Abstract
In the Global South, there is a push to drive agricultural modernisation processes through private sector investments. In West African drylands, land concessions are required for such agri-businesses are often negotiated through customary authorities, and inject large amounts of money into localised rural systems with low cash bases. The article argues that such transactions serve to increase area under crop cultivation on an inter-seasonal basis, as financial spill-overs allow for farmers to purchase larger quantities of agricultural inputs and prepare larger tracts of land. Simultaneously, such direct and indirect cash flows also result in larger local herd sizes and an increase in the number of locally-owned cattle, as cash is exchanged for cattle, largely regarded as an interest-accruing, savings buffer. Larger herd sizes, in turn, attract Fulani pastoralists in search of employment as contracted herders for local cattle owners. Taking Integrated Water and Agricultural Development (IWAD), a private sector, large-scale irrigation initiative in northern Ghana as a case study, the article argues that there is an inevitability of the pathway, which leads from large-scale land acquisitions in West-African drylands, to an increase in conflict (and/or the risk thereof) between sedentary and Fulani pastoralists.
Highlights
There is a contemporary push to modernize agriculture in northern Ghana
Whilst a substantive body of research focusses upon better understanding the conditions under which farmer/Fulani conflicts unfold, few have focused upon agricultural policy and programming as a driver of such conflicts
The article serves as an attempt to illustrate how agricultural, land-based private sector investments can be better assessed against more traditional development criteria
Summary
There is a contemporary push to modernize agriculture in northern Ghana. The three regions that make up ‘northern Ghana’ represent the three poorest of Ghana’s 10 regions, as well as the most exposed to climatic changes [1]. The drive to modernize agriculture in northern Ghana is, for instance, embedded in many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Eradicating Poverty (1); Zero Hunger (2); Decent work and Economic Growth (8); Reduced Inequalities (10); and, Climate Action (13). It increasingly forms an important part of donors’ growing mandate to enable private sector actors (both foreign and local) as key drivers of development. This process is driven by flows of capital, expertise, and a very specific ideologically, in which root development in neo-liberal notions (development as residual of economic growth)
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