This report is the second in a series of three evaluating underexploited African plant resources that could help broaden and secure Africa's food supply. The volume describes the characteristics of 18 little-known indigenous African vegetables (including tubers and legumes) that have potential as food- and cash-crops but are typically overlooked by scientists and policymakers and in the world at large. The book assesses the potential of each vegetable to help overcome malnutrition, boost food security, foster rural development, and create sustainable landcare in Africa. Each species is described in a separate chapter, based on information gathered from and verified by a pool of experts throughout the world. Volume I describes African grains and Volume III African fruits.

Scenes of starvation have drawn the world's attention to Africa's agricultural and environmental crisis. Some observers question whether this continent can ever hope to feed its growing population. Yet there is an overlooked food resource in sub-Saharan Africa that has vast potential: native food plants. When experts were asked to nominate African food plants for inclusion in a new book, a list of 30 species grew quickly to hundreds. All in all, Africa has more than 2,000 native grains and fruitsâ€""lost" species due for rediscovery and exploitation. This volume focuses on native cereals, including: African rice, reserved until recently as a luxury food for religious rituals. Finger millet, neglected internationally although it is a staple for millions. Fonio (acha), probably the oldest African cereal and sometimes called "hungry rice." Pearl millet, a widely used grain that still holds great untapped potential. Sorghum, with prospects for making the twenty-first century the "century of sorghum." Tef, in many ways ideal but only now enjoying budding commercial production. Other cultivated and wild grains. This readable and engaging book dispels myths, often based on Western bias, about the nutritional value, flavor, and yield of these African grains. Designed as a tool for economic development, the volume is organized with increasing levels of detail to meet the needs of both lay and professional readers. The authors present the available information on where and how each grain is grown, harvested, and processed, and they list its benefits and limitations as a food source. The authors describe "next steps" for increasing the use of each grain, outline research needs, and address issues in building commercial production. Sidebars cover such interesting points as the potential use of gene mapping and other "high-tech" agricultural techniques on these grains. This fact-filled volume will be of great interest to agricultural experts, entrepreneurs, researchers, and individuals concerned about restoring food production, environmental health, and economic opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa. Selection, Newbridge Garden Book Club

"A powerful polemic against agricultural technology." —Nature A major new book that shows the world already has the tools to feed itself, without expanding industrial agriculture or adopting genetically modified seeds, from the Small Planet Institute expert Few challenges are more daunting than feeding a global population projected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050—at a time when climate change is making it increasingly difficult to successfully grow crops. In response, corporate and philanthropic leaders have called for major investments in industrial agriculture, including genetically modified seed technologies. Reporting from Africa, Mexico, India, and the United States, Timothy A. Wise's Eating Tomorrow discovers how in country after country agribusiness and its well-heeled philanthropic promoters have hijacked food policies to feed corporate interests. Most of the world, Wise reveals, is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, people with few resources and simple tools but a keen understanding of what and how to grow food. These same farmers—who already grow more than 70 percent of the food eaten in developing countries—can show the way forward as the world warms and population increases. Wise takes readers to remote villages to see how farmers are rebuilding soils with ecologically sound practices and nourishing a diversity of native crops without chemicals or imported seeds. They are growing more and healthier food; in the process, they are not just victims in the climate drama but protagonists who have much to teach us all.

This book is a pioneering and comprehensive study of the environmental history of Southern Malawi. With over fifty years of experience, anthropologist and social ecologist Brian Morris draws on a wide range of data – literary, ethnographic and archival – in this interdisciplinary volume. Specifically focussing on the complex and dialectical relationship between the people of Southern Malawi, both Africans and Europeans, and the Shire Highlands landscape, this study spans the nineteenth century until the end of the colonial period. It includes detailed accounts of the early history of the peoples of Northern Zambezia; the development of the plantation economy and history of the tea estates in the Thyolo and Mulanje districts; the Chilembwe rebellion of 1915; and the complex tensions between colonial interests in conserving natural resources and the concerns of the Africans of the Shire Highlands in maintaining their livelihoods. A landmark work, Morris’s study constitutes a major contribution to the environmental history of Southern Africa. It will appeal not only to scholars, but to students in anthropology, economics, history and the environmental sciences, as well as to anyone interested in learning more about the history of Malawi, and ecological issues relating to southern Africa. /div

