Agriculture, Foraging and Wildlife Resource Use in Africa

Can wildlife utilization become a sustainable alternative means of land usage? Two years' fieldwork in a remote and culturally diverse part of Zambezi valley in Africa - where buffalos and elephants compete with foragers and stream-bank cultivators and where safari operators, spirit mediums and wildlife committees exert conflicting rights over natural resources - enabled the author to chart the progress of Zimbabwe's experiment in the use of wildlife for the benefit of local communities through the Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE). The programme aims to devolve control and benefits of a hitherto state-controlled wildlife through locally-based wildlife utilization common property regimes, and the focus of the study is the cultural and political dynamics associated with wildlife use relevant to the CAMPFIRE program. The author describes a situation in which conflicting and ambiguous rights and vested interests in natural resources emanating from ward, district, national and global levels result in multiple jurisdictions concerning use, ownership, access to or control of wildlife, which mitigate against the success of the CAMPFIRE scheme. In an anthropological context, the study reveals an intricate web of forces at play in contemporary African society, and raises points relevant to the concept of common property. In a wider context, the book throws light on many issues central to the management of wildlife resources the world over.