What is the impact of women’s collective action? Evidence from 3 African countries

Sally Baden (left, in the white shirt), Oxfam’s former Senior Adviser on Agriculture and Women’s Livelihoods, summarizes the findings of a new Oxfam report and research project on women’s collective action in agriculture.

As an Oxfam policy adviser in West Africa (2001-8), I worked with many different kinds of farmer organization. These included cotton farmers, pastoralists and rice growers, grouped in informal enterprises as well as more formal associations and cooperatives.

On occasion, they were women-only groups – such as the organic Shea butter producers of Songtaaba in Burkina, one of a small but growing number of women-led collective businesses. But most farmer organizations were mixed sex – which in practice often meant male dominated, providing plentiful anecdotal evidence that led me to question whether, in fact, women benefit.

• In a meeting with national level producer leaders, the proposal from a (lone) women farmers’ leader that women members be targeted for literacy training led to one (male) farmer storming out of the room, such was his fury.
• When facilitating a planning workshop with leaders of pastoralist groups from different countries in the Sahel, it was clear that the few women present were reluctant to speak.  During the lunch break, one woman grabbed my arm and whispered in a panicked tone, ‘You must help us: If the men get better access to markets, they’ll use the money to buy more wives’.

• When interviewed separately during a funders’ visit to a cotton-farmer cooperative, a group four or five women, expressed their disenchantment with the coop. They felt they are used as free labour and to cook food for meetings and village festivities but have limited say in decisions and derive little benefit.  (Back in the room, the men, by contrast, said they favoured women’s involvement!)

These experiences, plus similar ones from other colleagues led us in 2009 to launch the ‘Researching Women’s Collective Action’ (RWCA)  project to understand which women participate in collective marketing groups – in Ethiopia, Mali and Tanzania – how they benefit, and what NGOs and others are doing to support women’s engagement in markets. We first did an extensive literature review, organized stakeholder dialogues and conducted scoping research in 15 agricultural sectors. Then we carried out surveys of nearly 3000 women (members of marketing groups and non members with similar characteristics – as a control) focused on one subsector in each country, as well as in-depth case studies of 12 groups, via focus groups and interviews with key informants.

The RWCA’s results are published today in a new Oxfam research report.

Are the examples above an unfair caricature of patriarchal attitudes (especially coming from a European feminist)? Yes, up to a point: Oxfam’s RWCA research found that male leaders’ and husbands’ support has been vital to those women who have been able to actively participate in and benefit from collective action groups, including as leaders.  Whether to engage their support, or to mitigate their opposition, strategies to promote women’s empowerment ignore men at their peril.

In more detail, the findings included:

Women’s participation in collective action groups delivers significant economic benefits, but the choice of market is critical: High value products (vs.staples or traditional exports) which have local as well as national or international markets are likely to yield more benefits. This is true for producer organizations in general, but women in particular.  Women in groups gained high returns from the vegetables sector in Tanzania:  up to $340 per annum for women who joined groups compared to those not in groups.  The estimated monetary value of increased gains from sales was lower in Mali (Shea butter) and Ethiopia (honey) but still significant, at $12 and $35 a year respectively. Those sectors were also relatively easier for women to enter, as they do not require control over land.

Wealthier, higher status women are more likely to join groups, unless measures are taken to target the less well off: Group membership rules of ‘one member per household,’ requiring land ownership, or only admitting married members, indirectly discriminate against women or certain categories of women.  In Ethiopia, unmarried women were able to access groups because NGOs and government specifically targeted female heads of household. Married women’s participation dramatically increased after local lobbying for ‘dual membership’ per household led to changes in cooperative by-laws.

Participation in informal women’s groups increases the likelihood that women will join formal marketing groups and reinforces the benefits they derive: Building on traditional institutions such rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs), burial societies (iddir – in Ethiopia) or labour-sharing groups, informal groups help women to develop confidence and leadership skills as well as accumulate savings, which facilitate marketing of their produce.   However, as the basis for collective marketing such groups have limitations: collective enterprises require different skills, strong networks, group investments and legal recognition.  Linking informal women’s groups with mixed marketing groups can be an effective hybrid strategy, as we found in Ethiopia.

Women rarely have equal say in or leadership of mixed groups, while women-only groups may face challenges with business viability: Women themselves recognize these tensions: when the Matumaini A group in Tanzania lost most of its male members due to ‘women’s dominance’, members recognized that this also meant losing valuable skills, resources and networks. In Mali, ostensibly women-only groups had one or two male members, deployed for tasks such as negotiating with village chiefs where women were prohibited from crossing the threshold. One such group was even named after their token man!

Participation in marketing groups leads to improved incomes, but weak effects on empowerment: In contrast to the economic benefits, we found limited evidence of a clear link between women’s empowerment and group participation.  To assess this, we adapted elements of the ‘Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index’, an innovative methodology called developed by the Oxford Human Poverty Institute (OPHI) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) – explanatory video here.

Our research showed that empowerment was greater when women participate in informal as well as formal groups.

Control over credit was the one area where women’s decision making was enhanced by group membership across all three countries. Other dimensions of empowerment – such as mobility – were affected, though less consistently. Women reported increased control of incomes from the sale of Shea butter, honey or vegetables, but this didn’t seem to extend to wider household incomes, except in Ethiopia. And it was only in Mali that stronger women’s rights over land were linked to group membership.

Learning from such experiences, development actors  – including Oxfam – need to adopt flexible approaches to supporting collective action, taking the wider context into account, and supporting women’s own initiatives.  We also need to pay more attention to the policy environment, enshrining clear principles of equality in cooperative laws, setting explicit targets to address women’s participation and leadership, making membership rules and procedures more flexible, and protecting the space for informal association.

So: Does organizing groups of rural women producers contribute to rural women’s empowerment as well as increasing their incomes?  My answer is a qualified ‘yes’; it can be a step towards increased empowerment, for some women, under the right conditions.  But we are only just beginning to understand the relationships between markets, collective action, intra-household relations and ‘women’s empowerment’.  More innovation and more research are (of course) needed.

What can DFID learn from Chinese and Brazilian aid programmes?

IDS researcher Henry Tugendhat (right) wonders whether UK aid is following in the path of China and Brazil

Two weeks ago at the London Stock Exchange, Justine Greening announced her new policy of supporting UK businesses to invest in developing economies for the mutual benefit of both sides. According to the UK’s Secretary of State for International Development: “This is good for investors, who earn a financial return… [and] good for the poorest, who receive jobs and support”.

