Aid and Agriculture

A constructivist approach to a political economy analysis of sustainable agriculture in

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

degree Doctor of Philosophy (Dr. phil.) at the

Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources,

Albert-Ludwigs-Universität

Freiburg im Breisgau

Jasmin Marston 2017

Dean: Prof. Dr. Tim Freytag 1st Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Glaser 2nd Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Tim Freytag 2nd Reviewer: Prof. Dr. Michael Pregernig

Date of thesis defense:12.06.2018

In memory of:

Karl Wendelin Klober and Uwe Josef Kristen

(06.11.1928-26.09.2015) (22.03.1960-11.11.2016)

Acknowledgements i

Acknowledgements

This study has been inspired and supported by a wide array of individuals and institutions that my gratitude extends to. The quality of research benefited tremendously from the support given by the members of the Department of Physical Geography and Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Freiburg (im Breisgau, Germany). Specifically I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Glaser, Prof. Dr. Tim Freytag, Prof. Dr. Michael Pregernig, as well as the entire Physical Geography team, for the trust and support they have given me at crucial parts of this study. Likewise I am deeply grateful for the support extended through the UrbanFoodPlus project, which is jointly funded by the Bundesministerium für Wirtschafltiche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development), Germany, and the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF, Federal Ministry of Education and Research), Germany. In particular I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Axel Drescher, who was the Principle Investigator and a crucial supporter throughout the ups and downs I encountered as a researcher. Furthermore, Dr. Pay Drechsel and Prof. Dr. Andreas Buerkert established and enabled cooperation with local partner organizations such as the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in , and the University of Development Studies in Tamale. Particular appreciation is extended to the staff and leadership of the IWMI, including Dr. Olufunke Cofie and Dr. Philip Amoah that made the beginning weeks in Accra substantially easier. I am also grateful for the guidance extended by Prof. Dr. Abena Busia during the preparation phase, through the extensive recommendations for reading material on the . Also critical for the preparation of the field visit was Francisco Mari at Brot für die Welt, who put me in contact with staff of the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit/ German Development Cooperation (GIZ) that led me to the most important supporters within Ghana: Dr. Dirk-Florent Thies and Dr. Ernst Mill. These men in turn connected me to a wide range of supportive staff of various Development Partners as well as within the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. At the Unites States Agency for International Development (USAID) special thanks must be extended to Brian Conklin, Michael Dockrey, Walter Nuñez Rodriguez and Allan Pineda whose expertise, trust and continued support was essential to achieve the depth of analysis in this study. I also want to highlight the importance of Ghanaian staff working within Development Partner that represented an intuitional memory and often another perspective on aid projects in the sector. I am deeply grateful for the support extended by Bloomfield C. Attipoe, Atta-Agyepong and Kofi Biney. Moreover, I sincerely appreciate the generous support with the time and trust of a great number of civil servants of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) in particular and the Ministry of Finance (MoF). I wish to particularly thank the former Deputy Minister Dr. Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan, Directors Madam Angela Mercy Dannson and Daniel Ohmeng Boateng, as well as Ohene Damptey of the national office of the MoFA. Their patience, knowledge, honesty and encouragement were ii Acknowledgements invaluable to this research. During my stay in the Northern Region it was Director Boakye Acheampong and his Monitoring and Evaluation Officer Peter Claver Anyeembey that enabled me to contact and interview Regional, Metropolitan and District level staff of the MoFA in the region. At the Ministry of Finance I must thank Directors Dr. Alhassan Iddrisu and Samuel Danquah Arkhurst, as well as Seidu Dawdi Adams, Kwame Gyesaw and Joseph Antwi for their time, insights and sharing of information that was crucial to corroborate the ideational data with material, numerical evidence. Similarly, it was due to the help of Madam Lena Otto at Local Government Services that deeply strengthened my understanding around the key issue of decentralization. Furthermore, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Kofi Menkah for his interest, time and passionate support, particularly by establishing contact and organizing meetings with numerous Members of Parliament. There is a long list of unnamed civil servants within Ghana who I’m deeply indebted to for their relentless patience, hospitality and trust also. I benefitted greatly from discussion with a number of excellent academics at the University of Development Studies (UDS), as well as the in Legon. In particular, I would like to thank Prof. Dean Amin Alhassan, Prof.Saa Dittoh, Prof. Justice Bawole, Dr. Nana Akua Anyidoho, Dr. Annabella Osei-Tutu (Opare-Henaku), as well as Dr. Imogen Bellwood-Howard (Institute of Development Studies) and Siera Vercillo (Western University). The greatest lessons on the reality of farmers, however, were taught to me by Miles Apobona Adongo. Their combined interest, passion and patience were invaluable during the time in Ghana and thereafter. Last, but most importantly the thesis was only finished through the relentless and patient support of friends and colleagues including Jana Seidel, Jennifer Smith, Marites & Glenn Antonio, Christian Winger, Viktoria Klass, Lorenzo Uribe, Lea Mohnen, Tomas Canosa, Monika Dean, Dr. Hanna Karg, Obehi Iziduh, Patrick Ansah, Finola Mohan, and Swantje Oldörp. Finally, much credit and gratitude must extend to Dorit Barlevy and Mathilde Erfurt for their great editorial and organizational support of this thesis. Thank you very much and Medase pa pa pa!

Abstract iii

Abstract

This empirical research sets out to illuminate political, economic and ideational influences on the agricultural sector of Ghana.1 Particular attention is paid to the role of governmental aid agencies, known as Development Partners (DPs), on policy, budget and implementation development decisions. Initially efforts were also made to understand the status and potential of sustainable agriculture2 in Ghana, but downgraded in importance, as little of it exists and definitions differ. The traditional foci of a Political Economy Analysis (PEA), which are chiefly concerned with the distribution of power and wealth within a society or a sector, are expanded through a constructivist approach, which is interested in ideational factors resulting out of the social and historical fabric humans are interwoven in. Ontologically the study then is set on the understanding that our world is socially and historically constructed. This constructivist lens led to the inquiry into influential ideas, i.e. expectations of agricultural sector stakeholders for agricultural development, perceptions on policy and project ownership, as well as their definitions of sustainability among other thing. To elucidate the origins and vicissitudes of the most influential ideas presently important in the sector, the analysis is embedded in a rich historical context. This is in line with a Hegelian approach, which in general values history as important and significant to the understanding of the current state of development. The study follows an applied research question as well as an inter-disciplinary approach, combining theories of development studies, political science, economic history and anthropology, to analyze the agricultural sector and the role of aid within it. Epistemologically it then follows a constitutive rather than causal logic. Using qualitative methods, 260 semi-structured interviews, four focus group discussions and a plethora of participatory observations were collected over an uninterrupted 16-months field research visit in Ghana between September 2015 and December 2016. After an initial exploratory phase the research turned descriptive, aiming at uncovering what we must understand about the agricultural sector in Ghana before we know what to do. Primary data was expanded by budgetary data from 1999-2016, acquired via Parliamentary Hansards and Select Committee Reports.3 While this study aims at uncovering the ideational factors that guide the policy and budget decision, the implementation level was added to provide a holistic and realistic analysis of the agricultural sector. While the structure and functioning of institutions in the sector were well captured, the main finding is the severely dilapidate state of agricultural data systems present in Ghana (and elsewhere on

1 In this study the agricultural sector is focused on the crops and livestock sector under the hospice of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). The Cocoa sector is Ghana largest agricultural commodity and managed separately (through the Cocobod) and could not be included. 2 Sustainable agriculture is defined as any holistic approach, considering the wider natural environment during food production. Examples include organic agriculture, Permaculture or Agroecology. 3 A Hansard is the edited verbatim report of proceedings and debates of the . The Select Committee refers to the Select Committee on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs and their reports. iv Abstract the continent), making a final evaluation of the sector and the role of aid within it, impossible. The most urgent recommendation than is the funding of data collection and research initiative, so as to actually support evidence-based decision-making. In this regard the involvement of local researcher is vital. Supporting the decentralization effort and hence civil servants on the level, could simultaneously improve the quality of the data systems as well as strengthen democracy in Ghana. Power distribution within the agricultural sector continues to be slanted towards the Development Partners, which have supplied on average 60 percent of the agricultural budget between 1999 and 2016. Ghanaians most often describe the overall situation with the saying: “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” While the (GoG) has been funding the wages and salaries of civil servants, DPs have been paying for the running and implementation projects and programs in the sector. With almost 100 different DP initiatives in 2016, undertaken by 12 active DPs, donor coordination remains difficult, or impossible, as some DPs pointed out. This issue is intensified by the lack of ownership and trust towards the local government, as decision on aid objectives are largely still made in headquarters and capitals abroad. Presently popular are neoliberal approach that focus on the private sector as the panacea to development. This shift away from government supported agricultural activities can be traced back to the implementation of the first Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) on the continent by 1983 in Ghana. The heavy reliance on outside funding and hence ideas, has led to a neglect of local farming knowledge and a deterioration of trust between smallholder farmers and other actors in the sector, as farmers are mostly perceived as uneducated and stubborn. Similarly fraught is the relationship between ministries responsible for the sector (i.e. MoFA) and DPs, as well as the ministries between each other, which are often operating in competitive silos. The politicization of the civil service in Ghana is a result of a highly competitive, de facto two-party state that has not shrugged away from playing up ethnic affiliation to garner votes and extend favors. The abuse of powers pertaining to the misuse of public funds, was in parts explained by a kind ‘Robin-Hood’ syndrome, as “We still see that the master has everything”, as a Ghanaian academic phrased it (No. 168). This study hopes to contribute to and promote transparent, reflexive and inter-disciplinary research that provides informed analyses of development issues present in Ghana and elsewhere. It also hopes to highlight the importance of ideational factors (e.g. religious beliefs, societal norms, local narratives) as a pivotal part in developmental questions in particular, and social science inquiries in general. Future research should then aim at the collaboration of anthropologists, behavioral economist and psychologists to advance the field of development studies, involve more local researchers and promote qualitative methods that allow a better understanding on ideational influences.

Table of Contents v

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ...... i Abstract ...... iii Table of Contents ...... v List of figures ...... vii List of tables ...... viii List of boxes...... ix Abbreviations ...... x Timeline of Ghana’s historic events ...... xiv Part I: General Theories and Histories ...... 1 1. Introduction ...... 1 1.1. The state of sustainable development - food, forests, trade and aidFehler! Textmarke nicht definiert. 1.2. The case of Ghana - why it matters and how it can contributeFehler! Textmarke nicht definiert. 1.3. A reader’s guide ...... Fehler! Textmarke nicht definiert. 2. Aid & agriculture - development histories and critical reflections ...... 13 2.1. What is development aid? ...... 13 2.2. The aims of aid – politics vs. progress? ...... 24 2.3. Food security, agriculture and aid ...... 29 2.4. Development Partnerships in Ghanaian agriculture sector ...... 35 3. A constructivist approach to a political economy analysis in the developing country context ... 56 3.1. The rise and fall of ideational approaches in the political sciences ...... 57 3.2. Ideational influences on institutions, agents and structure...... 62 3.3. Political economy analyses in the developing country context ...... 66 4. Evolution of economic ideas in the West and their influence on rest ...... 85 4.1. Origins of neoliberal capitalism – the ideas of Adam Smith ...... 86 4.2. The cradle of ‘free trade’, to its disappearance and re-emergence...... 101 4.3. The aftermath of the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) ...... 107 4.4. The EPAs or free trade by other means ...... 109 4.5. Agricultural development ideas for Sub-Saharan Africa ...... 115 5. Power, politics and agriculture– the shaping and re-shaping of Ghana ...... 128 5.1. European encounters on the Gold Coast ...... 139 5.2. Effect of colonialism: economic, social and psychological ...... 155 5.3. The road to independence (1940s-1950s) ...... 158 5.4. 6th of March 1957 – The birth of the Black-Star of Africa ...... 163 5.5. General Acheampong & Operation Feed Yourself (OFY) (1972-1978) ...... 175 5.6. JJ Rawlings and the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) (1981-1992) ...... 181 5.7. The 4th Republic and Ghana Today (1992-2017) ...... 184 5.8. Movin’ on up? Ghana as a Lower Middle Income Country (2010-2017) ...... 196 5.9. Current developments and conclusions in the year 2017 ...... 205 Part II: Methodology ...... 209 6. Nature and relation of ideational research methods in development studies ...... 209 6.1. Research design and additional concerns...... 211 6.2. Preparation - On the importance of history and network ...... 212 vi Table of Contents

7. Qualitative research - semi-structured interviews ...... 213 7.1. Data acquisition -process and practicalities ...... 215 7.2. The Interviews ...... 220 7.3. Data Analysis ...... 232 7.4. Summary notes and lessons learned ...... 240 8. On data reliability and dependability in Ghana...... 242 8.1. Census of Agriculture ...... 245 8.2. Other sources for agricultural data ...... 247 Part III: Results and Discussion ...... 255 9. Policy, Budget, and Implementation ...... 256 9.1. Overall context to remember ...... 260 9.2. Main stakeholders ...... 262 10. MoFA Budget – the financing of the agricultural sector in Ghana ...... 269 10.1. The budget process ...... 275 10.2. Obligations and deviations ...... 284 10.3. Effectiveness and appropriateness ...... 287 11. Implementation - from Decentralization to Donor Disarray ...... 297 11.1. Organizational Structure of Decentralization ...... 298 11.2. Agriculture Extension Services ...... 308 11.3. The private sector and DP promoted policies ...... 312 11.4. Donor Disarray and USAID ...... 317 12. Perception about Farmer and other hurdles to agricultural growth ...... 325 12.1. Soil and sustainability ...... 331 12.2. Urban Agriculture ...... 334 13. Legal frameworks, power and the production paradigm – reflection on results ...... 337 Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook ...... 343 14. Conclusion ...... 343 15. Outlook and Reconciliation ...... 348 Cartoon...... 355 Appendix 1: Transcript of Interview samples ...... 357 Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees ...... 362 References ...... 373

List of figures vii

List of figures

Figure 1: Thesis structure ...... 11 Figure 2: ODA between 1960 and 2010 ...... 18 Figure 3: Components of DAC Donor’s Net ODA from 2000 to 2015 ...... 20 Figure 4: Net ODA in 2015 of OECD countries ...... 21 Figure 5: Net ODA in 2015 as a percentage of GNI ...... 21 Figure 6: ODA to Africa: Bilateral donors; 1970-2013 in US$ billion ...... 23 Figure 7: ODA to Africa: Multilateral Donors; 1970-2013 in US$ billion ...... 23 Figure 8: Total US. Food Aid to Ghana; 1965-1994 in US$ millions ...... 34 Figure 9: Historical perspective: ODA to Ghana in 1996 ...... 38 Figure 10: ODA to Africa by Sector; 1996-2013 as percentage ...... 39 Figure 11: ODA to Africa: Economic & Production Sector...... 40 Figure 12: Food Price Index of the FAO, 1961-2017 ...... 40 Figure 13: Total and per capital agricultural production 1961-2005 ...... 42 Figure 14: Four countries at risk of famine in 2017 ...... 50 Figure 15: Key Concepts of PEA within an ideational approach ...... 62 Figure 16: Stage 2: Understanding Organizations, Institutions and Actors ...... 69 Figure 17: Composition of EU agricultural exports in 2013 ...... 108 Figure 18: Map of Ghana ...... 130 Figure 19: Monthly average temperature & rainfall; 1960-1990 ...... 131 Figure 20: Population distribution in percent for 10 Regions of Ghana ...... 133 Figure 21 Major Language Groups in Ghana ...... 135 Figure 22: Agro-ecological zones in Ghana ...... 137 Figure 23: Historical Data for Real Gold Prices (per ounce); 1915 -2017 ...... 198 Figure 24: Real Gold Prices (US$): Ten year daily average; 2007-2017 ...... 198 Figure 25: Crude Oil Prices (US$); 2007-2017; Daily Chart ...... 199 Figure 26: Crude Oil Prices (US$)- 70 Year Historical Chart ...... 199 Figure 27: U.S. Rice, Poultry and Peanut Butter Billboard in Accra ...... 205 Figure 28: Total Interviews ...... 221 Figure 29: Civil Servants ...... 221 Figure 30: Development Partners ...... 223 Figure 31: Pillars of Analysis for the State of ...... 256 Figure 32: Agricultural Stakeholders in Ghana ...... 263 Figure 33: MoFA Organizational Chart ...... 264 Figure 34: Ministry of Finance organizational structure ...... 269 Figure 35: MoFA Expenditure 2000-2015 ...... 279 Figure 36: Share of Agriculture in Government Expenditure 1980-1995 ...... 281 Figure 37: DPs contribution to Total Expenditure & Development Budget ...... 282 Figure 38: Cartoon conclusion "Towing Aid" ...... 356 viii List of tables

List of tables

Table 1: Thick vs. Thin Constructivism ...... 61 Table 2: Tariffs in Western Nations from the 19th century and onwards ...... 103 Table 3: Government Total expenditure and agricultural spendings in £ ...... 166 Table 4: Estimated Annual value of harvest crops by household for the three zones ..... 203 Table 5: First nine months of field research in Accra ...... 217 Table 6: Eight months of field research split between Accra and the Northern Region . 218 Table 7: Workshop and Events ...... 219 Table 8: Headlines for interviewee list ...... 233 Table 9: Overview of stakeholder categories and colors ...... 234 Table 10: Example of excel table used for analysis ...... 234 Table 11: Example of coding in excel ...... 235 Table 12: Overview of four coding groups ...... 236 Table 13: Codes under the Group: Ministry of Food & Agriculture ...... 237 Table 14: Codes under the Group: Development Partners ...... 237 Table 15: Codes under the Group: Government of Ghana ...... 237 Table 16: Codes under the Group: Technical and Cultural Challenges ...... 238 Table 17: Analysis Structure ...... 257 Table 18: Agriculture Budget ...... 270 Table 19: Grants & Loans Disbursements, 2010-2015 ...... 273 Table 20: Agricultural Budget Items 2016 ...... 274 Table 21: GoG Agriculture Expenditure Share of Total Expenditure in % ...... 281 Table 22: Estimated Post-harvest losses ...... 338

List of boxes ix

List of boxes

Box 1: The Malthusian Mirage ...... 30 Box 2: Religion and Development – Max Weber’s Analysis ...... 76 Box 3: Akosombo Dam and the aluminum production ...... 168 Box 4: Peculiarities of the 1992 Constitution ...... 184 Box 5: Agricultural Sector Services Improvement Program (AgSSIP) ...... 191 Box 6: Participatory Observation in Northern Ghana ...... 232 Box 7: NDPC - National Development Planning Commission ...... 276

x Abbreviations

Abbreviations

AAGDS Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Development Strategy ABFA Annual Budget Funding Amount ACP African, Caribbean and Pacific AdB Agricultural Development Bank ADC Agricultural Development Corporation AEAs Agricultural Extension Agents AESD Agricultural Engineering Service Directorate AfD Agence Française de Développement AfDB African Development Bank AFRC Armed Forces Revolutionary Council AGOA African Growth and Opportunity Act AGRA Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa AgSSIP Agricultural Services Sub-Sector Investment Programme AgSWAP Agriculture Sector Wide Approach AgSWG Agriculture Sector Working Group AMA Accra Metropolitan Assembly AMSECs Agriculture Mechanization Services Enterprises Centres ASWG Agricultural Sector Working Group AU African Union Bundesministerium für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit (Federal Ministry for BMZ Economic cooperation and Development) BoG CA Census of Agriculture CAADP Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme CAP Common Agricultural Program CDD Ghana Center for Democratic Development CGIAR Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research CHRAJ Commissioner for Human Rights and Administrative Justice CIDA Canadian International Development Agency CIF Cost, Insurance & Freight COCOBOD Cocoa Board - in charge of cocoa, coffee and sheanuts (in 2017) CPP Convention People's Party CSIR Council for Scientific and Industrial Research CSO Civil Society Organizations DAC Development Assistance Committee DACF District Assemblies' Common Fund DADUs District Agricultural Development Unit DANIDA Danish International Development Agency DCA Development Credit Agreement DCE District Chief Executive DDF District Development Facility DFID Department for International Development of the United Kingdom DPCG Development Partners Co-ordination Group Abbreviations xi

DPs Development Partners EBA Everything But Arms EC European Commission ECC European Economic Community ECF Extended Credit Facility ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States EEC European Economic Community EPA Economic Partnership Agreement ERP Economic Recovery Programme EU FABS Food and Agricultural Budgetary Support FABS Food and Agriculture Budget Support FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FASDEP Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy FBO Farmer Based Organization FDI Foreign Direct Investment FTF Feed the Future - The U.S. Government's Global Hunger & Food Security Initiative GAMA Greater Accra Metropolitan Area GAP Good Agricultural Practices GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade GCAP Ghana Commercial Agriculture Projects (World Bank/USAID) GDP Gross Domestic Product GIDA Ghana Irrigation Development Authority Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GIZ German Development Agency GLSS Ghana Living Standards Survey GMOs Genetically Modified Organisms GNI Gross National Income GNP Gross National Product GoG Government of Ghana GPRS Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy I and II groundnuts peanuts GSFP Ghana's School Feeding Program GSGDA Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda GSP General System of Preferences GSP Generalized System of Preferences GSS Ghana Statistical Service Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit - German Government agency for GTZ international co-operation; now GIZ HIPC Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative International Assessment of Agriculture Knowledge, Science and Technology for IAASTD Development IAT Implicit Association Test IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development aka the World Bank IDA International Development Association - the World Bank IDEG Institute for Democratic Governance IEG Independent Evaluation Group xii Abbreviations iEPA Interim Economic Partnership Agreement IFAD The International Fund for Agricultural Development IFPRI International Food Policy Research Institute IFPRI The International Food Policy Research Institute IMF International Monetary Fund IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ISI Import Substitution Industrialization ISSER Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency KfW Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (German government-owned development bank) LEAP Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty LI Legal Instrument LMIC Lower Middle Income Country MCA Millennium Challenge Account MCC Millennium challenge Corporation MDAs Ministries, Departments and Agencies MDBS Multi-Donor Budget Support MDG Millennium Development Goal METASIP Medium Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan MIC Middle-Income Country MiDA Millennium Development Authority MMDA Metropolitan and Municipal District Assemblies MMDCEs Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives MOAP Market Oriented Agriculture Programme of the GIZ MoFA Ministry of Food and Agriculture MoFAD Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development MOFEP Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, aka Ministry of Finance MoTI Ministry of Trade and Industry MPs Members of Parliament MRACLS Multi-Round Annual Crop and Livestock Survey MTADP Medium-Term Agricultural Development Program NAFCO National Food Buffer Stock Company NAM Non-Aligned Movement NDC National Democratic Congress NDPC National Development Planning Commission NEPAD New Partnership for Africa's Development NGO Non-Governmental Organization NLC National Liberation Council Norad Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation NPP National Patriotic Party NRC National Redemption Council NRGP Northern Rural Growth Programme ODA Official Development Aid ODI Overseas Development Institute OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OFY Operation Feed Yourself PAPED Protocol on the EPA Development Programme Abbreviations xiii

PCU Project Coordination Unit PFA Peasant Farmers Association PNC People's National Convention PNDC Provisional National Defence Council PNP People's National Party PPAR Project Performance Assessment Report PPMED Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate PPP Public-Private Partnerships PPRDS Plant Protection and Regulatory Services Directorate RADU Regional Agricultural Development Units ReSAKSS Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System RTD Retired SADA Savannah Accelerated Development Authority SAPs Structural Adjustment Programs SARI Savanna Agricultural Research Institute SDG Sustainable Development Goal SHS Senior High School SIDA Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency SMC Supreme Military Council SOEs State Owned Enterprises SRID Statistical Research and Information Directorate (of the MoFA) SSSS Single Spine Salary Structure TEN Tweneboa, Enyenra, Ntomme - oil fields UCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development UDS University of Development Studies UEMOA West African Economic and Monetary Union UGCC United Gold Coast Convention UN United Nations UPA Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture URAA Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture USAID United States Agency for International Development WAAPP West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme WA-EU West Africa-European Union Economic Partnership Agreement EPA World Bank - International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and WB the International Development Association (IDA) World Bank Group - consisting of IBRD, IDA, the International finance Corporation, WBG the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes WFP World Food Programme WIAD Women in Agriculture Directorate WTO World Trade Organization xiv Timeline of Ghana’s historic events

Timeline of Ghana’s historic events

1471 Portuguese are the first Europeans to arrive at the coast of Guinea 1482 Portuguese build their first fortress - 'Elmina'- the mine The Danes are the last to have arrived and built Christianborg cast, now known as 1661 Osu Castle in modern-day Accra A competition in the trade of human lives intensifies between England, the 17th - 18th , Portugal, Germany, France, Sweden and Denmark who seek labor century for oversea venture, particular plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean 1790s Anti-slave-trade legislation is passed: first in Denmark then in Britain 1807 British ban on slave trade from the Gold Coast becomes effective 1800s going Missionaries 1824 The first Anglo-Asante war breaks out after the Ashantene, Osei Bonsu dies 1833 Slavery is officially abolished in all British colonies The British claim the 'Gold Coast' as their colony - albeit the colony is only about 1874 a 100 km strip along the coast, as the Asante kingdom is adjacent, powerful … and full of gold Togoland - which encompasses todays Togo, as well as Ghana's' , 1884 parts of Northern Region and Upper East - becomes a German protectorate December 1884 - Otto von Bismarck invites European colonizers to the Berlin conference and January 1885 starts the Scramble for Africa Asante king (Nana Ageyman Prempeh I) leave into exile and the Ashanti as well 1896 as Fanti regions are annexed into the British colony An uprising is led by the legendary woman warrior: Yaa Asantewaa over the 1900 British insistence to hand over the Gold stool (the most important religions and national symbol of the Asante) 1914/1918 The Western part of 'German' Togoland becomes part of the Gold Coast colony UGCC (United Gold Coast convention) is started with the slogan "Self- August 1947 Government within the shortest possible time" 1947 Nkrumah joins the UGCC The big six - , Edward Akufo-Addo, Emmanuel Obetsebi Lamptey, William Ofori-Atta, Ernest Ako Adjei and Dr. Joseph Boakye Danquah February 1948 are arrested for the riots that broke out after the killing of ex-servicemen during a protest march Nkrumah breaks away from the UGCC and forms the Convention People's Party June 1949 (CPP) 1950 Nkrumah demand 'Independence Now' and is jail for inciting a national strike Convention People’s Party wins first national election under Kwame Nkrumah, February 1951 who is released from jail to become the first African prime minister (and will be confirmed again in 1954 1952 and 1956). Nkrumah has to share power with the British governor Sir Charles Arden-Clarke Ghana is the first black African nation to become independent and Nkrumah 6 March 1957 becomes her first Prime Minster Timeline of Ghana’s historic events xv

Nkrumah becomes president and declares Ghana a republic following an July 1960 constitutional referendum and presidential election 1961-1965 Akosombo Dam (Hydroelectric Project) is build While Nkrumah is visiting China he is overthrown in a military coup; the February 1966 National Liberation Council (NLC) is installed. First IMF-backed stabilization program is launched by NCL; 30% devaluation of 1967 currency in July. 1969 A New Constitution is introduced and the ban on political parties is lifted August 1969 Progress Party (PP) elected to power under Dr. Kofi Busia as Prime Minster Dr. Kofi Busia is overthrown in a military coup; the National Redemption January 1972 Council (NRC) take over power under Lt. Col. Igantius Acheampong Kwame Nkrumah dies in Romania, after having spent the last 7 year in exile in April 1972 Guinea, as a guest of President Ahmed Sékou Touré. He had never returned to his homeland Ghana after the coup. The Supreme Military Council (SMC) replaces the National Redemption Council October 1975 (NRC) and Lt. Col Acheampong becomes General March 1978 Union Government referendum Acheampong ousted in a palace coup by Lt. Gen Frederick William "Fred" July 1978 Kwasi Akuffo A failed coup attempt by Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings (JJ Rawlings) 14-15 May 1979 leading the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) gets him arrested…. Speech taking the blame Soon freed by soldiers supporting him. Mutiny brings Rawlings to power as head of AFRC; Senior military officers are executed, including Acheampong and Akuffo Rawlings hands power to elected civilian government of People’s National Party September 1979 led by 31 December Military coup brings J.J. Rawlings back to power as head of Provisional National 1981 Defence Council (PNDC); the revolution is launched November 1982 Attempted coup, followed by purges and resignations Start of mass influx of 1,2 million returnees expelled from Nigeria, in midst of January 1983 severe drought conditions First budget as part of the Economic Recovery Program (ERP), followed by April 1983 protests 19 June 1983 Nearly successful coup attempt Nov 1988- First District Assembly elections Feb1989 Arrest of Major Courage Quashigah and others in connection with alleged coup September 1989 plot After a referendum in April, the new, democratic Constitution of the Republic of May 1992 Ghana is passed November 1992 Presidential elections won by Parliamentary election boycotted by the opposition and therefore won with ease December 1992 by the National Democratic Congress 7 January 1993 Inauguration of the Forth Republic Rawlings is re-elected for a second and last term with; the National Democratic December 1996 Congress (NDC) remains in power xvi Timeline of Ghana’s historic events

John Kufuor and the National Patriotic Party wins with 48.4% and takes over December 2000 government in January 2001 ( receives 44.8% of votes) April 2001 Ghana accepts an IMF/World Bank plan for debt relief December 2004 is re-elected as president and the NPP stays in power March 2007 50 years after independence Off-shore oil discovery is announced by Kosmos Energy - the Jubilee oilfield June 2007 rises great expectation of oil wealth for Ghana John Atta Mills wins (narrowly) against Nana Akufo-Addo and the NDC take December 2008 back over power in January 2009 July 2009 President Obama visits Ghana 2010 Ghana becomes a Lower Middle Income Country (LMIC) February 2011 New oil discoveries are announced by Tullow Oil Energy crisis become more sever as West African Gas Pipeline which runs from 2012 Nigeria to Ghana, is damaged President Mills dies in office at the age of 68 and John Dramani Mahama take July 24, 2012 over the office of the president John Dramani Mahama is confirmed as president and the NDC declares victory December 2012 with 50.7% of the votes Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP (comfortably) win the election and appoints his December 2016 friend Dr. Afriyie Osei Akoto as Minister of Food and Agriculture in 2017 Part I: General Theories and Histories 1

Part I: General Theories and Histories

1. Introduction

For the human infant is born-biologically considered- some ten or twelve years too soon. It acquires its human character, upright stature, ability to speak, and the vocabulary of its thinking under the influence of a specific culture, the features of which are engraved, as it were, upon its nerves; so that the constitutional patternings which in the animal world are biologically inherited are in the human species matched largely by socially transmitted forms, imprinted during what have been long known as the ‘impressionable years’ [...] (Campbell 1972, p.44). Humans are social animals and have their thinking shaped ‘under the influence of a specific culture’, as Campbell underlines in the quote above. The religious beliefs practiced in a persons family, the local narratives describing the journey of the hero to the children, and the ideas taught in school on how a community/society should be organizing itself, all leave patterns of thinking that go way beyond those first ‘impressionable years’. The importance of culture and in extensions the understanding that the world is socially and historically, can also be found with political analysts and scholars of International Relations (IR) theory. These Constructivists widened the approach of analyzing the international, anarchical system of states to include ideational, on top of material factors. Material factors, such as money, wealth and power, still matter in the Wendtian approach to constructivism, but so do ideational factors, such as religious beliefs, cultural values or norms, which shape identities of stakeholders and ultimately their actions. To exemplify the importance of identities, perceptions and images in international politics Wendt’s observation is useful, which states: 500 British nuclear weapons are less threatening to the United States than 5 North Korean nuclear weapons (1995, p. 73). Ideas and histories found in local narratives that shape collective memories in turn influence governmental procedures, foreign policy and, as this study is trying to argue, aid. As Chapter 2 will underline, Official Development Assistance (ODA), commonly referred to as aid, extended from so- called ‘developed’ to ‘developing’ countries over the past 70 years, has largely been used and should be seen as a political tool. With the end of the Second World War, and subsequently the end of colonialism, the global power centers shifted East and Westwards away from Europe, establishing the bi-polar world of US-capitalism vs. (self-declared) Soviet-communism. With the end of the Cold War the Western World and the ideas it stands for, most strikingly embodied by the United States of America, became generally accepted as the victor. A combination of democracy and a kind capitalism that ostensibly claimed to give more freedoms to the people by retracting the support and involvement of the state, and replaced it by the private sector. In the United States this change of economic 2 Part I: General Theories and Histories ideology came about after the people has undergone a serious of great disappointments with its political leadership, coupled with an inability to address the issues of stagflation. The switch in economic thinking infiltrated developing countries at an early stage, as some of them were used as guinea pigs of neoliberalist ideas that were promoted along loans meant for development and implemented via Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP). Incidentally, Ghana was the first county in Sub-Saharan Africa to undergo an SAP in 1983, administered by the World Bank and the IMF staring. This Economic Recovery Program was one of the first economic interventions by a multi-lateral Development Partner that aimed and built on substantial interference in a developing countries government on the African continent. Additionally the globalization process started to accelerate through spillover effect of high military spendings, making information technologies accessible to the Western public by the 1990s, and mobile communication technologies to almost everyone just two decades later. How these aforementioned global changes in power structures and economic thinking have affected the agricultural sector in Ghana was a leading motivation for this scientific inquiry. A secondary focus is on understanding and illuminating the role of governmental aid agencies on agricultural policy, budget and implementation levels. Initially the study also aimed at examining the status of sustainable agriculture as a potential development strategy for Ghana. Ultimately, this empirical study is answering an applied research question, with empirical data, to illuminate political, economic and ideational influences on the agricultural sector (crops and livestock) 4 of Ghana, with particular attention to the role of governmental aid agencies within it. The constructivist approach of a Political Economy Analysis (PEA) then aims at combining material and ideational factors to illuminate the workings of the institutions, structures and agencies active in the agricultural sector of. Ghana. This approach led to an inclusion of the perceptions and expectations of stakeholders in regards to perceived (aid and agricultural) policy ownership, expected agricultural development models, as well as concerns around sustainability. As capturing ideas is a more difficult task than simply examining policies or budget statements, history was used as a guide to capture the development and trace the most influential ideas over time. This is also in line with a Hegelian approach, which in general values history as important and significant to the understanding of the current state of development. Furthermore it was to reflect on, and clarify, some common misunderstanding of influential ideas around aid and agriculture. Hence this empirical study is embedded in a rich historical context. The strong inter-disciplinary approach draws from relevant studies and theories of political science, anthropology, economic history and development studies. To answer an applied research question, which is defined as what we must understand before we know what to do (Turabian 2007), a plethora of secondary data was examined and several selected for this study. The selection was undertaken after the 16-months field research (September 2015 to December 2016) in Ghana. Semi-

4 The Cocoa sector is managed separately (through the Cocobod) and is not part of this study. Part I: General Theories and Histories 3 structured interviews (260), focus group discussions (4), participatory observations during agricultural policy discussions and meetings (14) and three months on the fields in the Northern Region of Ghana were spent to inform this study. A first step was the identification of relevant stakeholders, understanding their power-relations and eventually uncovering their ideas on agricultural development and sustainability. Key stakeholders then include farmers, DPs, Ghanaian politicians, private sector actors, researchers and civil servants through multiple ministries. The ministry in the center of this study is the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), which is responsible for livestock and crop development (excluding cocoa).5 The analysis is guided by a three-pillar approach with a division between Policy, Budget and Implementation. While material factors naturally reign over the Budget pillar and the analysis of Ghana’s economic situation in general, ideational factor were extracted and added by focusing on stakeholders expectation and perceived power structures within the aid dependent agricultural sector, to elucidate influences the Policy and Implementation processes and outcomes. Being mindful of the researchers positionality as an outsider, this study benefited greatly from the enormous hospitality extended by Ghanaian, and international stakeholders alike, towards a German researcher. While hoping to provide a different perspective on local problems, it has the drawback of wasting time trying to integrate and understand cultural cues, important for research undertaken in a foreign country. For this reason it is also hoped that this study can be used or contribute to research of Ghanaian scholars interested (and funded) in studies around sustainable development and agriculture.

