Economic and Political Reform in Africa

Peter D. Little

Description

Realizing the promise of development in Africa

What are the local effects of major economic and political reforms in Africa? How have globalized pro-market and pro-democracy reforms impacted local economics and communities? Examining case studies from The Gambia, Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, Peter D. Little shows how rural farmers and others respond to complex agendas of governments, development agencies, and non-governmental organizations. The book explores the contradictions between what policy reforms were supposed to do and what actually happened in local communities. Little's bold vision of development challenges common narratives of African poverty, dependency, and environmental degradation and suggests that sustainable development in Africa can best be achieved by strengthening local livelihoods, markets, and institutions.

Preface
Introduction: What it means to be "Reformed?"
1. 'They Think We Can Manufacture Crops:' Contract Farming and the Non-Traditional Commodity Business
2. 'Everybody is a Petty Trader:' Peri-Urban Trade in Post-Conflict Maputo, Mozambique
3. 'We Now Milk Elephants:' The Community Conservation Business in Rural Kenya
4. 'They are Beating Us Over the Head with Democracy:' Multi-Party Elections in Rural Kenya
5. 'The Government is always telling us what to think:' Narratives of food aid dependence in rural Ethiopia
6. 'Counting the poor:' The politics of pastoralist poverty assessments in Kenya
7. 'A sort of free business:' Stateless Somalia and a hyper-liberalized economy
Conclusions: Rethinking encounters and reformist narratives
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• African Studies
• Political Science
• African
• African people
• Anthropology
• World

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 20 novembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253010933
• Langue: English