New as it may sound in UK development circles, this strategy sounds an awful lot like the “win-win” sound-bites we’re increasingly used to hearing from China among the other BRICS countries, who are meeting in Durban, South Africa this week. China and Brazil have both made efforts to leverage private sector investments as part of their aid/South-South Cooperation agendas, but problems have already arisen which the UK could usefully learn from.

Alignment of aid and investment efforts is a particular challenge. Business seeks profit, while aid is traditionally geared to humanitarian objectives, and they don’t always match up.

One example is the disconnect between the promotion of food security in Africa, and the agricultural interests of investors. The Chinese state has pushed for a serious engagement with food security issues affecting African countries. This is seen in everything from meetings in the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, to Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centres. Equally Brazil has committed to supporting agricultural mechanisation and technical support in a number of countries.

All such efforts are envisaged to link to private sector activity: to provide tractors, take over farms, or offer technical support. However, Chinese and Brazilian investors in Africa have predominantly invested in cash crops and large-scale farming, and even when smallholders are targeted, in many cases they have been those that are better off and already more commercially oriented.

New evidence from the Future Agricultures Consortium generated by research in Ghana, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, shows that when Chinese companies do invest in local agriculture, it is predominantly in crops such as cotton and tobacco. Otherwise, additional investment has focused on surrounding infrastructure such as irrigation schemes and roads. Brazilian investments have predominantly focused on sugar-cane and ethanol production. However, when private sector investment has targeted food staples necessary for food security, there has been either little success, as in the Xai-Xai project in Mozambique; or only small-scale investments, as in the small farms in Ethiopia that supply local Chinese restaurants.

Adding to this disconnect between Chinese and Brazilian government statements and the behaviour of their companies, even Chinese state-owned enterprises at times flex their independence from state interests, as Lucy Corkin describes for Angola. But of course, Chinese companies in particular may be subject to more pressure than UK companies to invest in areas aligned with state interests abroad, as they are often supported by state policy and finance. Which begs the question: when financial returns are less obvious, what makes Justine Greening more able to leverage investment for development interests, where China and Brazil have failed?

The second issue is that many investments in Africa have led to harmful practices over the years, whatever the nationality of the investor. Even if investors are introduced based on the principle of “development assistance”, profits are still paramount. This can lead to unintended consequences. For example, Chinese and Brazilian companies have got mired in controversy in recent years, including accusations of ‘land grabbing’, even when such claims have been refuted.

One of the currently most contentious investments is the vast ProSavana project spearheaded by Brazil in a triangular agreement with Japan and

Mozambique. The aim is to bring about agricultural development in Mozambique’s Nacala corridor, transforming it into a bread-basket on the scale of Brazil’s Cerrado savannah region, the site of a “green revolution” transformation which began in the 1970s. Brazilian private investors are already, as well as Japan, and a ‘Nacala Fund’ expected to mobilise US$2 billion has been set up. Already described as an example of ‘Brazil’s neo-colonialism in Africa’ in the Mozambican press, the project has come under heavy fire from local civil society groups that criticise the secrecy surrounding the project and the risk of evictions of local smallholder farmers.

So will ‘land grabbing’ become an issue that UK businesses face if they follow Justine Greening’s recommendations? In her speech, she recognised this challenge, arguing that there is a need for transparency on investments, so as to expose “those who acquire land unfairly”.

As a final thought, we should also question whether this new policy could be a subtle re-introduction of tied aid practices, despite Justine Greening’s

strong assertions to the contrary. The political reality is that this would no doubt be an appealing means of defending the aid budget against current cuts, so it must be properly scrutinised to avoid to a return to inefficient aid practices.

Ultimately, overseas investment by private sector actors is open to many challenges and problems. As the UK adds this new facet to its aid programme,
lessons from Brazilian and Chinese experiences in Africa should definitely be heeded.

Strikes, Spookytown, and a traumatic exit from feudalism: Women on Farms in South Africa

Managed to squeeze at least one day away from offices and lecture theatres in South Africa last week. In this case a road trip with Women

on Farms, an Oxfam partner led by the charismatic Colette Solomon (right), IDS PhD turned grassroots activist. In the Western Cape, scenic is an understatement: lush vineyards festooned with bougainvillea at the feet of colossal bare rock escarpments; dinky, opulent colonial towns – all church spires and verandahs and 4×4s. Perfectly asphalted roads, the infrastructure of modern ag – sprinklers, trucks, tourism (wine tasting, restaurants), a vision of plenty.

But where are the people? We go looking for them, and find women farmers living in the interstices of all this wealth. Crammed onto remaining pieces of ‘commonage land’, where they struggle with markets and theft; dumped in shacks in unlit, dangerous ‘Spookytown’ (left) on the edge of one of those nice colonial outposts (Rawsonville) after mass evictions from the commercial farms (too old, too rebellious, or just surplus to requirements). Black, coloured, marginal – at first it feels like apartheid  hasn’t gone away.

But it’s more messy than that. We end up in a lovely little cul de sac of coloured (mixed race) workers’ houses on Die Eike, a giant fruit farm supplying Tescos, among others. The houses are comfortable, with all mod cons, and gardens bursting with flowers. If the Spookytown inhabitants’ pre-eviction homes were anything like this, I feel their current pain. The Die Eike women took part in the first farmworkers’ strike in South Africa, an apparently spontaneous eruption last November, timed perfectly to hit the start of the harvest, earning them a big hike in the minimum wage (SAR 69 to 105) and global headlines. ‘It was like a bomb exploded, we said ‘we can do this’. Even though we’d known our rights all these years, we’d never had the guts.’

As they recount the story, their Afrikaans is peppered with English words – ‘labour rights’, ‘sisters’, ‘government’, ‘power’. Politics, it seems, is conducted in English. But paternalism is undoubtedly Afrikaans. Like their peers in Spookytown, these women are shocked at the change that has come
over the farmers (‘the boers’) since the strike. ‘Farmers don’t trust the workers like they did.’ Stories abound of threats of eviction, rent increases, swathes of new, unintelligible deductions wiping out the advances on their new pay cheques (the new wage came in at the beginning of March).

Much of the harassment feels like a petty war of attrition: ‘we’re not allowed to take fruit home any more; we can’t eat food on the job. They’ve cancelled the morning and afternoon breaks’. The kids are no longer allowed in the orchards. The estate drags its feet in repairs when things break in strike leaders’ homes.

