When a Good Business Model is Not Enough: Land Transactions and Gendered Livelihood Prospects in Rural Ghana

Abstract

Recent large-scale commercial agriculture projects in developing countries have raised concerns about the effects on natural resource-based livelihood activities of local people. A significant weakness in the emerging literature is the lack of a gender perspective on implications for agrarian livelihoods. This article explores the gendered aspects of land transactions on livelihood prospects in the Northern Region of Ghana. Drawing on qualitative research from two commercial agriculture projects, the article examines how pre-existing gender inequalities in agrarian production systems, as well as gender biases in project design, are implicated in post-project livelihood activities. The article concludes that a good business model of a land deal, even one that includes local communities in production and profit sharing, is not sufficient to protect women's livelihood prospects if projects ignore pre-existing gender inequalities and biases, which limit access to opportunities.

• Business model
• commercial agriculture
• commons
• gender
• livelihoods
• land tenure

• P48
• D63
• N5

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors are grateful to the Future Agricultures Consortium (FAC), which is funded by DFID, for supporting the study on which this article is based and for providing an intellectual community for their research on commercial agriculture in Africa.

Notes

¹In late 2012, the authors went back to the two projects to get an update on the current state of things in the communities and with the projects.

²See Dzodzi Tsikata and Joseph Awetori Yaro (2011) for more detail on methods and findings.

³Poverty levels are 70.4 percent in the Upper East and 87.9 percent in the Upper West Regions (Ghana Statistical Service 2008).

⁴The two case-study communities are examined in more detail later in the article.

⁵In the matrilineal system, lineage membership and the accompanying right to inherit for both men and women is traced through a line of female ancestors, starting with their mother. The convention is that on the death of a person, a successor of the same sex as the deceased is appointed to manage the deceased's property on behalf of those eligible to inherit. While women's rights under this regime are usually stronger than in the patrilineal system of inheritance (where lineage membership and inheritance is through a line of male ancestors), the convention of succession, which confers substantial powers on the successor, and marital residence patterns that find women living outside their natal communities over substantial periods in their life cycle, means that female members of a matrilineage often inherit and control fewer resources than their male counterparts.

⁶Those who lost their farmlands as a result of the deal (twenty-three farmers and their families) and sub-chiefs of the community were to be paid compensation from the initial payment for the land. However, only two farmers have claimed their share of the compensation, the rest not pursuing claims on the basis that it would be a sign of disrespect to the Dagbon King (Tsikata and Yaro 2011).

⁷While upland land was not necessarily more fertile than valley land, the two kinds of land were suitable for different types of crop. Valleys are better than uplands during drought years and also in the production of rice, vegetables, and watermelons.

⁸Farmers were engaged in land rotation, leaving depleted land for several years to regain its fertility for maize and yam, two of the most important staple foods in the area. During this period, they moved onto fresh lands while their wives used portions of the depleted land for growing groundnuts and legumes, crops which also contributed to the rejuvenation of the land.