NAIROBI - The ongoing crisis in the Horn of Africa can be linked to a violent transnational extractive economy that links the Horn and the Gulf States, argues an essay from The Review of African Political Economy.
The authors note that Sudan and Somalia, two countries that have suffered sustained violence in recent years, were together supplying 90% of the animal protein consumed in the chronically food-insecure Gulf States before Covid, earning an estimated $1.4 billion a year.
But this increased demand for meat in the Gulf has led to the rise of militarized ranching in the region, and a shift from subsistence to commercial modes of production, intensifying conflicts over water and land among farmers and herders.