What seems to be going on is a high speed transition away from a semi-feudal paternalist system in which many ‘boers’ paid over the minimum wage, and were happy to give advances on wages, or help out ‘loyal’ employees (we met one old woman living rent free in the middle of a commercial vineyard, growing vegetables – as a young domestic worker, she raised the present owner, and he didn’t hesitate to help her when she subsequently fell on hard times). No rights, but some consideration.

The strike seems to have triggered a shift away from that to purely monetary relationships, and workers (and probably farmers, but I didn’t talk tothem) are finding it traumatic. In one Spookytown shack devoid of electricity or running water, ‘Auntie Rosa’ (left) explains how she looks after her extended family of 10, relying largely on her monthly pension of SAR 1200. She pays out SAR 240 for the family funeral policy, SAR 210 for school fees for 3 kids and then SAR 540 for the washing machine. Eh? She takes us inside and shows us the power-less washing machine, fridge and sound system, all brought here on eviction from her nice farm house. She struggles to explain why she keeps up the payments at such personal cost, but I think it’s because they connect her to that better life back on the farm.

That farm-supplied housing leaves workers extremely vulnerable to harassment, and may well decline if the transition to monetarised relationships continues. But also missing are the institutions that can defend the workers in this new savage capitalist era. A strike can win a one-off victory, but how to defend against the war of attrition that follows? Farmworkers will need some institution to call when the harassment starts, but who? Trade unions exist but find it hard to organize, often in the face of massive farmer hostility (‘why should my workers need a union?’). And while a wonderful organization, Women on Farms is too small and under-resourced to play the necessary role.

I really hope someone is documenting this transition as it happens, and before it becomes the stuff of myth.

What’s the link between land grabs, trade rules and climate change? Good new briefing from Sophia Murphy

You can rely on Sophia Murphy for crisp, credible analyses of agricultural trade and food issues. Her latest paper, Land Grabs and Fragile Food Systems, is up to her usual standard. She locates the current row over land grabs in some broader debates that have rather fallen off the agenda, namely globalization and trade rules. Made me come over all nostalgic for the WTO-bashing of yesteryear.

Sophia argues that the globalization and the free trade agreements of the last 20 years have combined with fears over climate change to create the conditions for the current wave of land grabs. But the immediate trigger was the 2008 food price spike, which eroded the confidence of food-importing countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that they could rely on the trading system to feed their people (so many of them started grabbing land instead).

The problem with the WTO is that its insistence on removing import tariffs (which we campaigned on when prices were low) was not matched by any effort to discipline export controls, making it completely irrelevant when prices rose and exporting countries slapped on export taxes to try and keep the food at home, thereby compounding the price spike. Sophia also takes a swing at the WTO’s inability/unwillingness to do anything about corporate concentration in the food sector. When the price spike hit ‘the four companies that between them control an estimated 75 percent or more of the inter­national grain trade saw their profits soar.’

Failures in other areas have aggravated the problem. Food reserves have been run down, biofuels have added a new degree of uncertainty by tying food prices to those of oil and gas (when fossil fuel prices rise, more land gets turned over to biofuels, so less food is produced, so food prices rise). Climate change, both current and rapidly approaching, has only added to that sense of vulnerability on food security.

How to reduce the pressures that are driving the wave of land grabs? The report has a rather convincing policy shopping list arising from this analysis:

• Reformed trade rules that ensure export measures are subject to transparency and predictability requirements and that allow all countries policy space for food security policies. She also proposes ways to ease food price spikes by reducing biofuel production during price surges
• Publicly-managed grain reserves to dampen the effects of supply shocks
• Readily accessible funding for the poorest food importers, which would be triggered automatically when prices increase sharply in international markets
• The development of strong national and international laws to govern investment in land, respecting the principles and guidelines set out in the Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure. Tanzania’s recently announced limits on how much land foreign and domestic investors can lease is a hopeful example of a national government taking the initiative to get serious about regulation.

At 12 pages, a very useful addition to the land grabs literature. And in case you missed it here’s what the fuss is about.

Does agriculture have a future? Sonali Bisht wraps up Oxfam’s online debate

For the past two weeks, Oxfam has been hosting an online forum on the future of agriculture with a great range of viewpoints from every corner of the globe. Today is the last blogging day before the Christmas break (see you in 2013, everyone), so I’m handing over to Sonali Bisht, founder of INHERE, India, to wrap up a pretty diverse set of discussions.

The technology to produce synthetic food exists. Food pills are only one step beyond the vitamins, proteins and other food and nutrient supplements currently available in the market. We have knowledge of hydroponics and we can grow food in multi-storey production complexes. Certainly, there are plenty of alternatives to traditional farming for food and other needs. Does agriculture, as we know it have a future?

The experts who contributed to the Future of Agriculture debate, all eminent persons, leaders in their field, chose not to address such radical alternatives, and the comments received did not dispute that choice. Clearly, food grown by people living in rural areas, especially smallholders, is seen as important for the future.

“The technology to produce synthetic food exists.”

Smallholders currently constitute the majority of agricultural producers, the bulk of the poor and half the world’s hungry. They are expected to continue producing for a growing and more affluent urban population, and to do so in ways that keep food prices low, preserve the environment and manage the multifaceted risks they face, including vulnerability to shocks from the natural, socio-economic and political environment. The risks and vulnerabilities faced by women and indigenous populations, and expected to be managed by them, are even greater.

The experts generally offer optimistic visions for the future of agriculture, though the reasons for their optimism vary. Experts with a background in agriculture research and industry put their faith in fossil-fuel and chemical-based agriculture to achieve the increases in productivity needed to feed the population of the future. Or they champion comparative advantage, open trade and functioning markets.

Experts with a civil society background, on the other hand, believe high production levels can be obtained without chemical- or fossil-fuel-based inputs. They cite evidence that organic and sustainable agriculture achieves equivalent production in normal years and higher in drought or abnormal years. They also see sustainable and organic agriculture as empowering for women farmers, valuing their role and knowledge in agriculture, and helping to keep them and their families out of crippling debt. And several view food sovereignty as more important than markets.

The primacy of smallholders was acknowledged by almost all the experts. Several maintained that smallholders can generate research knowledge and use it for their prosperity, noting that peasants already make an enormous contribution in that regard.

“The primacy of smallholders was acknowledged by almost all the experts.”

If farming is to continue, youth need to pursue it as a career. But at present, farming is not an occupation young people aspire to and smallholder farming is not perceived to be a respected occupation. Agriculture is not given the status of a skilled craft in most countries, and thus wages of unskilled labour apply. This situation can and must change in developing and developed countries alike.

