Crisis and credit: social and political challenges of the Malian tea market

ABSTRACT

This article examines the manifold facets of crisis situations in Mali since the 1990s. Most prominent was la crise, the political crisis of 2012 that resulted from the rise of armed separatist groups in northern Mali. The political crisis is connected to other less prominent crises in the country: youth unemployment, the quality of tea (Mali’s national drink) and the decline of Malian social values. Some of the green tea traders profited from these crises while others experienced reduced sales volumes and still others faced severe losses. Elderly persons began accusing green tea to contribute to the social problems. Tea was as an imported product, prevented the young from looking for work and encouraged corruption and fraud. The tea merchants in turn tried to keep prices stable, emphasized that their activity was hard work that required experience, knowledge and enabled many smaller traders to make a living. They also took on some of the responsibilities of the state by distributing trade goods for free to accumulate social credit. Based on research in Mali (and China) since 2005, this article provides a fresh look at entrepreneurship that differs significantly from that of the classic entrepreneur figure and of market ideology.

KEYWORDS:

• Green tea
• markets
• traders
• brands
• crisis
• Mali

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Research for this article was carried out in the framework of the Cluster of Excellence ‘The Formation of Normative Orders’ (Goethe University, Germany), funded by the German Research Foundation, and the project ‘Africa’s Asian Options’ (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany), funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

2. See the special issue ‘Working better lives: mobilities and trajectories of young people in West and Central Africa’ with three contributions on youths in Mali, edited by Ungruhe et al. (2019) in the journal Cadernos de Estudos Africanos.

3. Still during large parts of the twentieth century, life-cycle crises were accompanied socially and coped with by rituals (Colleyn, 2001). Parents made concrete plans for each of their children’s lives, decided who they ought to marry and which profession would be best for them and the family, if there was a choice. Accordingly, life crises of the young have become increasingly difficult to cope with.

4. This complaint was also raised among Cameroonian traders who organized trade in a similar way (U. Röschenthaler, 2016a).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ute Röschenthaler

Ute Röschenthaler is a professor of Anthropology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. She carried out research in Cameroon, Nigeria, Mali. Her research focusses on cultural mobility, media, intellectual property, African trade networks and business migration to Asia.