Further clarifications A first and important clarification was exposed early on during the exploratory phase of the field research, as the often fetishized words of sustainability came up in interviews. While my definition refers to environmental concerns associated with the lifestyles of (mostly) Westerners that have depleted finite resources in an increasingly alarming fashion, and will have to be adjusted if life is to be sustained for future generations, stakeholders in Ghana focused on the sustainability of funding as many project and programs of DPs are limited to 3-5 year timeframes, and activities ceases thereafter, as Government funding has been rare in recent years. The West is defined as European nations, with an emphasis on the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, as well as Canada and the United States. The governments of these states have active aid/ development agencies in Ghana, and include the Department for International Development (UKAid/DFID); The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) or German government agency for international cooperation; The Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) or German government development bank; Agence Française de Développement or French Development Agency (AfD); The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), now called Global Affairs

5 Cocoa, the main export crop, is managed by the Cocobod and infamously reclusive. During 2015/2016 the Cocobod was under the hospice of the Ministry of Finance (MoF), but has returned to the MoFA with the change of government in 2017. 4 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Canada (CAN); The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA); And the United States Agency for International Development (USA/USAID). G8 nations joined together in 2010 to form the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition that has guided their activities in regards to agricultural development and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. 6 Furthermore, there are multinational institutions such as the World Bank (the Bank), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) that are of high importance in the sector. Last but not least the Bill & Melinda Gates/Rockefeller initiative – AGRA (Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa) - joins these DPs in supporting and influencing the agricultural crop and livestock sector under the hospice of the MoFA. China, India and Brazil are active, but remain elusive by operating outside the DP platforms (i.e. the Agricultural Sector Working Group) and were not further investigated for this research. In the Ghanaian political arena the research revolves around the two many parties that have established themselves since the return to democracy in 1992: the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the National Patriotic Party (NPP). Ghana, representing the beacon of democracy on the continent, has seen seven peaceful elections and three handing-over of powers between the two parties. Most recently, in January 2017, from the former NDC to a NPP government led by President Nana Akufo-Addo. The NPP government has just started the implementation of campaign promises in 2017, which might bring about changes that were not anticipated within this study yet (ex. the Planting for Food and Jobs initiative or Ghana beyond aid). Next the broader context of this study is described

1.1. The state of sustainable development - food, forests, trade and aid At the UN of Paris in 2015 world leaders decided on the replacement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 7 Since 2016, the second goal of the SDGs pledges Zero Hunger, aiming to achieve food security, improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030. This is a rightfully more ambitious target than the MDG one, which was hoping to just halve the proportion of people suffering from hunger between 1990 and 2015.8 This might be due to the limited progress on the African continent since 1990, yet surprising as many Sub-Saharan African countries had difficulty to reach the moderate goals of the MDGs. The final MDG report in 2015 was full of words such as: ‘slow progresses’, ‘risk of reversals’, ‘not rapid or inclusive’ and ‘uneven gains’ (UNECA). The challenge becomes clear when reading the MDGs’ final assessment in their executive summary that states:

6 The G8 countries include Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United State. The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition was formed in May 2010, at the 38th G8 summit in , , USA (see G8 20.05.2017). 7 Generally, the Sustainable Development Goals aim at ending poverty, fight inequality and tackle climate change until 2030, via 17 specific goals, succeeding the Millennium Development Goals, which had fewer, but similar targets aimed for the prior 15 years (2000-2015). For more information please see the UN website for the SDGs: http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/ [accessed: 26.10.2017] 8 For more information on the Millennium Development Goals please see: http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/gti.htm#goal1 [26.10.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 5

The overall net change in the proportion of persons whose food intake falls below the minimum level of dietary requirements in Africa, between 2012 and 2013, is zero. Africa excluding North Africa remains the most food-deficient of all regions of the world, with 25 percent of its population having faced hunger and malnutrition during the 2011-2013 period, a modest 8 percent improvement from the level experienced during the 1990-1992 period (UNECA 2015, p.xiv).

The need to make food accessible for the less-fortunate parts of the population is strongly linked to economic and political opportunities. This understanding is largely due to research by Armatya Sen, who developed the capabilities approach that tries to augment traditional approaches of development economics made influential after the WWII, by re-focusing the debate on freedom as the principal goal and purpose of development (Sen 1999). It was he that also underlined that food security and hunger has rarely to do with the production of food, but rather the accessibility (Sen 1981). However, in the aid industry today food security issues and agricultural development is most often debated within a productionist paradigm, strongly linked to the Malthusian fear of population growth outpacing production. At the same time new threats to food security have been identified in the form of climate change, which promises to bring more extreme, frequent, and changing weather events, such as droughts, floods, heat waves, and changes in the onset/ending of rainy seasons. Threats of climate change and population growth, combined with riots around the food price hike during the economic crisis of 2007/2008, have motivated Western governments to direct aid towards the agricultural sector of the African continent in recent years once again. What is commonly known as ‘aid’ is listed as Official Development Assistant (ODA) in the bureaucracies of the world. ODA is a concept that has been made particularly popular by United States politicians in the early part of the 20th century. Over the decades, the aid industry has grown to enlist a variety of politicians, idealists, researchers, and economists, to help so-called developing countries through the extension of well-meaning aid interventions. One Senior Officer at a DP (USA) program aptly described the array of individuals in the aid industry as being “missionaries, mercenaries, or misfits” that tend to join these projects (No.225). Many of them active in in the agricultural sector in Ghana, as it has 15 government funded aid agencies undertaking close to 100 different projects and programs in 2016, with just USAID have had US$ 400 million over five years to change the sector with their Feed-the Future (FTF) initiative of the Obama administration. But why Ghana?

1.2. The case of Ghana - why it matters and how it can contribute Ghana was the first country of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to declare independence in 1957 under the charismatic Pan-Africanist leader Kwame Nkrumah. In the decades following Ghana, which is also known as the Black-Star of Africa, it continued to be on the forefront of changes and challenges the continent has had to face. Suffering from economic deterioration and military takeovers in the 1960s and 70s, Ghana had to invite international institutions (i.e. the World Bank and IMF) in the early 6 Part I: General Theories and Histories

1980s to undertake the first Structural Adjustment Programs in SSA. The Israeli political analyst Naomi Chazan underlined in 1983 that: Ghana has in the past, and continues today to serve as a microcosm of political analysis in Africa (p.5). With the end of the cold War the microcosm of political analysis in African returned to democracy and since then into beacon of democracy. In 2009 Ghana also signed the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) to underline its commitment towards a six percent growth of the agricultural sector, backed by 10 percent budget allocation, as promoted by the New Partnership for African’s Development (NEPAD) at the African Union (AU). The richness and complexities of political processes, coupled with Ghana’s peacefulness and hospitality, the country presents a ‘best case study’, which can be to some extent representative for other African countries, as well as other sector outside of agriculture, as aid and the neoliberal approach to development have spread ubiquitously across the continent in the past decades. This study hopes to contribute to, and give impetus for further inter-disciplinary research clarifying and addressing the complex issues of development studies and sustainability in an area of climate-change. To provide additional transparency, as well follow a reflexive research approach, this study followed an anthropological approach, similar to grounded theory, in so far as no hypotheses were formed on the outset of the study, but rather reflections on influences and biases undertaken.

Reflection on initial influences on the constructivist political-economy analysis Setting out to explore the political economy of sustainable agriculture in Ghana has the aforementioned caveat that the word sustainability had a different meaning for the interviewer as compared to the interviewees. The purpose of the research then is to describe and enhance understanding of the agricultural sector’s mechanisms, power relations and the role aid interventions, since any kind of sustainable agriculture will have to arise out of it. This applied research question is supplemented to what the British economist G.L.S. Shackle calls the ‘rules of the game’ that are essential to understand in the analysis of economic decision-making (Shackle and Ford 1990). Understanding the rules of the game, defining the boundaries of the sector and mapping of stakeholders, including their roles and responsibilities, and organizational structures, as also part of traditional approaches to political economy analyses (PEA) (Moncrieffe and Luttrell 2005) A constructivist approach adds that there is no ‘objective truth,’ but rather a context specific interpretation of knowledge that is socially constructed. The ideas that have been shaped by told histories, values, norms, identities, perceptions based on the cultural environment, influence the knowledge and actions of stakeholders of the agricultural sector. This is also true for the individual researcher, hence, here the reflections on my own critical influences pertaining to this research.:

Part I: General Theories and Histories 7

1. Critical view on Western governments’ influence over developing countries, especially through the form of capitalism they have promoted through ideational and material means in the time since the end of colonialism (1950s onward) This perspective that the most powerful states use material and ideational forces to strengthen their position in the international, anarchical state system, on the backs of weaker, so-called developing countries has a Machiavellian flavor, but is mostly based on rigorous readings of histories. Understanding power structures in societies that is expected to be in the hands of vested interests is hence a crucial target of this PEA. Writings and authors that have helped shaped these perceptions include Noam Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent, Understanding Power), David Graeber (Debt: The First 5000 Years), or David Harvey (A Brief History of Neoliberalism), among others that question the current global power structures and the ideas used to corroborate it. In the case of Ghana, I expected Western ideas around capitalism and the private sector to have infiltrated government institutions and polices through the international development/financial institutions (i.e. the World Bank and the IMF), as well as through the globalization of the education system (e.g. with the Ghanaian elite being educated in Western nations’ ivy league schools). This research then also sets out to identify the most powerful decision makers in Ghana’s agricultural sector, explore and document their current vision and expectations in regards to development.

2. Critical view on economic ideas that have been used to justify ‘free trade’ and other neoliberal ideas, increasingly applied to developing countries since the 1980s. In this regard, my bias is against theories often ascribed to F.A. von Hayek, Milton Friedman and the boys in particular, as well as the ideas and agreements promoted by the World Trade Organization (e.g. WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture) that see state-interventions and protectionism as pernicious for the development of an economy. While I see value in competition and trade, I believe in ‘fair not free trade’, trade liberalizations approaches that must be gradual, context specific and ensuring protection of the weaker members of any societies, hence, rejecting the blanket approach that has been promoted by many of the powerful international institutions active in developing countries. In this regard I have been greatly influenced by the writings of Joseph Stiglitz (e.g. Fair Trade for All, Globalization and its Discontents, etc.) and Ha-Joon Chang (e.g. Bad Samaritans, Kicking Away the Ladder) that advocate for a differentiating trade-regime model, in which less developed countries could use more protection than more developed countries. These writings also point to historical evidence of inequality of treatment between developing countries and Western (as well as Asian tigers.) that have developed through protectionism and the involvement and support of state entities. My skepticism towards generalizing neoliberal economic ideas has further increased in reading Steve Keen (Debunking Economics), Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow), and Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (Poor Economics), who all question the assumptions of models erected around homo economicus in general, and their application to developing countries in particular. 8 Part I: General Theories and Histories

This study then also set out to identify the influence of neoliberal ideas on the aid and agricultural sector of Ghana. A strong emphasis was put upon tracing the historic origins to identify how these ideas have come to their current state, identify misinterpretation due to ‘Flüsterpost’ syndrome, in which researcher often neglect to consult original text, but rather copy from recent books and papers. By tracing and critical reflection over the past ideational development paths this thesis hopes to identify and influence future trajectories at the same time.

3. Critical view on the aid /Official Development Assistance (ODA) systems, particularly extended to countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), as it declares the Western lifestyle is the best and only model societies of the world should follow; the critical view is linked to and has intensified by the stringent use of neoliberal models within the aid industry in the decades after 1980 With the onset of aid interventions in the 1960s it seemed evident by the 2000s that the system was broken, since a large part of the SSA populations remained at risk of poverty and food insecurity. My view on aid has been influenced by critical development economists, such as Amartya Sen (Development as Freedom), William Easterly (The Elusive Quest for Growth, The tyranny of Experts), and Dambisa Moyo (Dead Aid), among others, who have advocated for aid systems either to be stopped or at least overhauled and adjusted in order to be useful for the majority of the African population. I have been furthermore impressed by Pan-Africanist writers and leaders, such as Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sankara, and Walter Rodney, who see Western government interventions as the reason for the underdevelopment on the continent. Tying in with influences described under one and two, I believe in the value and importance of African state governments to decide on and guide their development independently, as well as that the state in general has a crucial role to play in increasing freedoms within societies.

4. Strong influence towards the need to address anthropogenic climate change through more sustainable practices, particularly in agriculture,9 out of this believe sustainable smallholder farming is preferred over commercial agricultural practices, and low-external input over high- external input practices Most influential in shaping this belief were the reports and books of the previous UN special rapporteurs on the right to food: Oliver De Schutter and Jean Ziegler. Other UN reports, such as the Trade and Environment Review (2013) by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), as well as the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and

9 Sustainable agriculture includes organic (certified or not) agriculture, methods used under permaculture, agroecology, or resource-conserving agriculture – any holistic approach, considering the wider natural environment during food production. They usually make no use of inputs outside a farm’s locality, are knowledge intensive, recognize energy as a scarce commodity, and can involve a careful mix of trees, crops, livestock, and green manures (ground cover plants) to protect soil and build up its fertility (Madeley, 2002). Part I: General Theories and Histories 9

Technology for Development (IAASTD), have intensified this conviction. Through these reports it seemed clear that special attention should be paid to biodiversity and soil fertility (with the hope for carbon sequestration among other things) as crucial components of food production, best implemented by smallholder farmers. This inclination towards sustainable, smallholder agriculture was corroborated with writings by Miguel Altieri on Agroecology in particular, as well as Michael Heasman and Tim Lang (Food Wars: The Global Battle for Mouth, Minds and Markets). The focus on local knowledge and smaller units of implementation is in line with a related bias summed up by the title of E.F Schumacher 1973 book: Small is Beautiful. This research then set out to identify the status as well as the prospects for sustainable smallholder farming in Ghana to mitigate climate-change and ensure food production for the coming generations.

5. The need for ideational approaches and qualitative methods in development studies in particular and social science research in general. Socially constructed factors, including culture, values, norms and identities, which are equally shaped and embedded in told and believed histories This conviction has been shaped mostly through my previous experiences and studies. The initial impetus was most likely created during the research of my first thesis (Diplomarbeit) on Attitudes of consumers towards English language slogans. Composed during my study of International Finance and Law at the Frankfurt University of applied science in Germany (FH Frankfurt, Germany), I a majored in international marketing that had focus on consumers believes and attitudes that must be understood and influenced to affect their purchasing behavior. While the approach interested me, the quantitative methods I then used simply seemed unsatisfactory to capture the complexity people’s decision-making process and ideas. During the four years working for multi-national corporations (in Germany, the United States, and India) thereafter, I continued to observe their focus on marketing activities to influence consumer beliefs and actions through targeted campaigns. The importance of power over what people were thinking to influence their action was evident. Also the management training I received underlined the necessity to understand culture and use intercultural sensitivity when leading international teams. The importance of culture and differences in values and the link to history became particularly clear when I (unsuccessfully) attempted to transfer business skills/capitalistic values to my first development projects in South Africa in 2009/2010. The attitudes of South Africans, who only ended apartheid in the early 1990s, seemed strikingly different than mine, but more interestingly even to their neighbors in Zimbabwe, who had fought and won independence in 1980 (under Robert Mugabe). The rich history of Great Zimbabwe, as well as its victory against the British colonizer seemed to have given Zimbabweans increased self-confidence and ambition compared to their South African 10 Part I: General Theories and Histories neighbours.10The time in South African and Zimbabwe then incited my curiosity on the importance of history, as well as ideational/psychological factors linked to it. In this regard, the writings of Frantz Fanon (Wretched of the Earth, and Black Skin, White Masks) and Octave Mannoni (Prospero and Caliban) further extended my interest that would turn into an inclination towards constructivist approaches when studying International Relations at the University College Dublin (UCD, Ireland) in 2011/2012. At UCD I was made familiar with constructivist theorists and writers, such as Alexander Wendt, Martha Finnemore, Mark Blyth, and Vivien Schmidt, which led me to investigate the Covert Contentions in Ireland during the time of austerity (2012) for my Master thesis. Thereafter, a 10-months stay in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2013 intensified the intrigue over a link between history, identity, and development, as the country with the worst history of the world also lagged behind in all levels of human development while materially possessing the largest amounts of resources (ex. rubber, ivory, gold, diamonds, copper, oil and coltan). Political will and responsibilities rose to the top of my research agenda, especially because for the misery the Congolese still face today seemed not only shaped by Western nations only. During my stay in the DRC I then started working on a proposal into an investigation of the influence of ideas on economic- political development in SSA, especially in regards to agricultural development. These five critical influences will be re-visited in the final chapter of this study. To reflect further on my positionality during this research it should be noted that I am a Caucasian, born and raised in a German society, as a white, heterosexual woman and therefore shaped by the influences arising out of this cultural context. The eclectic mix of opportunities that have presented themselves to me over the past decade have, however, shifted my perspectives so that I consider myself a citizen of the world in 2017.

Research gap With the heavy influence of economics on the social science in general, as well as development theory and practice in particular, quantitative methods with material explanatory factors have been favored. Cultural anthropologists/ethnographers working in Africa are the exception and have heavily relied on qualitative methods with a focus on ideational factors. With the history of failed aid/development assistance over the past 50 years this research then sets out to fill a research gap of combining ideational and material influences to explain the political economy analysis, with a secondary focus on aid effectiveness and efficiency. It aims to bring in a distances ‘outsider’s view’ to the Ghanaian agricultural sector and the role of aid therein, by carefully listen to ‘insiders’ voices. The focus is on the power relations and ideas of relevant (elite) decision makers of the sector. A lengthy field visit, originally planned for one years (turned into 16 months), was carefully prepared by a detailed reading brought histories relevant to understating aid and agricultural developments in Ghana.

10 With lasting embargoes against Zimbabwe, countrymen and women were eager to find work in South Africa. The motivated work force from Zimbabwe ended up being the victim of horrific xenophobic violence in South African in 2008 and again in the years after Part I: General Theories and Histories 11

1.3. A reader’s guide This thesis has a total of 15 chapters and two appendices. The next three chapters give an overview over general theories and histories of aid, economics, and ideas in political science (Chapters 2-4). In an attempt to remedy what Easterly (2013) calls ‘the blank slate’ approach that most economists and development practitioners use when applying blanket solutions to developing countries without regards to their past, a more detailed look at the history of the Gold Coast, today known as Ghana, is presented in Chapter 5. Part II is on methodology (Chapters 6 and 7), as well as a section on data reliability and dependability in Ghana and other developing countries (Chapter 8). Part III presents results and discussions. In Chapters 9 to13 the political economy analysis through a constructivist lens is divided three pillars: budget, policy and implementation. As during the exploratory phase deep seeded issues of policy and budget decisions were uncovered that prohibit the trickling down of e.g. funds to the implementation level in the districts across Ghana, particular attention was paid to describe the district level view. Below, a figure summarizes the layers and structure of this thesis:

Figure 1: Thesis structure (Source: Own compilation).

12 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Additional notes: As will be described in further detail in Part II, 33 out of the 260 semi-structured interviews were digitally recorded, while 227 interviews were documented through the rigors of note taking (typed up within the days following the interviews). In an attempt to allow the reader a more intimate insight of perceptions and expectations expressed by interviewees, the latter part of this thesis makes extensive use of the comments and quotes gathered during the interviews. All data has been anonymized with general descriptions of interviewees’ positions in the text. The Appendix includes a full list of positions and anonymized titles as well as excerpts of three (recorded) interviews.

The World Bank is referred to as the Bank throughout most of this text.

Part I: General Theories and Histories 13

2. Aid & agriculture - development histories and critical reflections

What the common man calls ‘aid’ is listed as Official Development Assistance or ODA in the bureaucracies of the world. ODA is a fairly recent concept that rose out of the ruins of Western Europe in the earlier part of the 20th century. As history plays a particular important role in understanding and appreciating the situations of today for this thesis, this Chapter aims to have one eye on aid and a second one on agricultural developments inside of an historical framework. By picking out noteworthy examples it tries to illuminate broader trends and progressions that have influenced the assistant programs of government institutions to so-called developing countries as well as food security situations globally. Critical reflections on aid will have room to expand in the middle part of this Chapter, with the caveat that large organizations that have had exceptional records of transparency, such as the World Bank or to a certain extent the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has left them more vulnerable to criticism than other organizations that have preferred more clandestine operations. It should also be mentioned that large organizations are more harshly examined as they wield such tremendous power that can affect masses of people across the globe. The themes and cases were, however, also picked with the aim to clarify as well as demystify common assumptions in the sector (and the world), and the hope that by exposing these it can help to recalibrate our approaches to aid and agricultural development. As the Chapter progresses through the past seventy years it ends with current developments in approaches to ODA, still influenced by present Western leaders.

2.1. What is development aid? Development is a complex process that can include the expansion of skill and capacity, freedom, creativity, self-discipline, responsibility and material wellbeing as Rodney saw it (Rodney 1973). Sen was particularly taken by the definitions of freedoms and capabilities and widened it to include political (e.g. elections, free speech, transparencies, etc.), social (e.g. education, healthcare, etc.), as well as economic opportunities (to participate in trade and production) (Sen 1999). Sen also tries to step away from the Western-centric view on development by raising the question through a ‘capabilities lens’ and asking: has a person the substantive freedoms to lead the kind of life he or she has reason to value? Poverty then is defined as in a deprivation of basic capabilities (Sen 1999). As we will see these concepts can be difficult to measure and evaluate, and hence many development practitioners and economists had to find more practical solutions that were easier to implement yet often more detached from realities on the ground. ODA or aid seems to be an easier concept to understand and describe, for the unsuspecting observers. One might think of aid as brotherly love and compassion to man, as it has been proclaimed as one of the highest achievement to our earthly visit for thousands, even tens of thousands of years by a variety of religions (Besant 1897). While this study has elements that are equally important to the 14 Part I: General Theories and Histories examination and confrontation of religions – chiefly the importance of beliefs or ideas – one could expect a more-down-to-earth understanding of these concepts for ODA concepts. Aid in this sense, could simply mean the help of the better-off nation state, the developed nations to the ones that have been less fortunate and hence are still ‘developing’. Nation-states are also a fairly recent phenomenon, emerging in Europe only a few hundred years ago. After often rather brutal progress via wars and destruction it has only been in the 20th century that we have seen the world come together in a more globalized and organized fashion than ever before. After the almost unfathomable calamities of the two ‘world’ wars it has seemed that we finally started valuing the importance in working together – particularly on the European continent. The dedication to peace and cooperation has brought tremendous material prosperity to a variety of countries. Not all have benefited equally, but without a doubt ‘aid’ played a major role in rebuilding what is now known as the European Union. The helping hand that was first extended across a pond was that of the United States of America (United States hereafter) via the Marshall Plan, which transformed nations, such as Germany, from great receivers to great givers. Supporters as well as skeptics of aid have been plentiful and varied in nature since then. At face value aiding another person or, indeed, a whole nation should be a good thing, one would think. However, not all aid is equal, and seldom as self-sacrificing and magnanimous as most givers would like us to believe. As will be discussed in the following pages this can be true for the amount as well as for the kind of aid that is ‘given’ to developing countries. Military aid has played a substantial but often surreptitious part, particularly in aid given by the United States, in the otherwise described as peaceful and well-meaning Official Development Assistance. In fact, official statistics, which are most comprehensively made available by the Organization for Economic co-operation and Development (OECD), are only of non-military aid. Independent of military or non-military aid, the question that persists is if the aid actually aided the ones that it meant to aid?

Measuring progress Measuring development in any nation has usually been done by keeping track of all goods and services produced within a country during one year, assigning a monetary value to each (the price, dividing it by the total amount of population, which has usually been established by census data) and deriving the per capita value, e.g. Gross Domestic Product. In strictly organized and bureaucratic countries such as Germany these measures can be pretty accurate, as the country is heavily industrialized and the formal economy provides the largest part of employment. The judicial system is taken seriously and the average citizen is more or less law-abiding and willing to follow orders, such as reporting income and registering their place of living. Seen over time Germany’s GDP is indeed a good measure for progress, also because inequality is fairly low, due to the strong social flavor of the kind of democracy the population and its leaders chose to establish. Part I: General Theories and Histories 15

For many years GDP has been used to also measure progress on the global level, comparing regions, nations as well as aid-receiving countries in particularly to monitor successes or failure on the broad level. In this regard, it is useful to make mention again of the important and strong role of economists in guiding nations’ development - in developed as well as developing countries. In the case of developed countries, they had a strong influence over the decision on what path was worth exploring in the quest to achieve development for nations, in certain regards (mis)using developing countries as guinea pigs to see what would work without knowing or understanding the potential results. Furthermore their measurement tools, e.g. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, were gladly used as the main measure to evaluate progress. Income-centered measures for development, however, can be grossly misleading as they say little about the distribution of income within a society, on-top of a questionable base for data availability in the first place. Devarajan, a World Bank economist, reminds us that many countries use old methods and out-of- date census data to calculate GDP (FAO 2014). The situation is worsened by inadequate funding and the lack of coordination of statistical directorates in what he calls Africa’s Statistical Tragedy (FAO 2014). Ghana is a particularly interesting example as the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in 2010 had to announce a revision of GDP estimates causing a 60.3% increase that made it a Middle Income Country practically overnight (Jerven 2012). The subject of data reliability, particularly for statistics is considered to be of high importance, often overlooked and hence taken up again in Part II of this thesis to be discussed further. Despite many international institutions still preferring statistical evidence, particularly GDP to measure progress, the United Nations decided to at least widen their approach to have a better measure for development. Thanks to the likes of Amartya Sen - also an economist (and Nobel Laureate) – they have moved away from a strict measurement of income to include indicators for health and education in an index named the Human Development Index.

History of ‘Aid’ The birth of the ‘aid’ system can be dated back to a meeting in Bretton Woods (New Hampshire, USA) in 1944 where development institutions such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, better known as the World Bank, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) were established (this is notwithstanding the support to colonial administrators given by home countries like Great Britain, France, or Germany before then) (Sankara 2007).11 The first, and arguably the most successful ‘aid’ project that emerged shortly after World War II, was the Marshall Plan. Between

11 Most colonies where dominated by the doctrine of “colonial self-sufficiency”, limiting public capital investments to local resources, that had been very little until World War II. Private foreign investment in sub- Saharan Africa between 1880 and 1936 had been similarly small with 18% going to South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe; 11% to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo); 4% to Kenya and Uganda; while investments elsewhere were negligible (World Bank 1981 p.12) 16 Part I: General Theories and Histories

1948 and 1952 over $13 billion12 were transferred from the United States to rebuild the economies of war-torn Europe (Moyo 2010). For Easterly commencement of what is commonly known as development aid can be pinpointed to the inaugural address of President Harry S. Truman in 1949 (Easterly 2013). Independent of the exact date that signaled the start of aid, Truman’s words are worth reflecting on, as they have guided much of development thinking of the past seventy years and still today:

[W]e must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for improvement and growth or underdeveloped areas. More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these people. The United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. The material resources which we can afford to use for the assistance of other people are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible (Truman 1949, pp. 44-47). In many ways President Truman set in motion and inspired what is now the aid industry, calling for the collaboration between nations (funneled also through the newly created United Nations) with the aim to spread peace, plenty, and freedom (Truman 1949). He also positioned the United States as a trailblazer of this undertaking that had a distinct scientific and technological character. Formalized aid, excluding pre-war spending on oversea colonies13, can be best described in what the OECD lists as ODA. The term is defined as grants, soft loans (which means that there has to be a 25% grant element as part of the total loan), and technical assistance provided from donor countries to recipient countries (named bilateral aid) or through multilateral development agencies, such as the World Bank or the United Nations.14 The first official objective of ODA was the reduction of poverty. This goal was motivated by ‘helping’ growing nations as well as hoping that economic and political security would benefit the donors as Dollar and Pritchett (1998) point out and further clarify that:

12 Moyo converts the amount into $100 billion in 2010 US dollars. 13 Countries like Great Britain, France, and Belgium did spend some sums of investments, and even what could be considered aid in the years before the Second World War 14 OECD member countries include: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. For more details see the OECD website on ODA, available at: https://data.oecd.org/oda/net-oda.htm [accessed 24.03.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 17

The second objective was to promote the short-term political and strategic interests of donors. Aid went to regimes that were political allies to major Western powers (Dollar and Pritchett 1998, p.7). In 1960 the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD was established to provide donor countries a forum for discussion and exchange in regards to development aid programs (OECD 2010).15 In the past half century the DAC has been used as a platform for important issues, many of them that still play a crucial role in contemporary aid debates today. A short summary of the most potent issues includes (based on OECD data): - Target of 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) of donor countries should be given as ODA to developing countries (in 1965 DAC members first affirmed their support to contribute 1% of GNI; by 1970 the revised number of 0.7% of Gross National Product (GNP) was agreed on but revised again in 1993 to the current target). Notable exception to this is the United States, who do not subscribe to a specific target.16 - Untying Aid in favor of procurement in developing countries was first on the committee’s agenda in 1974. Tied aid is a term used to describe loans or grants that are stipulated to be used for the procurements of good, service, or works of companies from the donor country. - In 1975 DAC held the first meeting on the integration of women in development. The subject has surfaced regularly since then, but increasingly so in recent years when the role of ‘gender’ started playing a central role in aid projects. - Promotion of improved donor co-ordination was first initiated in 1984. This was also the time when multilateral organizations started playing a more important role, e.g. the Bank or United Nations Development Program. - By 1986 the significance and centrality of recipient governments’ involvement was acknowledged. In 2005 these issues were taken up again as part of the ‘Paris Declaration’ of aid effectiveness, which include the following five principles: . Ownership: Strategies and objectives should be decided on by developing countries . Alignment: Donors should support these strategies and objectives . Harmonization: Improved donor co-ordination (share information to avoid duplication) . Measuring results and making them the focus of the debate

15 At its creation the name was Development Assistance Group (DAG) and consisted of Belgium, Canada, Commission of the European Economic Community, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States (OECD 2010). 16 For more information see: http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/the07odagnitarget-ahistory.htm [accessed 24.03.2017] 18 Part I: General Theories and Histories

. Mutual accountability is given to donors and partners for development results17 - Private Sector involvement was officially encouraged by 1995 to foster “dynamic market- based economies in developing countries” (OECD 2010, p. 37). Between 1960 and 2013 OECD, DAC members spent at least $3.5 trillion (in 2009US$) on aid to developing countries (Qian 2015). This figure does not include aid given by non-OECD DAC members such as Russia, China, or the United Arab Emirates. As mentioned previously, this number also excludes military aid (loans or credit for military purposes, a non-negligible portion of e.g. the United States aid budget).18 The following statistics and description are then based on the constrained set of data available. The following graph gives an overview of ‘all’ ODA from 1960 to 2010 measured in two ways. One way is depicted by the blue line representing ODA in absolute monetary terms using US$ billion (in constant 2008) numbers, which would indicate a steady growth from around US$ 40 billion in 1960 to an historic high of just above US$ 120 billion in 2010. The second, grey line depicts ODA measured as the average percent of GNI that donor countries disbursed. This line shows a rather slow but steady decline from about 0.50% of GNI in 1960 to around 0.30% of GNI in 2010 (as a reminder the target was 1% of GNI in 1960 and 0.70% of GNI in 2010). As this OECD graph vividly illustrates, the measure one picks to measure progress can cause drastically different result interpretations.

Figure 2: ODA between 1960 and 2010 (Source: OECD (2010, p. 70), Official Development Assistance (ODA) over 50 years).

For recent data a similar quagmire can be observed. By 2015 ‘Net development aid’ totaled $131.6 billion, down from $137.4 billion in 2014, representing a decrease of 4.4% in nominal terms.

17 For more information on the Paris Declaration of 2005, as well as the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) of 2008 can be found at the OECD website available: http://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/parisdeclarationandaccraagendaforaction.htm [accessed 24.03.2017] 18 The United States is the biggest donor in absolute terms, and has dedicated about 1/3 to military aid in recent years. The amounts varied, but were much higher e.g. in the early 70s, see https://explorer.usaid.gov/aid- trends.html for more details. [accessed 29.03.2017] Major recipients have been Israel and Egypt Alesina und Dollar 2000 and recent reports from CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/11/politics/us-foreign-aid-report/ . Part I: General Theories and Histories 19

However, in real terms (adjusted for inflation) ODA for 2015 rose to $146.5 billion, which would instead indicate a rise of 6.9% for the OECD calculations.19 Yet again underlining that focusing on quantities measure can be a slippery slow, as ‘one should only trust the statistic that one manipulated her/himself’ as a popular saying goes. One of the reasons of the recent ‘real’ heights of Net ODA is the increased spending on refugees in host countries (e.g. Germany), which doubled in real terms to $12 billion in 2015. European countries have received more than one million of asylum seekers in 2015, many from war-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq.20 Laudably, Germany was one of the countries allowing the most asylum seekers to submit their application within the European Union in 2015 and 2016. However, we will see that this increase in asylum seekers, coupled with an increase of immigrants from many sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries has led to a decisive shift of Germany’s aid approach that they are currently trying to implement with the support of other G-20 members (this subject will be further discussed at the end of this Chapter). Meanwhile Net development aid rose due to increased costs of refugees in 2015 21, however, average ODA of DAC member countries stayed at 0.30% of Gross National Income, which rather far from the 0.7% of GNI ODA-target.

