Market reforms and the state: The case of Shea in Ghana

Journal of Modern African Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 421-440

  Chalfin, Brenda ^a,b  

^a University of Colorado College of Nursing   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0000572129     PISSN: 0022278X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0022278x00055531     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. E. Gyimah-Boadi, 'State Enterprise Divestiture: recent Ghanaian experiences', in Donald Rothchild (ed.), Ghana: the political economy of recovery (Boulder and London, 1991), pp. 193-208.
2. See World Bank, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: an agenda for action (Washington, DC, 1981).
3. Barbara Grosh and Rwekasa S. Mukandala, 'Tying It All Together: what do we know?', in Grosh and Mukandala (eds.), State-Owned Enterprises in Africa (Boulder and London, 1994), p. 248.
4. See Nicolas van de Walle, 'The Politics of Public Enterprise Reform in Cameroon', Robert Barad, 'Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises: the Togolese experience', Ernest J. Wilson, 'The Political Economy of Economic Reform in Côte d'Ivoire: a microlevel study of three privatization transactions', and Philip Steffen, 'The Structural Transformation of OPAM, Cereals Marketing Agency', in ibid. pp. 151-244.
5. See Nicolas van de Walle, 'The Politics of Public Enterprise Reform in Cameroon', Robert Barad, 'Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises: the Togolese experience', Ernest J. Wilson, 'The Political Economy of Economic Reform in Côte d'Ivoire: a microlevel study of three privatization transactions', and Philip Steffen, 'The Structural Transformation of OPAM, Cereals Marketing Agency', in ibid. pp. 151-244.
6. See Nicolas van de Walle, 'The Politics of Public Enterprise Reform in Cameroon', Robert Barad, 'Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises: the Togolese experience', Ernest J. Wilson, 'The Political Economy of Economic Reform in Côte d'Ivoire: a microlevel study of three privatization transactions', and Philip Steffen, 'The Structural Transformation of OPAM, Cereals Marketing Agency', in ibid. pp. 151-244.
7. See Nicolas van de Walle, 'The Politics of Public Enterprise Reform in Cameroon', Robert Barad, 'Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises: the Togolese experience', Ernest J. Wilson, 'The Political Economy of Economic Reform in Côte d'Ivoire: a microlevel study of three privatization transactions', and Philip Steffen, 'The Structural Transformation of OPAM, Cereals Marketing Agency', in ibid. pp. 151-244.
8. See Robert H. Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa : the political basis of agricultural policies (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981), for a classic statement of this argument, and Nicolas van de Walle, 'Adjustment Alternatives and Alternatives to Adjustment', in African Studies Review (Atlanta), 37, 3, December 1994, pp. 103-17, for a review of recent literature pointing to the same conclusion.
9. See Robert H. Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa : the political basis of agricultural policies (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981), for a classic statement of this argument, and Nicolas van de Walle, 'Adjustment Alternatives and Alternatives to Adjustment', in African Studies Review (Atlanta), 37, 3, December 1994, pp. 103-17, for a review of recent literature pointing to the same conclusion.
10. Kwasi Anyemedu, 'Export Diversification Under the Economic Recovery Program', in Rothchild (ed.), op. cit. pp. 209-20.
11. The economic disadvantages of northern Ghana, especially within the rural sector, are well described in Paul Glewe and Kwaku Twum-Baah, The Distribution of Welfare in Ghana, 1987-88 (Washington, DC, 1991), Living Standards Measurement Study, Working Paper No. 75.
12. Interestingly, the parent company in Britain served as both the primary purchaser and distributor of Ghanaian shea nuts during the years when the PBC monopolised their export. Now, as privatisation proceeds, the parent company is using revenues from its British outlet to finance shea nut purchases in Ghana and ' out-buy' all other firms. This scenario is yet another example of the complex ways that the PBC is implicated in the activities of private companies.