Farms need to be managed as profitable businesses if they are to attract a new generation of farmers. Perhaps, as Nicko Debenham suggests, some form of community or group enterprise would offer a sustainable business model that could generate a “more-than-acceptable living.” I wonder if that would appeal to Susan Godwin, who wants secure land tenure and more access to information for her daughter. Or to Rokeya Kabir, who says women farmers deserve more for the hard work they put in.

The views expressed were many and too rarely did those of opposing views engage each other. Pro- and anti- food sovereignty views were

left unresolved. Much of the debate resided in the realm of hope, perhaps best expressed by John Ambler, who envisaged institutional reforms leading to healthier eating and a healthier food system.

“The reality is that it has been difficult to build political will that favours smallholders.”

The underlying challenge has always been politics. As Prem Bindraban observed, power structures, vested interests, economics and other

drivers influence decisions in agriculture. Participants in the debate voiced this sentiment in different ways to express skepticism as well as hope. But the reality is it has been difficult to build political will that favours smallholders.

There is an Indian saying that the one who is thirsty goes to the well. The well does not come to him. Yet, without exception the experts feel farmers should produce for the market, conduct market intelligence, take their produce to the market.

One would think that if food is a priority need of consumers the initiative would come from them or their representatives. The consumer, who is generally urban and has higher income, should take responsibility for creating reserves to account for the vagaries of weather and for insurance against price fluctuations. The farmer should be in the position to decide whether he or she can produce at the price consumers offer or if further negotiations are needed. Community-supported agriculture, where communities invest in farmers by subscription, is a model that is worth more attention, as it guarantees farmers a fair price and assures consumers of clean and safe food, while sharing the risk.

“The one who is thirsty goes to the well. The well does not come to him.”

Mostly this does not happen. Politicians have their constituencies to please, and most of these are non-farmers living in wealthier areas of the country. Private companies view agriculture as an unending stream of business and profits. The political power of the fossil-fuel industry and the lobbying clout of agribusiness keep agriculture dependent on fossil fuels.

Nonprofit NGOs, though always strapped for resources, can create models of excellence which demonstrate the success of innovations. But these are rarely replicated at scale. Research institutions create knowledge which the poor are unable to access and use, while private companies can and do, often at a fraction of the real cost.

The consumer, especially the urban consumer, tends to be king in agriculture. Companies vie for a percentage of his or her essential spending and governments pander to the needs of this majority. Good intentions tend to get lost in this realpolitik. Until aware consumers change their behaviour, the smallholder farmer will get good words, symbolic gestures, and little else.

“Farmers need to be recognized as co-creators of knowledge in agriculture, encouraged and respected for the innovations they develop.”

It would not cost very much to make changes that, by common consensus, would transform the future of agriculture for rural poor people. Farmers, especially women, need security of land tenure or land ownership and protection against land grabbing. Farmers require fair prices for their produce and ways of farming which do not get them into debt and food insecurity.

Above all, most experts and respondents agree, farmers need to be recognized as co-creators of knowledge in agriculture, encouraged and respected for the innovations they develop. Farmers and research institutions must be linked in a web of knowledge creation and application, with joint responsibility for improving production and productivity through joint trials, participatory innovation, and farmer validation of scientists’ claims. This is the key to meeting production challenges in the agriculture of the future.

“Agriculture not only feeds people, it, builds close-knit families and societies.”

National systems and multilateral agencies should support this process with NGOs and farmers’ organizations facilitating accountability. Planning of production for local markets and according to local needs would avoid mismatch and waste. Application of force majeure clauses in production agreements would eliminate much of the risk. Subsidies and artificially lowered prices of commodities as social welfare measures have proven to be hotbeds of corruption and disincentives to farmers and should be avoided.

Agriculture not only feeds people, it creates engagement and employment in sustainable livelihoods, builds close-knit families and societies (especially smallholder and family farming) and supports cultural and social engagement as well as social stability. In today’s world it provides an alternate way of living from the stress and strain of urban areas. It preserves our farm landscape, traditions and heritage. We all have a responsibility to preserve and enhance our agricultural heritage—and that means not allowing a single farmer or farm labourer to go hungry or to suffer for being involved in agriculture.

Calling all Euro/Aid sceptics – here’s some top quality aid from the EU

Oxfam programme researcher John Magrath (he’s the one on the left in the pic) has been looking at some European aid, and is impressed with what he found

European Aid gets a lousy press. If you’re a reader of the UK’s Daily Mail (and nearly 2 million Brits are) then you’ll be used to headlines such as “Dance lessons in Africa, jets for tyrants, derelict offices….how EU wastes aid billions“.

(I must pause this blog to say that merely checking the reality of the above headline on the Daily Mail’s website – where it is accompanied by a photo of a masked figure of what Westerners used to call an African “witch doctor” – has made me want to devote the rest of this post to a rant about the Daily Mail’s politics and attitudes….but…deep breath and back to EU aid…)

EU aid is currently under greater threat than ever in Europe’s acrimonious budget discussions – partly, it’s a useful way for Euro sceptics to attack the whole concept of the European Union and the list of anti-Europe stories (remember bent (or was it straight?) bananas etc).

Does EU aid deserve its reputation? DFID doesn’t think so, giving it good marks in its multilateral aid review. So it’s rather nice to be able to point to an EU-funded aid programme that really has done a lot of good – and indeed, is ahead of the game when it comes to thinking about what sort of aid works best. It didn’t make the headlines, but then, good news rarely does.

The European Union Food Facility (EUFF) was a €1bn fund for access to agricultural inputs and services, and improvements in agricultural productive capacity, set up in response to the increase in food prices from late 2007 through 2008.

In all, the EUFF funded over 240 projects in more than 50 countries. On 17 December, the EU published its own Final Evaluation of all the programmes. Oxfam took part in a big way in six EUFF programmes in Nepal, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tanzania and Mali, as well as being part of consortia in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Kenya. Coincidentally, I’ve been looking through the end of programme evaluations we submitted and today we’ve published our own case study.

And what did we find? That the bold claims made for the EUFF in a press release on 2 December 2011 by WFP, FAO and IFAD seem correct. Their release said: “The EU Food Facility has been a tremendous success. It proves that linking relief, rehabilitation and development can have a concrete impact on people’s food security”. They added it “provided tangible evidence that investing in agriculture and nutrition improves global food security” and “by linking farmers to markets and financial services, assisting in facilitating sustainable and profitable farming practices and creating new revenue streams, the effects of the EUFF will continue into their futures”.

