Zimbabweland’s festive top 20 for 2015

via Zimbabweland’s festive top 20 for 2015 | zimbabweland December 21, 2015

This year about 50 blogs have been published, adding to an archive now of over 220 posts. Also, there have been around 55,000 views so far this year on the Zimbabweland site, which is rather amazing. Many posts have been reprinted in other outlets, including different Zimbabwean newspapers (from the Herald to the Bulawayo Chronicle to the Zimbabwean), as well as sites such as The Conversation, African Arguments, AllAfrica and so on. Below I list the top 20 posts this year in terms of views on the Zimbabweland site only, with links to each (under ‘view’), if you want to catch up on ones you have missed. Many from previous years are still being viewed, so feel free to dig around in the archive too. As usual readers come from a wide mix of places, dominated by Zimbabwe, South Africa, the UK and the US, although overall readers have come from a remarkable total of 171 countries.

It seems that discussion of livestock production is a big draw for readers, with pigs and poultry topping the chart. Indeed in the comments strings, there have been quite a few queries about pigs. It seems lots of people are setting up pig production units in Zimbabwe right now! In terms of other themes this year, there have been quite a few posts on other aspects of commercial agriculture, linked to our project on ‘space, markets, employment and agricultural development’, as well as wider international affairs, including the Greek crisis and the UK election. And yes of course there was Cecil the lion. The blog has also paid tribute to the passing of a number of people who have contributed in various ways to debates about land and agriculture in Zimbabwe, including Sam Moyo, Zephaniah Phiri, Freedom Nyamubaya and Terrence Ranger. They are all much missed.

I hope that readers will continue to engage with the always evolving debates on land, agriculture and economic development in Zimbabwe during 2016. During this year, the work associated with Zimbabweland won a prize, recognising the role of the blog in linking research to ‘impact’. So if you want to keep up to date, do sign up to get your weekly blog in your inbox, follow me on Twitter, or just bookmark the blog.

1. View – Zimbabwe’s new agricultural entrepreneurs I: pig production
2. View – Zimbabwe’s new agricultural entrepreneurs II: Poultry
3. View – What if Greece was in Africa?
4. View – Bill Gates discovers redistributive land reform
5. View – Greece and Africa: learning the lessons of structural adjustment
6. View – A tribute to Sam Moyo – a giant of agrarian studies
7. View – Cecil the lion: a lens on land, wildlife and elite politics in Zimbabwe
8. View – Why economists fail in Africa
9. View – Zimbabwe’s new agricultural entrepreneurs III: irrigators
10. View – Democracy in Africa: why it’s complicated
11. View – The water harvester, Zephaniah Phiri, has died
12. View – A hot commercial success: growing chilli in the eastern highlands
13. View – BRICS and development: new hubs of agrarian capital
14. View – The UK election, Africa and Zimbabwe
15. View – Soils for life: Some cautionary tales for the International Year of Soils
16. View – Terence Ranger, historian of Zimbabwe, dies
17. View – Nutrition puzzles: the shit factor
18. View – Africa’s Land Rush: Rural Livelihoods and Agrarian Change – a new book
19. View – Booming agricultural markets and the politics of control in Zimbabwe
20. View – Land and commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe: new findings