate more social consciousness. Identifying ‘the poor’ became the Bank's point of entry into social analysis.
The poverty debate
Poverty was by no means a new concept for World Bank development economists. Much of the formative theory of their discipline was built upon concepts of uneven development espoused by Gunnar Myrdal, W.A. Lewis and Hans Chenery amongst others. The World Bank drew attention to the problems of the poor in its 1990 World Development Report: Poverty. In this document, it publicly committed itself to poverty reduction and subsequently undertook poverty assessments in various African countries (Hanmer, Pyatt and White 1997). ‘Safety net’ policies were devised as supplementary measures for strictly delimited groups of people – natural disaster victims, and the ‘structural’ and ‘transitory poor’, such as female household heads with insufficient family support, or retrenched civil servants who constituted SAP's middle–class victims. Nonetheless, throughout the early and mid–1990s, the World Bank's poverty concerns paled in comparison with its drive to liberalise African economies and implement policies that reinforced the position of those with capital assets at the expense of those without (Bryceson and Howe 1997, Standing 2000).
Wolfensohn's presidency of the World Bank did allow some focus on poverty concerns through the promotion of participatory projects dealing with environmentally and socially sustainable development. The millennium provided an opportunity for a concerted public relations effort to change the image of the World Bank to that of champion of the interests of the poor. This was marked by the publication of a trilogy entitled Voices of the Poor, based on participatory research with poor people throughout the world (Narayan, 1997; Narayan, et al. 2000). The World Bank's first public on–line debate1 about the proposed poverty focus of the World Development Report 2000/01 broadcast the World Bank's concern for the plight of the poor. The fundamental flaw in these efforts was that the World Bank exonerated itself from any association with accelerating poverty in the developing countries over the previous two decades. In the words of one contributor to the internet debate:
What we call ‘poverty’ is a selection of features from a nexus of social relations in which we all participate. The Bank is engaged in these relations no less than ‘the poor’ it seeks to help. In some moments of the report … it would be easy to come away with the impression that there is no such thing as the World Bank, or that the [World Development Report] is some disinterested, ahistorical document, a survey of Agrarian Vista or Vortex: African Rural Livelihood Policies 621 poverty from space utterly disconnected from the history and policies (particularly Structural Adjustment) that created the phenomena it documents (Patel, 2000).3 Most succinctly one cybercorrespondent observed:
The Report is rather like an analysis of a shadow which ignores the object casting the shadow, or a study of cow pats which never mentions cows. As many have mentioned, relationships between the rich and poor worlds are understated and therefore lead to inadequate policy options …(Alexander, 2000).4
New hope? The sustainable rural livelihoods approach
The concept of rural livelihood strategies coalesced amidst the implementation of SAP and economic liberalisation policies over the past two decades. It is theoretically related to early studies of survival and coping strategies in droughtprone areas of the Sahel, where the high risk of harvest failure spurred the rural population to engage in a variety of non–agricultural activities, especially trade and handicrafts. As African peasant farmers elsewhere began to experience the constricting effect of structural adjustment on their commodity production, a wider need for coping strategies emerged. The concept of livelihood strategies took on board the fact that farming households were increasingly resorting to income diversification to secure their economic needs (Ellis, 2000). Ellis uses an expansive definition of livelihood, including: ‘income, both cash and in kind, as well as the social institutions (kin, family, compound, village and so on) gender relations, and property rights required to support and to sustain a given standard of living’ (Ellis, 1998:4).
Various multi– and bi–lateral donors embarked on programmes to operationalise what they understood as the livelihood strategies concept (Carney, 1999; Gordon, 1999). The UK Department of International Development (DFID) defined ‘sustainable livelihoods’ as the capabilities, assets and activities required for making or enhancing a livelihood which is considered sustainable when producers can cope with stresses and shocks without undermining the natural resource base (Carney, 1998, based on Chambers and Conway, 1992). The sustainable rural livelihoods approach aimed at reducing vulnerability by helping people to build on their own strengths and resources.
The upbeat message here is that ‘everyone has capital’ – even peasant farmers. Rural capital provides a bridging concept for use by economists and social scientists, despite the fact that most rural dwellers undergoing depeasantisation are relatively deprived of effective capital of whatever description. The rural poor's capital stock (land, seeds, tools, cash) is being severely depleted as their agricultural commodity production is undermined. The capital assets terminology, albeit phenomenally comprehensive, may end up providing a garbled picture of the basic occupational dilemma of rural people.
Just as the term ‘capital’ has been stretched, the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable’ livelihoods have been expanded. In the early literature, they were linked to maintaining environmental resources, but this has widened to embrace physical, economic, social and institutional sustainability (Chambers, 1987). Linked to the capital concept, sustainability is viewed as maintenance or accumulation of stocks of capital assets: ‘unsustainable systems deplete or run down capital, spending assets as if they were income, and so leaving less for future generations’ (DFID, 1999:1.4).
