Abstract
Background: The last five decades have witnessed significant inflows of donor assistance from the international donor community to support rural livelihoods and development in Ghana. However, after 50 years of consistent aid to Ghana, donor assistance has not fared as expected to improve farmers’ livelihoods and agricultural productivity.Aim: Using the modernisation theory as the basis of the study, this article examines how urbanisation, urban growth, and access to and security of rights to land affect the utility of development aid for farmers’ livelihoods.Setting: The setting is among the pineapple farmers at Nsawam in the Eastern Region of Ghana.Method: Relying on the qualitative research approach, data gathered reveal that because of urbanisation pressures, farmers’ rights to their lands are threatened by economic and political powers with stakes in farmers’ lands, such that farmers at all times attempt to find alternative livelihoods, even with development aid.Conclusion: Thus, the study concludes that when farmers’ major assets are threatened, they do not necessarily seek to sustain current livelihoods. Rather, they constantly seek alternative ones, a finding that should inform sustainable livelihood analysis to better understand farmers’ perspectives and meet their expectations about their own livelihoods. The study advocates ‘livelihood transience’ as an expanded and integral form of livelihood analysis. This expanded notion should not replace the current focus on ‘sustainable livelihood’, but rather complement it.
Highlights
Support for farmers and the promotion of livelihood among the poor in society is very significant for the donor community in Ghana
Access theory and the concept of livelihood, as discussed above, come in handy to explain the primary data to show that circumstances affecting livelihood assets, which are land in the case of Nsawam pineapple farmers, mediate the actual effect of development aid on farmers’ livelihood
The data show that development aid, which is oblivious to these challenges, does not align with the expectations of farmers about their livelihoods
Summary
Support for farmers and the promotion of livelihood among the poor in society is very significant for the donor community in Ghana. Donor assistance is sometimes directed to support farmers’ livelihoods for higher incomes through encouraging production of new export crops that can boost foreign exchange earnings for the state. To this end, some donor assistance has sought to support smallholder pineapple farmers in Ghana. The last five decades have witnessed significant inflows of donor assistance from the international donor community to support rural livelihoods and development in Ghana. After 50 years of consistent aid to Ghana, donor assistance has not fared as expected to improve farmers’ livelihoods and agricultural productivity
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