Browsing by Author "Tsikata, D."

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Africa's land rush : rural livelihoods and agrarian change
(James Currey Ltd, 2015) Tsikata, D.; Scoones, I.; Hall, R.
The case studies in this book explore the processes through which land deals are being made; the implications for agrarian structure, rural livelihoods and food security; and the historical context of changing land uses, revealing that these land grabs may resonate with, even resurrect, forms of large-scale production associated with the colonial and early independence eras. The book depicts the striking diversity of deals and dealers: white Zimbabwean farmers in northern Nigeria, Dutch and American joint ventures in Ghana, an Indian agricultural company in Ethiopia's hinterland, European investors in Kenya's drylands and a Canadian biofuel company on its coast, South African sugar agribusiness in Tanzania's southern growth corridor, in Malawi's "Greenbelt" and in southern Mozambique, and white South African farmers venturing onto former state farms in the Congo.
Agricultural and land commercialization – feminist and rights perspectives
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2021) Prügl, E.; Reysoo, F.; Tsikata, D.
The article introduces the Forum on Commercializing Agriculture/ Reorganizing Gender, which reports findings from DEMETER project, a collaboration of scholars from Cambodia, Ghana and Switzerland. The project examines how agriculture and food security policies have advanced or hindered gender equality and the right to food; analyzes the role of human rights-based accountability mechanisms in this; and maps gendered changes in livelihoods in situated contexts. We offer a literature review on governance of the international food system from a gender and rights perspective, and on the gendered political economy of agrarian change. We relate the contributions of the Forum to existing literature and preview their findings
Client power and access to quality health care: an assessment of Ghana's health insurance system
(African Finance and economic Association, 2013) Osei-Akoto, I.; Adamba, C.; Fenny, A.P.; Tsikata, D.
Ghana’s health service delivery is characterized by inadequate institutions and lack of accountability. One of the reasons for the introduction of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in Ghana was to facilitate citizen participation and ownership of the health service delivery system. Yet, this aspect of the scheme has often been overlooked. We examine how the NHIS and its related institutions perform the role of public oversight over frontline providers to ensure quality services. The main findings are: (i) there is improvement in the purchasing power of clients (policyholders use insurance card as a purchasing voucher to seek health care);(ii) competition among frontline providers generated by the National Health Insurance Authority’s accreditation procedures ensures institutionalization of quality services for clients; and (iii) related institutions under the scheme, educate and mobilize the people and build up communal power which ensures that communities act jointly to demand quality services. We conclude that creating institutional space for direct participation of users and citizens in general is a robust means of concurrently empowering citizens and providing an avenue by which providers may be sanctioned, thus making them more responsive to users.
Customary and Statutory Land Tenure and Land Policy in Ghana
(2007) Agbosu, L.,; Awumbila, M.,; Dowuona-Hammond, C.,; Tsikata, D.
Do Interventions to Support Women Producers Promote Gender Equality and Equity in the Rural Economy? Reflections on Recent Measures in the Context of Agricultural Commercialisation
(2017-02-23) Tsikata, D.; Darkwah, A.
In recognition of the entrenched character of their challenges with decent work and economic emancipation, rural women are one of the most targeted groups in development interventions. The gender and development literature is replete with assessments of such interventions which have been mainly within the WID-GAD development framework (e.g. Buvinic, 1986; Schroeder 1999; Kabeer, 1994). A major concern in that literature has been to explain the unexpected responses or lack of positive results from several interventions. Often projects ignored or tried to circumvent the power relations within households and the conjugal union, women’s heavy reproductive workloads and the overarching effects of the larger political economy on livelihoods. This seems to be a persistent problem in many efforts to support women producers and address gender inequalities in rural production systems. In this seminar, I reflect on recent interventions aimed at improving the conditions of rural women producers and their livelihood outcomes in the context of Agricultural Commercialisation in Ghana. I discuss the extent to which they contribute to more equitable gender relations and draw lessons for approaching interventions in the world of work as elements of a transformative gender equality project. The interventions include a) measures to improve access to land and security of tenure for women; b) support women’s participation in commercial agriculture projects; and c) CSR projects which seek to support women’s reproductive activities. I argue that beyond design and implementation challenges, the limitations of these intervention are related to the fact that they have tended to focus on only one of several challenges rural women producers face and are undermined by the larger policy context of neglect of smallholder agriculture and gender inequalities in other spheres.