It has been acknowledged that livelihood diversification involves a trade–off between different types of capital. Gains in one capital can be expected to be associated with losses in another but, on balance, it is assumed that vulnerability is reduced (Farrington et al. 1999). Vulnerability is defined as shocks, trends and seasonal shifts, yet the approach's primarily local–level focus has tended to sideline the influence of broader continental trends, notably the pervasive undermining of peasant–produced commodities in the world market. In some of the sustainable livelihoods literature, the market has been unproblematically cast as an open channel facilitating opportunity–grabbing by the poor, not unlike its role in neoliberalism. One optimistically stated livelihood objective was: ‘a policy and institutional environment that supports multiple livelihood strategies and promotes equitable access to competitive markets for all’ (DFID, 1999:2.4).
Nonetheless, the sustainable livelihoods approach, providing core principles and conceptual tools that take account of poor people's own work perspectives, represents a positive step forward compared to almost two decades of SAP and economic liberalisation policies. It has been limited by its lack of a realistic acknowledgement of the impact of neo–liberalist policies and current world market conditions, leaving avenues for achieving poverty reduction disturbingly vague. Uncovering the structural causes of poverty at international, national and local levels has to be centre–stage in the formulation of poverty–alleviating policies.
The livelihoods approach has been open–ended by promoting the voices and participation of the poor. Depending on the personnel involved and some luck, this openness can generate dynamic local change, but poverty alleviation on the scale now needed requires more general strategic thinking and direction from African policy makers. Given the geographical and sectoral dimensions of rural poverty, policy intervention at national, regional and local levels has to be coordinated, whereas the sustainable livelihoods approach has been largely restricted to project implementation (Bryceson, 2002).
African governments have a critical role to play, particularly in the development of skills training programmes, encouraging regional specialisation, providing policy coordination and an overall sense of purpose. This requires the IFIs to withdraw from the national policy arena, revoking their persistent denigration of African governments’ direction of policy and recognising the need for varied forms of state and market interplay depending on the national context.
The World Bank and a multitude of other multi– and bi–lateral donor agencies have embarked on policies directed at poverty alleviation. Certainly, a focus on livelihoods affords a pragmatic way to address poverty, but the question remains as to whether present and future rural livelihoods are sustainable, given the continent's depeasantisation and deagrarianisation trajectory? In the face of competition in global agricultural commodity markets, the growing influence of international agribusiness and biotechnology breakthroughs in food science, African farmers may well be forming a ‘relic agrarian population’ – communities residing in rural areas and sharing agrarian cultural values but whose agricultural and pastoral occupations have been fundamentally undermined, causing impoverishment and/or strategic dependence on external transfer payments (Bryceson, 2000b and c). A brief consideration of the South African experience may shed some light on this form of occupational displacement.
Historical & current lessons from South Africa
The South African example is highly instructive. First, it is the sub–Saharan African nation displaying the most extensive and the earliest deagrarianisation and depeasantisation, compared with the more recent and seemingly unintended depeasantisation in sub–Saharan Africa outlined in the first section of this article. Second, it has a government that actively acknowledges the problem of labour redundancy and has formulated ambitious national programmes to address it. Reviewing the general direction of African rural livelihoods illustrates some of the obstacles to achieving sustainable rural livelihoods.
The rich historiography of rural South Africa bears testimony to the destructive effect of capitalist investment on the productive capacity and output of South African peasant agriculture (Palmer and Parsons, 1977; Bundy, 1979; Beinart, 1982; Murray, 1992). Black commercial farming was essentially ruled out as a livelihood option with the clearance of agrarian black populations during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, implemented as a conscious policy, complete with designated labour destinations for displaced male farmers in the South African mines and whiteowned farms that actively sought labour. In this convenient manipulation of labour supply and demand on the part of white agrarian and industrial capitals, black autonomy was sacrificed. Black residence in rural areas was tolerated, but with endless restrictions causing indignity and hardship for the rural populations involved.
This labour constellation lasted for several decades but began to unravel in the post– World War Two period. There was a global surge in the capitalisation of agricultural production at this time. With its epicentre in the United States and fanning outwards, labour–intensive methods of agricultural production were displaced by new technology. The expense of large numbers of farm labourers or, when their wages were exceptionally low, the high supervisory costs of their labour, could be circumvented by purchase of the new agricultural machinery coming on the market. Similarly, with the cessation of war, manufacturers in construction and heavy industry turned to the production of heavy–duty machinery that made much labour redundant. The birth of apartheid in 1948 coincided with this period. Apartheid attempted to control an increasingly untenable labour situation through political repression.
The historic policy reversal of 1994, represented by the Mandela government's commitment to poverty alleviation was grounded in the goal of labour absorption. Mandela's government had the advantage of a clean break with the policy environment of the past. The proximate causes of poverty and labour displacement were not of its making, giving it a strong moral position to implement labour absorption programmes. Nonetheless, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and the programmes that followed, demonstrate that the use of labour–intensive production techniques for infrastructure building and other areas of productive work runs deeply counter to the dynamics of global and national markets as well as local labour and managerial thinking. Making programmes that work and organically fit the local setting is a challenge, requiring concerted local effort as well as national support.