"It is my expectation that respect for the critical importance of seed sovereignty will in due course be recognised by member states of the United Nations to be as critical to global peace and security as the UN Charter demands in respect of State sovereign equality, justice, human rights and economic and social wellbeing for all peoples."—Denis J. Halliday, UN Assistant Secretary-General 1994-98 "A constructive contribution to our understanding of what is going wrong and what can go right in the complex area of seed sovereignty."—Dervla Murphy, renowned travel writer and adventurer "Keeping seed diversity alive is the secret ingredient, not just for the good, nutrient-dense food that every cook, gardener and farmer/producer needs, but for strengthening our resilience in the face of multiple environmental threats. This compelling and timely book helps us to understand what we are up against and how we can overcome it."— Darina Allen, internationally renowned cook, founder of Ballymaloe Cookery school and President of the East Cork Convivium of Slow Food This book studies the relationship between globalisation and seed sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa. It provides comparative case studies of the most recent Kenyan and Ethiopian seed laws, as well as a study of seed sovereignty 'on the ground' in a locality within Ethiopia. Based on extensive fieldwork, it identifies the interests and motivations of transnational seed corporations, global philanthropic organisations, state actors, and local farmers. It finds significant differences in the wording of seed laws and the exercise of seed sovereignty, applying theories of globalisation to help us better understand these varied outcomes. It shows that seed sovereignty has the potential to be shared between local, national, regional, and global authorities, but in different ways in different countries and localities. In the face of what might sometimes appear to be unstoppable global forces, these findings suggest that the exercise of seed sovereignty can be transformed even in a highly globalised world.

One of the major challenges facing most countries in sub-Saharan Africa is the need to invest significant resources into strengthening their capacity to increase the availability of good-quality seeds of a wider range of plant varieties. This publication presents the proceedings of the Regional Technical Meeting on Seed Policy and Programmes for sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2017, over 5,000 victims of slavery were found in the UK, and their numbers are rising each year. From men working in Sports Direct warehouses for no pay, to the teenage Vietnamese girls trafficked into small town nail bars, modern slavery is all around us, operating in plain sight.But is this really slavery, and is it even a new phenomenon? Why has the British Conservative Party called it 'one of the great human rights issues of our time', when they usually ignore the exploitation of those at the bottom of the economic pile? The Truth About Modern Slavery reveals how these workers are being used as pawns in a political game. In order to create the 'hostile environment' towards immigrants in Britain, the state has to appear to be moral; identifying 'slaves' amidst a sea of other vulnerable workers allows them to divide and conquer.Blaming the media's complicity, rich philanthropists' opportunism and even the Labour Party's silence on the subject, The Truth About Modern Slavery is the first book to challenge the conventional narratives on modern slavery.

Sowing the Mustard Seed is a story of unflinching bravery. It is the story of unwavering search for a true, revolutionary and development-oriented leadership. The Ugandan President takes the reader on a tell-all journey of the sacrifice that he and other young Ugandans decided to take in order to liberate their country from the jaws of helplessness to which the first post-independence governments had conspired to consign it. In this spell-binding tale, told in the first-person voice, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni traces the journey of his life from his first few months on earth, through his education, after which he and other patriots embarked on a journey of seeking empowerment to overthrow the despotic regime of Idi Amin Dada. It also delves into other wars, such as the long-drawn-out bid to neutralise Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army and professionalising the Ugandan army, after many years of sectarianism. Besides illuminating the struggles of the past, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni shares his vision for Uganda and the pillars he has over the years put in place as President to ensure Uganda’s future is secure both economically and socially.