Drought and Migration in Northern Ghana
(University of Ghana, 2013-07) Jarawura, F.X.; Codjoe, S.N.A.; Smith, L.; Tsikata, D.; Akabzaa, T.
Drought is one of the leading environmental challenges to farmers worldwide. Research has shown several response strategies to this challenge but little is known of its relationship to migration. Moreso studies have had little to say of the mediating circumstances leading to drought-induced migration. The research investigates the relationship between drought and migration and how migration decisions are mediated and reflected under drought-induced conditions among households in the villages of Kpalung, Laligu, Tunaayili, Libga and Zaazi in the Savelugu/ Nanton district in northern Ghana. The study does this by examining farmer‟s perception of drought, the reasons for migration, and the various manifestations of drought-related migration and the processes involved in the decision to migrate under drought-vulnerability circumstances. Results show that farmers perceive drought as generally the lack of rain accompanied by heat which together last long enough to constrain plant growth and result in lower yields or total crop failure. Farmers attributed drought to three main factors; human activities, natural causes and super natural reasons. Generally, farmers see drought as the most important constraining factor to agricultural production. The perception of the phenomenon is therefore largely contingent on the economic, social and cultural circumstances within which people experience it. Farmers‟ perceptions of drought influence the adoption of migration as a livelihood strategy. The study finds a significant relationship between drought and migration. About fifty one percent of the people who have experienced migration at one time or another mentioned drought as a reason for their migrations. In addition, through a binary logistic regression, the study finds out that drought-related migration is generally determined by sex, availability of irrigation facility in the village and having more land in drought prone area. Males other than females, people whose villages do not have irrigation schemes and people from households with more land in drought prone area are more likely to migrate because of drought. Migration is used as a coping and adaptation strategy to drought. The study also found that in addition to out-migration, drought also influences return migration. Furthermore, migration experiences may result in immobility during subsequent droughts. Migration responses to drought-vulnerability, however, are mediated by a multiplicity of non drought-related factors. Multiple migration decision-making pathways are encountered by households that consider the general socio-economic and environmental conditions of both sending and destination areas. Drought vulnerability is therefore not a sufficient condition for migration. The study recommends that policies ensure rural farmers have multiple response capabilities to drought vulnerability. Livelihood adaptation or diversification through irrigation schemes is one of the best options to consider given the agrarian nature of the rural communities in northern Ghana. It is also important to enhance the ability of rural communities to conduct agricultural extensification (bush-farming) as it is one of the effective response strategies to recurrent drought. Enhancing bush-farming will involve improvement in transportation between rural villages and also the construction of roads connecting major interior farm-settlements to the nearest villages. Enhancing local coping and adaptation abilities of rural people will remove or reduce the possibilities of households being compelled to rely on migration and make the strategy a choice. It is also imperative to enhance the benefits of migration as a livelihood strategy by ensuring the safe flow of remittances to the origin through establishment of more rural banks for example. The revelations from the study villages of the importance of rural-rural migration as a strategy to deal with drought suggest that rural-rural migration deserves some more attention particularly from migration scholars. This is imperative as farm-livelihood systems are still dominant contrary to the expectations of some scholars in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The gender and geography of agricultural commercialisation: what implications for the food security of Ghana’s smallholder farmers?
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2021) Dzanku, F.M.; Tsikata, D.; Ankrah, D.A.
Using a comparative mixed methods approach involving two districts each in Southern and Northern Ghana, this article addresses the question: under what conditions, and at what scale does smallholder agricultural commercialisation promote or hinder food security? Specifically, it presents an analysis of how gender and spatial inequalities in resource control determine differential capacities to commercialise and the implications of agricultural commercialisation for food security in an export commodity dominated Southern Ghana versus a food crop dominated Northern Ghana. We found gender gaps in commercialisation capacity that did not seem to disappear even in the presence of land abundance because the gaps are structural. We also found that, in some contexts, high rates of commercialisation do not mean accumulation. Among females in parts of Northern Ghana, apparent high commercialisation rates are driven by necessity, and thus constitutes ‘distress push commercialisation’, which has negative food security implications. While we found no evidence of an overall positive association between commercialisation and food security, we show that in the export crop dominated high commercialisation zone of Southern Ghana, commercialisation enhances food security only up to a threshold above which further resource allocation towards non-food cash crops hurts food security because of inefficient food markets.
Gender, Land Tenure and Agrarian Production Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa
(2016) Tsikata, D.
