Socio-economic differentiation and shea globalization in western Burkina Faso: integrating gender politics and agrarian change

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the way a local manifestation of the globalization process, the boom in the shea trade in western Burkina Faso, has fueled socio-economic differentiation in shea activity as part of a wider differentiation process. We refer to the gender politics and agrarian change literatures to inform both within- and across-household mechanisms of differentiation. We analyze both the mechanisms of change and the resulting inequalities. Our results reveal the interplay between multiple drivers of change, and nuance the analysis of the winners and losers of globalization of shea activity.

Keywords:

• shea
• socio-economic differentiation
• gender
• sub-Saharan Africa
• Burkina Faso

Acknowledgements

We greatly appreciate the useful insights received from Tom Bassett on an earlier version of this paper. We want to thank Hélène Dessard for her advice, and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. The usual caveat applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Defined by Akram-Lodhi and Kay (2012) as ‘agricultural workers whose livelihoods are primarily but not exclusively based on having access to land that is either owned or rented, who have diminutive amounts of basic tools and equipment, and who use mostly their own labour and the labour of other family member to work that land’.

2 The Poverty and Environment Network (PEN) is an international research project launched in 2004 by Center for International Forestry Research. Its aim is to compare detailed socio-economic data collected at household and village levels using standardized definitions, questionnaires and methods (see http://www1.cifor.org/pen.html).

3 We applied a weighting factor of 0.5 for children under 15 and adults above 65, and a weighting factor of 1 for household members aged between 15 and 65.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CIRAD, CIFOR and CGIAR Research Program No. 6: ‘Forests, Trees and Agroforestry’ (CRP6).

Notes on contributors

Karen Rousseau

Karen Rousseau is an evaluation officer at AFD (the French international development agency). She holds a PhD in environmental sciences from AgroParisTech University (Paris) and an MSc in sociology from Descartes University (Paris). During her PhD at CIRAD (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development) she focused her research on the political ecology of dry forest in West Africa, at the crossroads of tree and land tenure, gender politics, socio-economic differentiation of households and global value chains. Email: [email protected]

Denis Gautier

Denis Gautier is research fellow at CIRAD (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development). He is a geographer specialized in the management of natural and renewable resources in dryland areas. Trained as an agronomist, specialized in tropical forestry, he holds a PhD and a ‘Habilitation to conduct researches’ in geography. His research is broadly centered around the geographical analysis of resource management governance and practices, with a focus on the issues of access and use rights and on territorialization processes, and on the link between ecosystems’ resilience and the vulnerability of people who rely on the woodland products. His regional expertise is principally in the semi-arid sub-Saharan. Email: [email protected]

D. Andrew Wardell

Dr. D. Andrew Wardell is currently a senior research associate with the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) based at CIRAD in Montpellier. Previously he was Research Director of CIFOR’s Forests and Governance Portfolio in Bogor, Indonesia. He has over 35 years’ experience working on natural resource governance, capacity development and finance issues in more than 20 South-east Asian and sub-Saharan Africa countries. His current work includes responsibility for capacity development across the Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) CGIAR research program, research on global value chains, MSc curriculum development with the University of Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a new research initiative on blended finance funds. Dr. Wardell has a PhD in environmental history from the University of Copenhagen. Email: [email protected]