While the engagement of Chinese migrants in small-scale mining in Ghana has gained traction in scholarship, the extant literature pays little attention to how the relationship between the so-called formal institutions (e.g., the Minerals Commission and Ministry of Land and Natural Resources) and informal institutions (e.g., the chieftaincy and customary land institutions) enables illegalities in the mining industry. This paper addresses this gap in the literature, focusing on the relationship between formal state and informal customary land institutions in the small-scale mining sector. Using an institutional analytical framework, we argue that the increasing involvement of the Chinese in small-scale mining in Ghana is an expression of a bigger and deep-seated problem characterized largely by uncoordinated interactions between key state and customary institutions. This, we suggest, creates parallel operations of formal and informal systems that promote different levels of agency and maneuvering among actors-breeding uncertainty, bureaucratic logjams, and illegalities in the mining industry. Based on our findings, we recommend that a more efficient coordination between the relevant state and traditional land governing institutions could curb the proliferation of illegal mining activities, and in particular, those involving Chinese migrants. As part of the conclusion, we suggest that future empirical research be conducted to explore the interactions between formal and informal institutions and how they affect mining activities.
The Brong Ahafo region, often referred to as the 'breadbasket' of Ghana, in the last decade has become the centre of increasing expansion of cashew nuts production for export. Farmers in the region are increasingly devoting their time and lands to the production of raw cashew nuts for the export market instead of producing food for the local market. We adopt a political ecology approach to demonstrate how the historical legacy of export-led agriculture and its integration of local agriculture into the global market drives the production of cashew nuts in Ghana. Our analyses were informed by interview responses from farmers, and a review of critical agrarian scholarship, policy documents and cashew production and consumption reports. We find that historical legacies, government policy narratives and global market integration are driving the commodification of local agriculture in Ghana and conclude that there is an urgent need to plan for an agricultural transition that considers both immediate and long-term impacts. 1 Sections of this paper are part of a PhD thesis submitted to the University of Queensland by the first author. We thank the University of Queensland for funding the Ph.D. study through the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and editor for providing feedback on the manuscript.
Food and agricultural systems in the global South have undergone recent and significant transformation. Such changes are driven by an array of actors, and alongside social, political and economic forces, including a renewed investment by global development actors following the global agri-food crisis in the mid-2000s. The global agri-food crisis, in particular, is associated with speculations in food and agriculture, alongside the introduction of new modernisation policies and programmesincluding the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Such interventions are often couched as a response to the challenge of feeding the world's growing population, estimated to reach nine billion by 2050. In Africa, an agricultural transformation is also closely tied to initiatives to modernise agriculture, including expanding export-led agricultural development. Turning to Ghana in particular, market-based and export-led agricultural development policies and narratives have expanded since at least the mid-2000s, incorporating new actors, and extending their local level impacts. During this period, dominant agricultural development narratives framed Ghana's agrarian problems as largely technical and supply-side problems, which could be solved by increasing productivity as well as diversifying into production of export crops, thereby addressing poverty, food insecurity and global market access issues. In particular, the promotion of cashew nut production as export diversification has integrated farmers in the Brong Ahafo Region into the global commodity market. These market-based approaches are shaping agricultural practiceswith outcomes that are transforming agriculture in Ghana, particularly the Brong Ahafo Region. With this as context, this thesis adopts a critical political ecology approach to analyse contemporary processes and outcomes of agricultural transformation in Ghana's Brong Ahafo Region. Political ecology was adopted to render transparent the complex political, economic and sociocultural processes across different global and local scales shaping agricultural transformation in the region, often referred to as the 'breadbasket' of Ghana. The research adopts qualitative methods, including interviews, focus group discussions, observation and policy document analysis, to gather in-depth data on farming systems in the Brong Ahafo Region.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.