13. Van de Walle, loc. cit. p. 164, notes a comparable entrepreneurial zeal in Cameroon among some parastatals which, like the PBC, try to take advantage of whatever economic opportunities and alliances are available - even those which go against their offical mandate - when threatened with extinction.
14. John Ravenhill, 'Second Decade of Adjustment: greater complexity, greater uncertainty', in Thomas M. Callaghy and Ravenhill (eds.), Hemmed In : responses to Africa's economic decline (New York, 1993), pp. 18-53.
15. Bard, loc. cit. p. 186, recognises a similar dynamic occurring in the Togolese economy, where private firms - often foreign based - replacing SOEs exact market protections from the state which mimic privileges formerly held by those enterprises.
16. These changes in chocolate processing techniques are made possible by the different melting points of shea and cocoa butters.
17. According to Glewe and Twum-Baah, op. cit. p. 1, 'Perhaps the best evidence of the unequal distribution of Ghana's wealth and resources is the duality of the economy and society, that is, the unequal distribution between urban and rural areas, between the North and the South, and between the formal, modern wage sector and the informal, traditional subsistence sector.'
18. Stephen Younger, 'Ghana. Economic Recovery Program : a case study of stabilization and structural adjustment in sub-Saharan Africa', in World Bank, Successful Development in Africa (Washington, DC, 1989), p. 64.
19. Anyemedu, loc. cit. p. 219.
20. Steven Jaffe, 'Private Sector High-Value Food Processing and Marketing: a synthesis of African experiences', in Jaffe and John Morton (eds.), Marketing Africa's High Value Foods: comparative experiences of an emergent private sector (Washington, DC, 1995), p. 64.
21. The growing number of traders involved in the shea economy and the much more limited, if any, expansion in production, could be interpreted as symptomatic of rural economic decline rather than development. As Sara Berry, 'Coping with Confusion: African farmers' responses to economic instability in the 1070s and 1980s', in Callaghy and Ravenhill (eds.), op. cit. pp. 248-78, points out, as rural people confront economic instability, they pursue diversification strategies, supplementing or substituting farming with trade. Clearly, the shea supply zone of northeast Ghana, with its intense population pressure and precarious environment (a single erratic rainy season and degraded landscape), is facing an agricultural crisis. The Ghana Living Standards Survey, 1987-88, according to Glewe and Twum-Baah, op. cit., ranks farmers of the northern savanna as the poorest group in the whole country. However, without knowing more about the economic profiles of new shea traders, their other activities, and how they invest their profits, it is difficult to determine if this is a sign of overall economic or simply agricultural decline.
22. The growing number of traders involved in the shea economy and the much more limited, if any, expansion in production, could be interpreted as symptomatic of rural economic decline rather than development. As Sara Berry, 'Coping with Confusion: African farmers' responses to economic instability in the 1070s and 1980s', in Callaghy and Ravenhill (eds.), op. cit. pp. 248-78, points out, as rural people confront economic instability, they pursue diversification strategies, supplementing or substituting farming with trade. Clearly, the shea supply zone of northeast Ghana, with its intense population pressure and precarious environment (a single erratic rainy season and degraded landscape), is facing an agricultural crisis. The Ghana Living Standards Survey, 1987-88, according to Glewe and Twum-Baah, op. cit., ranks farmers of the northern savanna as the poorest group in the whole country. However, without knowing more about the economic profiles of new shea traders, their other activities, and how they invest their profits, it is difficult to determine if this is a sign of overall economic or simply agricultural decline.
23. Gracia Clark and Takyiwaa Manuh, 'Women Traders in Ghana and the Structural Adjustment Program', in Christina Gladwin (ed.), Structural Adjustment and African Women Farmers (Gainesville, 1991), pp. 217-36.
24. Quoted by Paul Collier, 'Africa and the Study of Economics', in Robert H. Bates, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Jean O'Barr (eds.), Africa and the Disciplines: the contributions of research in Africa to the social sciences and humanities (Chicago and London, 1993), p. 74.