According to the release, “lessons learned from the initiative underscore the importance of:
-focusing on marginalized farmers with high production potential,
-combining input distribution with extension services,
-building capacities of smallholder farmers and their communities,
-rehabilitating rural infrastructures, and
-involving all actors of the value chain in local seed production.”

In Oxfam’s experience this approach really broke down the silos between humanitarian and long term development aid. In every country farmers faced the same or very similar obstacles. They needed certain basic inputs, in particular seeds and irrigation water; they required both access to markets and ‘power in markets’; they needed cash and/or credit; and they wanted services such as agricultural advice and veterinary help. So the vision and capacity to make multiple interventions – and at many levels – were crucial.

For the EU this approach has been rather a long time coming – about three years in fact -  but it’s nearly there. The EU’s 2010 Food Security policy aims to get all member states working this way, then this October the EU focused on “building resilience” and integrating humanitarian and development work . And now, finally, the long-awaited implementation plan for the food security policy should be endorsed by Development Ministers next May (2013) – and not a day too soon.

I summarised our interventions in this way, on a spectrum from emergency response to long term development:

Social protection

• Collective cash-for-work for infrastructure (e.g. roads, dams, irrigation works, tree planting, re-greening, etc)
• Unconditional cash transfers to meet food needs during the hungry season
• Food vouchers and support to traders
• Small livestock and veterinary services
• Beneficiary involvement, agency accountability

Inputs

• Seeds, tools, feed, micro-irrigation,  seed banks, grain stores
• Training on improved agricultural practices (e.g. composting)
• Land rights
• Access to credit
• Stoves

Organizational development

• Formal creation of producer groups; also irrigation management groups, grain store groups, pasture management groups, etc
• Capacity building for new and existing groups
• Emphasis on women’s groups and women’s involvement
• Farmer to farmer
• Scaling up and broadening out organizations

Power in markets

• Business training
• Value chain analysis, market information
• Linkages with the private sector e.g. assistance in negotiations
• Access to credit, bank loans, micro insurance

Convening and brokering

• Linkages with state authorities and service providers at local, regional and national levels
• Linkages with the private sector
• Advocacy on budgets, policy changes, frameworks, etc, from local to national level

Not every programme achieved the same level of success but generally, the results were impressive. If you’ve an antipathy towards statistics, stop reading. If not, here goes…..

In Nepal the number of households facing acute food insecurity was reduced from 21 to 13 per cent and there was a significant increase ofbetween 40 and 70 per cent in productivity per hectare of major cereals and vegetable crops by targeted smallholder farmers. The programme supported 141 micro-irrigation systems which alone increased productivity by 50 per cent. Prior to the programme only 16 per cent of farmers used improved seeds, but, by 2011, 100 per cent were using them.

According to the evaluation: “Every household is now engaged in kitchen gardening and 72 per cent of families have been eating vegetables five days a week as against the previous time when only 27 per cent of families could eat vegetables for only two days a week”.

In Ethiopia, nearly 14,000 farmers were organized into 619 market-oriented co-operatives and producer groups and linked with service and input providers. Once they had the wherewithal, organization and confidence to grow more crops like malt barley and potatoes, they were linked to and able to negotiate with potential buyers in the nearest town. Twenty-nine Producer Organizations gained a contract to sell their barley to a brewery and malt factory at a rate 15 per cent higher than the local market price.  Seventy two per cent of beneficiaries reported that their income increased by over 30 per cent.

OK, that’s the statsfest over. Back to plain English – what worked well and why? The Ethiopia programme summed it up:

To succeed you need to:

• collaborate with a wide variety of stakeholders, including the private sector;
• design projects that are community-managed;
• organize farmers into groups; and
• provide a cash transfer so people can withstand shocks, keep assets and develop infrastructure.

In one way, it sounds simple – putting into practice the three-fold support identified by Wiggins and Leturque as essential to liberate the potential of small farmers:

• Stability in the face of price volatility and incentives to earn more money from farming;
• Investment in public goods;
• Strategies to overcome the problem of chronic failure in rural financial markets.

In other ways, though, a multi-faceted, multi-level intervention of this sort is fiendishly complicated and poses all sorts of managerial and logistical challenges.

Collaborating with many partners takes time, energy and resources and forging successful collaboration is time-consuming and laborious. Fortunately the Oxfam programmes concerned already had a strong presence in the areas going back many years and had strategic partnerships with local bodies. But the number and variety of meetings required almost make it sound like a parody of development work – familiarization workshops, consensus building training workshops, multi-stakeholder taskforces, thematic workshops, regional value chain development forums, taskforce forums, a national learning event etc etc. But this networking was key to the success of the programme.

So we would agree with WFP, FAO and IFAD: “As food prices are expected to remain high and volatile in the coming years, it is essential to maintain the momentum created by the EUFF in promoting agriculture as the most effective means of reducing global hunger and poverty…. ”.

It might also convince some people that EU aid isn’t all bad.

(The EU Final Evaluation concludes with the suggestion that the EUFF is made into a permanent “Stand-by” instrument. It makes sense to me, but I’ll let you know Oxfam’s official position once we’ve had a proper discussion here).

Are global value chains really the right answer for small farmers? Great new study from IIED and HIVOS

If you’re interested in livelihoods, value chains, or agriculture, you absolutely have to read a great new paper from IIED and HIVOS.Small producer agency in the globalised market, by Bill Vorley, Ethel del Pozo-Bergnes and Anna Barnett, does for our thinking on livelihoods what the Africa Power and Politics Programme does for governance, or Portfolios of the Poor for financial systems – challenges most of the conventional wisdom and makes a whole lot of sense, crystallizing those ‘back of the head’ discomforts with orthodox thinking and getting you (or at least me) nodding in recognition at the sensible alternatives provided.

Enough rave reviewing, what does it say?

The starting point is ‘looking at where small producers are — and not where we think they should be’. As with Portfolios of the Poor, by looking intently at small producers’ current strategies, you rapidly realize that the received wisdom on how development agencies can help them is probably misconceived. In particular, an awful lot of our thinking is on helping get small farmers into global value chains (GVCs).  The problems the paper identifies with that strategy include:

-          Informal markets are growing, not shrinking (see table 3.1) – modern value chains are the exception, not the rule. In many regions, informal local and regional markets are growing as fast or faster than global ones.

-          The GVC approach largely targets the ‘top of the pyramid’ of better-off small farmers best able to meet the stringent quality and quantity requirements of GVCs.