Aid Components The OECD has different categories or components of aid that they have measured over time. Figure 3 below shows the five different components and their change over time (2000 to 2015). This includes an increase of In-donor refugee costs (light green) since 2010 (partially because of the onset of the Syrian war in 2011), while Humanitarian aid (red) has been fairly steady, but both a rather small part of total ODA. Multilateral ODA (light blue) plays a big role and bilateral development projects, programs and technical co-operation (dark blue) the biggest, with both categories rather steadily increasing between 2000 and 2015. The most notable ‘irregularity’ can be seen within Net Debt relief grants (purple) that peaked in 2005 with the HPIC Initiative and write-off for Iraq’s debt that had been initiated by the United States. While debt relief was particularly strong in the mid-2000s, much of it had its roots in the mid-90s when the IMF and the World Bank launched the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. Debt reduction under HIPC allowed 36 countries (30 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana) to reduce their external debt burden valued at $76 billion in total since then. After undergoing a comprehensive review in 1999 it accelerated in 2005 to support progress towards the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Similarly the Bush Administration had a priority during 2003-2004 on

19 In this case it doesn’t just include the adjustment of inflation but also the sharp depreciation of currencies in many DAC countries. For more information see: http://www.oecd.org/dac/development-aid-rises-again-in-2015- spending-on-refugees-doubles.htm [accessed: 28.03.2017] 20 See Eurostat statistics for more information available: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/Asylum_statistics [accessed: 28.03.2017] 21 ‘DAC rules allow member countries to count certain refugee-related expenses as ODA for the first year after their arrival’ (OECD, 2016). 20 Part I: General Theories and Histories debt relief for post-Saddam Iraq, and strongly lobbied, e.g. the Paris Club which is full of bilateral large lenders, to ultimately forgive $29.7 billion and reschedule $7.4 billion (Weiss 2011).

160

140

120

100

80

60

Constant 2014 USD billion Constant2014 USD 40

20

0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 prel. Net debt relief grants

In-donor refugee costs

Humanitarian aid

Multilateral ODA Bilateral development projects, programmes and technical co-operation

Figure 3: Components of DAC Donor’s Net ODA from 2000 to 2015 22 (Source: OECD (2016), Chart 3: components of DAC Donor’s Net Official Development Assistance).

Aid Donors and Recipients The United States have played and continue to play an important role in all aid-related matters due to their large absolute contributions. Historically the biggest donors of ODA outside of the United States include Germany, Japan, and France (Alesina and Dollar 2000). In 2015 the top donors were: the United States ($31.08 billion), the United Kingdom ($18 .70 billion), Germany ($ 17.78 billion), Japan ($ 9.32 billion), France ($ 9.23 billion), and Sweden ($ 7.09 billion). Below, Figure 4 is an overview of all ODA donors based on absolute terms:

22 OECD data available to download here: www.oecd.org/dac/stats/ODA-2015-Tables-and-Charts.xls [accessed 27.03.017] Tab 3 Part I: General Theories and Histories 21

USD billion Net ODA in 2015 - amounts 35

31.08 131.6 30

25

20 18.70 17.78

15

10 9.32 9.23 7.09 5.81 4.29 4.28 3.84 5 3.54 3.22 2.57 1.91 1.89 1.60 1.29 1.21 0.72 0.44 0.44 0.36 0.31 0.28 0.20 0.09 0.06 0.04 0

Figure 4: Net ODA in 2015 of OECD countries (Source: OECD (2016), Chart 1: Net Official Development Assistance from DAC Donors in 2015).

Interestingly the top donors change quite dramatically when they are measured on the 0.7% of GNI ODA target. Figure 5 below list OECD donors based percentage of GNI contribution:

Net ODA in 2015 - as a percentage of GNI As % of GNI 1,5 1,40 1,4 1,3 1,2 1,1 1,05 1,0 0,93 0,9 0,85 0,8 0,76 0,71 UN Target 0.7 0,7 0,6 0,56 0,52 0,52 0,5 0,42 0,370,36 0,4 0,32 0,30 0,280,27 0,27 0,3 0,240,22 0,21 0,17 0,160,15 0,14 0,14 0,13 0,2 0,120,10 0,10 0,1 0,0

Figure 5: Net ODA in 2015 as a percentage of GNI (Source: OECD (2016), Chart 1: Net official Development Assistance from DAC Donors in 2015).23

23 More details can be found on the OECD website: http://www.oecd.org/dac/development-aid-rises-again-in- 2015-spending-on-refugees-doubles.htm [accessed 24.03.2017] 22 Part I: General Theories and Histories

As Figure 5 above shows, there is room for improvement by many donors for reaching the agreed target of 0.7% of GNI, which is depicted in the red line marked ‘UN-Target’. Nevertheless, many countries have benefited from the aid that has been provided. The top ten recipients of Gross ODA in 2015 were: Afghanistan ($3.828 million), India ($ 3.179 million), Vietnam ($2.623 million), Ethiopia ($1.976), Indonesia ($1.910), Pakistan ($1.883), Syrian Arab Republic ($1.721 million), Kenya ($1.693 million), Jordan ($1.625 million), and South Sudan ($1.517 million). However, only 25% of ODA went to Least Developed Countries (LDC) in 2015 (22% to Lower Middle Income Countries, 13% to Upper Middle Income countries, while 38% was Unallocated). In terms of regional focus 25% went to sub-Saharan Africa, 13% to South and Central Asia, 11% to other Asian countries and Oceania, 10% to the Middle East and North Africa, 7% to Latin America and Caribbean, 3% to Europe, while 31% stayed unspecified.24

Aid to sub-Saharan Africa Historically Sub-Saharan Africa has played a sadly important role as an aid recipient, revealed in a quote from the Berg Report of 1981, where it states: After all, foreign assistance has played a more substantial role in Africa than in most other developing regions, in terms of aid per capita, share or total investment, technical assistance, and project selection and design [...]Donors have thus contributed to some extent to the present crisis (World Bank 1981, p.7). Within SSA, the top ten ODA recipient countries in 2014 were: Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Morocco, Mozambique, South Sudan, and Uganda. The biggest bilateral donors to Africa were: the United States, EU institutions, IDA (the Bank), the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, France, the African Development Bank, the Global Fund25, and Japan. Over the past forty years it is, yet again, the United States that has been the largest bilateral donor to Africa, as depicted in the following graph: ODA (in $billion) to Africa from bilateral sources between 1970 and 2012:

24 For more information see: https://public.tableau.com/views/AidAtAGlance/DACmembers?:embed=y&:display_count=no?&:showVizHom e=no#1 [accessed 28.03.2017] 25 The Global Fund is a partnership organization, funded mostly by OECD governments, to accelerate the end of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria epidemics. More information here: https://www.theglobalfund.org/en/ [accessed 28.03.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 23

Figure 6: ODA to Africa: Bilateral donors; 1970-2013 in US$ billion (Source: OECD p.5, 2.2.4 ODA to Africa by largest bilateral donors since 1970, USD billion, 2014 prices and exchange rates, 3-year average net bilateral disbursements).

Aid, particular in its bilateral form, has been volatile over the past decades, and hence its predictability has been a matter of great difficulty. When there is a change in government in a donor country, there is a strong possibility of the aid strategy and its budget being changed. One extreme example is the United States that saw a strong increase with the Obama administration funding aid, while the recently elected Republican candidate, Donald Trump, has announced cutting that aid budget again substantially.26 The subject will be discussed again at the end for the Chapter with current aid trends. In terms of multilateral donors to Africa the European Union and the World Bank (IDA) have started to play an increasingly important role since the 2000s, as the following graph illustrates:

Figure 7: ODA to Africa: Multilateral Donors; 1970-2013 in US$ billion (Source: OECD, p.6 2.2.6 ODA to Africa by largest multilateral donors since 1970, USD billion, 2014 prices and exchange rates, 3-year average net disbursements).

26 At the time of writing, it remains to be seen if President Trump will be able to implement his plans. As for now, more information available here: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-budget-state- idUSKBN16N0DQ [accessed 29.03.2017] 24 Part I: General Theories and Histories

However, none of these numbers tells us anything about the quality, results or, aim of the aid monies that have been given. There has been a surfeit of initiatives, too plentiful to recount. The biggest undertaking might have been the United Nations supported Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Initiative, decided by the ‘world leaders’ in 2000 to aim and achieve 8 developmental goals until 2015.27 Most recently they have been replaced by 17 Sustainable Development Goals.28 Who needs the help most? Who gives to whom, and why? It remains to be seen whether aid is indeed the best way to reach these and other goals. Meanwhile the debate around amount, effectiveness, and motivation has continued to overshadow the said initiatives. The two main differentiators for aid determinants, broadly speaking, would be the needs of the recipient countries vs. the interest of the donors - meaning that aid would have to yield a return (politically or commercially) to the donor country (Grilli, Enzo and Riess, Markus 1992).

2.2. The aims of aid – politics vs. progress? When the aid system started to emerge, right after WWII, a new war had already began. It was a new and different kind of conflict, which was fought mostly through proxies and underpinned by the struggle of ideas. It clouded many minds and cost millions of lives while the two new powers wrestled to be the new sheriff in town. The United States proved to be the ultimate contestant when Reagan’s requested for Gorbachev to: ‘Tear down that wall’ and a new form of capitalism – neoliberalism – become the model to strive for. A decade after the end of the Cold War and Structural Adjustment the World Bank started to critically reflect upon their approach and aid in general, intensified under the auspices of James Wolfensohn as president (1995-2005). During his time in office the Bank published Assessing Aid (1998), which pointed out that despite 50 years of aid interventions, and surely some success stories, in general global poverty remained a severe and sustained problem. How was this possible? The report points out: Zaire is just one of several examples where a steady flow of aid ignored, if not encouraged, incompetence, corruption, and misguided policies (Dollar and Pritchett 1998, p.1).29 The most spectacular failure of aid might have been the continued financing of the known kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire/DRC , who throughout the Cold War, despite clear evidence (i.e. a report from Erwin Blumenthal in 1979) continued to receive funds that were grossly misappropriated (van Reybrouck 2012). While the DRC is a sad pinnacle of failure within aid history, it is unfortunately not the only one. Most observers agree that the political interests of the United States during the Cold War helped determine which countries got foreign aid [...] These political interests continue to be on display today in the War on Terror (Easterly 2013, p.9).

27 For more information about the MDG see: http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/ [accessed 29.03.2017] 28 For more information about the SDGs see: http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable- development-goals/# [accessed 29.03.2017] 29 Zaire was the name Mobuto gave to what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Part I: General Theories and Histories 25

While the United States might have been preoccupied with ideas of ideologies during the Cold War, the French government has kept strong ties to their former colonies trying to secure their commercial interests with what became known as france-afrique. On the other hand, Germany currently might be most concerned with the wave of immigrants that are trying to bridge the waters between the African and European continents by other means. Motivations behind aid as well as miscalculations on what aid can do under these circumstances are varied and plentiful. Caveats of aid: Enzo and Riess (1992) came to the conclusion that the European Community used to be largely driven by commercial interests when giving aid, but recipient countries’ needs have gained importance, particularly as colonial ties have weakened. Dreher et al. (2008) suggest that particularly the United States have given aid (as budget support or grants) in return to voting compliance in the UN general assembly. They also point out the differences between EU members, as France had a focus on donor-interests, while Scandinavian countries based their aid on recipient countries’ needs. The middle ground was held by Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom that allocated their aid based on both: donor interests and recipient needs (ibid). Independent of economic or political motivations of giving aid, receiving it can cause trouble rather than find solutions, as Nkrumah underlined already in 1963: One of the worst things that can happen to less developed and emerging countries is to receive foreign aid with political and economic strings attached. These aids are very often wrapped up in financial terms that are not easily discernible (1963, p. 101). Alesina and Dollar (2000) believe that aid is given for political and strategic reasons (based on political alliances as well as colonial pasts), as well as for economic needs and based on recipient nations’ performance (such as good governance). They corroborated the findings of Enzo and Riess in regards to ‘correct giving’ of Nordic countries as well as France’s link to former colonies. They add that Japan’s aid also highly correlates with UN voting patterns (as countries receive more assistance when voting in tandem with Japan), while U.S. aid is partially determined and guided by interests in the Middle East - as high amounts of (military) aid were given to Egypt and Israel. Once controlling for the U.S.’s UN and Middle East bias, they do target poverty, democracy, and openness. However, in general, aid that is supposed to foster economic and social development in recipient countries is evidently compromised if it is conditioned on political favors (Dreher et al. 2008). New donors seem to follow similar patterns with the caveat that data is lacking for China and India (Dreher et al., 2010). Doucouliagos and Paldam (2007) simply come to the conclusion that the past 40 years of development aid has not been effective, stating: [A]id is surrounded by complex politics. In order to attract popular support in donor countries, it caters to all kinds of lofty and continuously shifting goals mixed up with stakeholder and strategic interests (2007, p.27). 26 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Quian (2014) differentiates the dilemma with particular sophistication, agreeing that aid is indeed often not solely given to alleviate poverty (as only 1.69% to 5.25% of ODA is given to the poorest twenty percent of countries anyways), but rather out of strategic consideration of donor countries. She further points out that there has never been any rigorous analysis, including all types of aid and its effects since data (e.g. the cost structure of aid or method of delivery) is not available. Hence, a first important step would be to address the accessibility to all data, and secondly to differentiate between criticisms of foreign aid policy versus foreign aid (Quian, 2014). Regarding US aid, Lawson (2016) adds: In most cases, the success or failure of U.S. foreign aid programs is not entirely clear, in part because historically, most aid programs have not been evaluated for the purpose of determining their actual impact. Many programs are not even evaluated on basic performance (2016, p.2). While the Obama US administration and others have tried to address these issues, most criticism of this kind is brushed aside in public debate around aid in which supporters like Jeffery Sachs simply demand an increase of aid, while adversaries such as William Easterly demand it should stop by arguing that aid incentivizes against “recipient’s marshaling its own resources for development”( 2002, p.44). Lawson adds: [A]id may do more harm than good, by reducing recipient government accountability, fueling corruption, damaging export competitiveness, creating dependence, and undermining incentives for adequate taxation (Lawson 2016, p.3). In his recent book, The Tyranny of Experts (2013), Easterly (also a World Bank economist) adds that the technocratic approaches to aid have ignored the real cause of poverty, which in his opinion is the unchecked power of the state against poor people that lack access to rights. Technical experts (e.g. from the World Bank) unintentionally bestow powers and legitimacy onto local governments to implement suggested technical solutions (Easterly 2013). The conventional approach to economic development, to making poor countries rich, is based on a technocratic illusion: the belief that poverty is a purely technical problem amenable to such technical solutions as fertilizers, antibiotics, or nutritional supplements (Easterly 2013, p.6). With powerful and often self-interested politicians backing the technocratic development, experts in turn bestow excessive power onto local government as implementers, developing dependencies and other problematic conducts, Moyo took it to a final stage and declared in her book title that aid is dead, or rather Dead Aid (2009). Her understanding of relevant explanations and alternatives remains limited, however, as solutions are always suggested within the dominant logic of free-market neoliberalism. Sub-Saharan African countries have been robbed of their unique past, as most developing experts have been treating the nations as a ‘Blank Slate’, allowing technocrats to apply the same formulas Part I: General Theories and Histories 27 across the continents, where neither particular nor general histories seem to matter in approaches to aid (Easterly 2013). A technocratic, Blank Slate approach to aid seems to have suited various sides, as Easterly sees it: Technocratic interest groups, including even racists and colonialists in the West, on one side, and the nationalist leaders in the Rest who were victims of racism and of colonialism, on the other. It had great appeal to philanthropists and humanitarians in rich countries who wanted to end global poverty, yet also to whose who cared nothing about poverty and only about the foreign policy and national security needs of rich countries ( 2013, p.9). Verhelst (1987) points out that aid from Western countries has been suffering from having an ethnocentric bias for assuming that one model of society is better than others. He was of the opinion that many initiatives of aid organizations, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, have failed because they tried to project alien, Western ideas onto people with vastly different histories and hence traditions and perceptions of needs. And he cheekily asks if aid is the benevolent support it claims to be or maybe a Trojan horse of Western ideas? (Verhelst 1987). Easterly (2013) also sees the disregard or selective use histories, combined with the power of the technocrats, has led to a situation in which governments of developing countries that receiving ‘assistance’, believe that experts advising the government know better than the actual ‘beneficiaries’. Gupta (1998) highlights that underdevelopment can become a form of identity for people, as their sense of self is profoundly shaped by the ideologies, institutions, and practices of development. He finds that the common discourse has positioned developing countries as backward, deficient, inadequate, and allochronistically behind the West, as in a period of the past of ‘developed’ countries, similar to a stage of infancy or immaturity. Hence, developing countries are treated as if they have to be supervised and monitored until they reach maturity or, as he would describe it, ‘adulthood’ through a variety of mimicry (Gupta 1998). Manzo (1991) laments that the capitalist states of the Western world have been used as the image or model of what it means to be “developed” while creating ties between North and South that are similar to a ‘parent-child relationship’. Instead: What is needed now is for social theory to take seriously the ideas of those who argue for grounding knowledge in local histories and experiences, rather than building theory through the use of general conceptual categories and Western assumptions (Manzo 1991, p.30). The idea that the Western way of living is the mode for development is indiscernible linked to the idea that one race has done better than the other. The issue of racism, often invisible/difficult to grasp for the ‘superior’ white community, however, is deeply ingrained into perceptions of world development. This poorly-conceived or misguided idea on racial hierarchies is often reflected and unwittingly absorbed in the aid industry that is divided between Western, mostly white ‘donors’ and African, black recipients. The histories (or the lack thereof) have been so widespread and pernicious that many people have come to consciously or sub-consciously embrace the Euro-centric versions presented over 28 Part I: General Theories and Histories the past two centuries. Starting with immense philosophers like Hegel, people have been blindly mislead by an idea that seems so common to us now, that Africa has no history, and hence little hope for the future, that we forget how recent is the idea of racism is. Lewis clarifies that: Race seems not to have mattered much in the world until fairly recent times, that is to say, until the development of the Atlantic slave trade from the seventeenth century onward. [...]A huge industry of this type had to have some ethical support. This was difficult, because Western Europe had long before outlawed slavery. The condition was not compatible with the Christian religion. To make it compatible, one had to argue that an African was in some sense not completely human and therefore not entitled to the same rights as other men (Lewis 1985, p.6). Racism, then, must be understood as something that took root in the 18th century, gained momentum through the time of colonialism, and reached its pinnacle around the Second World War .Racism was so widespread that even recognized BBC broadcasters used the word nigger without regard well into the 1940s.30 The misconception around race, which had started as an excuse to justify the trans-Atlantic slave trade, has unfortunately continued, and has been most publicly and intensely fought in the country in which white and black live with similar cultural believe systems, physically close to one another, yet economically and empathically far apart: the United States of America. While the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s has improved a rather atrocious situation slightly, African- Americans still suffer under widespread and misleading ideas of race being the defining and discriminating factor, as recent incidents of police brutality and protests have sadly shown. 31The image or idea of the black person, of the African, in the world today has suffered enormously over the past centuries. In how far aid theorists and workers can detach and make themselves free of such a widespread idea is yet to be fully understood. As the previous section was meant to show, aid in general is a rather new and admirable aim for the West to help the rest. However, what it has often ignored are historic incidents that have shaped cultures and the current situation that is brushed aside by a ‘blank slate’ technocratic approach, undercut by motivations other than magnanimity. The importance and approach to aid might be worth pondering with the words of Burkina Faso’s leader Thomas Sankara that said: Of course, we encourage aid that aids us in doing away with aid. But in general, welfare and aid policies have only ended up disorganizing us, subjugating us, and robbing us of a sense of responsibility for our own economic, political, and cultural affairs (2007, p.65).

30 Interestingly, Easterly describes that the ‘colonial subjects’ of the Gold Coast (modern day Ghana) complained and through the support of the colonial secretary, George Ernest , forced the BBC to apologize and ultimately ban the N-Word (Easterly 2013). 31 Among many, see articles on the spread of racism in the New York Times and a UN warning reported on by Aljazeera https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/opinion/police-violence-american-epidemic-american- consent.html?mcubz=1 or http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/issues-rare-warning-alarming-racism- 170823225952827.html [accessed: 24.08.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 29

It seems that despite all the effort and progress in the world over the past half-century, we are still far from ‘doing away with aid’ and dangerously close to having robbed African governments their sense of responsibility for their own affairs. The issue is most serious in regards to food security, hunger, and famines that continue to be pernicious and persistent, particularly on the African continent.

2.3. Food security, agriculture and aid The contemporary age is not short of terrible and nasty happenings, but the persistence of extensive hunger in the world of unprecedented prosperity is surely one of the worst (Sen 1999, p.204). The FAO World Food Summit in 1996 defined food security as "all people, at all times, [having] physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food" (FAO 1996). The previous UN Special Rapporteur to the right to food, Olivier De Schuetter, added that every individual should not just have physical and economic access to sufficient and adequate food, but that it should be culturally acceptable and produced and consumed sustainably, preserving access to food for future generations (DeSchutter 2014). In the 1980s the World Bank started the debate over food security at a time when Western Europe and the United States were reaching historic heights of agricultural production of ‘butter mountains’ and ‘wine lakes’. Yet distribution was and remains unequal. The fear of insufficient food production has probably burdened people since we left behind our hunter-gather lifestyle. It has intensified, however, with the great increase of population in the last centuries and the trend of urbanization whereby a reliance on strangers arose to provide for the nutritionary requirements. One of the first debates on food security linked to population growth was initiated and spearheaded at the end of the 18th century already by Thomas Malthus. While Malthus’s calculations and expectation have been proven wrong, his fears have survived and been revived in countless discussions on food security over the centuries (including during interviews on agriculture in Ghana in 2016/2017).

30 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Box 1: The Malthusian Mirage

Malthus first published his Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, making two main postulates: “First, That food is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, That the passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state” (p.4). Deriving from these two postulates, he determined that population would grow geometrically while food would increase arithmetically. He foresaw insurmountable difficulties, revised his essay often, while enjoying great influence over minds - then and now. Since the time of his writing the population has septuplet (it was less than a billion back then), and despite Malthus’s predictions, our food systems have managed to outpace even the sharpest increases of population growth in the past century. A less popular, but crucially potent counter-argument in the Malthusian debate came from Boserup who studied The Conditions of Agricultural Growth (1965). She postulated that the main line of causation is in fact in the opposite direction – that the pressure of higher populations will fuel agricultural developments and hence food production. The spirit of her thesis could be summed up with the English saying: “necessity is the mother of invention.” In addition Sen has greatly furthered our understanding on famines in his Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981) – tracing the source of the great hunger to poverty rather than production.

Sen has further dispelled the myth of insufficient food production with high population growth in his World Bank publication by pointing out that: The World has ample food. The growth of global food production has been faster than the unprecedented population growth of the past forty years [...] Yet many poor countries and hundreds of millions of poor people do not share in this abundance. They suffer from a lack of food security, caused mainly by a lack of purchasing power (World Bank 1986, p.1). In the decades before (as well as after) Sen’s analysis, hunger and famines were still of great concern and nations did what they could to elevate the horrendous conditions under which people suffered, when political unawareness and economic inequality prevailed. One of the proposed solutions was commercial food imports through so-called food aid in the cases when countries were able to afford loans and were not refused assistance based on political-ideological grounds (World Bank 1986). Food aid shipments started to become an established way of ‘helping’ food insecure countries over half a century ago, especially. in Sub-Saharan Africa, as an alternative to developing the agricultural sector or making structural changes to the economy (World Bank 1986). In the first decades after the rise of aid donor countries considered food aid as “an important part of their development assistance packages” (World Bank 1986, p.52). Part I: General Theories and Histories 31

While food aid was originally meant to relieve the suffering of food deficient people, it was also used as a surplus disposal of wealthier nations. The issue that must be considered for developing countries is that they are especially vulnerable to [cheap] import surges as these can hinder development of the agricultural sector and have serious impacts on domestic famers with loss of jobs and reduced incomes, leading to higher food insecurity in the long run (FAO, IFAD and WFP 2015). Before returning to the spillover effects of food aid, the next section examines the development and motivation behind food aid given by the largest donor: the United States. While they were just one of many nations that used this tool to aid developing nations in need, they were the largest and, hence, more effective partner that can be used as an example to understand the situation better.

United States food aid and other misnomers Food can be a powerful instrument for all the free world in building a durable peace (President Dwight D. Eisenhower in USAID 2003, p. Cover). The History of Food Aid is closely linked with the history of aid, also due to the central role the United States has played in both of them. The United States’ first aid project, which included food aid, was the Marshall Plan where significant amounts were spent on the reconstruction of agriculture (Friedmann 1982).32 After the Great Depression, during which free trade, the gold standard, and with it the ‘international food order’ had collapsed, Roosevelt’s New Deal had brought about large surpluses of wheat in the United States which were disposed of as war relief at first, but soon after the war converted into a new ‘food aid’ policy (Friedmann 1982). The scarcity of foreign exchange, the role of the US dollar, as well as the changing international climate – namely the emergence of the Cold War - gave impetus to this creative solution of the surplus burden: Subsidized exports, so-called food aid, to developing countries. On July 10, 1954 President Eisenhower signed Public Law (PL) 480 or the Agricultural Trade Development Assistance Act later known as Food-for-Peace to “lay the basis for a permanent expansion of our exports of agricultural products with lasting benefits to ourselves and people of other lands” (USAID 2003, p.7). The law that was enacted by the US Senate and House of the Representatives on the said date includes section 2, which reads: It is hereby declared to be the policy of Congress to expand international trade among the United States and friendly nations, to facilitate the convertibility of currency, to promote the economic stability of American agriculture and the national welfare to make maximum efficient use of surplus agricultural commodities in furtherance of the foreign policy of the United State by providing a means whereby surplus agricultural commodities in excess of

32 Almost $4 billion, or 29% of the aid through the Marshall Plan was in the form of food, feed, and fertilizer Friedmann 1982. It can be noted that there were some earlier emergency interventions by the United States and Great Britain during the decades before the WWII that, however, did not constitute the coordinated and institutionalized version of food aid that followed afterwards. 32 Part I: General Theories and Histories

the usual marketing of such commodities may be sold through private trade channels, and foreign currencies accepted in payment therefor (Government of the United States 1954). Food aid then was rather the concessional sales to reduce grain surpluses that also meant to expand export markets, undertaken in inconvertible currencies (not US$/ in local currency, allowing countries lacking US$ to import grain regardless)33, with the actual sales made by private U.S suppliers to foreign importers, government agencies, or private trade entities (Vellianitis-Fidas and Manfredi 1977). These so-called Title I sales amounted to US$ 17.9 billion by 1976 and made up the majority (71 percent) of all PL 480 exports until that point (Vellianitis-Fidas and Manfredi 1977).34 Title II of PL 480 provided (food) grants to combat famines and Title III the barter of food for other raw materials (Friedmann 1982). So while Title I food aid included concessionary sales of US food abroad, Title II and III were food donations that the receiving country could either directly distribute to the suffering population (Title II) or monetize/sell to then use the proceeds to support betterment of the situation by using it for emergency activities in the agriculture, economic, or infrastructure sectors (Title III). The purpose of the barter program [Title III] was to acquire foreign-produced strategic materials for U.S. Government stockpiles and to procure goods and services for U.S. Government agencies overseas (Vellianitis-Fidas and Manfredi, 1977, p.v). Food aid quickly occupied a key position within the U.S. foreign aid program and already accounted for almost half of all economic aid in 1956. It also played a key role in U.S. foreign policy at the time. Furthermore, “friendly” countries which received Title I 35 food aid concessionary sales would be sure that their payment was spent again within their country, often supporting military as well as economic aid projects (Friedmann 1982). A side-effect of this convenient convergence of domestic politics and foreign relations was a chronic downward pressure on ‘residual world prices’, as well as creating food import dependency that contributed to agricultural underdevelopment in many countries of the South (ibid). Lawson (2016) points out that PL 480 had multiple motives worth keeping in mind: 1. Dispose of agricultural surpluses that had been subsidized, were highly perishable, and had to be kept in storage and hence, were a burden on the US budget; 2.The creation of new markets for American food products, in particular wheat; 3. Build political alliances that were important during the Cold War; 4. Create an image of benevolence; and 5. Circumvent the dollar shortage that was acute after the Second World War.

33 The U.S government paid private grain companies in US$, held the equivalent amount in (mostly inconvertible) foreign currencies, but was then able to lend or spend this money in the recipient countries without any further approval from Congress. 34 (It is noteworthy that recipient countries were forced to repay the ‘food aid bill’ with US dollars starting with the end of the gold standard in 1971, but were allowed to defer their repayment while still adhering to minimum/maximum terms specified by Congress. 35 Title I food aid sales rapidly became the largest component of American food aid and accounted for more than 70% of food aid by the late 1970s (Friedmann 1982). Part I: General Theories and Histories 33

One objective of the program [Food for Peace] is to feed hungry people, but long-standing requirements that most of the food be provided by U.S. agribusiness and be shipped by U.S.- flagged vessels make clear that supporting the U.S. agriculture and shipping industries is a program objective as well, and a potentially conflicting one (Lawson 2016, p.12) In additional, the United States derived many important benefits from the Food for Peace Program, but certainly the increase of demand for American products, particularly wheat, rice, and dairy (Vellianitis-Fidas and Manfredi 1977). Rothschild importantly points out that a surfeit of wheat-aid in particular that it went beyond an economic or logistic dependency has changed the diet and culture of thousands of millions of people (1976). He adds: It went, too, to an idiosyncratic ideal, of remaking the world in the image of wheat-eating and Americanism: an ideal of feeding the hungry and selling wheat (p. 304). Rothschild’s criticism is an important one to keep in mind when considering the situation on the African continent in regards to food aid, as well as aid in general, which has be accused of been trying to remake the world in the American image. However, for food aid other criticisms have loomed larger over the past decades. For example, to ‘buy and ship America provisions’ that have lessened the impact on hunger alleviation of food and aid by up to 40%, and that because of diplomatic and political consideration that ‘underlie the majority of foreign aid’ evaluations of projects and programs in general have been rare (Lawson 2016). As previously pointed out, Amartya Sen’s analysis on the cause of famines and hunger clarified that in the fewest of cases is food not available, however, mostly the poor simply lack the capability, that is the money, to purchase the goods. For quick relief of hunger, the purchase of locally available foodstuffs would be much quicker, cheaper, and more sustainable, as it can support local producers. By the 1980s there was increased criticism towards US food aid (particularly Title I and II) for a multitude of reasons, including: lack of integration into national development programs, high delivery cost, and impotence against transitory food insecurity as the food aid budgets stay fixed or even reduced as commercial prospects rose in times of higher international food prices (World Bank 1986). Instead, it was argued, monies should be used to purchase locally available foods and donors should coordinate better “to avoid much of the misunderstanding, frustration, and wasted resources that have characterized past efforts” (World Bank 1986, p.53).

Food Aid in Ghana The United States Agency for International Development (hereafter USAID) is the lead agency of the United States government, which administers civilian foreign aid projects around the globe, including Ghana.36

36 Other organizations that have been administered food aid outside USAID include the World Food Program (WFP), CARE or Catholic Relief Services World Bank 1986. 34 Part I: General Theories and Histories

In regards to (Title I) food aid USAID wrote in 1997 that “resources have been used to support government that implemented sound economic policies and pursued free-market reforms”, and adds that “aid has been withheld from regimes that disregarded such policies” (USAID 1997, p.6). Keeping this in mind it might be unsurprising that the United States had initially shown little interest in supporting Ghana within the first decade of independence, as the Kwame Nkrumah joined and advocated for the Non-Aligned Movement in midst of the Cold War, and implemented socialist- leaning development ideas.37 However, after a Military coup d'état in 1966 that disposed of Nkrumah and a pro-free market government pursued more West-leaning policies by the late 1960s, the United States started supporting Ghana immediately with (Title I) food aid, by some estimates worth $62 million over the next seven years and stopped again when General Acheampong took over power in 1972 (USAID 1997).38 Ghana suffered under two severe episodes of food insecurity (due to prolonged draughts and high indebtedness), specifically in 1974/75 as well as 1983, yet US food aid remained scant. The USAID graph below, showing available US food aid to Ghana between 1965 and 1994, makes it difficult to deduce these times of calamities.

Figure 8: Total US. Food Aid to Ghana; 1965-1994 in US$ millions (Source: USAID (1997, p.10); Figures are in constant 1990 dollars; Source: USAID: U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants).

During Acheampong’s time in power (1972 to 1978) the US withheld Title I resources, and USAID still considered phasing out operations when Flight Lt. JJ Rawlings disposed Akuffo in 1979 (USAID

37 Kwame Nkrumah was the first Prime Minister and later, . In fact Nkrumah was an advocate of the Non-aligned Movement, which encouraged states to stay neutral in the time of the Cold War. Hence, not align with or against either the United States or the Soviet Union. 38 After the military government, that already had contact with the late Prime Minister Dr. who was elected from 1970 to 1972 with Edward Akufo-Addo as President. As a side note: the current President Akufo-Addo is the son of the former President. Details of Ghanaian history will be discussed in Chapter 5. Part I: General Theories and Histories 35

1997).39 Only when JJ. Rawlings, despite his socialist rhetoric, turned to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 1983 to request assistance and started implementing an Economic Recovery Program, did support resume.40 US Title I resources during the mid to late 1980s totaled $75 million and were mostly food grains, such as wheat (43 percent), rice (19 percent), and maize (8 percent). Title II support, which deals mostly with feeding programs, has since 1990 mostly been wheat and monetized (sold to local grain millers) to use the local currency to support food security projects (e.g. school feeding programs). In total, the United States provided an estimated US$340 million in food aid to Ghana between 1965 and 1994, which concurrently made up 42 percent of all nonmilitary assistance over this period (USAID 1997). The United States has been Ghana’s largest single source of food aid, while Ghana has been the sixth largest recipient of PL480 support in sub-Saharan Africa. Food aid is an important, yet not exclusive string to understanding the web of responsibilities and structures existing in the agricultural sector in Ghana today. An important point of food aid is made by USAID who point out that “during the last dozen years or so the level of food aid has won USAID a place at the table, making the Agency a major player in policy reform” (USAID 1997, p.2). Beyond policy reform, the Western lifestyle, eating habits, and agricultural production mechanism have been brought to the shores of West Africa. How the different actors have been engaging in the sector is the subject of the next section.

