Globalisations in a nutshell: Historical perspectives on the changing governance of the shea commodity chain in northern Ghana

Abstract

Pre-colonial patterns of trade in West Africa included exchanges of shea in periodic local and regional markets. The collection, processing and marketing of shea products in such markets continues to be predominantly by women to both meet subsistence needs, and exchange of surpluses. In the early part of the 20th century, the British colonial administration considered the possibilities of starting large-scale exports of shea kernels to Europe. Multiple colonial initiatives to develop the global trade were not successful due to a composite of factors. Contemporary patterns of production, trade and regulation are contrasted in the context of globalisation in the post-independence era. The government of Ghana has progressively reinforced its ambitions to expand the shea nut trade as part of the state's portfolio of major non-traditional agricultural export commodities. This policy is embedded within the (now) dominant orthodoxy of neo-liberalism, which privileges monetized production systems and private over public regulation. Historically and culturally-embedded patterns of shea production and trade by women in northern Ghana may now be challenged by the emergence of new processing technologies, the emergence of an oligopolistic global commodity chain and the anticipated continued growth in global demand for cocoa butter equivalents. Nevertheless, the cumulative impacts of increasing commercialisation and world market integration at the national and local level in Ghana, and other West African producer countries, are still unknown. There are risks, however, that this process may result in 368 Andrew Wardell and Niels Fold social differentiation, changes in household consumption patterns and loss of livelihoods, particularly for women. Acknowledgements:The authors would like to thank three anonymous referees for their valuable comments on an earlier draft. We would also like to thank the Danish Council for Development Research for financial assistance.

Towards a Gendered Agro-Commodity Approach

“…Another example is Barrientos, Dolan and Tallontire (2003), where the gender sensitive codes of conduct in the African export horticultural sector is explored by combining the global value chain and gendered economy approaches. Nevertheless, many authors still continue to ignore the gender dynamics, overlooking the fact that commodity chains are embedded in households whose survival depends very much on the work of women (Dunaway 2001;2013). As Dunaway (2014:64) observed, there is a "glaring absence of women from commodity chains.…”

“…Nevertheless, intra-household issues can explain gender differences in who will participate in the labor market and when and who controls the income generated from production and labor contracts. Little attention is paid to what really goes on in the households that provide the primary labor force and resources for agro-commodity chains (Mies 2007;Dunaway 2001;2013). Consumption patterns of households that produce for the markets in different nodes of the chains need to be known to consider the impact on nutrition levels within families, which may affect their labor supply.…”

“…Theoretical reasoning on how these relationships and the status of women and households affect and are affected by global production and trade processes can be found in Dunaway (2001;201 l;2013). She elaborated on earlier conceptual work of Mies (1986;, arguing that low wages, flexible and unpaid (family) labor and reproduction tasks of women are in fact the foundations of modern agro-export chains (see also Barrientos 2001).…”

“…It is further noted that the relations of materials and people in a commodity chain are affected by their social milieu of class, caste, and gender (Ramamurthy 2011 ). The commodity chain concept is a very useful tool for integrating women and households into world-systems analysis (Dunaway Towards a Gendered Agro -Comm odity Approach 231 2001;2013). One has to emphasize that gender relations affect and are affected by the ways in which value chains function (Bammann 2007).…”

Multi-level governance of forest resources (Editorial to the special feature – Part 2)

“…Efforts to mitigate global climate change through REDD+ are associated with global mechanisms such as carbon markets/credits while at the same time requiring the measurement, reporting and verification of forest resources at multiple levels (see Korhonen-Kurki et al 2013). Both processes create different pressures at global, regional, national, sub-national and local levels, which may influence long-established patterns of rules for resource access and use as well as marketing arrangements for Non Timber Forest Products (see Wardell and Fold 2013). By increasing the number and type of actors, and the diversity of, and asymmetries in interests, claims and influence, these processes intensify the well-known problems of exclusion and substractibility that characterize common pool resources like forests, fisheries and pastures, and may lead to a breakdown of previously effective arrangements for resource use and control.…”