This study analysed income diversification activities of 1,194 rural households in the Northern Region of Ghana using data from the sixth round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS) undertaken by the Government of Ghana, through the Ghana Statistical Service. We found that 92% of rural households were engaged in farm activities affirming agriculture as the dominant profession of rural households in the region. The number of income-generating activities undertaken by these households was significantly related to the size of the household, previous apprenticeship training acquired by the household head, ownership of a motor bike/car, and ownership by the household of specific physical assets which also provide information, communication and entertainment services, namely mobile phone, radio and television sets. The share of wage-based income in the total household income was significantly related to the age of the household. The overall income diversification index was positively influenced by the level of remittances and the number of rooms in the house; the latter allowed for increased possibility of renting rooms in the house to workers. We also established that overall income diversification index was associated with decreasing total household consumption expenditures and reduced food security at relatively low levels. However, this index was linked to increasing household consumption expenditures and improved food security at relatively higher levels. Our findings suggest that income diversification could be an important poverty-reducing measure if well-designed Community and State support programmes for rural households are implemented in the region under conditions of peace and good security.

This paper presents a summary of the international literature published on the thematic area of the political economy analysis of income diversification related to the activities of rural households with emphasis on the importance of these activities in economic growth, poverty reduction and sustainable development over time. The review provides information about the overall effect of income diversification on economic welfare of rural householders. Typically, a positive relationship exists between income diversification activities and economic welfare indicators such as income, wealth, consumption and nutrition. However, recent empirical literature evidence shows that income diversification could also increase income inequality and contribute to marginalization of certain groups of people. For example, there is evidence to indicate that in some parts of the world that relatively few better-off rural householders with sufficient capital inputs achieve higher levels of income diversification from multiple sources of income portfolios partly due to increased support services from State and community sources. The benefits of income diversification have not been fully realized by many poor rural households largely due to capital constraints, weak links to the political power structures, and conflicts that adversely affect these households. Overall, income diversification can be an important poverty-reducing strategy if its use as a policy strategy is continuously examined and assessed in terms of its political economy dimensions with regards to productivity, equity and sustainability of rural livelihood activities with particular attention paid to vulnerable and marginalized groups.

This paper provides a summary of the international literature published in the thematic area of household dietary diversity with emphasis on the importance of sustainable approaches to global hunger and malnutrition. The paper highlights the correlation between inadequate household dietary diversity, child mortality and death. It also draws attention to the subtle combinations of social, economic and political interactions in enhancing nutritional welfare. The paper further raises a major argument that contemporary explorations of dietary diversity have failed to sustain the important tension and dialectical debate between diverse empirical realities and wider theorization of the concrete linkage of economic welfare to dietary diversity. The paper sets the tone for wider conceptualization of the phenomenon by clearly outlining the role of multiple relations of low incomes, inadequate maternal-child health care as well as poor environmental sanitation as leading predicators of under-nutrition in rural Africa. This theorization makes the case that, studying the relations and conjunctions of economic welfare via the agency of dietary consumption, is critical for emergent processes of change as the given-evidence of under-nutrition does not allow economists to draw solid conclusions on status of dietary diversity in rural Africa without a dynamic understanding and explicit recognition of the wider abstractions of political economy undercurrents in economic welfare and nutritional well-being literature. That said, the paper re-affirms the subtle evidence that under-nutrition and reduced body-mass of adults, often cited in the development literature as proxy-indicators of poor dietary diversity, needs to be re-evaluated as reduced body-mass in adults could be an indication of other incidences of environmental-stresses rather than of food-energy stress. In this vein, the review sustains a new argument that, resource-poor households modify attitude to food consumption in order to self-protect against income losses in household production systems. This position has implications for economic welfare and nutritional diversity research as food may not always come first for the resource-poor. It also opens new avenues for economic research by projecting the hypothesis that consumption of nutritious diets cannot be seen as a unique object to be sought by resource-poor to the exclusion of all other priorities including raising income frontiers through savings for wealth accumulation. The pre-eminence of food security over income diversification activities of rural households as a broader strategy to reduce malnutrition and poverty in the developing world could be re-examined to give livelihood activities a central role in household dietary diversity research.