2.4. Development Partnerships in Ghanaian agriculture sector Development Partners (DP) have been plentiful in Ghana throughout the years. One could date back Ghana’s aid history to 1960, when the World Bank was brought in to undertake the Volta Power Project. 41 Since Ghana’s first president, Nkrumah, was of a socialist leaning not many other aid projects are recorded during his administration.42 It should be noted that Section (10) in the Banks Articles of Agreements prohibits political activity, stating that it should not interfere in political affairs or “be influenced in their decisions by the political character of the member” (World Bank 1989a). As Easterly points out, Article IV, Section 10 made it easier for the World Bank to overlook autocrats

39 JJ Rawlings led a coup against General Akuffo, who had taken over Acheampong in 1978. JJ, however, was arrested, later freed, but ultimately handed over power to the democratically elected Hilla Liman, before taking power back in 31 December 1981. More details will be found in Chapter 5. 40 USAID wrote: “... Ghana’s economy was in such serious trouble that the World Bank, USAID, and other donors insisted on major structural reforms as a condition for their support”. This ‘insistence’ is also known as conditionality, and nowadays common when government of developing countries request financial support from international financial institutions such as the World Bank or the IMF. 41 Details about this project will be discussed in Chapter 5, as it was the flagship undertaking by the first president of Ghana after independence. 42 It should be pointed out here that the World Bank makes a tremendously helpful database available granting access to a wide arrear of data (stretching over many decades) as well as leading the international institutions and Development Partners with exemplary transparency. The World Bank Ghana website can be accessed here: http://data.worldbank.org/country/ghana Under the second headline on the right is a link to ‘Projects and Operations’ which leads to all projects the World Bank has undertaken in Ghana; The analysis of WB project are taken from this site. Accessed [08.18.2017] 36 Part I: General Theories and Histories among the anti-Soviet allied during the Cold War (Easterly 2013), but it also allowed the Bank projects to burgeon amid rather militaristic leaning government of Ghana. Without a doubt the bank has been one of the most influential outside institutions in the country and on the continent. It therefore warrants closer examination, as it also holds an explanatory factor for other, smaller stakeholders active in the aid industry.

World Bank and agriculture projects in Ghana The World Bank started to undertake agricultural projects in 1969 (with a small Fisheries project), followed by a Cocoa Project (1970) and then a handful of regionally focuses agricultural projects (6), representing over a third of its undertakings during this next decade (1970s) (16).43 The 1980s then showed a steep increase in overall World Bank projects and lending, as Ghana became the test case for structural adjustment programs on the continent. A more detailed account on Ghana’s historic development and experience under the era of structural adjustment will be given in Chapter 5. While the United States must be ranked among the most influential DPs in recent times, the World Bank seemingly has the most influence over the entire time of DP involvement in Ghana. With the excellent documentation available, it is worth to take a look at the Banks first large agricultural project – the Upper Region Agriculture Development Project of 1976 that also involved other DPs and unveils a plethora of issues and lessons-learned that are still applicable today (2017)

1970’s Upper Region Agriculture Development Project (URADP):44 It was under the military leader Acheampong that the Government of Ghana, that already increased rice production significantly in the first half of the 1970s, requested the assistance of the Bank who prepared (with the help of the Ministry of Agriculture staff) a project to diversify the agricultural sector. While considering the “complex matrix of annual crops and livestock” competing for a limited area of “good arable land” (World Bank 1980, p.i), it included cotton, oilseed and livestock products. Within the first paragraphs of the report the Bank points to the aim of “arresting soil losses from erosion” and an initial emphasis on “sustainable agricultural production and improved farm incomes”. Interestingly, and importantly, issues of soil fertility and integration of livestock and land are still prevalent and are often neglected in in projects undertaken in 2015/2016.

Financing and Procurement (URADP): The Bank provided US$ 21 million as a loan, payable over 25 years, with US$ 15 million at an interest rate of 4.85% and US$ 6 million at a rate of 8.85% and other smaller differentiations, all with a seven year grace period for principal payments, during which

43 The six projects included the Sugar Rehabilitation Project (1972, US$15.6 million); Livestock Project (1974; US$ 2m); Ashanti Region Cocoa Project (1975; US$ 14m); Oil Palm Project (1975; 13.6m); Upper Region Agricultural Development Project (1976; US$21m); and Volta Region Agricultural Development Project (1980;US$29.5m); See http://projects.worldbank.org/search?lang=en&searchTerm=&countrycode_exact=GH [accessed: 08.18.2017] 44 The following summary is based on the World Bank Appraisal of Upper Region Agricultural Development Project Ghana Report No. 1061a-GH World Bank 1980 Part I: General Theories and Histories 37 interest and commitment charges were applied (World Bank 1980). Under a parallel financing arrangement the United Kingdom (UK) would provide an additional loan of £ 4 million and a technical assistance grant of £ 1 million, while the remaining 42% of project costs were supposed to be financed by the Ghanaian Government (US$ 13.7 million) and the (local) banking institutions (US$ 8.9 million). The combination of (mostly) loans with (only a small amount of) grants is still quite usual for agricultural development projects of the World Bank, while other DPs vary in their approach (e.g. the EU mostly loans while USAID gives more grants), almost all have what is termed ‘counter- part funding’ as a required contribution by the Ghanaian government. In the 1976 project, for example, the procurement list worth US$ 8.7 million “would be under UK procurement procedures” and included: “radio telephones, broadcasting equipment, cotton ginnery equipment and buildings, heavy plant and equipment for land development, four-wheel drive vehicles, trucks, spare parts, pumps and pipes for wells, cotton sprayers, insecticides and fungicides” totaling. While UK procurement procedures don’t exclude non-UK firms per se, it can be assumed that it will be easier for UK firms who are familiar with the local laws to comply more easily and rapidly, which is coming close to the issues of so-called ‘tied-aid’.45 Another issue that is still of concern today is the recruitment of international staff, which in 1976 was estimated to cost an average of US$ 43,000 per man-year. In comparison, the annual average per capita GDP for Ghanaians was US$ 276 based on World Bank estimates.46

Sector Analysis (URADP): 90% of the agricultural production was done by smallholders, and programs (particularly in the North under Acheampong) tried to stimulate a rapid expansion but providing “highly subsidized fertilizers, improved seed, and mechanical equipment hire services, backed by an attractive guaranteed price” and “credit at subsidized interest” for certain crops (World Bank 1980, p.3). Most smallholders combine so called ‘bush farms’ – distant fields in ‘the bush’ – with permanently cultivated nearby compound farms. It also noted that “mixed cropping is almost universally practiced” (World Bank 1980, p.8).All these factors are still valid today. The report also states that there were “a multiplicity of boards, corporations and agencies involved directly or indirectly in production, processing and marketing; many of these overlap functionally because of the absence of a well-planned and coordinated national agricultural development policy.” (ibid; emphasis added). Furthermore “policies generally have favored larger farmers” (both private and state) and “the structure and management of most programs are so weak that the aggressive larger farmer with his credit-worthiness and ability to deal with official and commercial institutions is able to secure the great bulk of the limited farm inputs available.”(ibid; emphasis added). It later adds that “until recently, little has been done for the small farmer; and, unfortunately,

45 Tied aid, as a reminder, is a term used to describe loans or grants that are stipulated to be used for the procurements of good, service or works of companies form the donor country. 46 GDP estimates can be found on the Banks website under: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD [accessed 08.18.2017] 38 Part I: General Theories and Histories poor implementation of those projects that have been initiated has resulted in high cost and, in many instances, nonproductive operations that have little or no impact on the majority of the Region’s population (World Bank 1980, p.5) (emphasis added). Other issues included the substantial amounts in uncollected loans (60% of loans were past due) by the bank, mostly involved in the sector of the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB).Other development partners such as the Canadians (CIDA at the time) were mentioned that were financing village boreholes, and the Germans that distributed “limited amounts of fertilizer” and provided “very sketchy extension services” ( p.8). Again, many of the issues touched on by this first agricultural project of the World Bank/UK aid in Northern Ghana, such as policies favoring lager farmers, poor implementation of projects for small- scale farmers, overlapping functionality of local institutions, lacking of coordination between certain development partners, contractual requirement for foreign sourced equipment of international and expensive staff, are sadly and surprisingly still prevalent today.

Development interventions after 1980 In the decades to come the Bank, as well as Germany, Japan and the US increased their initiatives in Ghana, but with far less vigor for the agriculture sector. Japan in particular emerged as the largest bilateral donor for Ghana by the 1990s (Sarpong 2008). Others, including Denmark, the Netherlands and France also continued involvement in a variety of sectors as Figure 9 below shows (based on amounts of reported disbursements).

EU AfDB 6% 11% Germany 6%

Denmark Japan 6% 16% Other Donors 5%

United Kingdom 5%

United States 4% Netherlands 3% Austria 3% World Bank (IDA) 35%

Figure 9: Historical perspective: ODA to Ghana in 1996 (Source: (Sarpong 2008, p.14; Figure 2: ODA sources 1996 and 2004 (percent of reported disbursements)). Part I: General Theories and Histories 39

International perspective and the neglect of agriculture in development Anriquez and Stamoulis (2007) highlighted in their FAO report that agriculture and rural development has witnessed a 20-year steep decline in the availability in public resources of ODA for the sector in the least developed and other low-income countries, falling 57 percent between 1983-1987 and 1998- 2000. Lawson et al. (2016) add that the international share of ODA to agriculture had fallen from 17% in the late 1980s to barley 6% by 2008 in their calculation (Lawson et al. 2016). By 1995 international fears were raised again that population growth rates were outstripping agricultural production in certain areas of the world, and food imports rose indeed by 185 percent between 1974 and 1990, while food aid increased by 295 percent in the same time frame to developing countries in general (UN 1996). As the historic overview in Figure 10 below shows, ODA to African countries between the years of 1996 to 2013 was mostly focused on the social sector (light blue line), which includes spendings on education and healthcare sector (OECD 2016). Also, the aformentioned debt relieve initiative (including HIPC), depicted in the yellow line, accounted for a large percentage of ODA, particulalry between the years of 2001 and 2008.

Figure 10: ODA to Africa by Sector; 1996-2013 as percentage (Source: OECD 2016 p. 10, 2.3.1.ODA to Africa by sector since 1996, As a percentage of total ODA to Africa, 3-year average commitments).

Aid to agriculture is included in the economic and production sector, representing about 20 percent and 10 percent respectively in 2013. In Figure 11 below ODA to Africa for the economic and production sector are depicted. Within these sectors agriculture has on average ranked second most important during the time between 1996 and 2013 demanding about 10 percent of the spending in the (OECD). Highest amount of aid monies have been dedicated to Transport and Communication (light blue line), followed by investments in the energy sector during the past that has sharply increased since 2007. The OECD figure below shows the decline in agricultural investment from around 15% in 1996 to below 10% in the 2000s when analyzing the Economic and Production sector of ODA to Africa exclusively. As this sector in itself only makes up about 30% of total ODA to Africa, agriculture spending of ODA in Africa in total can be estimated to be much lower. 40 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Figure 11: ODA to Africa: Economic & Production Sector (Source: OECD p. 14, 2.3.7. Analysis of economic and production sector ODA to Africa since 1996, as a percentage of total sector allocable ODA, 3-year average commitments).

Surprisingly the graph above does not indicated any changes after 2007, despite the sever international economic crises, which was sparked by unregulated financial markets. While many developing countries were excluded from the direct effects of the international stock market, declines and widespread fear of collapsing economies, unemployment, homelessness and ultimately large bail-outs for the banking sector, they were affected by the food price hikes that followed or accompanied it.

Food price hikes and the return to agriculture in development projects As can be seen in the FAO figure below, food prices (in nominal and real terms) reached new heights in 2008 and 2012 after decades of relative stability.

Figure 12: Food Price Index of the FAO, 1961-2017 (Source: Own compilation based on FAO Food Price Index (2017)).47

47 Also see: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ [accessed: 21.08.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 41

Internationally traded food prices reached new heights in 2008 due to a multitude of reasons, including bio-fuel production for western markets, climate change influencing weather patterns, as well as increasing oil (and related fertilizer) prices as well as speculation on commodity markets (especially the future markets of rice, wheat, corn and soy, which were considered safe investments after the US sub-prime mortgage meltdown), making food imports costly and unpredictable (Holt-Gimenez and Patel 2009). World Bank research honed in on the large increase in biofuels production in the U.S and the EU as the main driver of food prices hikes (Mitchel 2008). This increased production of biofuels came at a time when the global debates around anthropogenic climate change as well as ‘peak oil’ were on top of the agenda of many Western leaders. The food price increases presented a great burden on many people in developing countries as it is estimated that they spend roughly half of their household incomes on food (Mitchel 2008). In Northern Africa the food price hikes were even made responsible as the trigger for full blown revolutions. Many of the developing countries have been pushed to specialize and grow for export markets in the West, which in turn were supposed to provide foreign currency to import foodstuffs from the international markets. This development was fueled particularly by the spread of the SAPs, and the first wave of trade liberalization advocated by the World Bank, IMF and WTO in the 1980s and 1990s (Madeley 2002).

The productionist paradigm – issues and alternatives The aforementioned debates around anthropogenic climate change as well as ‘peak oil’ have led some parts of society to look for more sustainable ways, particularly for our food production systems, that have been dominated by what Lang and Heasman (2004) call the productionist paradigm in their book Food Wars. The experiences of starvation, food shortages, and maldistribution in many countries since the early 20th century, as well as the need to feed an increasingly urbanized population, had led to this model of food production utilizing industrial methods, including the production of chemicals, transport and agricultural technologies to focus on raised outputs by any means necessary (Lang and Heasman 2004). This paradigm has been successful in raising production in line with the unprecedented increase in world population (and the Malthusian scare), often abetted by fossil fuel driven technologies, heavily relying on external (purchased) inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, use of machinery and irrigation and historically focused on monocultures (Holmén 2006). This method of cultivation was intensified by new areas of cultivation as the Green Revolution spread into developing countries starting in the 1960s (Holmén 2006). The spread took place during the Cold War as policymakers of western countries were anxious to bring the “third world” into the Western bloc, therefore supporting the Green Revolution to establish global research and develop high-yielding hybrid varieties (HYV) of grain (first supporters included the Rockefeller and Ford foundations in particular) (Holt-Gimenez and Patel 2009). These HYV require fertilizers, timely irrigation and favor the use of modern agricultural machinery (all oil dependent inputs), and indeed can lead to dramatic 42 Part I: General Theories and Histories production increases (ibid). The graph below illustrates the total and per capita global growth in agricultural production from 1961 to 2005 based on this productionist paradigm.

Figure 13: Total and per capital agricultural production 1961-2005 (Source: FAO 2007 p.120 – Figure 14: Total and per capita agricultural production).

As can be seen above the absolute production, as well as the production per capita, has increased tremendously and in line with an unprecedented population growth rate of 17% (doubling the population from 3 billion in 1960 to 6 billion in 2000).48 Furthermore it is important to remember that the extraordinary increase of hunger during the 2007/2008 food crisis occurred during record cereal harvests in 2008, a clear reminder that ensuring adequate supply of food at the aggregate level, nationally or globally, does not guarantee that all people will live in food security (FAO 2009b). The authors Patel, Holt-Gimenez, and Shattuck (2009) point out that even though the “Green revolution” increased the food available per person by 11 percent from 1970 to 1990, if China was subtracted from this equation, global hunger actually increased by 11 percent. In fact over the last half century, the absolute number of hungry worldwide has stayed shockingly inert, starting at 878 million in 1969 while being slightly lower at 850 million persons in 2008, and only the percentage of people malnourished has decreased from 26% to 13% due to population growth during this time span (FAO).49The number of hungry reached a tragic apogee of 1.02 billion in 2009 (FAO 2009a).50

48 For population data also see: https://www.infoplease.com/world/population-statistics/total-population-world- decade-1950-2050 [accessed 24.08.2017] 49 The exact numbers and percentage of undernourished persons are as follows: 2006-2008 – 850 million (13%); 2000-2002 – 836 million (14%), 1995-1997 - 792 million (14%), 1990-1992 - 848million (16%), 1979-1981 – 853 million (21%), 1969-1971 – 878 million (26%) See: http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/ [accessed 24.08.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 43

The sad reality is that at the same time the prevalence of obesity has doubled between 1980 and 2008 (1.4 billion adults worldwide), about one third of food produced is lost or wasted, and 70 percent of all agricultural land is used for livestock production (DeSchutter 2014). Lang and Heasman (2004) point out that part of the quantitative rather than qualitative focus has also brought about an increase of dietary diseases such as diabetes, cancers, hypertension, osteoporosis, cardiovascular diseases and bone fractures as well as dental disease. They add:

Whilst the paradigm had as its objective the need to produce enough to feed people, its harvest of ill health was mainly sown in the name of economic development (p.96).

Also while food production has managed to outstrip population growth during the period from 1960 to 2000, partly due to regional specialization in a relatively narrow range of products, encouraged by the growth of international trade in agricultural products, this development also went hand in hand with a concentration of benefits in the hands of large production units and landholders at the expense of smaller scale producers and landless workers (DeSchutter 2014). The disappearance of the small-scale farmer has been a well-observe phenomenon in Western Europe and the United States were the ‘big is best’ motto has prevailed. In many places this extraordinary achievement in production has left land and water systems degraded at the same time (FAO 2011b). The International Assessment of Agriculture Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) estimate that 35 percent of land is severely degraded worldwide due to current agricultural practices (IAASTD 2009). Concurrently with accepted scientific finding of that time, we have been warned against the threat of climate change, if we continue our technological and often destructive ‘business as usual’. Alternative approaches to the productionist paradigm that focus on investment in ‘science and technology’, as described by Land and Heasman (2004), are rather concerned with an ecologically integrated paradigm often understood as sustainable agricultural, driven by knowledge and collaboration. These alternative approaches of sustainable agriculture methods include organic agriculture (certified or not), methods used under permaculture, agroecology or resource-conserving agriculture. Similarly, the IAASTD also recommended a shift to a non-hierarchical development model, such as agroecology 51, where knowledge is developed based on farmer’s experimentation locally and information sharing occurs horizontally. These kinds of models could also strengthen the role of women in society52, and promote more equal and self-reliant development, while mitigating the

50 Best estimates for 2010 still expect the number of hungry people at 925 million for 2010 FAO 2011c. No estimates have been produced for 2011 as the FAO’s methodology for calculating the prevalence of hunger is under revision. 51 Agroecology can be identified as a set of agricultural practices to enhance agricultural systems by mimicking natural processes, creating beneficial biological interactions and synergies among the components of the agroecosystem (De Schutter 2010). 52 Women, who still face discrimination in all spheres of life, carry an extraordinary role with producing 60-80 percent of agricultural output in Africa (IAASTD, 2009; FAO, 1995; 2012 and 2013). Failure to release their full potential in agriculture is a contributing factor to low growth and food insecurity (World Bank, 2008). Countries 44 Part I: General Theories and Histories effects of climate change (IAASTD 2009). While sustainable methods were considered to foster more integration, equality and independence (as knowledge is cheaper than the external inputs required for the productionist paradigm); it would also help to fight global climate change with the sequestration of greenhouse gases (GHG). Moreover, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth assessment report (2007) points to industrial agriculture as a main contributor of GHG emissions and highlighted the crucial role of soils, which hold 89 percent of the technical mitigation potential through soil carbon sequestration.53 Even though there is need for further research on the exact scale of contribution, sustainable agriculture practices will enhance climate change mitigation through building soil fertility54, avoiding use of synthetic fertilizer and improved carbon sequestration (FAO 2011a),(UNEP-UNCTAD 2008);(UNCTAD 2013).55 Pretty (2009) lists the following types of alternatives that use resource-conserving technologies and practices, for example in agroecology: Integrated pest management 56 , integrated nutrient management57, conservation tillage58, cover crops59, agroforestry60, aquaculture61, water harvesting, as well as livestock reintegration.62 These methods are versatile and can be mixed and matched to best support the local organic farmer (Pretty 2009). With many Sub-Saharan Africa having high levels of unemployment as well as depleted soils sustainable food production methods such as agroecology seem to be a great choice for their agricultural development. Dangling above them all, like the sword of Damocles, is the question Pretty tried to answer in 2009, ‘can ecological agriculture feed nine billion people? Answers are often linked to the Malthusian fear, in which the population growth it suspected to outstrips agricultural growth. What can be said

ranking highest on the global hunger index are also those with the most severe inequalities (von Grember et al. 2009) 53 About nine percent is related to mitigation of methane and only about two percent tied to mitigation of nitrous oxide emissions (correlating with nitrogen fertilizer use). 54 Practices such as inter-cropping, crop rotations, mulching, composting, cover crops, manures and other methods to replace synthetic fertilizer can be utilized to build soil, increasing yields, protect environment and biodiversity, ultimately enhancing food security. 55 As Leu describes in the UNCTAD report of 2013, soils are the greatest carbon sink after the oceans and can greatly contribute to Climate Change mitigation. Furthermore he highlights the need for additional research as data suggests that significant amounts of carbon are being stored at lower depths than most soil test have worked with (UNCTAD 2013). 56 Which uses prevention through developing ecosystem resilience and diversity for pest, disease, and weed control, only using pesticides when other options are ineffective 57 Which seeks to balance the need to fix nitrogen within farm systems with the need to import inorganic and organic sources of nutrients 58 Sometimes to zero-tillage to reduce erosion and ensure moisture in the soil 59 Such as leguminous crops (also used as green manure), to protect the soil from erosion, manage nutrients and pests and enhance water infiltration among other things 60 Which incorporates multifunctional trees (also potentially used for green manure among other things) 61 Which incorporates fish, shrimp and other aquatic resources, e.g. rice fields, which also leading to an increase in protein production 62 Including raising of dairy cattle, pigs, and poultry, which can provide synergies that enhance production and allow for better nutrient cycling.

Part I: General Theories and Histories 45 with certainty is that agricultural was put back on the agenda of development partners after the food prices hikes and food riots in 2007.

Agriculture back on the aid agenda for the 21st century: In the 21st century, agriculture continues to be a fundamental instrument for sustainable development and poverty reduction (World Bank 2007b, p.1).

In how far this will involve sustainable methods remains yet to be seen. At least state support for agriculture is being considered again, as the World Development Report 2008 of the Bank identified agriculture as uniquely powerful to “massively reduce poverty” (p.1). It also notes that for many of the poorest countries, their staple foods are only lightly traded (i.e. roots, tubers and local cereals), have high transaction costs exist, and that there continues to be a difficult investment climate for manufactures, hence limiting their comparative advantage to primary activities (World Bank 2007b). Independent of the banks proposal, the African Union (AU) had already tried to put agriculture back on the agenda five years earlier. In Maputo in 2003, when AU members came up with a declaration to commit at least 10 percent of annual national budgetary allocation to agriculture, as well as to aim at 6% growth of the sector - the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program was born, also known as CAADP.63 The CAADP is a commitment of African countries to pursue economic growth through agriculture-led development to reduce poverty and hunger on the continent. It stems from the failure of previous interventions on the continent largely attributed to their weak ownership (Madeley 2002, p.v). CAADP was built on the principles of partnership, dialogue, peer review and mutual accountability at all levels, and African countries stepping up to take full responsibility for their own development agenda (Madeley 2002). The continent wide CAADP aim to increase public-private partnerships (PPP) to support export-producing farmers with technological solutions of international companies, however, has thus far had only limited success as actual investments have been limited or misguided.64 With the focus on the private sector being the panacea for development, as declared by the Neoliberal proponents since the 1980s, international companies involvement in particular, have intensified the struggle over land and seed systems in SSA, often without the option of participation for smallholder farmers (Provost et al. 18 February). Furthermore, Lui (2014) pointed that the impacts of foreign agricultural investment on host countries often outweigh the few benefits to the local community

63 On top of the 10 percent budget expenditure for the agricultural sector the initiative also aims at 6 percent sector growth by 2015 in the over 40 participatory nations. 64 Of 40 currently participating African countries that have engaged in the CAADP, 32 countries responded to a survey (CAADP Review, 2010), which found that 7 countries (22 per cent) had allocated indeed 10 percent or more, while 25 countries (78 per cent) were below the target. Furthermore, the study found that ‘the efficiency of utilization of the rising capital expenditure’ has not been established, as in some countries the goal was met simply by pouring resources into fertilizer subsidies, while in many other countries actual disbursement were less than 50 percent of the annual budget allocation (CAADP Review, 2010). 46 Part I: General Theories and Histories

(especially in countries where local land rights are not clearly defined and governance is weak). Investments have the most positive and sustainable effect on local economies and social development when local farmers are involved as equal business partners, giving them an active role and leaving them in control of their land, he adds (Lui 2014). The subject will be further discussed in Chapter 4. The renewed interest in agriculture on the international agenda, however, commenced in July 2009 when the G-865 met in L’Aquila, Italy (including the newly elected US president ), and agreed on what is now known as the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative (AFSI). In their joint statement, the heads of state, government and international and regional organizations expressed their deep concern about the global food security, including the impact of the global financial and economic crisis and the previous year’s spike in food prices on the countries least able to respond to increased hunger and poverty. They also lamented the longstanding underinvestment in agriculture and made food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture a priority while underlining their commitment to free trade and rejection of protectionism (G8 2009). Their approach statement furthermore highlighted their priority to make available better seeds and fertilizers, promoting sustainable management of water, forests and natural resources, as well as enhancing the efficiency of food value chains (G8 2009). The G8 had seemingly chosen the middle road between the productionist and the ecologically integrated paradigm – at least on paper. The following year, 2010, the Obama Administration started their Feed the Future (FTF) initiative in which they targeted 19 focus countries for investment in food security and agricultural development to reduce hunger, malnutrition, poverty and food insecurity (Lawson et al. 2016). This presidential initiative led USAID to spent US$ 4.7 billion between 2010 and 2014, while other US agencies implementing FTF initiatives invested as much as US$ 6.6 billion on top during the same time (Lawson et al. 2016). This brought about a big shift for the neglected sector of agriculture that had only claimed 6% of total ODA of the international donor community in 2008. The congressional research paper highlight that one reason for this rather large initiative was the absolute number of hungry people in 2009, that has reached over 1 billion in that year (Lawson et al. 2016). The refocus on agriculture is only apt considering the people still suffering from hunger. In 2015 the FAO estimated that 795 million people still suffered from undernourishment, of which 220 million were in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). While globally this marked a reduction, it marked a historic high for the continent as it meant an increase by 44 million people in 2014/2016 from 1990/1992, and signaled that 23 percent of the population on the continent suffered from long term hunger (FAO, IFAD and WFP 2015).66It is of interest to point out that these FAO estimates have been adjusted in 2010 and do not capture short term undernourishment, and hence only include the most extreme form by focusing on year-long averages, they also neglect inequality in intra-household distribution of food

65 The G8 countries include Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United State. 66 Here one must also consider the remarkably high population growth rate of 2.7 percent per year (FAO, IFAD and WFP, 2015) Part I: General Theories and Histories 47 and are based on a low threshold of daily energy requirements that assume a sedentary lifestyle, even though many of the poor perform physically demanding activities (DeSchutter 2014). Victims of micronutrient deficiencies due to inadequate diets are furthermore not considered in these statistics (ibid). Hence, the need for urgent action continues to be clear. In the case of the US FTF initiative in Ghana responsibility for the implementation for the was given to the USAID and after it was selected as one of the 19 focus countries, with the following flow of funding: US$ 33 million in 2010; US$ 45 million in 2011; US$ 45 million in 2012; US$ 43 million in 2013; US$ 45 million in 2014 and another US$ 45 million in 2015 (Lawson et al. /2016). These investment amounts are on the upper end among the focus countries, which include high-end receivers such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Bangladesh. Tanzania stood out to be the highest receiver with an average of US$ 70 billion per year between 2012 and 2015. Over five years (between 2012 and 2017) Ghana received US$400 million under the FTF initiative. Spending close to half a billion US$ in a country of 26 million people warrant rigorous monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities.

M&E methods and misconstructions As previously pointed out, the US government is the largest bilateral donor worldwide in absolute terms, and the sums made available via the Feed the Future initiative for agricultural development in general and Ghana in particular have a great potential for impact. It is also important to recall that the Congressional Research Team including Lawson’s investigation into the effectiveness of foreign aid in 2016 have found that in most cases, U.S assistance programs have not been evaluated for the purpose of determining their impact (either at the time of implementation or retrospectively), as aid has rather been provided for political and security purposes (Lawson 2016). For example, assistance to Uzbekistan may have been requested and appropriated for specific agriculture sector activities, but may have been motivated primarily by a desire to secure U.S. overflight privileges for military aircraft bringing troops and supplies to Afghanistan (Lawson 2016, p.12). On top of the political sensitivity that might distract from rigorous and extensive evaluations of aid program it is also an issue of cost considerations as it would come at the expense of other program components. Over the past decade, however, aid monitoring and evaluations efforts of USAID have increased, primarily focused on accountability of funds to Congress and other stakeholders, as USAID is answerable to them in the last instance (ISSER 2012). In this regards it has been mostly M&E activities and data collection practices “that are geared toward tracking where funds go and what they have purchased rather than the impact of fund on development” (ibid, p.13). Additionally, officers working in DP programs for a career may have an interest to avoid formal evaluations for fear of drawing attention to shortcomings, which could lead to “loss of control over a project, damage to professional reputation, budget cuts, or other potential career repercussions” and, hence, feel pressure to create success stories rather than critical debates (ibid, p.16). 48 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Other issues in regards to understanding the effectiveness of any single aid projects in Ghana is that there is the plethora of other donors that are usually concurrently working in the same region or at times in the same communities. And even if it is not the case for the time of project implementation there is a high likelihood that other development partner or government agencies have provided development in the year preceding the project. Hence, claiming a success would have to consider and list preceding initiatives in a country that has been overwhelmed with a surfeit of projects over the last four decades. Moreover, rigorous methods of M&E are often not practical or not possible as control groups (for comparison) are impossible to find or unethical to create (e.g. by excluding people from a humanitarian intervention). Last but certainly not least, Lawson (2016) points to the election cycles of politicians abroad (e.g. 4-year in the USA, but also many other Western democracies) and with it the time-bound budget allocations that don’t allow adequate time for programs to demonstrate their impact. The demand for immediate results, which could be utilized for re-election campaigns in modern democracies, is the last but maybe ultimate deterrent. Notwithstanding all these issues, USAID for example has made serious attempts to address these deficiencies since 2010, and even if results are not yet perfect, there seems to be an agreement that consistent performance evaluation of aid programs is becoming necessary (Lawson 2016). This issue is closely linked to the debate on data reliability and dependability that will be had in Chapter 8.