This article examines in historical perspective how gendered land tenure systems have contributed to shaping, and have in turn been shaped by, agrarian production and reproduction systems and how this has worked to the disadvantage of women in terms of their livelihood choices and outcomes and their position in agrarian societies. It is argued that contemporary challenges to the health of Africa’s agrarian production systems have gender implications which are not sufficiently recognized, either in the literature or in policymaking. This stems from the fact that the complexities of women’s positions and contributions to agrarian production and reproduction, since before the colonial period, are often not recognized and, therefore, their influence on long-term processes, such as capital accumulation and proletarianization of rural life, are not accounted for. The article provides a framing of the linkages between gendered land tenure and changing agrarian production and reproduction systems and examines two contemporary land tenure issues which illustrate the impacts of gender biases in land and agrarian policies
Implications of socioeconomic change for agrarian land and labour relations in rural Ghana
(Journal of Rural Studies, 2022) Dzanku, F..M.; Tsikata, D.
Informalization, the informal economy and Urban women's livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa since the 1990s
(The Gendered Impacts of Liberalization, 2009-01) Tsikata, D.
This chapter examines urban women’s livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa within the context of economic liberalization, the growing informalization of labour relations and an exponential growth of the informal economy. While historically much of the urban labour force has operated within the informal economy and its interface with the formal, the particular processes of informalization since the economic liberalization of the 1980s are worthy of attention because their impacts on the character, structure and quality of Africa’s urban economies and livelihoods have been signifi cant. Livelihoods in most of Africa are rural, agrarian and household-based and employ traditional technologies. However, the rapid pace of urbanization and the exponential growth of aspects of the urban informal economy underscore its increasing importance. Urban women’s livelihoods are of particular interest because they best illustrate the segmentation and workings of the informal economy. The differences in women’s and men’s location also have a bearing on gender inequalities in the wider economy and society.
Narratives of scarcity: Framing the global land rush
(Geoforum, 2018-06) Scoones, I.; Smalley, R.; Hall, R.; Tsikata, D.
Global resource scarcity has become a central policy concern, with predictions of rising populations, natural resource depletion and hunger. The narratives of scarcity that arise as a result justify actions to harness resources considered ‘underutilised’, leading to contestations over rights and entitlements and producing new scarcities. Yet scarcity is contingent, contextual, relational and above all political. We present an analysis of three framings – absolute, relative and political scarcity – associated with the intellectual traditions of Malthus, Ricardo and Marx, respectively. A review of 134 global and Africa-specific policy and related sources demonstrates how diverse framings of scarcity – what it is, its causes and what is to be done – are evident in competing narratives that animate debates about the future of food and farming in Africa and globally. We argue that current mainstream narratives emphasise absolute and relative scarcity, while ignoring political scarcity. Opening up this debate, with a more explicit focus on political scarcities is, we argue, important; emphasising how resources are distributed between different needs and uses, and so different people and social classes. For African settings, seen as both a source of abundant resources and a site where global scarcities may be resolved, as well as where local scarcities are being experienced most acutely, a political scarcity framing on the global land rush, and resource questions more broadly, is, we suggest, essential. © 2018 The Authors
Plantations, outgrowers and commercial farming in Africa: agricultural commercialisation and implications for agrarian change
(2017) Tsikata, D.; Hall, R.; Scoones, I.
Whether or not investments in African agriculture can generate quality employment at scale, avoid dispossessing local people of their land, promote diversified and sustainable livelihoods, and catalyse more vibrant local economies depends on what farming model is pursued. In this Forum, we build on recent scholarship by discussing the key findings of our recent studies in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. We examined cases of three models of agricultural commercialisation, characterised by different sets of institutional arrangements that link land, labour and capital. The three models are: plantations or estates with on-farm processing; contract farming and outgrower schemes; and medium-scale commercial farming areas. Building on core debates in the critical agrarian studies literature, we identify commercial farming areas and contract farming as producing the most local economic linkages, and plantations/estates as producing more jobs, although these are of low quality and mostly casual. We point to the gender and generational dynamics emerging in the three models, which reflect the changing demand for family and wage labour. Models of agricultural commercialisation do not always deliver what is expected of them in part because local conditions play a critical role in the unfolding outcomes for land relations, labour regimes, livelihoods and local economies.
Plantations, outgrowers and commercial farming in Africa: agricultural commercialisation and implications for agrarian change
(Journal of Peasant Studies, 2017) Hall, R.; Scoones, I.; Tsikata, D.