-          Farmers often prefer informal markets because they are flexible and allow them to minimise risk by running a diverse ‘portfolio’ of strategies – some family members head for the cities, others work off-farm, others produce lots of different crops on the farm. If prices or other factors vary, they change their strategies – the right thing to do in terms of resilience, but often leading them to be branded as unreliable by formal chain buyers.

-          ‘Beyond the practical considerations of profits, barriers and penalties are matters of perception and culture. Small-scale producers are typically very comfortable with informal trade, but may not see formal and modern markets as ‘for them’, given the requirements for technology, education and organisation. For some, modern markets are associated with unfamiliar language, concepts, goals, and codes of conduct. And they oblige farmers to carry higher risks.’

The focus on the agency of smallholders produces other novel insights, for example on migration:

‘The exodus of young farmers should not be considered a new crisis to be headed off.  Development initiatives commonly approach this situation by trying to fix problems and make village life more attractive. From the agency perspective, an alternative — more aligned with the preferences and strategies of rural youth themselves — is to think about supporting migration in such a way that young people can leave successfully and also are encouraged to return, bringing new skills and knowledge back to the countryside.’

Happily, the authors avoid the trap of romanticising informal market structures:

‘Though informal markets offer the crucial advantages of access and flexibility, and are sites of creativity and trust among small farmers and other market actors, they also have a dark side, including poor traceability and food safety, poor records on environmental impacts and worker welfare, and sometimes corruption, criminality, monopolies and cartels.’

What seems to work resembles the APPP’s findings on ‘hybrid institutions’ in governance: development interventions need to work ‘with the grain’ of traditional structures. The result is a syncretic amalgamation of informal and modern market structures (eg groups of Ugandan farmers using elaborate mobile phone networks to get better prices when selling to informal market traders – the paper is littered with great case studies to illustrate all these findings).

And there are some interesting critiques of the GVC approach:

‘Global markets tend to demand that small-scale producers upgrade in the areas where small farmers have a comparative disadvantage — to produce standardised products at high volumes, for example. But there are some promising markets, especially locally and nationally, that instead value the ‘intangible assets’ that small farmers have in plenty. These valued qualities are rooted in traditional production methods and cultural identity.’

And if producer organization is such a no brainer ‘why aren’t more farmers organized?’ and what kinds of organization actually take root and make a difference (for example, IIED’s research suggests that many of the most successful producer organizations actually started life as credit co-ops and then evolved)?

As for the so whats, I think a few suggestions emerge either explicitly or implicitly:

-          Spending more effort trying to ‘see like a farmer’ (see table 6.1). Study what exists much harder before wheeling out your cherished model of producer cooperatives, bargaining with global value chains etc etc. Maybe a case for some ‘Portfolios of the Poor’ style diaries charting small producers’ market interactions over a year or so (anyone already done this?)

-          Rather than adopting a standard ‘best practice’ approach, innovate by trying several things out as experiments, spotting which ones are failing and replacing them with some other approach

-          Think about the enabling environment that would benefit both formal and informal producers (access to information, infrastructure), rather than focusing on particular value chains

-          Focus on those areas where informal markets don’t work for small producers – eg in influencing government policy-making

How we saved agriculture, fed the world and ended rural poverty: looking back from 2050

As Oxfam’s two week online debate on the future of agriculture gets under way, John Ambler of Oxfam America imagines how it could all turn out right in the end

It is now 2050.  Globally, we are 9 billion strong.  Only 20% of us are directly involved in agriculture, and poor country economies have diversified.  Yet we all have enough food.  Technological innovation has played its part, but increased production has been largely driven by institutional reform.  For example, industrialized countries have eliminated the subsidies that once undercut poor country agricultural production and exports.  Land reform has spread in Latin America.  Water reform has proceeded in Asia.  Irrigation, which once constituted 70% of freshwater use, now consumes less than 50%.  New agronomic practices are taking hold worldwide. The world is eating more healthily and locally.   The sustainability of our agricultural systems is taken as non-negotiable by the world’s politicians.

The key?  Institutional reform.  And the key to institutional reform has been placing citizens and primary producers in more central oversight and ownership positions, with governments stepping back and taking more responsibility for managing at watershed and ecosystem levels.

The institutional structure of innovation

Governments are investing more in public sector agricultural research, while multi-stakeholder “trustee panels” provide broad oversight.  Public agricultural research institutions rely for 15% of their budget on licensing their innovations to farmers, creating an additional accountability linkage.  In poor countries, farmer-to-farmer innovation is partially subsidized by the government, as is improved agricultural information.

Private agricultural research is encouraged, but publicly-funded innovations are jealously preserved for the public domain. Local “agricultural boards”, with a mix of government, farmer, and civil society representation, have a large say in setting the research agenda.  Income from agricultural patents accrues to the creators, but the state sometimes intervenes for the public good, as it once did for HIV/AIDS medicines.

Biological or chemical innovations in agriculture are now supervised by FDA-like mechanisms at national and global levels, which assess potential impact on human, animal, and environmental health. Patents produced from government-funded programs are held in public trust. Income from such patents is divided equally between inventors and state agricultural programs. Special efforts are taken to advise government and communities on the economic and social implications of agricultural innovations produced by public research.  Major breakthroughs have occurred for crops that grow well under saline conditions and under the higher temperatures associated with climate change.  New drought and heat tolerant varieties especially suited for the tropics and for some breadbasket areas of the North have been developed.  GMOs are selectively used but heavily regulated, and are limited primarily to industrial crops.

Investment in innovative water-saving technology is flourishing, incentivized by better valuation- worldwide, water is now acknowledged as an economic good and has a price.  Water use efficiency for agriculture is up 50% compared to 2012.  The state has stepped up in its oversight roles, and guarantees base flows for ecosystem sustainability.

The institutional structure of production

Small-holder farmers now get significantly more attention.  Governments support cooperative storage facilities – to manage stocks, flows, and prices.  They have also improved transport links to major agricultural areas and provide loan guarantees for agricultural cooperatives. Both rich and poor countries have developed a clearer understanding of the role of the state in all this: where markets already function reasonably well, they should be left alone, within the confines of reasonable regulation.  Where the markets themselves are not functioning properly, as in many poor countries, the State should play a role, not least to ensure that the very large number of poor people who are still dependent on agriculture benefit from their involvement. In consequence, rich countries have stopped subsidizing food production, leaving market forces to determine agricultural prices, while poor governments have extended their assistance to small-scale agriculture fourfold, primarily through co-investment rather than through full subsidy. Market systems, even in statist countries, are allowed to signal supply and demand.  Most countries have disbanded their inept and corrupt ministries of cooperatives, replacing them with wholly farmer-owned “cooperative companies,” which have at least the same status and legal persona as any corporate entity.