Labour absorption in urban South Africa during the Mandela period was greatly facilitated by the long–overdue Africanisation of the existing white–collar labour force. As the historical experience of other African countries demonstrates, this is highly beneficial to those whose age and qualifications allow them to readily step into an array of good jobs. However, all too soon, these job vacancies are filled and the succeeding generation of labour market entrants is frustrated by arriving too late.
In the rural areas, DARE case–study evidence (Bank and Qambata, 1999; Manona, 1999; McAllister, 1999) shows that pension reform rather than affirmative action has had the greatest impact. Bank and Qambata (1999) provide a Ciskei village casestudy account of the economic and social repercussions of a rise in black pension payments. Most beneficiaries were older widowed women who chose to live in the village rather than the city. Their newly–bolstered income enhanced their social standing in the village, but there was little indication that the pension payments were generating sustainable rural livelihoods or strengthening the village economy. Commercially–directed agricultural or non–agricultural enterprise investment was not pronounced, suggesting that the pension's potential economic multiplier effect was not being realised. Pensions were primarily invested in human and social capital, notably immediate family welfare, as well as the hosting of traditional ceremonies that strengthen community social cohesion. The latter may have enhanced rural–urban linkages, giving urban–based youth and others a reason for visiting their home areas.
The most overt sign of labour market and livelihood policy failure is criminality. Aspirations kindled by the post–apartheid government provide a powerful motivational force for change but also a source of frustration, especially where impoverished populations live in close proximity to the relatively more affluent. If the speed of poverty alleviation and livelihood opportunities is too slow, criminality is a possible livelihood alternative. As the South African government knows only too well, this threat is double–edged with the potential of seriously destabilising national security and undermining foreign investment.
What is the future of South Africa's black rural settlements? Agricultural commodity production, dormant for two or even three generations, is not easily revived even in the most promising of market circumstances. Transfer payments, be they remittances or pensions, have sustained the rural areas for many decades and there is no sign that this is likely to suddenly be replaced with a turn to commercial agriculture and non–agricultural enterprise. Locationally, the rural areas are poorly placed in terms of market knowledge of domestic let alone international trade, transport costs for products are relatively high and rural purchasing power is depressed. South Africa's wholesale and retail market circuits are more heavily influenced by corporate interests than elsewhere in sub–Saharan Africa, leaving less room for fledgling attempts by rural entrepreneurs. Rural–urban links in South Africa are comparatively well established and there is a well–entrenched notion that gainful employment is necessarily urban. Rural social identities remain strong, but the rural economic base lacks autonomy and vitality. Without agricultural commodity production, a strong foundation for economic sustainability is lacking. While the term ‘relic agrarian populations’ may be unpalatable, it can be a useful spur to policy makers to emphasise the depth of the economic problem.5 Revitalising rural areas populated by very poor people without a viable agrarian base requires exceptionally creative thinking and immense political will.
Capital, labour & ‘relic agrarian populations’
In the aftermath of sub–Saharan Africa's experiences of SAP, it is vital that international and bilateral agencies project realistic policies to integrate micro and macro economic levels. Sustainable livelihoods policy as currently formulated can generate much–needed analytical awareness and understanding of the African rural population's complex work portfolios arising from two decades of trial–anderror income diversification. Through participatory methods, it can help rural dwellers rationalise their efforts at individual, family and community levels. On the other hand, the wider international policy context continues to give precedence to the immense labour and capital allocative power of the global market. The nonintersection of micro and macro policies work at cross purposes with respect to the welfare of African rural populations.
The marginalisation of peasant and tribal populations has been a recurrent theme in capitalist expansion through time, with the assumption that these ‘relic agrarian populations’ will eventually be absorbed into the mainstream of national economies. In the case of Africa, however, any notion of a prosperous mainstream with absorptive capacity is far–fetched. The encounter of African economies with the global market generates labour displacement in rural and urban areas alike. A huge ‘informal sector’, whose usual comparative advantage is simply proximity rather than better or more cheaply–produced products, absorbs labour but in a mode best described as ‘hand to mouth’, ‘trying to make ends meet’, ‘eking out a living’ – phrases that indicate a fight for survival rather than the path to sustainability.
Sustainable rural livelihood efforts need to acknowledge and address the current contradiction between micro and macro policies. Vigorous advocacy for the global trading interests of African rural populations in the halls of power is necessary. Collaborative efforts with rural dwellers to create market space for existing African rural products as well as encouraging new, innovative labour specialisations with market potential would constitute positive steps forward. Meanwhile, IFIs (especially the World Bank) who invoke the ‘voices of the poor’ have to be pressed to confirm the measures promised to alleviate massive African labour displacement. Those voices have to be backed with a commitment of IFIs, and other international agencies with political clout, to eradicating poverty even at the expense of international capital in certain critical spheres. The ‘capital’ of the poor, be it financial, physical, natural, human, or social, cannot be compared to the equally multi–various but immensely more abundant capital stock of the global corporate world. To achieve sustainable livelihoods amongst Africa's rural poor, capital trade–offs have to extend far beyond the local level of African rural communities.