Whether or not investments in African agriculture can generate quality employment at scale, avoid dispossessing local people of their land, promote diversified and sustainable livelihoods, and catalyse more vibrant local economies depends on what farming model is pursued. In this Forum, we build on recent scholarship by discussing the key findings of our recent studies in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. We examined cases of three models of agricultural commercialisation, characterised by different sets of institutional arrangements that link land, labour and capital. The three models are: plantations or estates with on-farm processing; contract farming and outgrower schemes; and medium-scale commercial farming areas. Building on core debates in the critical agrarian studies literature, we identify commercial farming areas and contract farming as producing the most local economic linkages, and plantations/estates as producing more jobs, although these are of low quality and mostly casual. We point to the gender and generational dynamics emerging in the three models, which reflect the changing demand for family and wage labour. Models of agricultural commercialisation do not always deliver what is expected of them in part because local conditions play a critical role in the unfolding outcomes for land relations, labour regimes, livelihoods and local economies. © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Policy discourses on women's land rights in sub-Saharan Africa: The implications of the re-turn to the customary
(Journal of Agrarian Change, 2003-01) Whitehead, A.; Tsikata, D.
This article examines some contemporary policy discourses on land tenure reform in sub-Saharan Africa and their implications for women's interests in land. It demonstrates an emerging consensus among a range of influential policy institutions, lawyers and academics about the potential of so-called customary systems of land tenure to meet the needs of all land users and claimants. This consensus, which has arisen out of critiques of past attempts at land titling and registration, particularly in Kenya, is rooted in modernizing discourses and/or evolutionary theories of land tenure and embraces particular and contested understandings of customary law and legal pluralism. It has also fed into a wide-ranging critique of the failures of the post-colonial state in Africa, which has been important in the current retreat of the state under structural adjustment programmes. African women lawyers, a minority dissenting voice, are much more equivocal about trusting the customary, preferring instead to look to the State for laws to protect women's interests. We agree that there are considerable problems with so-called customary systems of land tenure and administration for achieving gender justice with respect to women's land claims. Insufficient attention is being paid to power relations in the countryside and their implications for social groups, such as women, who are not well positioned and represented in local level power structures. But considerable changes to political and legal practices and cultures will be needed before African states can begin to deliver gender justice with respect to land.
Researching empowerment: On methodological innovations, pitfalls and challenges
(Women's Studies International Forum, 2014-07) Tsikata, D.; Darkwah, A.K.
In this paper, we address the methodological challenges as well as innovations made possible by a mixed methods analysis of empowerment in a multi-lingual environment. The linguistic challenge of translating empowerment fully reminds us that the concept is both time and place specific. Combining a survey with intergenerational interviews allows us to uncover both whether or not Ghanaian women are empowered and equally importantly the context that makes this possible. Such an approach also allows us to assess the extent to which researchers and the researched share similar understandings of what empowerment means.
The rights-based approach to development: Potential for change or more of the same?
(IDS Bulletin, 2004-10) Tsikata, D.
This article discusses the implications of the adoption of rights-based approaches (RBAs) to development by the UN and its agencies, bilateral development agencies and international development NGOs. While this has allowed human rights language into the world of development programming, a development which has been met with much approval, sceptical voices argue that the development industry has taken the high-minded concerns of human rights instruments and moulded them to its own purposes and that not much is likely to change in policies and programmes. Given the critique of the RBA on grounds of its refusal to interrogate economic liberalisation, its implied reliance on the legal apparatus and its exaggerated claims, it is open to question whether it will deliver development based on human rights. The concerns raised about the RBA signal the need for caution on the part of feminists, especially in the light of how the development industry has digested previous analyses and approaches.
Sam Moyo: A Life of Prodigious Scholarship, Institution Building and Strategic Activism
(Development and Change, 2017) Tsikata, D.
The car accident that took Sam Moyo's life in Delhi on 22 November 2015 and injured his comrades Paris Yeros and Marcelo Rosa, cut short a scholar at the height of his powers. Working together with a group of like-minded colleagues, Sam had finally built the foundations of a vibrant tri-continental network that could hold his dreams: the Agrarian South Network. He was in Delhi at a conference on ‘Labour Questions in the Global South’, hosted by Praveen Jha, professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, one of his two closest intellectual partners — the other, of course, being Yeros. The conference, like earlier gatherings in Sao Paulo and Brasilia, was an opportunity to coordinate meetings of the Network and its journal, Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy. As it turned out, a meeting of the journal's editorial board was Sam's last activity before the accident. © 2017 International Institute of Social Studies
Securing women's interests within land tenure reforms: Recent debates in Tanzania
(Journal of Agrarian Change, 2003-01) Tsikata, D.