All over Latin America, major land reform has peacefully taken place, with compensation to the former owners. The beneficiaries, mostly peasants, pay for the land over time at a discounted rate. Land reform has served the triple bottom line: higher productivity, more equitable income distribution, and greater ecological sustainability.  Strengthened regulatory safeguards govern the buying and selling of agricultural land.

Heavily dependent on irrigation, Asia, home to nearly half our population, has accomplished major reform in water management, including revamping its water rights frameworks.  Significant water rights have been invested in companies controlled by farmers.  But multi-stakeholder water boards closely supervise transactions and form the first point of adjudication for disputes.  Even large irrigation systems formerly run by government are now managed by farmer-owned cooperative companies or by public utilities. Irrigation engineers work for the companies, not the government, thus increasing the incentives to raise productivity, reduce water consumption, increase equity, and tackle waterlogging and salinity.  Water cooperatives sell the water they save to other users, including growing urban areas. Proceeds from sales are reinvested in irrigation infrastructure and in research.  For its part, governments now focus on issues above the individual irrigation system, especially ecological sustainability and inter-system water distribution.

In many countries, some agricultural extension services have also been privatized, providing the incentive for agronomists and extension agents to develop and disseminate products that the farmers want and are actually willing to pay for.

The debate is over about whether large-scale mechanized production is more efficient than small-scale peasant production.  We acknowledge that both are necessary. In countries such as the USA, grain production stays under large mechanized farms. However, fruits and vegetables, which respond more to higher inputs of labor, is increasingly managed by smaller farms.  Many developing countries have benefitted from selective mechanization, such as power tillers and small tractors, but except for areas with major labor shortages, wholesale mechanization has been found to be neither necessary nor advisable.  And, in some places, such as terraced rice fields, the mechanization possibilities remain extremely limited.

The proliferation of advanced agronomic techniques continues. The plant root management techniques that started with the system of rice intensification in Asia have spread to new crops and continents.  For many crops, combinations of newer and older agronomic wisdom appear to yield superior results.  Restructuring the incentive and ownership frameworks for agricultural research and extension has been instrumental in producing new knowledge appropriate for the small holder.  GMOs have gone through periods of alternating approach, avoidance, and ultimately cautionary adoption mostly limited to industrial crops.

We have mostly organic solutions on how to enrich the soil. Even soil-rich countries had, mistakenly, often considered soil as inexhaustible. When the nutrients disappeared, treatment overly relied on chemical fertilizers. Now, chemical fertilizer consumption is down 75% because of reduced  costs to spread organic material (largely through new solar and hydrogen-powered transport vehicles), better recycling of organic urban waste, improved crop rotation, and more widespread use of nitrogen-fixing cover crops.

Fisheries and watersheds/forests are now under new management.  In the case of the former, international bodies with advanced surveillance equipment now monitor fishing fleets in open water to make sure they comply with stricter international fishing quotas; while artisanal fisherfolk have stronger legal rights and technology to protect their coastal fishing rights.  Regarding watersheds, the practice of downstream urban areas paying for upstream environmental protection services is now widespread. In selected areas, urban areas also pay agricultural producers to use less climate changing production techniques. New solar and hydrogen-based energy and better battery storage technologies greatly reduce the use of arable land for bio-fuels.

The institutional structure of consumption

Over 1 billion farmers are both sellers and buyers of food; and another billion rural people must buy all their food.   With rising incomes, we have faced the severe challenge of high grain prices due to rising demand for grain-fattened meat animals.   We still produce large quantities of grass-fed beef, lamb, and goats, but we have managed to reduce per capita consumption of grain-fed meat through public education, new “grain-meat” taxes, and social programs that emphasize the reduction or elimination of meat in the diet.  Grain-fed meat consumption in emerging economies has grown relatively slowly due to good public education.    Health professionals have helped reduce grain-fed meat consumption in the West, while poor countries have been able to better meet their protein needs through new crop-based amino acid combinations rather through grain-fed meat.

In conclusion, politicians around the world have learned that for agriculture to successfully produce food, stabilize the ecosystem, and generate employment, institutional reform is critical.  This particular reform path is difficult because it requires nuanced policies—selective mechanization, appropriate application of artificial fertilizer, judicious GMO use, equitable land reform, improved valuation of water, fairer structure of knowledge creation, and more citizen control over regulation and enforcement.  The underlying policies and institutions are the product of continual negotiation.  And, new technology has been at the service of these institutions rather than the institution being driven by the technology.  Special efforts are needed to ensure that poor farmers and women benefit from the new structure of ownership and authority.  These changes have gotten us to a new place, one more meaningful because it centers around equity, sustainability, and distribution, and not so much on profit, extraction, and comparative advantage, as it did back in 2012.

Why the World Bank is wrong (so far) on large land deals

You’re getting a lot of guest posts this week, not least because I’m in India – expect a spate of India posts next week. Here’s Hannah Stoddart, Oxfam’s Head of Economic Justice Policy, responding to the World Bank’s response to Oxfam’s call for a freeze on large land deals.

Oxfam’s land grabs campaign, launched on 4^th October, highlights the alarming increase in the speed and scale of large land deals in the past decade. It calls on the World Bank – as an investor in land deals, as a global standard setter and as an adviser to developing countries on their land policies – to freeze those of its agricultural investments that involve large land deals for 6 months while it reviews its policies and practices to ensure land grabs are prevented.

The World Bank has responded through official statements, blogs and interventions on panels. Here’s Oxfam’s response to some of the Bank’s main counter-arguments:

• Extent of World Bank involvement in land-grabbing

Some at the World Bank have suggested that it is not the right target – it is only involved in a ‘few cases’ that could potentially constitute land grabs and at any rate it is not as bad as most other investors. Oxfam stands by its focus on the Bank for a number of reasons. First, given the Bank’s mandate for poverty alleviation, even one land-grab case is a case too many.

Secondly, in reality we know that there are very likely more than a few controversial cases relating to land. 21 cases involving land disputes have been brought by communities since 2008 (Oxfam is involved as a complainant in a number of them). We also know that between 2000 – 2012, 56% of the complaints to the Compliance Adviser Ombudsman (CAO) have been in relation to land. The CAO also confirms that in the past 4 years there has been a growing number of complaints in relation to agri-business.