The consequences of conflictual views on modelling the economic impact of remittances on agribusiness entrepreneurship and economic growth, has been present for a long time in the economic literature, albeit in a somewhat scattered way. This has attracted wide-spread criticism for agribusiness inititaives and its failure to address rural unemployment within the context of youth participation in the global food markets. This paper provides a summary of the global evidence published in the thematic area of international migration-remittance and sustainable development with emphasis on the financialisation impact of remittance on agribusiness entreprenuership and economic growth. The paper selectively reviews over 100 documented cases that offer insights into the methodological approaches for empirical modelling of remittance studies around the world. The paper bridges different stands of literature in economic and business management sciences and exemplifies the new complementaries between remittance, agribusiness and supply chain developments. Much as the paper advances no particular theory for modelling the economic impact of remittances on agribusiness entreprenuership and growth, it clearly offers insights into picking the appropriate methodological approaches for empirical estimation of the net effects of remittances on agribusiness entrepreneurship and rural youth employment in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The paper pinpoints ample evidence and brings a case for use of randomized experimentation approaches in Sub-Saharan Africa prone to the vagaries of weather- shocks and climate change. The paper further elaborates the nexus between remittance and contemporary development themes of poverty reduction and inequality, investment and savings, labour supply participation and economic growth. The experimental evidence reported around the globe showed that remittances have positive effects on poverty reduction but negative ramifications for labour supply, education, and economic growth. The analysis made a startling discovery which demonstrated that although, remittances reduced labour supply participation in developing economies; it significantly increased consumption of luxury goods in migrant households and made no positive contribution whatsoever to economic growth. This sorepoint courts new attention on resolution of the dilemma of remittance on economic welfare and advances an immediate redress of the emerging crises of methodological misuse in Development economics. Specifically the paper finds penalties with choice of methodological approaches for modelling the economic impacts of remitance on agribusiness entrepreneurship and economic welfare and advocated the inculcation of political economy perspectives in order to intergrate the multidimensionality of the complicated linkages of remittance to agribusiness entrepreneurship, rural youth employment and sustainable economic growth.

International political economy of food security has become a central theme in the development narrative, providing a lens through which contemporary challenges of development are intergrated, rationalized and synthetized for sustainable and equitable development. The paper explores the prominent role of food security in development narratives, but in broader conceptions of state and its social contracts. From the analysis of the spatio-temporal evolutions of households’ strategies for coping wth food insecurity and hunger, this paper clearly argues that food security defined as “access to enough preferred food” is fundamentally political. This study offers a set of different approaches to understanding the dynamics of food politics, grounded in broader theorectical traditions of power politics in food governance. The approaches are evaluated through an identification and analysis of a set of problematiques in food security governance gleaned from an overview of the major literature of note in food security and agricultural economics. The micropolitics of food that work in different constellations of ethnic power to perpetuate food insecurity are well outlined. The paper build upon this tensions by further questioning the regimes of power and how dominant political interests exercise themselves in corporate power structures, dismantling socially-oriented state approaches for enhancing food security. The relevance of intergrating the emerging dimensions of food politics and power, concerned with control of resources and opportunities for food production are also highlighted. With the politics of power not only concerned with material domination but directing rural people’s beliefs, values, behaviours and practices. As well as elaborating on the dorminant issues of food politics that have co-opted to increase food insecurity, the paper outlines alternative visions that are diverse and even incompatible on epistemological grounds. In so doing, the paper argues for triangulation of new ideas to shine the light from different angles to achieve sustainable and equitable food security in the Covid-19 era of food crises and deprivation. In this vein, the review, examines the impact of the mobility restraints set in 2020 by local governments to stem the spread of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) on food security regimes in Africa, with particular emphasis on how the move has disrupted economies worldwide, disproportionately affecting livelihoods already threatened by poverty and hunger. Whilst the sections heretofore articulate the synergies between food and politics, so much is shared that this review reflects a richer picture of the political economy of food security on the international front.