Agent-webs of development This transformation was partially pushed forward by former USAID Administrator (2009- 2015) who tried to focus on ‘results’ and drive aid to the local level (Lawson 2016). Notwithstanding these efforts, he highlighted the importance of U.S. foreign aid to contribute to the stabilization of countries around the world, while adding that the slogan of USAID in this regard should not just be “from the American people” but also “for the American people” (Shah 2015, 2:17). Shah, who had previously worked eight years for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, is now the newest president of the Rockefeller Foundation (Gelles 2017). The seeming symbioses between government aid agencies and influential philanthropists, other large charitable organization, politicians and celebrities is more common that one would expect. The current President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), incidentally the former ‘honorable’ Minister of Agriculture of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, tweeted a picture with Melinda Gates, stating that she and her husband “are just amazing people”.67 AfDB’s new investment strategy (published just days after his pronounced support for the Gates’ efforts) favors “African farmers of major cash crops like tea, coffee and cocoa” (African Development Bank Group 2017). Similarly the

67 Exact words: “Great to be with @melindagates She and @BillGates are just amazing people. Their commitment to Africa is inspiring!” see: https://twitter.com/akin_adesina/status/861974802822770688 ; 9 May 2017; 9:03 AM [accessed: o8.20.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 49

Agricultural Green Revolution for Africa- AGRA (a Gates and Rockefeller Foundation sponsored initiative) the AfDB strategy is all about economies of scale, “using the right seeds and turning the large farms into large productivity regions” (African Development Bank Group 2017). In turn, the new spokesperson of AfDB is the ‘honorable’ former president of the Republic of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, who spoke days before the press release at the African Development Bank Group’s annual general meeting in Ahmedabad in India on the theme: Agriculture is Cool, in an attempt to engage Africa’s youth that perceive the work to be “back breaking, dirty work” that “is meant for the aged and illiterate rural population” (Mahama 2017). The World Bank adds that land rights in Ghana are diverse, complicated and allow for veto power among various stakeholders over new, large-scare investments, hence the World Bank follows the model of contract farming: [A] model in which investors supply inputs and, in return, farmers grow and resell crops to the investors (World Bank 2014, p.xi). The bank is implementing this vision in collaboration with USAID through the largest single agricultural project named the GCAP – Ghana’s Commercial Agricultural Project – worth US$150million (US$ 100 million loan by the bank and US$50 grants by USAID)68. The project will be discussed again in the results section in Part III. Aiming to support large farmers of major cash crops does not make the World Bank, the African Development Bank or AGRA strangers in the ideological orientation to other development partners working in the agricultural sector in Ghana, or Africa. After all, AfDB is a sister organization to the African Union and naturally aligned with the CAADP policy framework, which was in turn referred to by the 38th G8 summit (in Camp David, Maryland, in May 2010) from with the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition originated from. The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition reference came from an evaluation that surfaced results about CAADP that were “not stunning” as a senior official of USAID commented on the processes and added his believe that “out of this evaluation they [the G8] decided that the private sector must play a more important role” (No. 225). Disregarding the reasons behind their decision, the statement of the G8 world leaders on their Camp David summit included: Building on this progress [CADDP], and working with our African and other international partners, today we commit to launch a New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition to accelerate the flow of private capital to African agriculture, take to scale new technologies and other innovations that can increase sustainable agricultural productivity, and reduce the risk borne by vulnerable economies and communities (G8 20.05.2017). With this profession by the leaders of Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United State, the following list of Development Partners (DPs) that also work in

68 Additional information can be found at the GCAP website: https://gcap.org.gh/ [10.05.2017] 50 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Ghana, were united under a common goal. The full list DPs working on agricultural projects and programs in Ghana include: • The GIZ - Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit or German Government agency for international cooperation, as well as the (GER) • KfW- Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (German government development bank) (GER) • AfD - Agence Française de Développement (FRA) • CIDA - The Canadian International Development Agency, now called (CAN) Global Affairs Canada • JICA- Japan International Cooperation Agency (JPN) • DFID - Department for International Development (UK) • USAID United States Agency for International Development, (USA) Other development partners in the agricultural sector in Ghana include: • EU – European Union (in some regards represented by the G8) • IFAD - International Fund for Agricultural Development (who partners with AfDB with almost all program) • Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (HOL) • WFP – World Food Program (officially linked to the UN; heavily supported by the USA) • FAO - Food and Agricultural Organization and • WB – the World Bank The respective roles, overlapping ideologies and conceivable culpabilities will be the center of investigation in the Results section in Part III. More important than the theoretical debate however is the real threat of acute food insecurities and famines that are looming yet again over millions of people that should be acknowledged in a thesis around food security. . In July 2017 the FAO warned about the largest food crises in 70 years, with 20 million people in four countries at risk of famine (FAO July 2017). These four countries include: northeastern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen:

Figure 14: Four countries at risk of famine in 2017 (Source: Modified from FAO July 2017). Part I: General Theories and Histories 51

Military (aid) and food security The four countries have suffered from prolonged and heated conflict over the past years, which have been fueled by the influx of official as well as clandestine weapons. In the case of South Sudan, a confidential UN report seen by REUTER stated, "the bulk of evidence suggests that the famine [...] has resulted from protracted conflict and, in particular, the cumulative toll of military operations undertaken” (Nichols 17.03.2017). Besides the continued underinvestment in agriculture, it should be remembered that it is not just the active involvement in military operations that contributes to this horrendous situation, but also the secondary effect of war that forces farmers off their fields and away from their homes and livelihoods, repeatedly missing the agricultural season, as pointed out by the FAO (FAO July 2017). Similar to South Sudan that continued to receive weapons from ‘diverse sources’, possibly even purchasing weaponry amid famine warning early on in 2017 (Al Jazeera 17.03.2017), Yemen and Nigeria have also continued to received weapons from outside sources. This small interjection is meant to highlight the importance of global disarmament in the fight against hunger and poverty. Moreover, it is important to point out that many of the countries that are giving money to aid programs are also top arms producers and exporters. In 2016, the list of the top 10 arms dealers features prominent names of countries that fight food insecurity just as vehemently as they seemingly produce weaponry. Based on the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute the List is and has been headed by: • The United States of America, • Russia, • Germany, • France, • China, • The United Kingdom, • Israel, • Italy, • South Korea and • Ukraine.69

In the case of South Sudan it should be mentioned that is was also the United States, backed by Great Britain and France that suggested an arms embargo in December 2016, which was ultimately vetoed through an abstention of other Security Council members including Russia, China, Japan, Malaysia, Venezuela as well as Angola, Egypt and Senegal (UN Security Council 23.12.2017). Nevertheless, President Obama’s defense budget soared, and even though the largest part went to ‘operations’ and not ‘weaponry’, this one time intervention 70 is not representative. Worse still, the United States witnessed a change of presidency, with Donald Trump taking office in January 2017, and an administration that has been calling for a focus on military over humanitarian aid in Africa, while

69 For more details and queries see: http://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/page/toplist.php 70 For a historic graphic analysis of the US defense budget see the Washington Post article from January 7, 2013: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/07/everything-chuck-hagel-needs-to-know-about-the- defense-budget-in-charts/?utm_term=.9c89262cdc44 [accessed 24.08.2017] 52 Part I: General Theories and Histories proposing a cut from US$ 8 to US$ 5.2 billion of the continent’s aid package (Cooper 2017).71 This strategy shift claims to be part of the U.S. war against terrorism; however, many senior officers interviewed for a New York Times article disagreed with the approach. General Cart Ham for instance spoke on the link between lack of development, hopelessness and radicalization when citing the following example: If you’re a young Muslim man in northeastern Nigeria, and you look at your government and say, my prospects for a job are pretty slim, there’s no education or health care, and then suddenly some guy comes along and offers me money, prestige, a gun and a girl, a purpose, that becomes attractive (Cooper 2017). President Trump and his administration seem to have found an unusual ally in Germany’s leader, , who suggested as part of their presidency that industrial nations should increase their military aid, which would include the transfer of weapons to African countries (Reuters 12.06.2017). Under Merkel Germany has recently also tried to make plans for a ‘Compact with Africa’, a central pillar of the G20 with the goal to foster prosperity and development on the nearby continent, subtly or not suggesting that this would curb a seemingly unstopping stream of African migrants seeking refuge in Europe. The amount of asylum seekers and immigrants has been of great concern to the strongest nation within the European Union. Chutel observes: The administration of chancellor Angela Merkel—who may now be considered the true leader of the free world—is setting up shop in emerging markets once dominated by the pound and dollar (Chutel 2017). While commercial interests could also play a role as well, the overriding concerns in the rhetoric has been on immigration and security, with the latter one being sadly substantiated by increased attacks (most recently in August 2017 in Burkina Faso, Spain and Finland). Because of this developments tensions have heightened in the fight against radical jihadist groups typically affiliated to al-Qaeda and so called Islamic State over the past years. The recentness of the shift is called into question by some that argue the continent has been swept with military aid since the military intervention in Libya (2001) and the formation of AFRICOM – US Africa Command72 – in 2002. This was followed by French lead interventions in the Sahel zone countries in 2012 and 2014, who support the formation of the Sahel-G5 counterterrorism force (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger), while nine other Unites Nations peacekeeping missions in Africa have been ongoing since 2015 (Conteh-Morgan

71 It should be noted that in 2016 US Congress passed the Global Food Security Act (H.R. 1567) that was later signed into law by Barack Obama that same year. While the purpose was (also) mainly for US national security it too requires the US government to have a strategy for global food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition in place. https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1567 [accessed: 21.08.2017] 72 Current key beneficiaries of US military assistance are Djibouti, Ethiopia, Uganda Chad, Cameroon, and Mauritania; see http://ewn.co.za/2017/08/16/opinion-the-danger-of-supplementing-aid-to-africa-with-weapons [accessed 08.21.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 53

2017). The Military Industrial Complex has seemingly found new raison d'etre in the fight against terrorism, and in more clandestine forms for stopping the waves of immigrants coming across the sea. As part of the African compact suggested by the German administration, money for reforms is supposed to be provided to African countries, along with weapons in their fight against terrorism. Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Rwanda, as well as Ghana have accepted this G-20 offer, with Ghana standing to receive a EUR 100 million grant to “improve conditions for sustainable private sector investment, infrastructure, economic participation, and generate employment in the country”(MoF 2017). With a steady wave of immigrants trying to enter the Fortress Europe, the generation of employment is a key component to keep Africans in their home countries. All over the world, there are new walls coming up. Walls that imprison us against the rest of the world. The young African refugee in an Italian detention center is facing one such new wall [...]It’s a paradox of our world, that nearly 30 years after Reagan called for the Berlin Wall to be torn down, new walls are springing up everywhere (Mahama 2016, p.4). As a friend and farmer in Northern Ghana aptly commented that, with regards to Europe, it has always been difficult to enter, but now the walls, “they just turned into transparent bullet-proof walls” (No. 17). This is to highlight the transparency that the age of communication has brought about across the globe. The wealth and sometimes opulence of many Westerners is now easily visible or ostentatiously flaunted on a variety of online media platforms. The constant need and competition for growth by and in developed countries “just creates pressures” when “you are already way ahead” (No.17). Instead we should work together – everywhere – and come see each other eye to eye. It remains to be seen how military interventions and the fight against terrorism on both sides of the Atlantic will influences the structure and distribution of aid. What seems already clear today is that a stop of arms sales would be a first great step towards more peace, prosperity and food security on all continents.

Summarizing reflection on aid that should “aid in doing away with aid”

As the previous Chapter tried to illuminate, there are many aspects of aid that are less often seen or understood when popularly debated. A more critical and honest look is needed to re-evaluate the current state of Official Development Assistant – maybe first and foremost the aim to remake the world in the image of the West. As Verhelst quotes a visitor from the South encountered Europe cities: Everything there is perfectly organized but the people look despondent and seem nervous. Are they happy, these Westerners whom everyone envies so? (1987, p.65). With the high and regular consumption of drugs, alcohol, prostitution and anti-depressants in many of the Western countries that are on the forefront of aiding ‘less-developed’ countries, there should be time to halt and ponder about the grand end we are hoping for. Often the Western-centric view on aid is built on one-sided tales of histories, as well as silent but omnipresent idea of the superiority of one 54 Part I: General Theories and Histories race/country over another, frequently trying to ignore the oppressive and hence unfair past current Western achievements have been built on. In this regard the old saying that “until the lion learns how to write every story will glorify the hunter“, needs to be expanded in as such the lion has long been able to write its story, but continues to be timid and unheard within the global community, in which you need to find the right media outlet and marketing strategy to have the message get to the target audience. Of course, it should be acknowledged that in the decades after independence movements on the African continent many of the outspoken leaders have been silences. The single-story about Africa ‘as a country’, hence, has been made increasingly more likely. This leads also to the negation of the cultural complexities and diversities on the continent and within countries. Yet, economist Sir William Arthur Lewis tried to illuminate already 30 years ago, in Racial conflict and economic development – that by far history and culture, not genes, can explain some of the variations in the stages of development around the globe and must be paid attention to (Lewis 1985). Similarly E.F. Schumacher asks: Could it be that the relative failure of aid, or at least our disappointment with the effectiveness of aid, has something to do with our materialist philosophy which makes us liable to overlook the most important preconditions of success, which are generally invisible?(Schumacher 1973/2011, p.136). Thomas Sankara, the leader of Burkina Faso in the 1980s pointed out that the top-down approach in many aid projects has often disorganized, subjugated and robbed Africans of the responsibility for their own economic, political and cultural affairs, he added (Sankara 2007). He aptly sums up the aid debate with saying: “we encourage aid”, but only if it “aids us in doing away with aid” (2007, p.65)

Part I: General Theories and Histories 55

56 Part I: General Theories and Histories

3. A constructivist approach to a political economy analysis in the developing country context

(T)he mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of[...]they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes (Mill 1859, p.71).

The words of John Stuart Mill written in 1859 for his contemporaries of Great Britain are still important today. Humans are social animals and we adjust to what conforms to the common thought, to our culture. We collaborate and we can do so by believing in similar ideas that can bind together or tear apart a nation. While inequality of material goods rules on the streets, equality of ideas rules in the minds. Ideas are what the common man and the elite entrepreneur bind together. Or else revolutions can and will arise. Attributed to Victor Hugo, it has been said that nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. One of the most powerful set of ideas has been presented within the realm of religions. Weber would turn it on its head by trying to prove that religion – the Calvinist believes in particular – could be the main driver behind capitalism and ‘development’ (Weber 1958). The prolific writings of Weber made him one of the first great thinkers that acknowledge that both material and ideational interests must play a role in ‘governing man’s conduct’ (Wallace 1994). As pointed out by the great thinkers of the 19th century, ideas and beliefs play a crucial part in people’s lives and hence in understanding power and politics. Ideas are the blanks and blinders to keep people inside of a system that has been pre-determined by achievements, adjustments and agreements of previous generations – histories delivered through culture. Unfortunately for political science investigations into culture, which were believed to guide man’s conduct, have waned from many social sciences since the post-war period (Mehta 2011). Material explanations have taken over in place of ideational explanations for most decades of the 20th century. More recently, however, a small group of political scientists within the field of International Relations have returned to embracing ideational explanations to their studies. Indeed since the mid-1990s a veritable academic industry has developed as analysts have increasingly turned to ideas (Gofas and Hay 2010). This renegade cluster of social scientists have centered on constructivists that have revived theories around the ‘messy’ concepts of culture, identity, beliefs etc. to illuminate international politics. To counter the ‘vulgar materialism’ that saw no impact of ideas on politics, the constructivist brought ideas back to varies degreed ontologically – either within a mix with material explanations (Thin constructivism) or with ‘ideas going all the way down’ (Thick constructivism) (Gofas and Hay 2010). This chapter hopes to give further insides to the different approaches of constructivism that has been used as the theoretical background to this thesis. It first starts with a quick and most rudimentary definition of a political economy analysis (PEA) before moving to illuminate key influences of constructivists within the realm of International Relations that have brought ideational approaches back into the social science discussions. The caveat is that the constructivists work has mostly focused Part I: General Theories and Histories 57 on theoretical rather than empirical studies, as well as focused on developed rather than developing nations. In an attempt to bridge the gap between political science and development studies the second part of this Chapter will then delineate the importance of political economy analysis for development studies (in opposition to the technocratic approach that has been used in the majority of times) by summarizing approaches of stakeholders within the aid organizations that have tried to operationalize ideational approaches in PEAs. The last part of the chapter tries to outline peculiarities that must be kept in mind for such analyses on the sub-Saharan African continent in particular. The fairly recent implementation and the issues of democracy on the continent and elsewhere will be discussed briefly, before attempting to bring attention to ideational influences that are often related to histories of the various countries during the close of the Chapter.

3.1. The rise and fall of ideational approaches in the political sciences polit/ical econ/omy, 1. a social science dealing with political policies and economic processes, their interrelations, and their influence on social institutions (Webster 1996, p.1113). In the 19tth century, the definition of political economy was similar to modern day economics, however, chiefly dealing with government policies. The rudimentary definition above depicts the starting point of the analysis: political policies, economic processes, their interactions and their influences. Political scientists have always been interested in power, as well as explaining occurrences with broad social impact (Rathbun 2008). It is acknowledged that policies and economic processes are mostly a result of political struggle (within an intuitional structure) (Alesina and Perotti 1994). However, in the realm of political analysis facts are often meaningless without the context so the challenge is to locate the relevant information (Smith 2011). Political Economy Analyses then usually focus on interaction of political and economic processes, in particular the distribution of power and wealth between the different stockholder, as well as the processes that create, sustain and transform these relationships. Traditional PEAs are usually centered on Structures, Institutions, and Agency, and are mostly concerned with material explanations, i.e. factors that can be counted (in budgets), read (in policies) and traced through set structures (in legal documents). PEA is will be discussed in more detail toward the second part of this Chapter. As mentioned in previous pages ideational factors, including values, norms identities and beliefs as a source of influence and power over people, taken a hiatus in most social science investigations in most of the 20th century. As pointed out in the introduction of the Chapter this was not always the case. Marx most famously remarked that religion is ‘opium of the people’, but it was Max Weber that tried to understand how the belief system influences people’s lives and successes. Weber who labored most intensely over the role of ideas and their relationship to interests also pointed to the decisive role of culture for understanding personal and political behaviors (Weber 1946). It was he who underlined that believes or values were just as ‘real’ as material forces, and that ideas were either enmeshed 58 Part I: General Theories and Histories within the social fabric or had a great potential to impact the spheres of social life (the most important being economic, religious and the intellectual sphere) when they were more differentiated (Weber 1946). Following Weber’s lines of investigations, political analyses should aim at understanding fundamental cultural values that shape authority and power relations in a given country (Smith 2011). In the struggle for power in politics, people are then compelled by a great number of ideas on what is appropriate, legitimate, and proper considering their pride, fears, expectations etc., which in turn are shaped by cultural forces of shared beliefs and public narratives (Béland and Cox 2011). In recent years it has been the constructivists within the field of International Relations (IR) who have presented a variety of aspects and approaches that are worth considering for PEA in a developing country. Beland and Cox (2011), for example, hail ideas to be the primary source of political behavior, and provide us with an interpretive framework in which values and preferences are translated into goals, strategies and actions. For these authors the ideas are defined as causal beliefs, and the translation is important as most social scientists have been compelled to strive for causality (particularly in Anglophone academia) despite the recognition of the world is being socially constructed, and hence of immense complexity. Others believe that this multilayered web of indiscernible interconnections that influence interests beyond the material analysis, equals to a fluid ideational structure that can be difficult [or impossible] to grasp, as ideas are reconsidered and redefined when actors exchange, reflect debate with one another (Béland and Cox 2011). The recognition of complexity that often stands in the way of causality has kept ideas on the sidelines of social science research. Béland and Cox point out: [I]deas have held a beleaguered status, often derided as imprecise or placed lower in status than material interests as motives for political and social action (2011, p.6). The economics discipline - the ‘queen’ of the social science - has played its part in greatly reducing the notions of a socially constructed world by increased mathematization over the last decades (Weingast and Wittman 2006) in which stoic assumptions of machine-like humans have guided the rigidly structured formulas, absent of human inconsistencies in additional to sidestepping space and time. The potential of homo economics having different attitudes and motives in the exactly similar situation only because the deal is offered by an altered actor, e.g. his mother vs. his political opponent, would make calculations too complex and currently impossible to include in the models used. This reduction to what can be counted, predicted, and logged into a workbook has swept over the social science, and ideational approaches under the royal carpet. Nowadays quantitative methods and material explanations have been created into the pinnacle of what is often considered valuable research. Especially in the developing country context this rather rigid approach can cause misunderstandings and lead to dreadful conclusion. Withstanding the regal pressures within the field, psychologists, anthropologists/ethnographers and sociologists have shown continued and keen interest into broadening our understanding of identities, attitudes and beliefs onto how they influence behaviors, while the aforementioned constructivists have Part I: General Theories and Histories 59 built up their position within the field of International Relations (Abdelal et al. 2010). It is the ontology of social constructivism that provides the framework for these ideational scholars. It has led some scholars to claim that without considering ideas, which are essential elements of social science inquiries into human nature and social systems, research produces serous misleading explanations (Blyth 2011; Béland and Cox 2011). Yet between the time of Weber’s writings and the end of the cold war most social scientists shied away from ideational approach to research. During this time it was the marketers and other propagandist that tried to understand, use and harvest the power of ideas. With the rise of the free market system over the past century clever capitalists have used the knowledge and support of psychologists in understanding the connection of ideas (in forms of beliefs and attitudes) on actions and behavior. Pioneers such as Ajzen and Fishbein, had their biggest impact in the realm of consumer research, in which they attempted to prove an existing link between salient beliefs/attitudes and behavior in the 1970s (Fishbein and Ajzen 1980; Ajzen and Fishbein 2002). For the marketing research and advertising world this paved the way of image campaigns aiming to mold the beliefs and attitude of consumers toward certain brands over others. Brand-consciences such as Nike, Coca-Cola or the gamut of Procter & Gamble product lines, have also long understood the importance of image and emotions as part of advertisement strategies that aim to change beliefs, attitudes and intention of consumers by devoting large parts of their budget to advertisements. This approach to marketing, with its root in propaganda campaigns of the war periods of the early 20th century, has most misleadingly spread to the scientific realm where millions of dollars are given to think tanks and public relations firms to produce ideas that satisfy the taste of the donors rather than scientists. One of the most prominent examples are the Koch Brothers ‘donations’ to climate change scientist writing denial papers over the past decades. 73 There are many lessons to learn from these spectacular, and unfortunate (mis)uses of the focus on the power of ideas within the realm business and entrepreneurship, in social science in general and development studies in particular. While the business world benefited from the investment into ideas, political scientists were reluctant to fight the battle against quantitative and causal claims. In the realm of IR the acceptance of ideational approaches have complicated, as mainstream theories, such as Neorealism and Neoliberalism were based on a materialist and individualist ontology, have dominated the field for many decades (Wendt 1999). Only timidly scholars pointed to actors being caught in a web of great complexity and the large degree of uncertainty that makes the use of ideas necessary to guide decisions (Carstensen 2010). This happened increasingly so after the end of the cold war that neither Neorealist nor Neoliberalist had been able to predict. This failure of the traditional IR theories questioned and made room for alternative approaches. The foundation of ideational scholars then based their ontology on the belief in a socially constructed rather than a “natural” world (Finnemore 1996). Constructivist, then became prominent only rather recently, with the end of a cold, but also ideological war in the early 1990s.

73One example is the Greenpeace analysis of their funding projects available here: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-deniers/koch-industries/ [accessed: 12.06.2017]. 60 Part I: General Theories and Histories

In this regards it has been Alexander Wendt that has been the trailblazer for constructivists by brining social theory to international politics in 1992. He has become known for pointing out that relatively little of international life is a function of material forces as such, but rather needs to be understood through the analytical lens of ideas and culture. Acknowledging that much of what happens within the international system is what actors think opened up political science for interventions that would be impossible before (Wendt 1999). This interpretations that collectively held ideas shape the social, economic, and political spheres has since then returned into the realm of investigations (Abdelal et al. 2010; Wendt 1999). The acknowledgment that great uncertainties that life and hence the international system present, are balanced by ideas and guided by norms enclosed in culture, led to an assortment of approaches with the constructivist arena. Wendt, as well as many other scholars, chose the middle ground in explaining state relations with material interests AND ideational forces. Other follow the belief in “ideas all the way down”, associated with a thinkers of the more radical branch of constructivists that see no room for material explanations. The key is to reclaim power and interest from materialism by showing how their content and meaning are constituted by ideas and culture (Wendt 1999, p.371). It has been claimed that in recent years ideational research has attained a mainstream position within political science (see: Carstensen 2010). And indeed there has been a multitude of theoretical frameworks developed within the ideational scholar communities.. In The role of ideas in political analysis Hay and Gogas (2010) skillfully juxtapose t main approaches to political analysis with constructivist components: Rational Choice Theory; Thick (radical) Constructivism; Thin (Wendtian) Constructivism; and Critical Realism. While Rational Choice theorist prioritizes material explanations over ideational ontologies yet use ideational variables when material explanations falter, Critical Realists assign an equal weight to material and ideational factors, but have the option of seeing ideas as causal, constitutive or causally constitutive (Gofas and Hay 2010). The third and fourth approaches are Thick and Thin Constructivism and in further detailed summed up in Table 1:

Part I: General Theories and Histories 61

Table 1: Thick vs. Thin Constructivism (Source: Modified and abridged from Gofas and Hay 2010 p.17).

Ontology (relationship Epistemology between the (appeal to causal and Approach to ideas ideational and the or constitutive logics) material)

Accords an Rigidly demarcates ontological Ideas as constitutive: causal and constitutive equivalence to retains a residual Thin (Wendtian) logics while appealing material and ideational (causal) materialism constructivism) to both; retains a factors; ontological and tends towards a Human conception of dualism of material structural idealism causality and ideational factors

Material and ideational Thick (radical) ontologically Rejects causal in favor „Ideas all the way constructivism indistinguishable; of constitutive logics down“ materiality denied causal capacity

As can be seen in the table above, Wendt, rightfully or not, has had a major impact on the field of IR with one approach informally named after him. Potentially this is due to his diplomatic approach of the principled middle way between the ‘vulgar materialism’ that ridicules ideas as having no impact on politics’ on one side, and ‘radical constructivism’ that proceeded as nature and the distribution of capabilities (principally, geographical and resource constraints) did not matter, on the other (Gofas and Hay 2010,;Wendt 1999). Wendt suggests that rather than denying that distribution and composition of material capabilities (which Wendt sees as largely technologically determined) matter, constructivists should accept that they define the possibilities of our action at any given moment, while at the same time acknowledging that ideas and culture give impetus and direction to the ongoing human effort to transcend these ‘natural’ constraints (Gofas and Hay 2010; Wendt 1999). Epistemologically the Wendtian tradition tried to strike a similar balance, in this case between the constitutive and the causal questions (Wendt 1999). Radical constructivist in contrast, can be descried as believing in ‘ideas all the way down’, assigning no causal explanatory power to material factors (Gofas and Hay 2010). Instead they follow a constitutive logic. For this thesis the principled middle way, according a dualism between material and ideational explanations is favored, and hence follows a Thin (Wendtian) constructivism ontologically. However, this thesis rather follows a Thick, or radical constructivism, epistemologically that believes in a constitutive rather than a causal logic. This is because the web of social interrelations and interdependencies are deemed as too complex for a scientist to establish causality in a sector analysis. 62 Part I: General Theories and Histories

3.2. Ideational influences on institutions, agents and structure Ideas are not so much mental as symbolic and organizational; they are embedded not only in human brains but also in the ‘collective memories,’ government procedures, educational systems, and the rhetoric of statecraft (Legro; 2005, p.6)

The theoretical underpinning for most orthodox social scientist, including political sciences and economics has been based on the conception of man being a self-interested utility maximizers. Adam Smith famously declared that this self-interest and not the benevolence of man (e.g. the butcher, the brewer and the baker etc.) would bring a society forward (Smith 1776). In line with this logic Political Economy Analysis (PEA) has always focused on power, most often associated with economic resources (i.e. money/wealth). Constructivists following the Wendtian tradition would add a: “Yes, But”…you also have to consider ideational factors. So while usually there are three key concepts that must be considered for PEA: Institutions that exist, the Agents that populate them, and the Structures that they are supposed to be acting within them, the constructivists add the importance of ideas that are on top of the three areas of investigations. In the next section ideational influence around the three key concepts of a political economy analysis will be further illuminated, as depicted in Figure 15 below.

Figure 15: Key Concepts of PEA within an ideational approach (Source: own compilation).

Ideas include beliefs (e.g. religion or political ideologies), norms (what is considered “right” vs. “wrong” e.g. opinions on same-sex marriage) and values (such as freedom). Another way of capturing this variety of ideas that influence the three concepts mentioned above is by the concept of ‘culture’. It arises from the acknowledgment of humans as being social animals that live in interconnected networks and hence are influenced by the group of people surrounding them in their present Part I: General Theories and Histories 63 generation, as well as the past generations that have passed on ideational influences (via stories and histories) underpinned by material marks (i.e. monuments, houses, keep-sacks etc.) that form a symbiotic synthesis influencing individuals today. The way children are raised, and what stories are being told to them, then marks the beginning of an ideational journey that will shape believes, norms and values that later influences their actions. These public narratives, histories, are of particular importance in this study, as they provide important evidence on what the current state of shared ideas are. With a closer look at the past narratives, it can also help to trace and capture the formation of important ideas over time, leading to further understanding and potentially prediction how things might change in the future. As mentioned recent economic thinking has left little room for ideas, believes or culture. It might then come as a surprise that Friedrich August von Hayek, whose ideas were used to draw up what has become known as Neoliberalism, also included concepts of tradition, customs and habits: There probably never has existed a genuine belief in freedom, and there has certainly been no successful attempt to operate a free society, without a genuine reverence for grown institutions, for customs and habits [....] (p)aradoxical as it may appear, it is probably true that a successful free society will always in a large measure be a traditional-bound society(Hayek 1960, p.122). While pointing to the importance of institutions, FA Hayek also alludes to a ‘constructivist’ approach when highlighting the importance of traditions within societies in his Constitutions of Liberty (1960). It can be said that he advocates for a view on institution that must be understood within their flow of history. In the age of globalization it must be added that while valuing tradition in societies as well as institutions, we also have to understand the broader, international context that institution operate within. Hence, later constructivists have pointed to the fact that the structure of international institutions, and the meaning attached to them, have been shaped by mutual perceptions and expectations that ultimately have become self-confirming (Finnemore 1996). Furthermore constructivist believe that ideas are enshrined in institutions, and people within them are often forced to adhere to the founding ideas as times goes on (Béland and Cox 2011). Historic institutionalists therefore examine the initial conditions and their changes over time to uncover so-called ‘path-dependencies’ (Schmidt 2011). They see policies underlying a path of dependency, because once a particular course of action has been introduced, it is difficult to reverse, as there is less resistance when sticking with the status quo (Pierson 2000). However, looked at through the ideational lens Beland describes this as ‘cognitive locks’ that causes policies as well as institutions to be reproduced over time (Beland 2007). It is the idea of the policy that serves as a blueprint, yet can also offer actors a powerful weapon when using ideology to challenge existing patterns and arrangements (Beland 2007). There are a number of other analysis methods on institutions, including sociological institutionalists, which considers the cultural framework (of rules and norms) present, leading to a 64 Part I: General Theories and Histories

‘logic of appropriateness’, or discursive institutionalists which considers the discourse present leading to a ‘logic of communication’ (Schmidt 2011). The line between institutions and agents is a blurred and overlapping one, as it takes people to work in the institutions, and depending on the leadership, rules and norms can be adjusted slightly. While there are complex interconnections within institutions combining culture, historical dependencies, leadership and policy direction, outside influences must be considered also. Network theory then points to the competitive and conflicting interests among state actors themselves, such as different directorates, ministries or institutional branches within the government that influence each institution (Resnick et al. 2015). Advocacy coalition framework (ACF) brings together what is within and outside institutions, by arguing that policy participants will seek allies that hold similar beliefs among legislators, interest groups, intellectuals, researchers and state officials from multiple levels of government (Resnick et al. 2015). Sabatier (1988) extends the advocacy coalition approach by assuming that “people get involved in politics at least in part to translate their beliefs into public policy” and proposes that the advocacy coalitions are composed of people from various backgrounds that share the same set of normative and causal beliefs (Sabatier 1988, p.132). Policies can then only be changed when elites from different advocacy coalitions alter their belief systems (i.e. a set of value priorities, perceptions of important causal relationships, perceptions of world states etc.), often as a result of policy analyses as well as trial and error learning. Mandelkern and Shalev (2010) point to ‘power resources’ and advocacy coalitions when it comes to altering policies. By using a discourse analysis to compare economic policies in Israel in the 1980s they uncovered that the distinguishing factor was not necessarily the idea but rather the persuasiveness of the ideational entrepreneurs that caused a shift in policy direction. In this regard the authors have alerted to the importance of ‘power resources’ (similar to Bourdieu) whereby social or academic capital, such as prestige, reputation, title and status have been crucial to strengthen the authoritative claim, as well as the building and leading of a so call ‘advocacy coalition’ – the group surrounding the ideational leader (Mandelkern and Shalev 2010). Leadership and ability of the leader to persuade the team had a critical influence over the policies chosen. A further example of merging of agents and institutions is the case of politicized bureaucracies in which politicians can ensure the presence of their allies within the bureaucracy, making decision- making easier and implantation easier for the incumbent while deterring quality personnel to join the non-politicized part of the bureaucratic structure (Huber and Shipan 2006). As will be discussed in later Chapters, all the above theories, which acknowledge the complexity and intertwinedness of intuitions and agency, will be of relevance for the analysis of the agricultural sector in Ghana. Particularly the issue of politicized bureaucracies plays an important role in later analysis presented in later Chapters.

Part I: General Theories and Histories 65

Agency - the role of power, identity and image Power plays a central, if generally undertheorized, role in constructivist theory and practice (Best 2010, p.208). The materialistically focused world most of us have come to live in, furthermore demands the assumption that people/politicians are self-interested and power-seeking, and teams of politicians – parties – are (mostly) interested to win office to be in control of the government as our value system has been aimed at money/power (Ansolabehere 2006). Similar to other parts of the world, Ghana’s democratic system has encouraged a focus on the election-cycle for undertaking action, e.g. in the agricultural sector, as will be discussed in later Chapters. In general it is important to note that constructivists recognize the importance of social identities of individuals, as well as states as a whole, which in turn explain interest formation and actions (Abdelal et al. 2010). Identities in this regard have been shaped over time and cannot be seen or understood without the broader historical context, similarly to policies. Ingram et al. (2007) highlight that beyond economic and political resources it is also image, reputation and social standing that matter, particularly in the policy design element of the policy process. The emphasis is then on the ‘construction of target groups or target populations’, based on policy makers’ belief systems (i.e. stereotypes), experiences, or anticipated consequences, while at the same time shaping target groups experience’s and hence perception of their problems’ standing within government priorities (through targeted communication). Ingram et al. add: Thus, policy designs impact public and elite opinion, the social constructions of target groups, the distribution of political power resources, and even the legitimacy of various knowledge systems (2007, p.97). It is generally acknowledged that policies and economic processes are mostly a result of political struggle within an intuitional structure (Alesina and Perotti 1994). Of particular interest are the role of interest groups and the political environment that they are acting in. However, while the interest of political elites, corporations/interest groups, and so-called policy-entrepreneurs 74 matters, it is often through special events or shocks (i.e. strikes, protests and crises) that policy directions change as Resnick et al. (2015) point out. They also underline that: The publicized interest in ‘evidence-based policymaking’ must then also recognize that technical data availability and analysis does not necessarily lead to better-designed policies or policy outcomes (Resnick et al. 2015, p. 13). The power of interest groups matters, and in the case of Ghana it is also the role of Development Partners (DPs) that with their provision of large parts of budget spending, can be said to not just undercut the traditional responsibility relationship established in democracies between politicians and their voters, but even the local interest groups such as the (nascent) corporation sector.

74 A policy entrepreneur can be individuals or corporations that usually possess more resources and greater access to policymakers (Resnick et al. 2015). 66 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Last, but most certainly not least, Meyer et al. (1997) point to the importance of ‘worldwide defined models’ that are then used to legitimize agendas, structures and policies of states, as well as local actors in almost all domains of rationalized social life (Meyer et al. 1997). This is particularly true when it comes to accepted forms of ‘development’, that have been within the Neoliberal framework only since the end of the cold war. This is particularly true for the ‘good student’ Ghana has been with adhere to Structural Adjustment Programs in the 1980s, as well as the return to democracy in the 1990s, that has been by most Ghanaian accounts an idea forced upon them by the outside. The subject will therefore be discussed in length during the next Chapter. While constructivists have produced a surfeit of theories, they have produced very little empiricism, particularly within developing countries. To supplement the theoretical framework provided by the constructivist, publications by international development research institutions and agencies have been used to structure a operationalization of a constructivist political economy analyses in Ghana. Thankfully, in recent years, promoted with the failure of usual aid program, these agencies have been more open towards ideational approaches as well. What now follows is a more praxis- oriented approach to a constructivist PEA in a developing country context.

3.3. Political economy analyses in the developing country context As outlined in the previous Chapter development aid was focused on technical solution in the initial decades. This was underpinned by the belief that ‘developed’ countries could share and teach their knowledge to ‘developing countries in an attempt to help them to progress fast’. After the first decades of adventures (and misadventures) of development assistance in countries of the global South, development theorists and practitioners turned their attention towards understanding politics with the rise of the governance debate before including ideational approaches in PEAs as time progressed. Good governance was linked to good leadership, as government would lead a nation by serving to improve the quality of life for the largest possible population, so as each individual of that society would be able to fully develop their capacities to control their lives (Antwi-Danso 2013). This expansion of the ‘development discussion’ can be linked to Sen’s capabilities approach mentioned in Chapter 1. Unfortunately, in many African settings the leading classes have made themselves know rather through self-enrichments by expropriating a nation’s limited resources (Antwi-Danso 2013). The initially governance debate, then, included the concept of power, how it was exercised. It , however, also opened the door towards better understanding norms and management culture within government, in an attempt to make aid programs and projects more ‘sustainable’. The World Bank (WB) was one of the first and more fierce supporters of this approach to aid, followed by the Dutch, Swedish (Sida), British (DFID), Norwegian (Norad), and American (USAID) development agencies, Development research think tanks such as the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) or the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) followed (Hudson and Leftwich 2014), (Haider and Rao 2010), (Resnick et al. 2015). Part I: General Theories and Histories 67

Notwithstanding structural factors, such as a country’s geography, resources endowments or demographic dynamics the time had come to bring back politics as part of the analysis after the fall of the Berlin wall , as the World Bank points out (2014). The Bank can be considered a pioneer in this regard with its publication in 1989 entitled Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth. In it they argued that a cause for the weak economic performance for the SSA countries was the failure of public institutions (World Bank 1989b). The term good governance was born which pointed to the need of efficient public services, reliable judicial system, and accountable administration. The report also pointed to the need for empowerment of ordinary citizen, especially women, supporting nongovernmental organizations and the growing realization that development must be more bottom-up and less top-down (World Bank 1989b). This seminal work was groundbreaking for the first generation of governance studies that would follow in the 1990s, particularly promoted by the Dutch Development Cooperation that was headed by Minster Eveline Herfkens (1998-2002), who incidentally had just concluded six years as an Executive Director at the World Bank in 1996. She re- directed aid to a limited number of partner countries that were meeting some minimum requirement of ‘good governance’ (Hout and Schakel 2015). By the early 2000s multiple other aid agencies joined the Bank and Dutch by focusing on politics of development and governance issues by undertaking various forms of political economy analyses (Hudson and Leftwich 2014). In doing so they hoped to elucidate power structures and provide insights into underlying interests, incentives, rule and institutions to ensure the most efficient use of aid money (Haider and Rao 2010). It is worth noting that this change was only possible after the end of the cold war as it newly allowed criticism of governance, human rights records as the earlier logics of superpower and rivalry, including the fear that countries would turn to Moscow, diminished (Hudson and Leftwich 2014). Various development partners started developing tools for political as well as social analysis in the 2000s including Sida’s Power Analysis, DFID’s Drivers of Change, USAID’s Democratic and Governance Assessment, Norad’s governance analysis and the Dutch Strategic Governance and Corruption Analysis (SGACA) (Haider and Rao 2010; Hudson and Leftwich 2014; Hout and Schakel 2015; DFID 2005). Key concepts in the Political Economy Analyses (PEAs) remained: Structure, Institutions and Agency. However, there were additional themes that frequently emerged. DFID, for example commonly cited: corruption, elite capture (of power and resources), and jointly the role of civil society and external actors (including donors) as Drivers of Change within developing countries (DFID 2005). Sida’s Power Analysis also included the investigation of political and economic drivers (similar to DFID), but widened their frame towards social and cultural causes (including family inequalities, role of gender, class, race and ethnicity) of poverty and lack of progress in developing countries (Sida 2005). While most PEAs still focused on identifying stakeholders, mapping institutors as well as 68 Part I: General Theories and Histories incentives and interests that guide actors, there was an increased interested in ideational approaches within this framework a decade later.