Extrait

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL REFORM IN AFRICA
ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
PETER D. LITTLE
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
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© 2014 by Peter D. Little
All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Little, Peter D., author.
Economic and political reform in Africa : anthropological perspectives / Peter D. Little.
    pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01079-7 (cl : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-01084-1 (pb : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-01093-3 (eb) 1. Rural development— Africa. 2. Economic development—Africa. 3. Africa—Economic policy. 4. Agriculture and state—Africa. 5. Sustainable development— Africa. I. Title.
HN780.Z9C6473 2013
307.1412096—dc23
2013016718
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
In memory of Betty and Bill Little and Peter Branson
Contents
Preface
Introduction: What It Means to Be “Reformed”
1 “They Think We Can Manufacture Crops”: Contract Farming and the Nontraditional Commodity Business
2 “Everybody Is a Petty Trader”: Peri-urban Trade in Postconflict Maputo, Mozambique
3 “We Now Milk Elephants”: The Community Conservation Business in Rural Kenya
4 “They Are Beating Us over the Head with Democracy”: Multiparty Elections in Rural Kenya
5 “The Government Is Always Telling Us What to Think”: Narratives of Food Aid Dependence in Rural Ethiopia
6 “Counting the Poor”: The Politics of Pastoralist Poverty Assessments in Kenya
7 “A Sort of Free Business”: Hyper-liberalization and Somali Transnationalism
Conclusions: Rethinking Encounters and Reformist Narratives
Notes
References
Index
Preface
T HIS BOOK TOOK much too long to complete! It perennially was on the back-burner, always precluded by more urgent commitments. It has hung around in partially completed form for several years and confronted lots of false starts and stops along the way. An important change in the project's pace came in 2007–2008 when I was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed me to commit full-time attention to the book for nine months. A research leave from the University of Kentucky in fall 2007 and a sabbatical from Emory University in spring 2011 helped me to finish the bulk of the research and writing. The lengthy gestation of this project means that I am indebted to many colleagues, institutions, and collaborations, which I will acknowledge in the rest of this preface.
To begin, the topical and geographic breadth of the project—case studies in six African countries (Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, and Somalia)—required an arsenal of partnerships, collaborations, and methods unusual for an anthropologist. It draws on key research and collaborative opportunities and partnerships that were afforded me during the past twenty-plus years. In many respects, the book represents a synthesis of my work since 1990. Within a five-year period in the early 1990s I was involved in two comparative research programs that greatly expanded my geographic and topical interests. Both were interdisciplinary, multisited projects. The first was a comparative study of contract farming in Africa codirected with Michael Watts of the University of California-Berkeley, to whom I am deeply indebted for many of the ideas reflected in chapter 1 . This project allowed fieldwork back in Baringo District, Kenya, the location of my dissertation research, as well as research in The Gambia, West Africa, where I had not previously worked. In the late 1980s contract farming, a form of capitalist production that vertically links small farmers with the operations of agribusiness firms and processors, was just being introduced in various African countries and increasingly associated with the production of so-called nontraditional commodities. Contract farming (CF) came to symbolize the pro-business agendas so prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s, and provided a very convenient window into the intricate connections between global trade and transnational firms, on the one hand, and local politics and labor relations, on the other.
Field research for the chapter (1) on CF of nontraditional commodities was conducted in the export horticultural zones near Banjul, The Gambia, and Accra, Ghana, during 1993–1994 and partly supported by another comparative research project focused on peri-urban economies (described below). For the CF research a range of actors, including farmers, business owners, exporters, and policy makers, were interviewed at multiple sites, including farms, offices, and marketplaces. In Ghana field interviews were conducted with 83 of the approximately 500 farmers growing pineapples under contract at the time, and with key informants, such as traders, large-farm owners and managers, government officials, and chiefs. This fieldwork was supervised by Cyril Daddieh, currently of Providence University, and based on research modules that had been jointly developed by the two of us. I am grateful to Cyril for his hard work and intellectual inputs to the study. For the Gambian research, data collection focused on four related components: (1) horticultural traders; (2) communal vegetable gardens; (3) household (or “backyard”) producers; and (4) large export farms and firms. Overall 93 small-scale farmers, 167 horticultural traders, and 12 owners or managers of large-scale export farms were interviewed in the Banjul peri-urban area during January–October 1993. Most of this fieldwork was supervised by Catherine Dolan, currently of Oxford University but at the time a PhD student at the State University of New York-Binghamton, and Isatou Jack, now a senior associate of International Relief and Development (IRD) based in Washington, D.C., but an independent consultant in The Gambia at the time. The study was based on a research module, interview guides, and questionnaires that I developed in consultation with Catherine and Isatou. I conducted the in-depth interviews with 12 owners or managers of export farms, in some cases with the assistance of a translator. I am equally indebted to both Catherine and Isatou for their assistance in the fieldwork and subsequent analyses of the Gambian data. I updated both the Ghanaian and Gambian materials through interviews in 2008 with researchers and policy makers and reviews of recent reports, statistical data, and literature.
A second interdisciplinary research program was on “Peri-Urban Economies in Africa,” and I codirected it with Michael Roth, then of the University of Wisconsin but currently at Associates in Rural Development, Burlington, Vermont; and Douglas Graham of Ohio State University. This comparative study looked broadly at how livelihoods of peri-urban residents were affected by economic reform programs, especially with regard to land, labor, and credit markets. The peri-urban study hypothesized that the impacts of reforms were particularly intense in zones located near major metropolises, because of their heightened commercialism, active land markets, diversity of economic activity, and relatively good access to domestic and international markets. This research project included a case study of petty traders in the urban and peri-urban areas of Maputo, Mozambique, during 1991–1992, as well as in peri-urban areas of Accra, Ghana, and, again, in Banjul, The Gambia. In addition to interviews with market and government officials, wholesalers, shopkeepers, and transporters, data were collected through a random survey of 73 small-scale (petty) traders in Districts 2 and 4, two of Maputo's eight peri-urban districts, based on a questionnaire that I developed for the project. In these two districts five markets were covered: 7 de Abril, Malanga, and Xipamanine in District 2 and Ferroviário and 3 de Fevereiro in District 4. The unstructured interviews asked about the history of trade in the Maputo area, the content and nature of buying and selling relationships, perceptions of the effects of economic reforms, and other important information that was difficult to gather from the questionnaire-based module. The survey of petty traders was administered by Irae de Lundin, a Brazilian anthropologist, who at the time was a visiting faculty member in the anthropology program at Eduardo Mondlane University (EMU), while the unstructured interviews were conducted by me, with the aid of a translator, and Irae. I especially was fortunate to collaborate with such a capable researcher and with her anthropology students at EMU who assisted in the study, especially Antonio Timóteo Fanequisso, Simeão Lopes