Paper short abstract:

Ghana’s oil industry has spawned profound changes in the social (re)production of inland communities. This paper explores links between oil and agrarian transformation, seen as necessary for capitalist development and industrialisation. It documents dispossession using an agrarian political economy approach

Paper long abstract:

Though Ghana's oil is drilled offshore, the industry has spawned profound changes in the social (re)production of the inland communities dotted along the country's Western coastline. These changes are intrinsic to the processes and mechanisms directly or indirectly related to the production, lifting, and transportation of oil and gas from under the seabed to various destinations in Ghana and abroad. Though the socioeconomic impacts of Ghana's oil and gas industry has been a much-studied topic since 2007, to date the issues have not been systematically probed through an agrarian political economy approach. This paper goes beyond the predominantly empiricist analysis of the deleterious socioeconomic effects of the oil and gas industry on local communities, questioning to what extent these effects may be the birth pangs of the agrarian transformation necessary for capitalist development and industrialisation in Ghana. The paper does two main things: first, it documents evidence of the dispossession of fishers and peasants as global primitive accumulation; and second, it shows how agrarian political economy is an underexplored area, yet rich in analytical tools that can be applied to oil and gas in Ghana. The article serves as a springboard of a scholarly and political project that seeks to shift analyses of Ghana's oil and gas industry in new and different directions from the 'Dutch disease' and 'resource curse' approaches, which have been the predominant prisms informing research, analysis, and development policies on industry.

Paper short abstract:

Win-win scenario of agro-industrial projects must be questioned on a case-by-case basis, especially considering the crucial issue of net job creation. Through a counterfactual scenario, we figure out that a large agro-industrial project in Sierra Leone results into job loss for family farming.

Paper long abstract:

Large private agricultural projects are described by their promoters as "win-win" partnerships: investments supposedly make it possible to increase agricultural productivity in developing countries, and to create thousands of jobs in the agro-industry. These arguments, which are used in Sierra Leone where the priority of the agricultural policy is to attract foreign capitals, rely on the conviction that lands occupied by large private agricultural projects are "under-farmed" or even "unused" and that, therefore, their opportunity cost is nil. However, where family farms are well-established, the differential between the jobs created and those destroyed must be examined carefully. This is what we propose to do in this article, by examining the case of an ethanol and electricity production unit relying on an industrial sugar cane plantation of more than 12 500 ha, in the centre of the country. By analysing family farming, its current situation and its history, in a control region close to that of the project, we show that family farming supplanted by the project would enable more farm labourers to make a living than the number of jobs potentially created by the industrial production unit.

Paper short abstract:

Empirical evidence on rural transformation in Ghana suggests that changes in land relations, capitalist farming, educational patterns, and individual aspirations lead to changing spatial and social mobility. However, freed rural labor do not (yet) feed into industrialization in Ghana.

Paper long abstract:

In his book "The Great Transformation" Karl Polanyi has shown how industrialization depended on a conscious reworking of labor-relations and rural-urban mobility creating incentives for rural dwellers to seek wage-labor opportunities in the upcoming British industrial sector. This freed rural labor for industrialization, led to urbanization, and was essential for the transition from a largely agrarian to an industrial society. Evidence from empirical research on changing land relations, capitalist farming, changing aspirations, and patterns of social and spatial mobility in Northern Ghana suggests that changes in land relations, educational patterns, and individual aspirations indeed free agricultural labor and enhance spatial mobility and urbanization. But findings also show that educational pathways, individual aspirations, as well as larger economic processes do not (yet) feed into industrialization and the expansion of industrial labor relations in Ghana. Education lacks training in practical skills, individuals rather prefer white-collar to blue-collar employment, industrial labor opportunities are scarce, and rural labor migrants largely enter the precarious and informal labor market in the plantation, service, and construction sector of Southern Ghana.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is concerned with analysing the drivers, processes and impact of medium scale land acquisitions in Northern Ghana. It highlights the changing landscape of global land rush actors from big transnational corporate entities to domestic businessmen and public servants .

Paper long abstract:

A combination of crude oil and food price hikes in 2008 provided the impetus for large scale land acquisitions by multi-national corporations for the production of biofuel feedstock and grain. The ensuing policy discourse of what became known as land grabs focused more on foreign investors who were perceived as dominant players, acting in collusion with local elites and state institutions in Africa to acquire large tracts of land while alienating smallholders in the process. Outcry against the selling of land by customary and state authorities, with detrimental consequences for smallholders galvanised scholarly research and also fuelled much of the agitprop opposition by civil society groups across several countries in Africa. This tacit opposition to land grabs, coupled with significantly diminished economic prospects of biofuel feedstock following the fall in crude oil prices led to decline in large scale land deals by multinational corporations and the abandonment of several large scale biofuel feedstock plantations. The ensuing spaces created by the withdrawal of multinational corporations were almost immediately filled by domestic interests in land. This new or re-emergent internal dynamics in land relations portrays a scenario in which political figure heads, urban elites and civil servants dominate land acquisitions and drive medium scale agricultural investments. This paper is concerned with analysing the drivers, processes and impact of medium scale land acquisitions in Northern Ghana. It highlights the changing landscape of global land rush actors from big transnational corporate entities to domestic businessmen and public servants buoyed by emerging agribusiness opportunities

Paper short abstract:

In the clash of models over today’s path towards further skewed industrialised development, what are the conceptual and practical lessons from historical experiences in Africa regarding control over land/resources and possibilities for thoroughgoing agrarian transformation?

Paper long abstract:

Analysing access to and control of land both through dimensions of scale and commodification- land and resource grabbing, concentration of land and large-scale capitalist agriculture-- and through social impact, raises big questions over Africa's future. In the framework of the globalised processes of today's world, extremely uneven development and greater socio-economic polarisation are likely to accelerate, driving more people off the land, out of farming and to a mix of diversified but uncertain livelihood strategies in both urban and rural areas.

This paper explores radical experiences in agrarian transformation(s) in the 20th century, from Tanzania and Burkina Faso to a range of redistributive land/agrarian reforms in Zimbabwe or failed market-led ones like South Africa's. It looks at past practical outcomes as well as the theoretical implications for thinking about breaking down the property and patriarchal relations underpinning social organisation: are Africa's rural poor to be reduced to competing for precarious and/or low-paid jobs in increasingly industrialised agriculture that neither feeds the country well nor taps other sections of this labour power, leaving many trapped in impoverished countrysides or peri-urban slums? The 'peasantist vs industrialist' dichotomy may obscure a possible new framework for creating an independent national economy based on a different vision of society as a whole and seeing land-based people as a socially productive and active part of that. Such important debates are returning to the fore within the evident continued harsh realities of the dominant 21st century model of industrialisation for African development.