3.3.1. The rise of ideational approaches of PEAs in development aid A first timid ideational-encroaching approach to a PEA is the mentioning of values and ideas in DFID’s 2009 “How To Note”, in which they point to the impact of political ideologies, religion and cultural beliefs on political behavior and public policy. The Norwegians took it a step further by making values, beliefs, trust, cultural and social norms central themes in their “PEA with a legitimacy twist” (Norad 2010).While Norad still focused on ‘power and interests’ of different actors (political and economic elites, social classes, ethnic, tribal and religious groups), as well as formal institutions (e.g. judiciary, bureaucracies, parliament) and informal institutions (traditional leaders and laws) the third pillar is: The influence of social, political and cultural norms, values and ideas, including political ideologies, and religious and cultural beliefs on shaping human relations and interactions, and political and economic competition and the consequent influence on development (Norad 2010, p.7.) As much as the ideational influence is a noteworthy progress within development agencies PEAs, they existed mostly on the margins and never made it to mainstream applicability. The most relevant, and in certain regards most revolutionary approaches to ideational PEA have instead, come from research intuitions/think-tanks such as the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Development Leadership Program (DLP). In some regards the DLP has been the fiercest supporter of the role of ideas as part of the PEA process. In their 2014 publication From Political Economy to Political Analysis they provide an overview of the evolution of PEAs within development agencies while trying to highlight the distinct differences between political and politics (Hudson and Leftwich 2014). In particular they draw attentions to the role of ideas, the subtleties of building and sustaining coalitions, and the role of contingencies (Hudson and Leftwich 2014). ODI’s analytical framework for understanding the political economy of a sector and policy arenas starts with historical/foundational country analysis (Moncrieffe and Luttrell 2005). The importance of history is repeated in stage 2, which also adds power, structural features, ideologies and change progress as headlines for understanding structures, institutions and actors. Stage 2 is further broken down and reflected in Figure 16:

Part I: General Theories and Histories 69

Figure 16: Stage 2: Understanding Organizations, Institutions and Actors (Source: Selected and modified from Moncrieffe and Luttrell 2005 p.5; Figure 2.1: Stages in Political Analysis).

ODI’s framework aims to provide tools of broad political sector analyses, as well as help explain variations in policy making and implementation in an effort to support development partners to reassess and critically reflect on their role in the process (Moncrieffe and Luttrell 2005).

3.3.2. IFPRI’s Kaleidoscope model Policy and its impact have been a focus in the development community with initiatives from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank Group or the Bill and Melinda Gates sponsored AGRA. Policy matters, and must be improved. To support public policy theories and analysis, the IFRPI supported its’ donors (i.e. USAID) with the development of an applied framework, named Kaleidoscope model, to understand divers of change, particularly for agriculture and nutrition policies in the developing-country context (Resnick et al. 2015). IFPRI’s Kaleidoscope Model includes considerations of power and its relation to external actors (development partners in particular), but simultaneously considers influences of interests, ideas and institutions (Resnick et al. 2015). Looking at the agricultural sector IFPRI highlights the issue of low- information, education and media development in developing countries in general, as well as the lack of organized power of interest groups within the agricultural and nutritional spectrum (i.e. scattered, poor smallholder farmers) in particular. African governments are seen as highly centralized with strong executive powers, typically emasculating or coopting interest groups such as unions and farmer associations (ibid). Most significantly, however, it is the development partners that are considered playing a “critical role in shaping interests and beliefs as well as constraining action” within the policy process (Resnick et al. 2015, p.17). The particular distinction of this model is that it draws heavily on political science and even constructivism, but it, relates these theories to developing country contexts – including highlighting the role of DPs as major actors, particularly in the policy 70 Part I: General Theories and Histories making process. This is explained by the low levels of tax mobilization in most developing countries, and hence, a high degree of dependence on donor funding, and also true for Ghana. When policy action is taken it is mostly with a short-term focus for ‘pressing’ policy issues rather than medium to long term policies (such as land reform, maternal health promotion, or micronutrient supplementation) (Resnick et al. 2015). IFPRI’s Kaleidoscope Model goes on to differentiate between three different powers: electoral (i.e. from voters, labor unions, lobbying groups), fiscal (i.e. development partners, private investors), and institutional (i.e. executives, cabinet ministers, members of parliament). In regards to the policy cycle it differentiates five key stages: agenda setting, design, adoption, implementation, and evaluation and reform (Resnick et al. 2015).The issue for developing countries, including Ghana, is often the elite capture (foreign and national) during the policy process, and their domination over ideas, as well as the supporting evidence. Within a country there are often the opposing groups of politicians and technocrats where: (p)oliticians prefer policies and seek institutional changes that support their current needs, including exigencies such as horse trading when negotiating over policies with other powerful stakeholders [i.e. development partners or the private sector] or designing intergovernmental relations with a view to maintaining some form of centralized control, rather than optimizing service delivery (World Bank 2014, p.2). Civil Society Organization, who could call this bluff are unfortunately often just as dependent on donor funding as their governments, and furthermore lack representativeness as they are located and focused on the urban environment (Resnick et al. 2015). The intended beneficiaries are often poor, insufficiently organized, and unaware of how particular policy changes may directly influence their welfare (Resnick et al. 2015, p.19). Most of these issues will be revisited in the Results Chapters. In summary it can be said that development agencies moved from technical assistance in the 1970, to structural adjustment in the 1980s and 90s, to a renewed interest in power and politics under the headline of ‘good governance’ in the 2000s. This is with the knowledge that institutions are underpinned by politics and that effective policy reform require a thorough understand of the political economy environment that can be analyzed through a variety of mean presented in the preceding section. Many of the issues raised in the Political-Economy Analyses, naturally, revolve around the political system in which the majority of nations, including Ghana operate: democracy. The next section traces the democratic development in general, and in the developing country context in particular.

3.3.3. Ideas and caveats of Democracy and the African context With the declared death of communism by the end of the 1980s there was a renewed push for democracy across the globe to underpin the economic system that had survived the cold war: Part I: General Theories and Histories 71 capitalism. While developing countries that were allies of the United States had been supported as long as they agreed with western ideology independent of their kind of government system until then, they were now ‘strongly encouraged’ to embrace models of democracy after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was almost as if one battle had been taken care of, so now the target moved onto others. The winds of change caused particularly great upheavals on the African continent where well-established dictators that had accumulated great fortunes with their savvy support of the right ideas, now had to justify themselves to long oppressed rivals. The horrendous and grandest example was certainly Mobutu Sese Seko that caused Africa’s World War while trying to hold onto power for the 4th decade in a row (Prunier 2012). Slowly but surely democracy moved across the continent, however, not without the caveat that it already had encountered across the oceans in the preceding centuries. Certain individuals throughout history have always seen themselves as the better fit for ruling over the masses, despite the original vision of democracy being a political system in which members would regard one another as political equals, collectively sovereign, and in possession of all the capacities, resources, and institutions they need in order to govern themselves (Dahl 1989). Democratic beginnings in ancient Greece were rather fragile as they excluded women, slaves or resident alien. Similarly the United State of America revived the idea when revolting against the oppressive hand of the British crown in 1776 with similar limitations. Nevertheless, Thomas Jefferson can be credited with the reminder of the ideal when he declared in his independence speech that: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. (Jefferson 1776). Just 13 years after the US Americans the French followed similar paths when during the French National Assembly in 1789 they declared the natural, unalienable and sacred rights of men as being born and remain free and equal (Easterly 2013).This strong and surprising comeback, however, was not without its hurdles – including the exclusion of women along with others from participation - and three centuries later we are still left with the question of best structure and implementation of a government by the people and for the people. [...] until the twentieth century all “democratic” countries were as best governed as male polyarchies (Dahl 1989, p.235). The unceasing and inexorable issue of inequality has also meandered tenaciously throughout time, accompanying democracy and expanded with the rise of neoliberalism since the 1980s before being again amplified after the crisis of capitalism after 2007. This plague of inequality has spread almost independently of a political system, however, has the highest hopes to be besieged and eliminated through participator means of the majority of the people that so often have been excluded from an equal seat at the negotiation table of power. 72 Part I: General Theories and Histories

The unequal distribution of wealth and knowledge had often been linked to different social positions or classes, which led to varying access to official seats and resources (Dahl 1989). Hence, the question has been raised: who governs? The pluralist theory of Robert Dahl (1961) points to interest groups, which have diffused and fragmented positions of power that they coalesce to pressure political leaders/the state into creating beneficial environments while broader society is often left with paying the cost (Dahl 1961/2005). In western ‘democracies’ we have organized and institutionalized these interest groups into lobbies. lobby, n., 2. a group of persons who conduct a campaign to influence members of a legislature to vote according to the group’s special interest (Webster 1996, p.840). It’s an open secret that an army of lobbyists has invaded and established itself from Berlin to , from Sacramento to Washington, or wherever else the structure of the system is decided by elected representatives of the people. The issue with many lobbyists of special interest is - again – their unequal access to wealth and information and hence power. In some regard these men (and women) representing large special interests, e.g. the pharm, finance, or automobile industry, are the best educated and informed a country has to offer. One issue, however, is the narrow focus on the interest of the patron they are obliged to represent. Another issue is the turbidity of transaction and interactions, amplified by the amalgamation of people that seem to go from sitting in the chair of the cabinet to sitting in the chair of the chief executive of large corporation. This culture of intransparency and mutual collaboration between a small group within societies rises great doubt about the effectiveness of democratic systems so proudly extoled in the West. The worrying trend of industries and corporation having revenues (and profits) much larger than total GDP (Gross Domestic Product/income) of nation around the globe, is an issue worth pondering also in regards to understanding the agricultural sector in Ghana. Agricultural business giants such as Bayer-Monsanto, Dow-DuPont or Syngenta-ChemChina are forces to be reckoned with all over the globe. Their influence reaches through Western government into development countries, often and also through the help of governmental aid agencies that have been promoting the private sector as the panacea for development since the onset of Neoliberalism in the 1980s. Most sub-Saharan African countries were ‘set free’ by their colonial administrators with the demand to be guided by democracy. Ghana was the first to claim back independence in 1957, with many others following in the early 60s, while the Southern Part of Africa (e.g. countries such as Zimbabwe (1980), Namibia (1990) and South Africa (1994) with the end of apartheid). Initially most of the newly independent nations tried to allow for the rule of the people, however, for various reasons many of them turned into quasi- or total dictatorships within one decade after independence with turbulent years thereafter. As will be discussed in great detail in Chapter 5 Ghana underwent military coups in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s with rather short-intermission of democratic rule. However, even those were closer to oligarchies than democracies. As the seminal work of Robert Bates (1981) pointed out, most policies were enacted to satisfy elite interests, mostly located in urban areas, but in Part I: General Theories and Histories 73 the case of Ghana also elite farmers, creating rural clients to bridge the gap between town and country (Bates 1981). Politicians in Ghana misused their office as early as the 1960s to convert scarcities (of food stuffs) into personal wealth by concentrating power (e.g. for import licensing only issued by the minister) and restricting supply to certain firms only under discretionary conditions (Bates 1981).This concentration of power, and corrupt practices that arose out of it, can also be examined with Olsonian lens in which this was rather a collective action problem as poor people, including farmers, were too fragmented and too poorly organized to challenge the system of the elite (Olson 1971). Indeed, the failure of democracy and economic development in Africa is due, in large part, to the scramble for wealth by predator elites who have dominated African politics since independence (Antwi-Danso 2013, p.26). During the cold war the West turned a blind eye (or supporting hand) towards the various undemocratic regimes, but changed its approach after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In the case of Ghana the people were asked to cast their vote again in 1992, and every 4 years since then, returning to a peaceful democracy. However, issues of clientalism have remained as parties (i.e. NPP or NDC) will prefer certain groups of business, as well as rely on their support for the highly-competitive and hence expensive election campaigns (Booth et al. 2005; Brierley 2017). Booth and Cammack point out that: Leaders who have bought their way to positions of power may have debts to repay, but the beneficiaries are unlikely to be the generality or ordinary voters (2013, p.83) In addition there had been an establishment and spread of neopatrimonialistic structures in which bureaucracies lack a separation between the ‘private’ and ‘official’ spheres (Booth and Cammack 2013). This recent and rapid transition toward democracy in the 1990 was outwardly buoyed by material as well as ideational factors often from outside the African continent. What is highlighted are the ideational influences, including ‘world images’, which Weber famously regarded as the ‘switchmen’ that determine the tracks along which action can be pushed by the dynamics of interests (Schroeder 1992). It also tries to better understand factors of ‘cultural significance’ (Kulturbedeutung) that have the potential to influence the actors of the West African polities and institutions as they are ‘cultural beings’ (Kulturmenschen) as Weber suggested (Schroeder 1992). The first and maybe most important influence of democracy and development on the African continent are linked to ethnicity and the lack of a national identity.

Ethnicity and National Identity influence on development Ethnicity differentiates what is acquired from one’s culture, most notably religion and language, but also dress, eating habits, noise levels, rules of adolescent dating, or family structures”(Lewis 1985, p.4). 74 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Leaders of the new states in Africa (as well as Asia) were surprised to see that ethnic antagonism could provoke as much violence as racial antagonism after independence, and that divisions around language, religion, or tribal affiliation were much larger than they could have imagined (Lewis 1985). This is partially due to the arbitrarily drawn lines of colonial boundaries from 1884/85 that were accepted as boarder that often cut across tribal and, hence, ethnic communities (Hansen 1987b). This decisive meeting of European men in the distant city of Berlin split a continent and a people in absurd and artificial manners that set boarders between family and friends, while merging long-standing enemies into what are our modern day nations on the African continent. National identities that have been shaped and re-shaped ‘naturally’ over many centuries of war and peace on the European continent are then an artificial and recent creation on the African continent. The lack of national identity continues to be serious issue to overcome in SSA and Ghana, and strongly linked to the diversity of ethnicities present in each nation. In the fight over government positions, which are touted to be very lucrative, ethnicity has been utilized and intensified in importance in the fierce competition for the exiguous chances to access power. This ferociousness of the fight over precious control has led to countless conflicts on the continent and beyond, as political parties foster ethnic sectarianism when targeting at securing their seat by all means necessary. Antwi-Danso warns that: In most parts, politics has become a conduit for personal glorification; a path towards life and living; indeed, a profit-oriented profession (2013, p.34). In Ghana the two many parties - the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the National Patriotic Party (NPP) – have indeed tried to link ethnicity to voters behavior, splitting the country into two groups: the South-West Akan group for NPP and the Northern Regions and Eastern corridor with Ewe for NDC. The ‘us versus them syndrome’ has been entrenched by lack of décor in public discussion with vituperative attacks, threats, intimidation, intemperate languages, arrogance, show of vindictiveness, and criminalization of opposition among some Ghanaian politicians who then use religion and tribe as tools for political contestation to divide the (Antwi-Danso 2013). Lewis’s words (1985, p.5) are still true today, saying as African states: We are still trying to piece together a political philosophy suitable for multiethnic states While Ghana has always remained peaceful, and shows evidence of breaking up the ethnic divide since the last election in December 2016, ethnicity still looms large in a political analysis, while the linked national identity crisis might be the biggest obstacle to widespread progress in Ghana and beyond. With the history of ethnicities there is all a deeply entrenched and only slowly changing form of traditional power that has survived rather unscathed the onset and the re-emergence of democracy in the past century.

Part I: General Theories and Histories 75

Traditional power structures Traditionally the Chief was the leader of a one community and responsible for overseeing laws and customs, guided by the elders, while the ancestors were the custodians of the tribe (Busia 1941/1968). The Chief and the elders were also responsible for military duties during times of war, as well as to perform the necessary scarifies for the welfare of their people (Busia 1941/1968). The overlap of the political, military and spiritual powers within a small group of people was similar to what other parts of the world saw before the 19th century. In the case of Ghana, the role of the chief started to shift, and in parts became compromised when the British colonial administrators used them in their approach of ‘indirect rule’ to exercise power over conquered territories. This potential complicity, as well as direct rivalry towards centralized power, led to a counter-current against these traditional structures under Kwame Nkrumah and the achievement of independence in 1957. Alongside the waxing and waning of democratic and militaristic systems over the decades thereafter, the Chiefs adjusted and ultimately retained their place of importance by being recognized by the central, democratic government in the most recent 1992 constitution. After the initial attempt of the new leaders to concentrate power in the capital, recent decades have reversed this trend towards decentralized power structures, in order to increase the democratic character of the system. This also contributed to create a competitive system of ‘modern’ representation of the people at the district level. While Chiefs are still respected and they are the undisputed custodians over land (particularly in the north of Ghana), their unelected nature constitutes a direct challenge to the legitimacy and relevance of decentralized democratic structures in rural areas. While the traditional political and militaristic structures were mostly replaced or substituted by Western ideas of democracy in the 20th century, the spiritual sphere had been attacked even before then with the invasion of Christian missionaries in the early 19th century. Sacrifices as well as ancestors played a crucial role for prosperity of a community, and: [t]he Earth was regarded as possessing a spirit or power of its own which was helpful if propitiated, and harmful if neglected, but the land was also regarded as belonging to the ancestors (Busia 1941/1968, p.42).

Religion Missionaries of orthodox Christian religions, e.g. Catholicism, tried their best to eliminate these traditional ideas on natural or supernatural spirits and ancestry by replacing them with the import of the belief in one God and his son Jesus. Human and animal sacrifices were forbidden and later to be replaced with monetary sacrifices to the organization introduced as Church. Traditions of singing, drumming and dancing were highly curtailed as European Christian Churches had more military-like rules and processes that required strict obedience and submission, which ultimately cleared the way for later interventions of the colonial powers. 76 Part I: General Theories and Histories

In an analysis of how religion influenced development was most aptly analyzed by Max Weber in his 1905 Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that with important lessons for understanding the belief system and prosperity.

Box 2: Religion and Development – Max Weber’s Analysis Max Weber observed in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that Calvinist countries prosper. He found that the success of the Calvinists was linked to ‘the rationalization of the world and the elimination of magic as a means to salvation’ (Weber 1958, p.117). This was in stark contrast to the Catholic religion in which the priest can act like ‘a magician’ to wipe away all sins, independent of the transgression of the believer. This makes it possible for a Catholic to live a life of sin, yet can still get into proclaimed ‘heaven’ if he can confess to a priest before his death. In a revolutionary step (triggered by Martin Luther) this magical power was taken away from the Catholic priest, as the protestants started to believe that the only entity that can judge is God and only at the end of one’s life, leaving believers wondering and working towards the final day of their judgment. Similar ‘holy work’ that was formerly restricted to priests, nuns and monks was now available and required of the common man, who was supposed to discover his and her God’s given gift and please him by ceaseless, sacred work. The idea of an angry or punishing God that had the common man under constant watch, motivated the believers to work particularly hard, Weber reasoned. The Calvinists also had an added requirement for dedicating their work to the greater public good, rather than their family. While the pure form of Calvinism was rather short-lived and soon merged into other Protestant stemming religion tenants, the power of the belief system nevertheless deserves further consideration

The God of Calvinism demanded of his believers no single good works, but a life of good works combined into a unified system (Weber 1958, p.117). As mentioned before, orthodox missionaries occupied many parts of the African continent already in the early 19th century, paving the way ideationally or going alongside with the second occupier – the European colonist. Missioners representing the Roman Catholic Church continued to be a poor fit for African cultures that had a strong history of singing and dancing when conducting sacred ceremonies. Almost a century and a half later an ideal alternative presented itself to the Christian Africans.75 In the 1960s, while many sub-Saharan countries had just gained independence and longed to free themselves from former colonial shackles of all forms, US American Christian ministers/pastors started to preach successfully on television. Televangelists of the Southern Baptist and Pentecostal church (among

75 The following section is a product of a handful of interviews that were conducted back in Germany after leaving Ghana. Religion represents a serious oversight in this study of ideational influence on the political economic environment of agriculture Ghana. As debate with Ghanaians and other West Africans continued to revolve around religion I decided to question four West Africans and one born-again Christian from the United State via phone and video interviews. All additional resources were internet based and heavily relied on video of evangelists that are regularly and lengthily posted on various websites. Part I: General Theories and Histories 77 others) integrated more ‘charismatic’ elements into their services, such as singing, dancing, as well as hyperbolic speech and gesturing. These so-called holly-rollers additionally focused on ‘miracles’ and went on healing ‘crusades’ by which the evangelists would travel to a number of locations for the purpose of healing the sick. This kind of believe system, with a strong element of magic and musicales, on top of a strong element of music making, dancing and singing was a much better fit than the orthodox religions left by the colonizers. Inspired by the evangelist like Billy Graham, Kenneth Copeland or Oral Roberts, African evangelists started to follow and learn from their American counterparts introducing the Charismatic movement to West Africa.

The Charismatic Movement in West Africa The Charismatic Movement in West Africa finds its origins in a variety of Pentecostal denominations of which many are united under the Assemblies of God group. First followers from the African continent, such as the Benson Idahosa, had learned from and traveled to Bible colleges in the United States to learn in e.g. Gordon Linsay’s Christ for the Nations Institute or at Oral Roberts University.76 Inspired by their US American counterparts, it was especially the healing crusades that became popular over the decade, recently attracting crowds ranging from many hundred to millions of followers across West African nations such as Nigeria, Benin or Ghana. The super-natural elements of the charismatic church services attracts many interested in physical healing, as well as many others that were willing to pray, pay, and work for miracles of economic prosperity that were promised to be possible via God. Part of the Pentecostal faith is the belief in Jesus as the son of God that has taken all the sins with his death 2000 years ago, for men and women that believe in him. In yet another twist, the magical element that was only accessible to the priest under the catholic faith was now available to anybody as a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) belief-system. Similarly the believer is in constant contact with God himself/herself and can ‘confess’ any sins immediately, but is ultimately free of any burden of transgression, as Jesus has taken them away already. One must remember that witch-craft/voodoo/fetish religions and spirits are still strong elements of West African culture, with almost everyone having been in contact with it in one form or another. The Pentecostal church offers multiple good fits with this. 1. It offers an alternative to traditional healers and witch-doctors, particularly with many of the evangelist going on healing crusades. 2. It can offer protection against, heal or cast away any spell sent through voodoo. 3. It presents the hope of quick and lasting wealth and prosperity through the miracles that God makes possible.

76 For additional information on Benson Idahosa and US bible schools for used by charismatic African Church leaders see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Idahosa [accessed: 15.08.2017]. 78 Part I: General Theories and Histories

4. Instead of only paying the tithe, charismatic churches in West Africa utilize the option of non-monetary donations or sacrifices (that were not unusual to Pentecostal Churches in the USA either). For example the church member will donate money but also sacrifice a chicken and bring it to the Pastor so he can pray for the members with a full stomach. One interviewee from Ghana said: “It pleases God for his people to live in faith and prosper in life. However, people are exploiting their fellow brothers to extract money from them due to ignorance.” (No. 236). Transgressions a interviewee adds “God understands that you are a sinner, but he has sent his son; Accept him [and] you have a fresh start” (No.235). Pastors overseeing large Church communities, hence, often gain in wealth and power, at the same time affording clientalistic opportunities to its members by speeding up health care treatment, enabling special arrangements with the executive branch of the government or facilitating soft loans from the Church purse for entrepreneurial undertaking and other events.

In his analysis of Calvinism, Weber points out that the faith calls for asceticism with the condemnation of both dishonesty and impulsive avarice. However, while “asceticism looked upon the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself as highly reprehensible”, it did add “that the attainment of it as a fruit of labor in a calling was a sign of God's blessing” (Weber 1958, p172). In the Charismatic Churches of West Africa, the outward presentation of wealth is allowed and welcomed, as it is a sign of God’s blessing similar to the believe of the Calvinist just mentioned in regards to the ‘fruit of labor’. It is not unusual for pastors of West African churches to display his riches in what some Westerners consider an ostentatious fashion, as it supports the statement: “My God is a rich God” (No. 235). Again, this is not so far from the Calvinist faith that allows the ‘visualization’ of God’s grace and blessings, as described here: With the consciousness of standing in the fullness of God's grace and being visibly blessed by Him, the bourgeois business man, as long as he remained within the bounds of formal correctness, as long as his moral conduct was spotless and the use to which he put his wealth was not objectionable, could follow his pecuniary interests as he would and feel that he was fulfilling a duty in doing so (Weber 1958, p. 176/177). The particularly interesting belief in the Pentecostal faith is in regards to sins, for example the stealing of money, as the believers are taught that: “God said we should love all men [and] if we do not love them we are murderers 1 John 3:15” (No. 236). And the same interviewee also reiterates that after all “He [Jesus] died for our since. Romans 5:8”. Many of the Christian believers in West Africa are very ‘serious’ about their religion, studying their bible - in audio or written form, go to church regularly and often, and referring to God’s grace during common events, e.g. when answering the question “How are you?” with: “Thanks to the Grace Part I: General Theories and Histories 79 of God.” Similarly a Senior Researchers in Ghana recently tweeted this after a promotion to the next higher academic position: “If it were intelligence, wisdom & hard work, many will have been better qualified but God's grace did it” (No.167). Despites its potential pitfalls, the strong and faithful following of the Pentecostal denominations present an opportunity for Africans to change and strengthen their self-believe and ethnicity- transcending identify. It should also be pointed out again that the Christian faith is most prevalent in the southern parts of Ghana, while the Northern parts are mostly influenced by the Islamic faith. The Charismatic Church Movement in West Africa and religion in general is an important subject that is under-investigated and understood in regards to the political and beyond. And while it is particularly powerful, its weakness must also be exposed, as Baldwin so adequately and eloquently reflected on in his time of need while in Church, by asking: And if one despairs – as who has not? – of human love, God’s love alone is left. But God – and I felt this even then, so long ago, on that tremendous floor, unwillingly- is white. And if His love was so great, and if He loved all His children, why were we, the blacks, cast down so far? Why? In spite of all I said thereafter, I found no answer on the floor – not THAT answer, anyway- and I was on the floor all night (1964, p. 34).

Extended family, local narratives and corruption African communalism and general human need for family, the importance of children and inclusiveness of individual members into the group were leading concepts governing life in West Africa before the interference of the West and still today. In the rural setting, children traditionally belong to the entire community and all adults will be considered as father or mother, and in this regard are allowed to discipline or guide the child. This goes as far as civil servants calling their superior that is older in age than them “father” or “mother”, and can have a similar expectation, in so far they should look out for them (if they are from the same ethnicity). Beyond the collectivist culture that has arisen from the small and depending community units, most African cultures are relying on and are structured along extended family lines. Beyond the parents and the brothers and sisters; aunts, uncles and cousins and nephews are of high importance, and are in fairly close contact as well as feel responsible for each other’s welfare. It is said, that only when the economies grows, and with it the standard of income and taxes, governments will be able to better organize and assume responsibilities taken care of by the extended family network (Lewis 1955). So while we find that in wealthier societies members of families see no moral obligation to support distant members. This is often exacerbated in large and urbanized societies where public pressure is limited by the anonymity and ignorance against even the next door neighbors. While the extended family system had tremendous benefits for societies at the subsistence level it can be a weight during times of growth, as successful family members remain besieged by even the most 80 Part I: General Theories and Histories distant relatives deterring additional effort or adding pressure to find additional avenues to satisfy certain demands (Lewis 1955). These family obligations still prevalent in many sub-Saharan countries can also lead to the appointment of unsuitable candidates due to family relations (Lewis 1955). In case a family member disagrees he is often threatened going as far as suggesting ‘traditional’ powers or voodoo to get the person to take his/her responsibility. The fear of witchcraft used on disobeying family members in African societies is difficult to understand by Westerners, but must be considered in the realm of believes influencing actions. Verhelst (1987) points out that a person that has access to a well-paying position/money in collectivist cultures, comes under great pressure to share the benefits with their innumerable and less fortunate ‘brothers’ and ‘cousins’. Family, clan as well as tribal loyalties are often more important than employers whether it be the State, the capitalist boss or a development project. Ghana has an extended family systems, which still seems to lead to behavior favorable towards a select few only rather than a great mass of people. This can be a particular hindrance for civil service or political positions that are explicitly filled to serve the public interest. Achebe puts the behavior into an historical context when he writes about a corrupt official in his 1966 novel, saying : Let them eat,' was the people's opinion, 'After all when the white men used to do all the eating did we commit suicide?' Of course not. And where is the all-powerful white man today? He came, he ate and he went. But we are still around. The Important thing then is to stay alive; [...] It may be your turn to eat tomorrow. Your son may bring home your share (Achebe 1966, p.144). What Chinua Achebe wrote in 1966 rings still true today and should be investigated much further. Many of my interviewees described the issue of taking money (or other benefits) in addition to the contractually agreed compensation by other, unofficial or fraudulent means; similarly to Achebe’s quote. A senior researcher said ‘White people chopped. Now us’, and adds that the reason for this behavior among civil servants or academics is the low salaries (No.128). Another interviewee compared it with the ‘Robin Hood’ syndrome, as it is perceived that many monies are diverted from donor programs, in which the extremely high salaries of foreign ‘expats’ is an open secret (Osei-Asare and Eghan 2014). It is fairly common that national officers only make 1/3 or down to 1/10 of what a foreign staff with similar qualifications gets played. The situation can become as absurd as a senior civil servant of over twenty years of service being paid a lower salary than a student undertaking an internship at the German development agency. It is also commonly known that foreign employees of development organizations such as USAID, GIZ, AfD, any UN organization receive not only extremely high salaries, but often can do so tax-free. Hence, ‘we still see that the Master has everything’, lamented a senior researcher on the subject of unequal payment between foreign and local staff, and adds that she sees this as one reason for corrupt behavior (No. 168). At the same time it must be said that civil servants enjoy an area of other benefits with increasing seniority, such as housing or fuel allowance, vehicles and sitting allowances for meetings. The last one Part I: General Theories and Histories 81 is of particular importance since the rise of participatory approaches within the development community that requires the attendance of local participants to avoid project and programs being simply dictated from abroad. While the idea behind it is honorable, civil servants and other participants have used this opportunity to increase their meager salaries, and not seldom schedules of directors will be adjusted based on the best sitting allowance and per diems for e.g. validation workshop or policy discussion meetings financed by Development Partners with large budgets for these undertaking. I personally have experienced and benefitted from these meetings, which have taken me to the lavish buffets and the nicest meeting rooms in Accra for FAO, AGRA, and WB etc. of which two included me on the per diem list. For example, one event from the AGRA/Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations that made it possible for participants to receive an envelope, with 300 GHC ($70) for a bit over 6 hours of meeting, including a breakfast and a lunch buffet break. The issue of corruption is that ‘it is what everybody is doing’ as a senior researcher described and adds that people would consider you to be stupid if you could get away with it and don’t do it (No.167). And ‘they do get away with it.’ (No.167). The famous Ghanaian investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas released his newest video documentary just a week prior to this comment made in early October, 2015. In this piece, Ghana in the Eyes of God, Anas (whose identity remains hidden) exposed judicial corruption, in what the BBC called the “biggest scandals in the country's history [that] has shaken the foundations of the judiciary”.77 In it, 34 judges (including 12 higher court and 22 lower court judges) and dozens of court officials were caught on video asking and taking bribes from litigants to alter the outcome of their case as justice would demand. A junior researcher lamented about the ‘feeling of helplessness’ due to the omnipresent of so- called corrupt practices and added that there is an ‘active encouragement by people around you’ as they see it as a necessary evil in the ‘survival of the fittest’ (No. 168). Achebe writes his narrative of a rural son that rises to become minister: When I lay down in the double bed that seemed to rise on a cushion of air, and switched on that reading lamp and saw all the beautiful furniture anew from the lying down position and looked beyond the door to the gleaming bathroom and the towels as large as a lappa I had to confess that if I were at that moment made a minister I would be most anxious to remain one for ever [... ]A man who has just come in from the rain and dried his body and put on dry clothes is more reluctant to go out again than another who has been indoors all the time. The trouble with our new nation- as I saw it then lying on the bed- was that none of us had been indoors long enough to be able to say 'To hell with it (1966, p. 37). In this quote Achebe underlines the irresistible attractiveness for men that have suffered and lived in poverty for so long. Corruption scandals involving the misconduct of politicians are a sad reality still

77 Also see the “Ghana’s anti-corruption blockbuster film draws crowds” published by Sammy Darko, BBC Africa, Accra, on 30.09.2015: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34383397 [accessed: 16.08.2017]. For a discussion of the Media ecology used in Anas journalistic investigation (also see Odartey-Wellington et al. 2017) 82 Part I: General Theories and Histories today in countries like Ghana. In very concrete terms Brierley (2017) argues that the political oversight over bureaucrats has impaired governance and increased corruption, by extracting rents from the state to generate funds to finance political parties and election campaigns. Politicians and other high ranking officials and civil servants can threaten with transfers to the ‘bush’ (away from the capital), with holding back of promotions or salaries to break bureaucrats that are particularly inclined to follow moral and ethical callings (Brierley 2017). Similarly to Brierley, my research exposed many stories from civil servants of all ranks being concerned with the tools available to superiors that might lead to transfers or a lack of promotion. Corruption and the misuse of power are serious and widespread issue all across the world. Further research is need how local narratives and histories are influencing corrupt behavior, and how it is supported by the extended family system. Moreover it would be of great interest to find out how the misconduct of the leading elite is influencing the rest of the country by providing such a poor role model for the rest of society. In the past there have been great philosophers, political scientists and psychologists expressing their thoughts on the general subject as the next section show.