Lastly, while the World Bank may not the worst culprit when it comes to land-grabbing, it IS the only global bank with a mandate for poverty alleviation and it is a crucial institution for setting the bar high in this area. In other words, we believe that if Oxfam can’t convince the World Bank to raise its standards, we have no hope of getting other financing institutions to do so. If the Bank takes leadership, we hope we can leverage change in other institutions as a result, from regional development banks to private investors.

• World Bank’s role in agriculture

In reaction to our call for an investment freeze, the World Bank contends that it has increased its agricultural investments precisely in response to calls from organizations such as Oxfam for it to focus on a sector that has been neglected for too long. It argues that to suspend its agricultural investments – which overwhelmingly benefit smallholders – will only end up harming the very people that Oxfam seeks to support.

In response, we have never argued – and never will – that the World Bank should not be investing in agriculture. We welcome increased investment in agriculture by the Bank that genuinely benefits smallholders. This is why we are not arguing that the Bank should get out of agriculture altogether. And this is also why we are not calling for a freeze of all agricultural investments, but for a temporary 6 month freeze on agricultural investments that involve large-scale land acquisition – which the Bank acknowledges is not the majority of its investment portfolio. To put it another way, we’re invoking the precautionary principle – something the Bank has done itself in the past when it froze lending to the palm oil sector as a result of a controversial case in Indonesia.

As the World Bank’s investment in agriculture has increased from $2.5 billion in 2002 to $6-8 billion in 2012, the risk of some of these investments involving problematic land acquisition is heightened (for the record, this figure was misquoted by some media as being up to $8 billion in land investments, Oxfam has always been clear that the overall figure is for agriculture more broadly, some of which will involve land acquisition).

We welcome models of agricultural investment – both large-scale and small – that benefit communities and genuinely lead to shared benefits based on consultation and consent. We have recently published a paper outlining models of positive agricultural investment, and Oxfam GB CEO Barbara Stocking reiterated this message recently in the Financial Times. What we oppose is a model of agricultural investment that involves the mass transfer of land rights away from poor farmers and communities, a model that  frequently leads to conflict and for which there is very little evidence of pro-poor outcomes.

• Transparency

The Bank has suggested that it is a leader in the area of transparency. While Oxfam agrees that it has made great advances over the years, we feel that there are still some real areas of concern. First, we can’t even tell the full extent of the Bank’s investment in this area: there is no clarity on the overall size of its land portfolio. For an institution that rightly prides itself on the huge advances it has made in making  its data accessible, this is disappointing.

Second, 17 of the 21 complaints involving land raise issues relating to inadequate transparency. Third, over 50% of lending through the International Finance Corporation (the private sector lending arm of the World Bank) is channeled through financial intermediaries: these investments are far more opaque, and these bodies are also not subject to the same standards as the World Bank. And it makes it almost impossible for Oxfam to judge whether the Bank’s claim is true that ‘only 2% of IFC agribusiness loans in the past financial year involved land acquisition’. Furthermore, the trend towards new lending instruments and technical assistance makes it far more difficult to hold the World Bank accountable for cases where it might not have directly funded a project that results in controversy, but has provided the advice that made it possible.

So if the Bank wants to know #whatwillittake to end poverty, Oxfam thinks taking leadership on stopping land grabs is a great place to start.

Hannah Stoddart is Head of Economic Justice Policy at Oxfam GB

Why don’t Africa’s politicians invest more in small farmers? The political economy of ag policy.

Interesting if rather impenetrable new(ish) paper from the Future Agricultures consortium on the political economy of Africanagricultural policy. It seeks to answer an important question – why hasn’t the spread of democracy produced more investment in the smallholder farmers that form the majority of the electorate in many countries? Here’s the summary:

“Theories of policy neglect of, or discrimination against, agriculture in Africa include urban bias and the narrow self-interest ofautonomous elites. Whilst structural adjustment removed much of the previous tax burden on African agriculture , the sector also saw declining investment from international development partners and through national budgets. Whilst there has been some recovery in public investment in agriculture over the past decade, signalled by the 2003 Maputo Declaration, investment in the infrastructural and institutional public goods needed to support smallholder-led agricultural growth remains disappointing. As a result, the contribution of the agricultural sector to growth and poverty reduction objectives in Africa is widely believed to have been below potential.

In theory, democratisation, which has proceeded unevenly across Africa during the past two decades, should encourage pro-poor agricultural policy, as the majority of voters in many countries remain rural and poor. This paper draws on case studies of recent policy change (attempted and actual) in eight African countries, plus an analysis of the political systems in these countries, to explore the evolving role of competitive electoral politics in agricultural policy making.

An important observation is that politicians are as likely to rely on ethnic allegiances and forms of social or political control to secure votes as they are to engage in policy competition. Moreover, the political incentives facing senior policy makers in the agricultural and rural development sphere may be inimical to the development of strong institutions to promote smallholder agricultural growth. Instead the paper finds that it is exogenous factors – macroeconomic dependence on agriculture and, most strikingly, sustained threats to regime survival – that create positive incentives for agricultural investment, even where social or political control is relied on to secure votes.”

So what I think Colin Poulton, the author, is saying is that since many African leaders don’t rely on having good policies to win elections, it doesn’t matter much whether those policies are popular with voters. As he later explains:

‘Critically, the argument that democratisation may strengthen political incentives for policy support to smallholder agriculture in Africa assumes that politicians primarily exchange policies for votes. Drawing on existing literature and the country case studies, the paper  argues that this assumption does not hold in most of Africa.’

In fact, they only start worrying about investing in agriculture where, as in Burkina, Malawi or Ethiopia, it is particularly vital to generate the foreign exchange they need to run the government (or buy a new Mercedes), or the whole government is under actual or potential military threat (Rwanda, Ethiopia). When those moments arrive, then political leaders are more likely to remember small farmers and listen to well-meaning technocrats, but at other times they will largely ignore them.

There are a few exceptions like Ghana, where policies do seem to matter more (some great policy debates going on in the current election campaign on issues such as healthcare).

Can civil society help fill the democratic deficit and generate the pressure for change? According to Poulton:

‘In Latin America mobilization of poor groups by diverse social movements (Vanden 2007) arguably began to exert an influence on electoral outcomes around 15 years after the return to democracy. However, there are various reasons why such mobilization might take much longer to achieve in much of Sub-Saharan Africa than in Latin America, including deeper levels of absolute poverty, lower education levels (although recent increases in school enrolment are a positive sign in this respect) and little prior history of awareness raising amongst the rural poor in Africa (some early cooperative development activity aside).’

Your thoughts?