This article is an account of the debates around the recent land tenure reforms in Tanzania. It focuses on the discourses of Government officials, academic researchers and NGO activists on the implications of the reforms for women's interests in land and the most fruitful approaches to the issues of discriminatory customary law rules and male-dominated land management and adjudication institutions at national and village levels. The article argues that from being marginal to the debates, women's interests became one of the most contentious issues, showing up divisions within NGO ranks and generating accusations of State co-optation and class bias. It illustrates the implications of the recent positive reappraisal of African customary laws and local-level land management institutions for a specific national context, that of Tanzania.
Smallholder Farmers’ Uptake of Initiatives to Mitigate the Livelihood Effects of Changing Land Use Patterns in the Abokobi Municipality
(University of Ghana, 2016-03) Nyarko, E. N. A.; Tsikata, D.; University of Ghana, College of Humanities, Development Studies
Small-holder farmers in the urban and peri-urban areas have become very vulnerable to land use change patterns due to rapid increase in population and urbanization. Farmlands are gradually being converted to residential facilities, posing significant threat to the livelihood of farmers who depend on such lands. Land use change at Abokobi dates back to the 2004, but the phenomena became more pronounced in 2008 when the Ga East District attained municipal status. With support from the Department of Agriculture, small-holder farmers in Abokobi were offered alternative livelihood programmes in livestock and high yielding crop varieties and non-traditional farming practices under the Heifer Project. This study sought to assess the extent of farmer uptake of the alternative livelihood support programmes. Mixed approaches of qualitative and quantitative methods were used to engage 100 farmers in a survey whiles 12 others were engaged in a focus group discussion. Three project officials were engaged in an in-depth interview. The findings revealed that farmlands were increasingly being sold to estate developers leading to a reduction in farm size, output and income. Of the 100 farmers in the survey, 49 were under the Heifer project, 33 were engaged in their own alternative livelihood activities and 18 were not engaged in any livelihood activity. Those with successful uptake of the Heifer programme had higher income relative to those who did not adopt. The factors that influenced successful uptake of the alternative livelihood programmes were expectation, incentive and benefits from the programme, educational level, age and household size of farmers. The study recommended that providers should engage farmers before introducing them to alternative livelihood programmes, proper and efficient planning of urban areas with much consideration for the preservation of space for agriculture should be considered and continuous education of farmers in peri-urban areas not to depend only on farming.
Smallholder Farmers’ Uptake of Initiatives to Mitigate the Livelihood Effects of Changing Land Use Patterns in the Abokobi Municipality
(University of Ghana, 2016-03) Nyarko, E.N.A.; Tsikata, D.; University of Ghana, College of Humanities Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research
Small-holder farmers in the urban and peri-urban areas have become very vulnerable to land use change patterns due to rapid increase in population and urbanization. Farmlands are gradually being converted to residential facilities, posing significant threat to the livelihood of farmers who depend on such lands. Land use change at Abokobi dates back to the 2004, but the phenomena became more pronounced in 2008 when the Ga East District attained municipal status. With support from the Department of Agriculture, small-holder farmers in Abokobi were offered alternative livelihood programmes in livestock and high yielding crop varieties and non-traditional farming practices under the Heifer Project. This study sought to assess the extent of farmer uptake of the alternative livelihood support programmes. Mixed approaches of qualitative and quantitative methods were used to engage 100 farmers in a survey whiles 12 others were engaged in a focus group discussion. Three project officials were engaged in an in-depth interview. The findings revealed that farmlands were increasingly being sold to estate developers leading to a reduction in farm size, output and income. Of the 100 farmers in the survey, 49 were under the Heifer project, 33 were engaged in their own alternative livelihood activities and 18 were not engaged in any livelihood activity. Those with successful uptake of the Heifer programme had higher income relative to those who did not adopt. The factors that influenced successful uptake of the alternative livelihood programmes were expectation, incentive and benefits from the programme, educational level, age and household size of farmers. The study recommended that providers should engage farmers before introducing them to alternative livelihood programmes, proper and efficient planning of urban areas with much consideration for the preservation of space for agriculture should be considered and continuous education of farmers in peri-urban areas not to depend only on farming.