Other ideational influences from philosophy to psychology The invention of racism that was made necessary during the time of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to justify the horrendous condition of humans which were supposed to be brothers under the Christian religion had a long lasting impact on several aspect of society (see Lewis 1955). However, the continuation of worldwide discrimination, as well as the usage of structure and langue of the colonial powers by almost all of the now independent nations left unresolved scars on the African people as Fanon points out: Every colonized people- in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality – finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nations (1952/2008, p.9). When it comes to trying to understand ideational influences on the people of the African continent there is probably none better than Frantz Fanon – an Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist and writer from Martinique.78 In his most popular writings, including Black Skin, White Mask (1951) and the Wretched of the Earth (1961), he underlines the importance of identities that have been created by the colonizer and calls for the creation independent ideologies to free Africans of the physical and mental shackles of colonization. Fanon insisted that through the internalization of colonialism many Africans developed an inferiority complex that is intensified among the most educated. With the destruction of self-esteem and the mechanisms of racism the intellectual elite of sub-Saharan Africa is charged with simply attempting to emulate their oppressors to be accepted into their circle (Fanon 1952/2008).

78 He was born in Martinique, studied in France, and served in Algeria – first as a psychiatrist for the French, then a revolutionary for the Algerians. An interesting side note is that Frantz Fanon was an ambassador to Ghana on behalf of the provisional government of Algeria during the late 1950s. Part I: General Theories and Histories 83

Intellectuals on the African continent have been criticized for taking over Western ideas and ‘simply adding color’ to things they have brought back from European universities, while refusing to make a genuine effort to come up with their own ideas as they have become part of the petty bourgeoisie unwilling to give up its privileges “either due to intellectual laziness or simply because it has tasted the Western way of life” (Sankara 2007, p.62). Sankara adds: A passive and pathetic consumer, the petty bourgeoisie abounds in terminology fetishized by the West, just as it abounds in Western whiskey and champagne, enjoyed in lounges of dubious taste. We would search in vain for genuinely new ideas that have emanated from the minds of our “great” intellectuals since the emergence of the now-dated concepts of Negritude and African Personality (2007, p.62). Sankara believed that the West had tried to claim an exclusive monopoly over thought, imagination, and creativity, and warned the educated elite that there was no such thing as unbiased writing. The role of the intellectual elite and the accusation of simply emulating the oppressors, the Western elite, is a subject of crucial importance to this thesis. This supposed symbiosis on the ruling elite of the international society has severe consequences for the ruled: As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels point out: What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class (1948, p.25). Another important author on the subject of ideas, intellectuals and hegemony was Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci underlines that man is not ruled by force alone, but also by ideas and saw a key role with the intellectuals of a society, who would often be the ‘salesmen’ of elites’ ideology within the marketplace of ideas (Bates 1975). It has also been argued by others that every ruling elite finds their ‘political formula’, ranging from religious and supernatural beliefs to ostensibly rational beliefs (like democracy), to justify their domination and gain the acquiescence and even support of the masses (Dahl 1989). The common man, the proletariat as Marx has called it, would need to create their own worldview, their system of beliefs, with the help of the intellectual – the creators, interpreters, and purveys of ideas and beliefs, as Gramsci called it (Dahl 1989). McClelland points instead at the entrepreneurial class within free market societies “which, in pursuit of its objectives, destroys the old social order and introduces new values, new motives, and new social institutions” (1961, p. 426). This issue of an alternative belief system spans much wider than the African continent, as most of the Western World has been told about TINA – There Is No Alternative by Margret Thatcher in the 1980s. The dearth of debates around alternatives presented by left intellectuals, the lack of collaboration among them, combined with the incredible resilience of the capitalistic system despite its recurrent crises has seriously impeded progressive change. How to determine what makes for right timing in the realm of ideas has been contested and thoroughly examined, yet still not perfectly 84 Part I: General Theories and Histories understood as Mehta states (2011). This has been particularly true for large uprisings and revolutions, but also for less monumental occurrences as fashion trends. To explain the emergence of particularly philosophies in public policies or general zeitgeists requires a historical reconstruction (ibid). Dahl adds: [T]he democratic process does not, and cannot, exist as a disembodied entity detached from historical conditions and historically conditioned human beings. Its possibilities and its limits are highly dependent on existing and emergent social structures and consciousness (1989, p.312). While these men have expressed and underlined the importance of social and historical factors on actions of common and privileged people more research should be undertaken to get a better understanding on the connection of these ideational influences on economic and political development. Of particular importance for ideational influences in the broader world have been the theories of economists that were used (and maybe at times misused) by politicians and other elites to shape the development paths of economies and societies across the globe throughout history, and most perniciously the African continent since independence.

Part I: General Theories and Histories 85

4. Evolution of economic ideas in the West and their influence on rest

Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interested is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas [...] Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil (Keynes 1936, p.241).

In the quote above John Maynard Keynes encapsulates the essence of this Chapter, which sets out to trace the powerful ideas of the 21st centuries back to their roots and throughout history, with the hope to clarify and demystify the original intent of their inventors. Of particular importance are ideas of economist that have shaped the currently system of free-market (dominating) capitalism, also known as Neoliberalism, and its relative known as the ‘free-trade’ system (mostly pushed for by the WTO). Keynes’ concerns of men and women in authority taking academic scribbles to form ideas that, in the end, are more dangerous than vested interests for societies, seems true also for the case of Ghana. The following Chapter then tries to highlight the most influential ideas that that have been distilled out of economic scribbles and encroached upon many nations of the developing world since the years of independence. The following section is also meant to provide a better understanding of historic pathways of ideas as well as their authors, which have spread and shaped our current belief system on development in general, and Neoliberal capitalism in particular. In turn, these ideas can be found in discussions and debates on development and agricultural in Ghana, as a plethora of political and economic organizations are internationally connected and inter-dependent. The connection between states, many of which had been established themselves just with the end of the 19th century, has grown enormously since the 1970s and with it the exchange of money, culture, and ideas. This has been amplified by the fact that many sub-Saharan Africa states were the last to re-claim independence from European powers (Ghana being the first in 1957), but had often become (or stayed) dependent on the ‘aid’ from Western societies whose economies were living through a ‘boom’ cycle during the same time. The United States in particular established itself to be a generous creditor to the rest of the world after the Second World War and the establishment of the Bretton Woods System. However, credit applications were often scrutinized on ideational bases, as the United States was using aid also to win the ‘war of hearts and minds’ for claimed liberty for economic actors, as discussed in Chapter 2. The Neoliberal ideas that sprung out of the West in the 1980s moved to influence the rest over the decades to come. The next section then traces the flow of ideas of economists that have had great influence over the development in Ghana and beyond. As Keynes rightfully underlines: The ideas of economist and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist (Keynes 1936, p.350). 86 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Keynes, who was potentially the most famous economist of the 20th century, was not the first to explain and help us develop our economies. Indeed the ‘godfather’ of capitalism is Adam Smith. Yet, even he was influenced by his predecessors, teachers and contemporaries.

4.1. Origins of neoliberal capitalism – the ideas of Adam Smith During the Scottish enlightenment period (18th and 19th centuries), great thinkers like Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and David Hume fiercely debated the character and purpose of man (see Herman 2001). On the one hand, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson saw life as being the pursuit of our inborn morality, so that helping others would bring us happiness and allow us to live joyous, contented lives. Universal desires were made out of compassion and kindness; they proclaimed that the desire to be moral and virtuous, as well as free, including politically, is what ought to drive people (ibid).On the other hand, Hume, similar to Machiavelli, had a more skeptical view of human intentions and motives. For Hume we were simply self-interested slaves of passion – anger, lust, fear, envy, and love of fame –, creatures of habit and products of our environment, with little rational capacity (Herman 2001). Caught in the middle, the moral philosopher and economist, Adam Smith - a good friend of Hume but also a former student of Hutcheson - first published his Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) in 1759 In line with Hume’s argument that human reason is the slave of passion, Smith adds that humans need ‘refined education [...] which can correct the inequalities of our passive feelings’, through ‘recourse to the severest, as well as to the profoundest philosophy’ (Smith 1759, p.122). T. The focus on this writings were then (surprisingly) mostly on ethics and his professorship was in moral philosophy, however, it did not hinder hindered him from being best known as a founding father of the field of economics. Because Smith’s second and most popular publication, the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (WN), followed in 1776. His magnum opus has attracted attention throughout the centuries and was often used as a blueprint explanation and justification for consumer capitalism, as well as free-market focus/ laissez-faire government among Neoliberal thinkers in recent decades. Smith was the first to focus on the division of labor, pointing to the increase of efficiencies and, hence, profitability when tasks (i.e. the making of a pin) are split into special sub-tasks. In his view this division of labor was ‘[t]he greatest improvement in the production powers of labor’ (Smith 1776). While Smith continues to be honored in his innovative idea by replicating specialized tasks and titles throughout all ‘developed’ economies, he is often muted over his concerns about what this division of labor will lead to: The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients from removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and Part I: General Theories and Histories 87

generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become (Smith 1776, V.I. p178).79 Additionally, Smith praises the work and mindfulness of the common man, such as the farmer, when he adds that “[t]he common ploughman, though generally regarded as the pattern of stupidity and ignorance, is seldom defective in his judgment and discretion” (Smith 1776, I.10. p.79).Of equal importance and surprise is the idea around the invisible hand in Smith’s works, which has often been used to justify the focus on free markets in the age of Neoliberalism. But in fact, the oft-referenced phrase of the ‘invisible hand’ is only used three times in over 1000 pages of his major works (WN and TMS). Due to Smith’s emphasis on morality and sympathy in his first book, the term ‘invisible hand’ can possibly be understood as God’s intervention that would keep a balance between ‘insatiable desires’ and altruistic actions, such as taking care of the poor (TMS, IV.1, p.165). In its second publication (WN), he uses it once in a footnote80, while the next quote is the one/only solid appearance of Smith’s invisible hand, where he writes: By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he [the individual with capital] intends his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention (Smith 1776, p.456). The interpretation here can here once more be traced back to an ethical connotation, in which the rich, while promoting their own interest, help their countrymen by investing at home. The historical context of Smith’s time is framed by extensive expansionism and imperialism of the nascent nation of mainland Europe (i.e. Portugal, Spain and the Dutch in particular), as well as mercantilism marked by strong protectionism for domestic industries and the paradigm of self-sufficiency. Likewise it was the era of gold and silver that was accelerated by the discoveries and the plunder of the American continents that allowed the pioneering European states to claim control over international trade. Their shrewdness, paired with their rapacity awoke the Western part of the continent out of a long slumber and transformed Europe into a force to be reckoned with in world affairs. The accumulation of gold and silver through their ‘businesses’ abroad was not without its caveats, as Adam Smith noted:

79 A century later Karl Marx picked up on this dear of Smith, when trying to illuminate the issue of alienations in his magnum opus ‘Das Kapital’ (1867). 80 For the curious reader that is eager to learn more about Adam Smith here is the full Footnote: “A man who consumes 10,000 pounds appears to destroy what ought to give maintenance to 1,000 men. He therefore appears to be the most destructive member of society we can possible conceive. But if we observe this man we shall find that he is no way prejudicial to society, but rather of advantage to it. In the 1st place, he eats no more than what any other man does; he has not a larger stomach than any ordinary ploughman ..[…] consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their won convenience, though the sole end which they propose from the labors of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide which the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of species.”( Smith 1776,(I.xi.c, p.180/181) 88 Part I: General Theories and Histories

So far Europe has, no doubt, gained a real convenience, though surely a trifling one. The cheapness of gold and silver renders those metals rather less fit for the purposes of money than they were before. In order to make the same purchases, we must load ourselves with a greater quantity of them […] (Smith 1776, IV,i. p. 448). While the discovery of the Americas was an ‘essential one’, it was the discovery of the passage to the East Indies, ‘by the Cape of Good Hope, which happened much about the same time’ that opened up ‘perhaps, a still more extensive range of foreign commerce’ (Smith 1776, IV.i. p. 448). The run of Western Europe on the rest of the world, however, was highly competitive and their trade hence strongly protectionist. Smith laments, for example that ‘the Portuguese monopolized the East India trade to themselves for about a century’ and afterwards still restricted all trade by other European nations to go through them (Smith 1776, p. IV.i. p. 448). This behavior of Portugal was by no means unique, as England herself had prohibited its (mostly American) colonies from trading directly with the Netherlands, Spain, France, and other colonies between 1651 and 1733 with the Acts of Trade and Navigation (Navigation Acts). As the preceding paragraph already indicates, it was also a time of government-supported companies, e.g. the Dutch East India Company, in which heads of nations protected local merchants with high tariffs for foreign goods and even supported and defended them, if needed by militaristic interventions. This was intertwined with the paradigm of self-sufficiency, which led governments to forcefully demand all products be made within the borders of their nations. Smith challenged and revolutionized the thinking in this regard, whereby he suggested specializing in what people/nations do best, and trade: It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy (Smith 1776, IV.2. p.11). The subject of free trade, which was eventually furthered by the Smith disciple, David Ricardo, will be discussed in detail in the following section, as it, again, had strong effect on today’s economies. What is equally interesting to recognize is that Smith already had doubt towards ‘statesman’ or other authorities that assume to know the best occupation for each individual. What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it (Smith 1776, p. 456). Fleischacker underlines that the popular interpretation of Smith as believer in the selfishness of men is deeply misguided and instead points to Smith’s egalitarian view (Fleischacker 2004). While Smith’s Part I: General Theories and Histories 89 contemporaries were of the opinion that experts in government would be best suited to guide the development of a nation, Smith, however, had a strong confidence in the judgment of ordinary people (including the poor) and thought that individuals understood their local situation best thus promoting the public good (ibid). He could not yet foresee the power of Multinational Corporations that would take the place of the individual Smith’s envisioned. For his time, however, he was revolutionary. The importance of humanity as well as self-love/interest must also be understood within the frame of historical events and circumstance, as Szelényi points out (2009). Smith lived in the age of Mercantilism and building of the British Empire, marked by a plethora of wars, state-supported monopolies, such as the East India Company, and high inequality promoted by capitalists and their network ability. Smith writes: Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody hears of (1776, p.84). While this quote highlights his mistrust towards the elite, or as he called them the ‘masters,’ Smith was not one to call for the overthrow of the system, as he believed that the elite’s focus to advance their own self-interest would albeit unintentionally, also advance the interest of the entire society (Herman 2001). This belief has been the essence of continuously proclaimed trickle-down economics, even though the recent publications by the French economist, Thomas Picketty (2013), on increased inherited wealth and inequality, begin to shake its foundations. Not all has been rosy for the development of capitalism as the dominant system of thought we can admire today. One part of capitalism’s character is the so-called boom and bust cycles that bring re- occurring crises, which may even come close to collapsing the system that is so particularly crucial for Western Societies. In the early 20th century, Western capitalism underwent one of the worst crises that capitalism knew until then, when the roaring 1920s were followed by an equally massive crash that triggered a slowdown of growth of many economies, the rise of high unemployment, as well as dangerous national sentiments, particularly in the Weimarer Republik - modern day Germany. In this setting, new ideas on how an economy should be run were most prominently presented by the British economist John Maynard Keynes.

4.1.1. The State to the rescue –change toward Keynes’s ideas Keynes, born a century and a half after Smith, encountered different circumstances and obstacles to political and economic developments that have naturally influenced his ideas. He, who had participated in the Versailles peace conference in France in 1919, was shocked and abhorred by the ‘insane delusion and reckless self-regard’ reflected in the treaty that would ‘destroy Germany’ 90 Part I: General Theories and Histories economically and ultimately foster civil conflict ‘in the European family’ once more (Keynes 1919). He later wrote on this trip: “Paris was a nightmare, and everyone there was morbid” (ibid, p. 3).While he foresaw the great danger coming from such a baneful and protectionist treaty that the states of Europe applied with regards to Germany, he was also concerned with the Great Depression that had spread across Europe and the United States. However, Keynes kept an optimistic attitude towards government and life in general. In 1930, for example, Keynes wrote an essay on Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren in which he describes economic life as ‘wings into the future,’ and answers his question to what can be ‘reasonably expected,’ with the ‘three-hour shift or a 15-hour work week’ while asserting that ‘we shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich today’ (Keynes 1930, p.362). Until we would arrive at such a stage, however, capitalism must undergo a ‘process of Creative Destruction,’ where it ‘incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one’ (Keynes 1930, p.364). While he saw the ‘fundamental impulse’ of the engine of capitalism come from the new consumer goods (including the method of production, transportation, trade, and organization that come with it), he saw the misery of and in unemployment (Keynes 1930, p. 364). The lack of demand in labor, indeed, would become a major challenge to Western economies in the 1930s. The basic assumptions in classical economics had been that supply and demand are regulated and brought to equilibrium through the market mechanism of price, and should remain untouched by the State. With the crisis at hand, Keynes tried to analyze to what extend classical economics had caused it, by critically re-examining basic assumptions of the time, including that the ‘simple’ model of supply and demand could explain employment levels and the labor market. Deducting from the model of supply and demand, it was assumed that at all times the labor market would fix itself as long as prices, here wages, were flexible. In case of an excess supply of workers, e.g. a high rate of unemployment, wages would fall and therefore factories would hire more workers – reducing unemployment. With this view of the economy, there was no role for the state to intervene, or speed things up, as markets would adjust themselves in the long run. In the long run, however, Keynes famously remarked, we are all dead (see Sarwat et al. 2014). Instead, according to Keynes, the state must play an important role for maintaining a stable economy with low unemployment by investing, i.e. in infrastructure projects, to contribute to ‘aggregate demand’ in the short run to jump-start the economy. This approach was also based on Keynes belief in psychological factors that were holding many individuals back from investing when the future is uncertain. Similarly capitalists would not re- hire workers or raise their wages, which in turn meant workers were unable to earn incomes and spend it, i.e. increase private consumption, which would revitalize the economy when perceptions and expectations were grim. To break this vicious circle the state must act with countercyclical policies and spend money (if necessary through borrowing) on ‘stimulus packages,’ similar to what Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) embarked on with the ‘New Deal’ across the pond that followed similar lines of Part I: General Theories and Histories 91 logic (alas, independent of Keynes), just around the time The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936) was published. Keynes hoped to see his ideas used for ‘peace and prosperity’ and he was an avid and important member at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 that established what are today known as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization (Keynes 1933). His ideas, however, were also applied as ‘Military Keynesianism,’ which refers to government spending for militaristic purposes to stimulate demand and with it economic growth (see Custers 2010). After an unprecedented three terms, ending with his death, Franklin D. Roosevelt passed his idea on liberty and peace through state-support on to his Democratic vice president Truman who extended it across the ocean when signing the US $ 5 billion Marshall Plan to grant aid to 16 European Nations in 1948. The 1950s saw a Republican President stay two terms as US President, however, continuing Keynesian economics by establishing and supporting the building of public works programs such as the Interstate Highway System or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In a candid farewell speech in 1961 Eisenhower highlights that ‘America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world’ (1, II), but also points out that since World War II the US was ‘compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions’ with annual military spending higher ‘than the net income of all United States corporations.’ Furthermore, the retired Army General, Eisenhower, warned: In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex (1961, p .1, II). This military industrial complex stands to influence the ‘aid’ policies of the US of today, as President Trump pushes for more military aid in 2017. Eisenhower’s advice, however, came in 1961 at a time of the first ‘Red Scare,’ which included widespread fear that lead from witch-hunt-like prosecution of supposed ‘communists’ within the United States, with consequences reaching as far as Hollywood artists and entertainers that were denounced by, among others, then-actor and union leader Ronald Reagan, to the invasions of nations and covert coup d’état of democratically elected leaders outside the United States.81 Coincidentally agricultural surpluses that had arisen out of the FDR’s Agricultural Adjustment Act were sold and handed out as aid starting with Eisenhower (discussed in Chapter 2). Production methods became further industrialized as farm sizes grew while the amount of farmers started to shrink increasingly in Western societies. These societies that started to experience unprecedented growth after the devastating destruction of the Second World War, eventually went on to even supporting the spread of agricultural technology into many developing countries and in particular in Asia through the Green Revolution . The economy of the US continued to grow in the 1960s under Kennedy, Nixon, and Johnson following Keynesian economics. However, building on existing US$ debt due to budget deficit

81 The covert operations included the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. 92 Part I: General Theories and Histories spending, as well as US$ loans to other nations, it became exceedingly difficult to keep the gold standards, which asked the US to match the gold reserves in Fort Knox. By 1971 Nixon had to revoke the monetary system agreed upon at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, in which the US Dollar had been set as at an exchange rate of US$35 per ounce of Gold, and other currencies in turn were ‘set’ or pegged to the US dollar. After the tumultuous end of the 1960s, with growing student protests across the United States, the end of the Bretton Woods System was a continuation and at the same time a new harbinger that announced the process of creative destruction described as necessary in capitalism by Keynes in Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930).82 Having had become increasingly prominent after his death in 1947, Keynes is said to have invented the field of macroeconomics and rose to be called the ‘the most important economist of the twentieth century’ (Chang 2014, p146). ‘Keynesian economics’ dominated theory and policy during the 1950s and 1960s and saw massive application particularly through the bi-partisan use of its ideas by US presidents before and after the war (Sarwat et al. 2014). In the epoch after the Great Depression then, thought-leaders, such as Keynes and FDR, replaced the old belief in the market as the ‘best regulators’ of the economies with a view that market failure exists and should be smoothed by the State. This included ideas around state intervention during economic crisis by extending greater security to the common man (mostly through interventions in the job market, e.g. through public works projects and hardship-relief programs). However, trust in the State and the ideas of Keynes started to wane with the end of the gold standard.

The decline of Keynes’ ideas and the transition to a new idea The 1970s had Western economies struggle with a new phenomenon: ‘stagflation’ – persisting stagnation - slow growth and unemployment AND inflation. The covert US military support to un- democratic elements in the Middle East (i.e. Israel and Iran) in previous decades caused retaliatory acts contributing to the two oil shocks in 1973 and 1979, which simultaneously framed a gloomy end of terrible 20 years of war in Vietnam. The failure of the fight on hearts and minds for freedom and liberty had been preceded by the Watergate scandal (1972) that shook the core of the people’s trust in the then US president Nixon (which eventually/only forced him to resign in 1974). 83 US society in particular was undergoing a deep crisis of trust in regards to democracy as well as capitalism. With the

82 The quote of Keynes, for the avid reader, is: “The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates. [..]This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism” (Keynes 1930, p. 364) 83 While the Watergate scandal started with a rather ‘small incident’ of breaking into the National Democratic Committee (NDC) it went to reveal a paranoid Nixon administration, which had investigated many of its political opponents that lead to multiple abuses of power that were neatly documented in thousands of hours of tape that Nixon had made of the conversations in the oval office and beyond. Even staunch supporters like the religious leader and evangelist Billy Graham, who was a close friend of Nixon, were shocked about the revelations made by the detailed recordings. A few years later (in 1977) Nixon agreed to a four hour televised interview with the Australian journalist David Frost to talk about his time in office, as well as the scandal he caused. Part I: General Theories and Histories 93 image of the state in shambles, room was made for a change in paradigm concerning the guidance of the economy. Widmaier writes: Over the 1970s, the neoclassically technocratic critique of Keynesian egalitarian views would be reinforced by an ascendant post-Vietnam and post-Watergate classical libertarianism, which ultimately facilitated the combined dismissal of incomes policies and fixed exchange rates (2010, p.168).

While the previous crisis of the Great Depression had forced a change in favor of the State as the best regulator and incentivizer of an economy, this crisis resulted in increasing doubt over the State. Rising libertarianism therefore demanded a withdrawal of the State from all spheres of society – moral and otherwise – replacing it with a laissez-fair approach to politics. While liberty was defined as an extension of securities to the common man under FDR and Keynes (via employment and social securities), the new movement saw state involvement in affairs pertaining to individual freedoms as pernicious and destructive. The new ideas that were supposed to rescue capitalism (and democracy) by the mid-1970s can be traced back to have originated from Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich August von Hayek, who had been Keynes’ adversary in previous decades. Retired and almost forgotten his ideas were resurrected in midst of the crises and he was honored in December 1974 (together with Gunnar Myrdal) with the Nobel Prize in Economics (Easterly 2013). This late honor resuscitated some of Hayek’s ideas and laid the foundation of what we now know as Neoliberalism.

4.1.2. A return to the markets- the rise of von Hayek’s ideas By the late 1970s, von Hayek, who strongly influenced and advanced the so-called Austrian School84 of economics (Chang 2014), started to receive increased attention from Western political leaders first in Great Britain and then the United States. Born only 16-years after Keynes, in 1899, von Hayek experienced the horrors of the First World War and the disastrous economic phase in the 1920s, during which the catastrophic intervention attempts by the Austrian-Hungarian Bank let to excessively printing money and causing a hyperinflation that erased entire fortunes of Austrian elites. Hyperinflation in Europe was followed by calamitous low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve in the United States that was suspected to have fueled the historic stock market crash of 1929. These factors were the harbingers of the Great Depression. In his book The Road to Serfdom, written in the early 1940s and building on the ideas of his Professor and mentor’s work Ludwig von Mises, von Hayek describes his believes that central planning by a government, such as had been seen under the Nationalsozialisten in Germany during this time, could only lead to malinvestment (due to a lack of information), disorder, and ultimately, loss of individual liberty. Von Hayek was understandably skeptical towards the state capacity in

84 Carl Menger (1840-1921) was the original founder the ‘Austrian school.’ His ideas were extended by Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) but made particularly popular by Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992). For more details (see Chang 2014). 94 Part I: General Theories and Histories ordering human affairs even with the goal of improving societies, as he saw the complexities of the economy as impossible to be understood or controlled. Perhaps also shaped by his father’s expertise (August von Hayek) in medicine and botany, von Hayek describes the attitude towards the economy as follows: Our attitude ought to be similar to that of the physician toward a living organism: like him, we have to deal with a self-maintaining whole which is kept going by forces which we cannot replace and which we must therefore use in all we try to achieve (1960, p.131). The strong belief in inherent ‘healing powers’ of the markets, being the best possessors of information available, accompanied by a staunch belief in individual freedoms and the evils of ‘unlimited government’ henceforth became his strongest arguments (Hayek 1960). Instead of state intervention and planning, effective competition is what would lead to greatest economic success. However, contrary to his libertarian colleagues, such as Milton Friedman, and the ‘madmen in authority’ using his ideas, Hayek actually assigned a role to the government, e.g. protecting workers’ rights with limited working hours, provision of social service, and protection of the environment with forest reserves, etc. (Hayek 1949, p.46). As Keynes’ sad suspicions over Versailles started to emerge and unleash a tremendous malevolent force by Nazi-led Germany (supported by Italy until 1943) across Europe, von Hayek’s book was also written “to correct the popular and erroneous view that it was caused by a character defect of the German people” (Hayek 1949, p.10). 85 In it he equated Nazi-totalitarianism with the proclaimed socialism of the Soviet Union. Hayek writes: Totalitarianism is the new word we have adopted to describe the unexpected but nevertheless inseparable manifestations of what in theory we call socialism (1949, p.3). While von Hayek’s ultimate target might have been the Nationalsozialisten in Germany and Austria, he was also known for arguing against Marxists on the feasibility of central planning in debates that drew international attention in the 1920s and 1930s (Chang 2014). His dislike of socialism of the Soviet Union and Marxist in general, made him easy friends with leaders of Western nations which were griped by the red scare during the highest of the cold war in the 1980s. In the 1930s, however, von Hayek managed to combine the potential culprits in all forms of totalitarianism, including the so-called socialism of the Soviet Union, in his first prominent book that he wrote during his time at the London School of Economics – LSE- (1931-1950).During this time, the leading economist and adversary, John Maynard Keynes was based just a couple hours north of LSE, at the University of Cambridge. Becoming increasingly prominent as the leading figure of the British delegation of the Bretton Woods convergence, when trying to create economic frameworks and set up international institutions that would support a lasting peace. Against such a formidable foe, von Hayek’s ideas received little attention in Europe and abroad. Nevertheless, in 1945 a condensed version of The Road to Serfdom was published in a print magazine popular in US American

85 This fact is noted in the Foreword of the book, written by Walter E. Williams of the 2005 edition. Part I: General Theories and Histories 95 households known as Reader’s Digest. Founded in 1922, the Digest gained prominence as the leading magazine (except TV Guide) in the United States by the late 1930s, having wide readership and could be read in a variety of languages (Sharp, 2013). It also positioned itself within the framework of ‘American liberty’ and in complete opposition to so-called Soviet socialism (ibid). Indeed, von Hayek moved to the United States in 1950 to teach at the University of Chicago, where he worked with and influenced a ‘brother-in-arms’ in the fight against Keynesianism, the nowadays well-known ‘Libertarian’: Milton Friedman (Haan 2016). Milton Friedman had been part of Friedrich von Hayek’s Mont Perlin Society and attended the first meeting in Switzerland in 1947 (Harvey 2011).86 During his decade in Chicago Friedman, among others, worked with Hayek, whose interest stretched beyond economics into philosophy and political science, as well as the history of ideas. Before returning to Europe a decade later (1962)87, this time to teach at the Albert-Ludwigs- University of Freiburg, Hayek wrote: [T]o succeed in the great struggle of ideas that is under way, we must first of all know what we believe (1960, p.48). Von Hayek’s beliefs in markets over governments as best regulators of an economy would finally triumph over Keynes’s ideas close to half a century later, at the peak of the Cold War (Weingast and Wittman 2006).

The promoters and makers of Neoliberalism The ‘Iron Lady,’ as the Soviets named her, and a public advocate of Hayek since 1975, became Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1979. Margaret Thatcher believed that individual freedoms could be liberated within an institutional framework only by supporting strong private property rights, free markets, and free trading systems (Harvey 2011). She saw it as her task to restrain trade union power and end inflationary stagnation by allowing the market to reign freely once more. In 1981 newly elected President of the United States, Ronald Reagan joined her in this quest. Their economies started a process of deregulation including industries and agriculture (which had overproduced in the preceding decades due to generous government support), and the financial sector was ‘liberated,’ while the power of labor was curbed (Harvey 2011). Inflation rates were targeted and the US Federal Reserve interest rate was increased into the double digits (up to 20% p.a.) the first two years after Reagan took office (Amadeo 2017). While social programs established under the New Deal were rolled back, leaving people exposed to market forces, the military sector continued to follow a pervasion of Keynesian ideas with an expansive policy and massive amounts of government spending in what would be the pinnacle of the Cold War, ballooning the US budget deficit to post World War II heights by the mid-80s. Reagan had

86 For more information (including some interesting photographs) please see The Mont Pelerin Society website: https://www.montpelerin.org/about-mps/ [last accessed: 13.03.2017] 87 Even though von Hayek was initially very welcomed, also from the American conservatives, he did not like the ‘materialistic way of life.’ (Haan 2016 p. 236) 96 Part I: General Theories and Histories become president at a fragile time of US foreign politics. The loss and shame of Vietnam had followed in the late 1970s when the US-backed (and covertly installed) ‘Shah’ of Iran was overthrown in a Revolution, leading to the second oil shock (as well as an extensive hostage crisis). Reagan, who was also an outspoken anti-communist, saw a great threat in the rival ideology of the Soviet Union and focused the US attention onto the Cold War – monetarily and rhetorically. While the Thatcher and Reagan governments only followed some of Hayek’s ideas, they successfully claimed him as a scholarly supporter of their approach to markets and states, now known under the headline of Neoliberalism. The Margaret Thatcher foundation writes: Alongside Milton Friedman, who won his Nobel Prize in 1976, Hayek lent great prestige to the cause of economic liberalism, helping to create the sense of a rightward shift in the intellectual climate, valuable in all sorts of ways to MT [Margaret Thatcher] and others arguing the cause, such as Ronald Reagan.88 The ideology contributed to the intellectual climate, as well as Milton Friedman and other former colleagues at the University of Chicago, who had been educating economists known as the ‘Chicago Boys,’ would later advise in countries around the world to remake their economies in the image of neoliberalism. Likewise, the overt and covert operations that were undertaken in the name of liberty and democracy by the United States government organizations increased the spread of US ideas. In the case of Chile, they intersected already a decade before Reagan became US President. First trainings of the ‘Chicago Boys’ were started by USAID in which the link between the Universidad Catolica in Chile and the University of Chicago, and Milton Friedman was created out of these technical assistance programs in the late 1960s (Brender 2010). After September 11th, 1973, when the socialist President Salvador Allende died during a coup d’état of the Chilean military (aided by the CIA) and eventually brought Augusto Pinochet to power, the Chicago Boys received the opportunity to apply and put into practice the acquired ideas of the University of Chicago (Brender 2010). Chwieroth (2010) underlines that the political success of the ‘Chicago Boys’ in Chile was also linked to their united and numerous appearance in state bureaucracies, as well as their authoritative claim to policy knowledge based on detailed studies to back up there proposed solutions (Chwieroth 2010). While the association with Pinochet was less flattering for Friedman, the success in Chile followed by his Nobel Prize in 1976 added to the good image of Neoliberalism. And meanwhile, on the other side of the pond Thatcher was known for explaining that ‘there is no alternative’ or T.I.N.A. After its first declared success in Chile, Neoliberalism would become the “hegemonic mode of discourse” in the 1980’s, through the “construction of consent,”, as Harvey underlines (2011). The seductive power of neoliberalism being the “guarantor of individual freedom” convinced voters,

88 Margaret Thatcher Foundation on Thatcher, Hayek & Friedman, available online: http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive/Hayek.asp [accessed 08.03.2017]

Part I: General Theories and Histories 97 converted many intellectuals, captured segments of the media, was spread by think-tanks (often with corporate backing and funding) and infiltrated civil societies (ibid). Neoliberalism’s campaigns to convince and convert the public have been particularly successful in communicating the image the conservative elite wielded tightly. Reagan’s past careers, including acting and being a travelling advertising agent for General Electrics, which allowed him to deliver speeches across the nation, made him an excellent public speaker. Margaret Thatcher was equally skilled in public speaking and was less threatening than a male counterpart in this position. Similar to Hayek they had both expressed a strong dislike of the Soviet Union and their proclaimed ideology of socialism. Since the Soviet Union was built around a state- and not market-driven model, logic then almost dictated that in order to be anti-communist one should be anti-statist in the approach to govern the economy. The Soviet Union was the anti-hero, a totalitarian state, enslaving its citizen, as Hayek’s first book title suggested, while the United States fought for freedom and liberty in this fight of good versus evil.

