Panel Discussion: 'Food Security and Food Sovereignty in the Middle East and North Africa' - Professor Habib Ayeb, Dr Soraya El Kahlaoui & Professor Ray Bush

LUCAS and POLIS invite you to a panel discussion of the newly published book Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa. Agrarian Questions in Egypt and Tunisia, (Anthem Press 2019).  The event takes place at 4pm on Thursday 7th November, in room 14.33 of the Social Sciences Building at the University of Leeds

About the Book

Food insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa studies the political economy of agrarian transformation in the MENA region.  By examining the case studies of Egypt and Tunisia the book places family farmers and the rural dispossessed at the centre of debates about food sovereignty and rural development.  It critiques the tropes of the international financial institutions and the governments of Egypt and Tunisia that promote food security with little regard for food producers and burgeoning debate and activism of peasants advancing the agenda of food sovereignty. The panel will engage with the importance of the book to re-set debate about the uprisings in the MENA region, to place farmers and farming within them and to propose the importance of food sovereignty.

The Speakers

Co author Habib Ayeb is a geographer, researcher and professor at the University of Paris 8 in Saint Denis.  He is founder member of the Tunis based NGO,  Observatoire de la Souveraineté (OSAE) that advocates for food sovereignty and alternative rural development strategies.  He is a film maker whose last two films have been widely acclaimed,  Gabes Labess – All is well in Gabes  and Couscous, Les Graines De La Dignité

Discussant, Soraya El Kahlaoui is a post doc researcher at the University of Ghent.  She examines social and economic transformation in north Africa with emphasis on the ways in which public space is re-appropriated in the context of democratisation in Morocco since 2011.  She is also film maker receiving praise and commendation for her film, Landless Moroccans

Co Author Ray Bush is professor of African Studies and Development Politics in POLIS, he researches and publishes on political economy, rural development and underdevelopment and alternative development strategies.  He is a member of the Editorial Working Group of The Review of African Political Economy where he has recently promoted Africa based workshops with activists on resistance to capitalism and dispossession.