The Reagan Revolution The Neoliberal storyline was professionally planned with an eye for stylistic and materialistic effects, but mystified and underlined by seemingly serendipitous events. The main character, Reagan, started his first term in the January 20, 1981, the same hour as a 444-day lasting Iran hostage crisis ended, only to survive an assassination attempt on his life almost unscathed just a few months later. For the evangelist Reagan, surely this had something of a divine intervention character in a supporting role. Most astonishing, however, might be his political survival and re-election after the Iran-Contra scandal, which implicated Reagan as a liar or aware of illegal arm sales to the new Iranian government for profits that were used to support a vigilante anti-Sandinista group in Nicaragua (PBS Aired February 23, 1998). Instead of a resignation, the coincidental uprisings in the Soviet Union brought Reagan to the negotiation table with Mikhail Gorbachev, crowned by the picturesque ending of asking the Soviet leader to ‘tear down this wall’ in Berlin 1987 (Reagan 1987). At the end of his presidency in January 1989 Reagan was able to say: I hope we have, once, again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts (Reagan 1989). Liberty, in this sense, has been equated with a contraction of government. While in reality the budget deficit increased, the government withdrew from the life of the common man. Meanwhile, the markets were set free and so were the high-income earners/tax payers. Reaganomics, or as Vice President Bush Sr. called it, voodoo economic policy, meant reducing spending on social programs that had supported poor Americans and at the same time shifting focus to the wealthy, who were incentivized by lower taxes to jump-start the economy. Economic growth was supposed to come from the so-called trickle- 98 Part I: General Theories and Histories down-effect. The image of Reagan overcame all obstacles with a strong backing of the US media industry. Chomsky observes: For eight years, the public relations industry and the media had been claiming that this guy revolutionized America – you know, the ‘Reagan Revolution’, this fantastic charismatic figure that everybody loved, he just changed our lives (2002, p.54).89 Supported by the media and serendipitous international events (such as the end of the Cold War) Reagan’s image was glorious and with it the Neoliberal economic idea’s made popular by his supporters and their institutions. During the same time, many of the internationally renowned US Universities, such as Harvard and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), along with the group around Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago started producing neoliberal thinking economists (Harvey 2011). With prestigious education on their resumes, many of the young men and women sought employment in the big international institutions such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. These two institutions gained tremendous importance during the years of the Reagan administration, as many developing countries had adjustable interest rates pegged to the US Federal Reserve rate that reached highs of 20% p.a. in the early years of the 1980s. Many developing states encountered economic turmoil and found it increasingly difficult to pay even the mandatory interest payments to keep the countries afloat (George 1988). The World Bank and IMF were happy to re- finance these loans, but required certain fiscal discipline along with policies originating from Neoliberal thinking, so-called conditionalities, as developing countries particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa had shown stagnation, regression, or at best, disappointing growth from the first decades after independence and despite ‘aid’ World Bank staff, who have often come through the doors of elite US universities, would bring their ideas to developing nations. With the continued ‘success’ of the American and Western ideas spread around the globe: involuntarily through Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) – which Ghana was the first to undergo on the African continent90 – Notwithstanding this rather forceful development, ideas also spread voluntarily through the perception of a glamorous ‘the American-way-of-life’ supported via US media, movies, and music increasingly available with ease of internet connectivity.

The critics within Not all development economics and intellectuals agreed with the Neoliberal approach of markets as the ‘best regulators during a developmental phase from agrarian-dominated to industrial countries, as many African nations aimed and had hoped for in the early days after independence. While

89 As Chomsky and Herman in their book on Manufacturing Consent (1988) had already pointed out that mass media in the US is better understood as an ideological instrument of powerful forces within American society and hence markets, using self-censorship to stay system-supporting and funded (Herman and Chomsky 1988). 90 For Ghana his was called the ERP – the Economic Recovery Program that was implemented under the second coming to power of JJ Rawlings in the early 1980s. Part I: General Theories and Histories 99 ideologically unshaken in the early years, the World Bank undertook serious critical reflection under the auspices of James Wolfensohn and his head economist Joseph Stiglitz around the end of the millennium.91 During his time questions were raised within the Bank particularly in regards to the application of ‘free trade’ models that had been legitimized through the agreements in the World Trade Organizations, but also on IMF policies as well as the Bank’s programs, based on the neoliberal ideology popular at the time (Stiglitz and Charlton 2007). The impressive performance of the East Asian tigers, e.g. Honk Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan92 in the mid-1980s to the mid- 1990s, that all showed strong government involvement, contributed to the period of critical reflection (Stiglitz 1996). Stiglitz’s leadership on open, critical reflection and acceptance of the diversities and complexities of the world complex demanded a humble and flexible approach to developmental support by the international institutions, was, however, not well received by the Washington establishment and ultimately led him to leave the Bank in 1999 (The Economist 1999). A few years later the debate around the role of the State ensued once again, after the financial crises through the US into a Great Recession in 2008, in which the Obama administration eventually decided to step in and ‘bail-out’ parts of the financial sector and dedicated US$700 billion to an Emergency Economic Stabilization Act and fiscal stimulus package (Krugman 2009). ‘Keynes had it right the first time’ where the words of, Paul Krugman, another prominent critical economist who applauded the government’s move and called for even more state-support during this time of need with a deficit-finance recovery à la Keynes. He and others have castigated the savage austerity measures forced upon European Nations such as Greece and Ireland that have been so popular for countries of the global south for decades. As of late, the debate around inequality in the US economy has increased as French economist and Harvard alumni Tomas Picketty’s data presented in Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) underlines to the great advantage the elite has through the benefits of inherited wealth, which on average earns interest above the economic growth rate, and hence widens the gap between rich and poor even further (Piketty 2013). With this book trickle-down economics should have been declared dead, but ignoring the finding and with the old myth still inveterate implanted into the minds of the Republican Party, Trump most recently resurrected tax-cuts for the rich to motivate them to invest and eventually help the poor. What should have evidence that presented a warning against forms of patrimonial capitalism was not able to replace the established narrative of the private sector as the panacea for development. The spending cuts for social programs that are used by a large segment of society and are essential to having a decent society, have been disregarded and ignored by too many of the past US governments. The lack of debate about the issue within the United States, as well as in other countries, is eloquently described by Krugman when he explains:

91 James Wolfensohn became World Bank president in 1995 and stayed until 2005, and appointed the famous and critical Joseph Stiglitz as chief economist. 92In the World Bank paper on the East Asian Miracle ,Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand are also mentioned Stiglitz 1996. 100 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Wealth is so concentrated that a large segment of society is virtually unaware of its existence (2014). While even Nobel Laureates such as Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman and other academics such as Ha- Joon Chang, Steve Keen, Tomas Picketty and Yanis Varoufakis have called for a more balanced approach in the debate of economic ideas for development, they have been mostly sidelined by the establishment, leaving even less hope of academics and critics from the global south, Africa or Ghana in particular.

Same, same, but different - From old to new power structures While the power structures were visibly steep, racially framed and in favor of the Western powers, the transparency started to become more opaque after the Second World War. The old, European colonial powers had been shaken to their cores and the US was just beginning to establish itself as the new hegemon. Over the decade’s new international power structure were established that has also led to the dominance of IMF and the Bank, in which leaders are picked either from European or US American institutions, de facto sidelining and hence disabling willing and capable participants from the global south. While the IMF and the Bank have pushed Neoliberal ideas based on No Hayek in the recent decades, the institutions were constructed through the Bretton Woods agreements that ironically were heavily influences by the ideas of Keynes (Harvey 2011). While many of the policies promoted by the IMF are considered ani-Keynsian, the IMF however, does honor Keynes as their ‘intellectual founding93 Keynes, who has led the British delegation to the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that would set up rules trying to ensure peace and stability in the international financial system, encourage trade, and facilitate the rebuilding of Western Europe, tried to keep in mind the lessons from Versailles and the Great Depression (Sarwat et al. 2014). Counter-Keynes-currents were flowing the already from the powerful US counter-positions, represented by Henry Morgenthau and Harry Dexter White, which insisted on the Dollar to be the standard currency with which the rest of the world had to be pegged, as the United States was setting itself up to be a the new world power with massive gold reserves in Fort Knocks, and blocked Keynes idea of a ‘bancor’ currency to be created. Nevertheless, many of Keynes’ ideas prevailed and have influenced the institutions and nations long after his death in 1946.In the first decades after their creation, the three main Bretton Woods Instructions: the Bank, the International monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, the predecessor of the World Trade Organization – WTO), state mostly in the shadows in the arena for development. In fact, the Bank’s involvement in Sub-Saharan Africa was limited until the early 1980s and the IMF supplied less than 5% of financial needs to developing countries between 1974 and 1979 (George 1988). Similarly most developing countries, particularly in SSA, were preoccupied with setting up their states, and to the extent that they participated in trade negotiations for the GATT, they

93 See the IMF website available at: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/09/basics.htm [accesses 14.03.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 101 only played ‘a small role’ the first 20 years, as Stiglitz and Charlton point out 2007. Surely this had do with late won freedom, particularly on the African continent, where colonial powers only started to loosen their grip in the late 1950s. Interesting for this study, agriculture had been excluded from trade negations within GATT in the early days of international trade liberalization, as the United States requested (and received) a waiver under Article XXV for their domestic farm program in 1955 (Bukovansky 2010). By the 1980s, continuous subsidies to agriculture by the European Community and United States led to a gross overproduction ending with the aforementioned ‘butter mountains’ and wine/milk lakes that flooded the markets. On the zenith of this ‘farm war’ between Western nations, the GATT decided to include agriculture for the first time in ‘free trade’ negotiations: the Uruguay Round (1986-1994) (Bukovansky 2010). The following section aims to explain how the idea of free trade was born, buried and resurrected over the past centuries.

4.2. The cradle of ‘free trade’, to its disappearance and re-emergence There are gains from trade - that is, when countries sell goods and services to each other, this exchange is almost always to their mutual benefit (Krugman and Obstfeld 2003, p.3).

As Krugman and Obstfeld write in the very first chapter of their classic textbook on International Economics that the most important insight is that there are almost always gains from trade. Similarly, Mankiw (2012) points to the ‘long understood’ gains from trade that Adam Smith had labored over in the 18th century. As previously pointed out, Smith was a much more complex economic thinker as often understood, and, as all intellectuals and people, a product of his time. In the end, however it was the disciple of Smith, David Ricardo, that established, pushed for and explained the idea of free trade in its application to entire nations with simple mathematics of wool and wine. In his explanation Ricardo focused on what the idea of ‘comparative advantage’, and while many economists since then have debated the concrete application of this idea through certain policies over others, they all remain united in their support of the general free trade (Mankiw 2012). But how did we arrive at the ideas that seem so indisputable today? We should recalled that at the time of Smith and Ricardo’s writing, England had been working on building an empire, and was rivaled by a row of countries in mainland Europe (e.g. Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, etc.). In the 18th century the first wave of colonialism established itself already and focused most intensely on gathering raw materials (e.g. silver, gold, spices, etc.) from Latin America and Asia, using Africa mostly as a labor reserve to the mines and plantations in ‘the New World.’ Surprisingly, these jaded explorers and businessmen also ensured the correctness of the legal documentations, including trade agreements. These treaties, which usual prohibited trade of the colonial country with anyone else beside the colonial hegemon himself, were not seldom spread by 102 Part I: General Theories and Histories

‘gunboat diplomacy’ (Chang 2014). 94 Hence, it must be understood that Britain was already “buttressed by its colonial undertakings” and “obviously ahead of other countries” when Ricardo emphasized the benefit of free trade agreements (Chang 2014, p.61). while Ricardo already published his analysis in 1817, it took another four decades before Britain gave the impetus towards free trade and was joined by France’s Napoleon III who signed the first cornerstone (Anglo-French) Treaty of Commerce in 1860 that lead the way towards a series of bilateral free-trade agreements with practically all other European nations (Tracy 1989).95 Again, Britain did so when its leadership in industry and commerce were undisputed and it had “everything to gain and nothing to lose” from this “freedom of trade” (ibid, p.16), and it was able to be the “architect and hegemon” of the new “liberal economic order” (Chang 2002, p.13). In initial interlude of free trade in Europe only lasted about a decade before the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 brought about pressures to return to protectionism (Tracy 1989). The ‘Long Depression’ of 1873-86 and the agrarian distress of the 1870s increased the strain permanently and started a protectionist movement led by the newly formed Germany and Friedrich List’s school of nationalist economics, which advocated growth through protection (ibid). The under Bismarck unified Germany (Deutsche Reich) started implementing protective measures that also became known as the ‘union of iron and rye’ in 1879 (Chang 2012b). Germany, who had previously been forced into the most-favored-nation (MFN) clause by France and had committed itself to the removal of tariffs on pig iron and introduced the gold standard before the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), within the following decade, abandoned free trade, implemented protective tariffs, established a general cartel organization, and practiced high-pressure colonial policies while setting up an all-round social insurance system (Polanyi 2001). Germany was no isolated case. As Chang describes in Kicking away the Ladder, virtually all now developed countries “actively used interventionist industrial, trade and technology policies that were aimed at promoting infant industries” (Chang 2002, p.18). Table 2 below illustrates that although many European countries reduced tariff protection between 1860 and 1880, they soon thereafter returned to strong and lasting protectionist measures to grow and develop their economies.

94 The Nanking Treaty which China had to sign with ‘Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland’ in 1842 was maybe the most infamous unequal treaty, yet Latin American countries were already forced into unequal treaties in the 1810s and 1820s upon their independence, and a string of other countries were forced to sign them between the 1820s and 1850s, such as the Ottoman Empire (today’s Turkey), Persia, Siam (Thailand today), and even Japan. (Chang, 2012). 95 Each of which was based on the ‘Most Favored Nation’ principle as to grant the same concessions to all countries automatically, similar to what the World Trade Organization uses today. Part I: General Theories and Histories 103

Table 2: Tariffs in Western Nations from the 19th century and onwards (Source: Table by Bairoch, 1993, p.70, Table 3.3, Notes by Chang 2002, p.17).

The particular protection of agriculture in historic development of the West The onset of the ‘Long Depression’ (1873-86), with the agrarian distress of European countries in the 1870s, led to the rise of agricultural tariffs in order to protect Europe from the flood of grains, meat, and dairy that started to arrive from the New World, and was accelerated by the development of steamships and refrigeration technology. Similarly, grains from Russia and Ukraine were flowing in large quantities due to the development of a railway system (Chang 2012b). Out of protectionist measures, it is the ‘union of iron and rye’ that was the most significant, as it provided heightened agricultural protection to the ‘Junkers’. 96 Other countries now considered ‘developed’ nations, including France, USA, Great Britain, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, and Korea, followed suit (ibid). The George Washington administration in the newly established United States, for example, applied strict protectionist measures under Alexander Hamilton’s tenure as Secretary of Treasury between 1789 and 1795. In line with List’s infant industry promotion strategy across the pond, Hamilton raised tariffs to allow American industries to develop without undue completion from further developed nations (Krugman and Obstfeld 2003). It would take another 40 years and two wars that shifted the balance of power towards the United States that free trade became their declared way to prosperity and world peace for the democracies of the world (ibid). Hence, the second strong wave of protectionism lasted through the Great Depression and two World Wars.

96 Junkers were members of the land owning nobility in Germany, who often used peasant farmers to cultivated and maintain their estates. 104 Part I: General Theories and Histories

It was Keynes, yet again, that pushed the international community to have a discussion around an International Trade Organization (ITO) as part of the Bretton Woods Conference (George 2007). Keynes’ idea of this ITO included a gradual approach to trade, granting weaker countries specific authorization to use government aid, intervention, and protectionism, as well as encouraging the exchange of skills and technology (ibid). However, with the passing of Keynes in 1946, the idea of an ITO that was presented as the Havana Charter was also buried. Instead, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was signed in 1947. While the Havana Charter specifically permitted aid to national industries (through subsidies or government procurement), the GATT intended a much more limited diet of measures in favor of developing countries (McMahon 2006). One can only imagine what would have happened if Keynes and his ideas would have survived and established themselves. Unsurprisingly successes in terms of growth and development remained limited under the GATT. After a decade of disappointing improvements for developing countries’ export performances, the contracting parties (international community, led by the US) requested an examination of the ‘Trends in International Trade’ through GATT (McMahon 2006). The resulting report, known as the Haberler Report, already highlighted the pernicious degree and forms of subsidies used by rich countries (such as the European Economic Community) to promote industry and agriculture in the 1950s(GATT 1958). The Harberle-group of economists appointed out that: We recognize that there are special considerations affecting the position of under-developed primary producing countries, which justify a rather greater use of trade controls by them than by the highly industrialized countries (GATT 1958, p.125). The 1958 report cautions developed countries to only use moderate agricultural protectionism and combine it instead with a shift “towards giving economic aid to under-developed countries more and more in direct financial grants” in the “magnitude of 1 percent of national incomes,” and less and less in the form of low-priced exports (GATT 1958, p.9 and p.51). This underlines the long established evidence in regards to aid and its implementation, that has now been seemingly unheard or disregarded for over have a century. Just when the Haberler Report was written, the first Sub-Saharan African countries re-claimed their independence and the age and importance of development started with the new international institutions that were formed a decade earlier at Bretton Woods, to be used to support its founding fathers in the midst of the Cold War cloud, at times leading to aid as being used as a weapon. Development for Western nations revolved around technology and trade, as agriculture declined in its relative share of importance to their economies (Anriquez and Stamoulis 2007). Yet they subsidized their farmers with a dizzying array of schemes, starting as early as e.g. the 1930s in the United States with its Agricultural Adjustment Act as part of FDR’s New Deal (Summer 2008). Indeed, while free trade was promoted in all sectors of the global economy, the wealthier nations continued to protect their agricultural markets, obtained waivers from the liberalization rules of the GATT from the get-go (Khor 2013). This protection was insisted on mainly for reasons of food Part I: General Theories and Histories 105 security, but also to provide stable livelihoods for farmers who produced high yields, coupled with high costs for land, input, and fuel that made them uncompetitive compared to farmers elsewhere (Chang 2012a). The newly formed European Community (EC) created the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as a substantial pillars in its declaration of 1958 (EPCA 2015). Eventually this support to EC and US farmers lead to the production of ‘butter mountains’ and ‘wine lakes’ that were observed in the 1980s (ibid). In the United States, which had supported its agricultural-sector in various forms since the early 19th century, this didn’t just mean the massive accumulation of agricultural stock but also deficiency payments as well as land idling due to a price collapse in the early 1980s (Summer 2008). Ironically the GATT advised developing countries to use their comparative advantage and specialize in growing cash crops without state support. Developing countries were supposed to aim at exporting to Western markets to earn foreign currency, which then could be used to purchase technology and other goods on the international markets (GATT 1958). This export-led industrialization was described by some as the continuation of the colonial policy of primary product promotion (see Hansen 1987a). Similarly the dangers of a single export-crop dependency was felt by the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, when cocoa production doubled between 1955 and 1965, yet the earnings were half of those from a decade earlier due to a declined international market price (Hansen 1987a). Due to the absence of the hoped-for development and exacerbated by other external crises (such as the oil crises of the 1970s and the strong rise in interest rates in the US under Reagan), many developing countries had to undergo Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), promoted by the World Bank and the IMF, starting in the early 1980s, to receive additional funding. This time period coincides with the overproduction of agricultural products in the West caused by the highly subsidized farming sector, which put downward pressure on agricultural prices. (DeSchutter 2014). This crucially discouraged the anticipated private investment that was supposed to make up for discontinued state support in favor of trade liberalization and the removal of price controls (ibid). The age of Neoliberalism had begun. With lack of investment in agriculture from elsewhere, in combination with the ‘obligation’ to repay previously acquired loans (in hard currency), many developing countries had their vulnerability increased as they became net food importers. The aforementioned food aid, originally meant to relieve the suffering of food deficient people and often served as surplus disposal for Western countries, worsened the situation. Moreover developing countries were made especially vulnerable to (cheap and subsidized) import surges as these hindered the development of the agricultural sector with grave impacts on domestic famers, including loss of jobs and livelihoods, hence reducing incomes that contribute to higher food insecurity (FAO, IFAD and WFP 2015). The situation was not looking this grim everywhere though. Newly industrialized countries in East Asia, including China and India, and abroad, such as Brazil, which did not see international trade as 106 Part I: General Theories and Histories their primary engine of growth until the 1980s, pushed for a seat at the negotiating table within the GATT’s eighth negotiation round (World Trade Organization 2015).

Free Trade in the age of Neoliberalism –The Uruguay Round and the agreement of agriculture With the emergence of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China), their power was felt and resulted in the GATT’s 8th Round – this time in Uruguay - which started in September, 1986. It lasted almost a decade, ending only in April, 1994, represents the first round in which developing countries were actively involved in the discussion. Coincidentally it was ‘quite simply the largest trade negotiation ever’ (World Trade Organization 2015). The Uruguay Round covered an array of issues reaching from ‘toothbrushes to pleasure boats, from banking to telecommunications, and from genes of wild rice to AIDS treatments’ (ibid). Most importantly the shift in international power structures led to the inclusion of agriculture under a free trade agreement This inclusion signaled a systemic shift away from Western exceptionalism, and toward a trade regime that included regulation of agricultural production and trade via an agreement on agriculture (McMahon and Desta 2012). The resulting Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) entered into force with the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on January 1, 1995 and tried to limit state- subsidies or domestic support with an eloquent document comprised of broad differentiations and thorny details. In this document (the AoA) a central differentiation is made between different colored ‘Boxes’ that are defined based on the effects of state support on production and trade. The three WTO boxes are color-coded and include: - Amber Box (with the most direct link to production levels), - Blue Box (for production-limiting programs that still distort trade), and the - Green Box (that have minimal distortion on production and trade) (WTO 1995) Green Box payments from the state to the agricultural sector that only cause a ‘minimal distortion’ are exempt from any calculations, while Amber Box subsidies are defined as having a direct effect on what would be considered a ‘free market and consequently have to be reduced’ (WTO 1995). In general, the goal of the Agreement on agriculture was the establishment of free trade with a focus on the reduction of tariff and non-tariff barriers (Pillar II), as well as export subsidies (Pillar III), over time and depending on the level of subsidies paid and development level reached. In the end, the Uruguay Round’s AoA had turned into a ‘notoriously loophole-filled text’ of ‘ambiguities’ and legal exceptions (Bukovansky 2010, p.71). It had officially set the target for subsidies paid to the agricultural sector “for developing country Members, at the de minimis percentage under this paragraph, of be 10 percent” (WTO 1995, Part IV, Article 6, 4 (b). While in general, developed countries, which were quite considerably above this new target in the 1980s, they simply had to commit to a ‘cut’ in their distorting subsidies over the years to come, developing countries, such as India, which did not give any or only little subsidies to the sector before the Uruguay Round, had to commit itself to 10 percent in advance and despite the persistence of Part I: General Theories and Histories 107 hunger on the sub-continent (Khor 2013). Least Developed Countries (LDCs) instead were obligated to either ‘convert’ non-tariff barriers to tariffs—a process called tariffication—or ‘bind’ their tariffs, creating a ceiling that could not be increased in the future (WTO 1995). Importantly though, as Tandon points out, between 1995 and 2009 the EU cut down its amber box tariffs from €50,181 million to €8,764 million and its blue box tariffs from €20,846 to €5,324. But, at the same time, it raised its green box tariffs from €18,779 million to €63,798 million (Tandon 2016).

4.3. The aftermath of the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) The Agreement on Agriculture was the first attempt to regulate agricultural subsidies, which had been essential and necessary to make Western nations the food-production power houses on the globe. The 10 percent de minimis of state support would mean a sharp reduction in agricultural subsidies or OECD countries. The World Bank unsurprisingly observes that agricultural producer support in OECD member countries has only declined from 37 percent (of gross value of farm receipts) in 1986- 88 to 30 percent in 2003-05 (2007b). Policies, the Bank states, have shifted from support directly linked to product prices (particularly in the EU) “to other less-distorting forms such as cash transfers decoupled from production” (World Bank 2007b, p.10). The report also highlights that such transfers are not ‘neutral,’ as they reduce the variability in farm income (insurance effect) and the aversion to risk (wealth effect), as well as offer an opportunity for banks to make loans that they otherwise would not (World Bank 2007b). Indeed, in absolute terms, the support to agriculture in OECD countries increased from US$242 billion a year to US$273 billion between1986-88 and 2003-05 (World Bank 2007b, p.97). U.S. support to farmers is said to have grown from $61 billion in 1995 to $130 billion in 2010 (Khor 2013). It is estimated that about 31 percent of total revenue for the main grain, oilseed, sugar, and livestock products among OECD members have been subsidies (Summer 2008). In the European Union the CAP – Common Agricultural Policy - has been ‘the most important common policy’ and traditionally taken a large part of the EU’s budget (European Commission 2015). In 1985 an estimated 70 percent of the European budget was dedicated to CAP (ODI 2011). The total CAP budget for 2014- 2020 (in current prices) stands at 408.31 billion euros and represents about 40 percent of the EU budget (European Commission 2015). Similarly the average support rate in the European Union has been estimated at 35 percent of the value of production (Khor 2013). Now in reality, these numbers mean a violation of the agreement of ‘free trade’ and the maximum amount of 10 percent of total production value that a state is allowed to support its agricultural sector. However, as with the mentioned case of the EU, subsidies are mostly labeled as Green Box subsidies, officially causing only minimal distortion and hence are exempt from ramifications through the WTO. To mobilize political support for better use of public expenditures in agriculture, an initial step is greater public disclosure and transparency of budget allocation, and analysis of impacts (World Bank 2007b, p.11). 108 Part I: General Theories and Histories

The insightful and important point underlined by the quote of the Bank, asking for more public disclosure and transparency, has been largely ignored, particularly by the members of the European Union which initiated a new phase of free trade agreements when the WTO started to get stuck in the early 2000s with its Doha Developing round when BRIC-nations gained more power and made for an increasingly difficult negation climate. The Doha ‘Development’ Round started in Qatar in 2001 and is still ongoing, but was soon declared as failed. In the meantime the EU 28 became the ‘world’s number one exporter of agricultural food products,’ with two thirds of these exports going to Least-Developed-Countries -LDCs (worth 4.8 billion euros in 2013) and in total reaching 120 billion euros globally, ‘despite the strong euro in 2013’ (European Commission 2014). The figure below gives an overview of the different agricultural projects that are shipped from the European Union to developing countries and the rest of the world.

Figure 17: Composition of EU agricultural exports in 2013 (Source: European Commission 2014, p. 5, Graph 4).

The European Union has established itself as an agricultural super-power in terms of productive capacity and market size (Bukovansky 2010). The EU is also an important partner for LDS who export their agricultural products, valuing €2.8 billion per year, to us, which in turn represent only 2.8 percent of all EU imports between 2011-2013 (European Commission 2014). This rather insignificant imports for the EU are of crucial importance for LDCs’ balance sheets. With this statistic the EU’s value of agricultural imports from LDCs is four times higher than that corresponding with of ‘Big 5’ - Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan - taken together. This makes the EU the most important trading partner for poor countries, many of them from SSA, particularly for agricultural products Part I: General Theories and Histories 109

(European Commission 2014). One can imagine that this power imbalance makes for unequal negotiation positions, despite the democratic structure of the World Trade Organization.

4.4. The EPAs or free trade by other means In September 2002 the EU started negotiations with African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries to work towards a ‘future Economic Partnership Agreement’ (EPAs). These EPAs were supposed to replace the agreement of Cotonou that had governed trade relations between European nations and many of its former colonies preciously. The Communication from the European Commission to the Council and the European Parliament (18.09.2002) in regards to the EPA was titled: Trade and Development - assisting developing countries to benefit from trade. It indicated the EU’s intention for a ‘global partnership for sustainable development,’ dedicating €20 million ‘to prepare ACP countries and regions for the negotiations of the EPAs (EC 2002). The four fundamental principles of the EPAs were set to be: Partnership, Regional Integration, Flexibility, and ‘Link to WTO’ (EC 2002, p.25). The ACP group, many of which were former colonies, had received preferential access based on a quota system (e.g. for sugar) and could enter the European Community free of duty originally based on the Lomé convention, signed in 1975 (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa 2007). One major declared goal now, however was to ‘ensure compliance’ with the Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) principles of the WTO and wish to follow Article XXIV of the GATT/WTO, which calls for reciprocity and liberalization of ‘substantially all the trade.’ ACP countries were then divided into five Regional Economic Communities (RECs), independent from the already established country groupings through the African Union, and the EPA consequently attempted to align African countries by enforcing a reduction of their customs duties toward zero on a minimum of 80% of imports from the EU, often within 15 years (African Union 2006). Impact assessment studies on national, regional, and continental levels, however, predicted serious adverse consequences, including job losses, closure of industries or deindustrialization, and loss of revenue, while weakening the economic integration process underway in ACP regions (ibid). This knowledge led to a tremendous slow-down of EPA negotiation speed.

A road paved with good intentions – the forceful path to EPAs The origins of the relationship between the European Union and ACP stretches back to the early days of the European Economic Community (Verhelst 1987). They were first formalized in 1975 with the Lomé I convention, under which preferential access based on a quota system (e.g. for sugar) and was followed by other Lomé agreements that were already back then presented as a sort of development support for ACP countries. Lomé III, for example, had its prime importance in the harmonization of financial and technical aid matters, as well as matters concerning the export of food commodities to the EEC. During this time the Togo-Nigerian West African Union was founded to strengthen regional cooperation and trade, and was joined by Ghana in 1973, making it one of the founding members of 110 Part I: General Theories and Histories

ECOWAS in 1975 (Chazan 1983). Under General Acheampong and his Supreme Military Council, Ghana became a signatory of Lomé II, joining ACP countries in their agreement with the EEC in 1975.The Lomé preference system underwent changes (Lomé I-IV), but was ultimately reformed and replaced in 2000, with the signing of the Cotonou Partnership Treaty (Verhelst 1987). On 23 June 2000 in Cotonou, Benin, the new partnership agreement to replace the Lomé treaties, was completed and designed to be in effect for 20 years. The Cotonou agreement established a framework for the European Union’s cooperation relations for economic, social, and cultural development of ACP states, with its main objectives centered around the reduction and eventual eradication of poverty, as well as the gradual integration of ACP states into the global economy, while adhering to the aims of sustainable development and contributing to peace, security, and democratic and political stability of the states (Cotonou Partnership Agreement 2000). Cotonou rolled over the existing unilateral trade preferences up to the end of 2007, but ‘in time’ they were replaced by a WTO- compatible trade arrangement (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa 2007) as Article 1 of GATT requires non-discriminatory trade agreements among WTO members. Under the Lomé convention, ACP countries were not required to ‘reciprocate.’ With regards to the Cotonou Agreement, ACP countries and the EU applied for a waiver from the WTO which was granted in Doha in November 2001 (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa 2007). By September 2002, however, the European Commission started negotiating the Economic Partnership Agreements with seven groups of African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries (five of them in Africa) to negotiate an agreement compliant with WTO rules and underpinned by the idea of trade liberalization made popular again with Neoliberalism. In Africa, EPAs were negotiated in five different Regional Economic Communities (RECs), independent from the already established country groupings through the African Union, which were: • Central Africa (CEMAC)97 • West Africa (ECOWAS)98 • Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA)99 • East African Community (EAC)100 and • Southern African Development Community (SADC)101

97 The following list of countries can be found online at: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/wider- agenda/development/economic-partnerships/negotiations-and-agreements/ [accessed 30.03.2017]; CEMAC: 98 ECOWAS: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Mauritania 99 ESA: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan (Horn of Africa), Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe (southern Africa); Comoros, Mauritius, Madagascar, and Seychelles (Indian Ocean islands) [All countries are members of COMESA] 100 EAC: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania 101 SADC: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, and South Africa are negotiating their EPAs through the SADC EPA Group. The other six members of the broader SADC political region – Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Zambia, and Zimbabwe - are negotiating EPAs within other regional groups. Part I: General Theories and Histories 111

The fear within West African countries, like in other part of Sub-Saharan Africa, was that the open and unprotected exposure to many of the most developed nations’ goods would harm local industries as well as cause substantial revenue losses through the reduction of import tariffs (a non-negligible source of revenue for many developing countries). Part of the negotiations included a list of imports from the EU, which would be excluded from the liberalization commitments under the EPA. However, agreeing upon a common exclusion list had to happen within the regional grouping and was a tedious process, as different countries often had different priorities and sectors they wish to protect from import competition or preserve for revenue generation via tariffs (Karingi and Deotti 2009). Equally, the negotiation agenda included a clarification on the schedule of liberalization of tariffs – from when and over what time period they would be reduced to zero. Ghana was the second country out of the West African group (after Côte d’Ivoire) to sign the interim EPA in 2008 (USDA 2014). Since then, Ghana has been facing a particular kind of quagmire as it became a Lower-Middle-Income Country in 2010 and hence would have lost its preferential access to EU markets under the generalized system of preferences (GSP)102 that continues to run parallel to EPA negations. Similar to Ghana, three other countries were under threat of having to pay customs duties on exports to the EU, namely: Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nigeria. Nigeria, The Gambia, and Mauritania have so far refused to sign the Agreement, and originally Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana sat in the same boat. With a tacit agreement within the ECOWAS nations nobody was supposed to budge. Resistance was strong and many campaigns were initiation by local Civil-Society Organization between 2007 and 2012. However, with the power imbalance in place and active propaganda campaigns financed by the EU, i.e. With speakers at the local universities to promote the agreement and ask to have pressure put on the members of parliament, Côte d’Ivoire was the first country to sign, and Ghana (a direct competitor in the production of cocoa) followed short. By 2014, the West Africa-European Union Economic Partnership Agreement (WA-EU EPA) was adopted by most of the heads of the Economic Community of West African States . After more than a decade of negotiations, the EU and ECOWAS states (besides Nigeria, who is in a more powerful position due to its size of the economy and oil production) agreed on elimination of customs duties for 75 percent of tariff lines, over a period of 20 years, while the 25 percent remaining tariff lines will apply tariffs, ranging to a maximum 35 percent (Göbel 2016). WA-EU EPA covers goods and development cooperation as well as a rendezvous clause that provides for further negotiations on rules and services offered/rendered (GoG 2017).

102 The Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP) supports EU businesses’ competiveness by lowering the costs of imported components and simultaneously allows least developed countries to enter the EU market more easily by paying fewer or no duties. In 2012 the trade rules were changed and the GSP+ (valid until 2023) have been established to include vulnerable low and lower-middle income countries; see http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/development/generalised-scheme-of-preferences/ and http://ec.europa.eu/trade/import-and-export-rules/import-into-eu/gsp-rules/gsp+/ [accessed 25.08.2017] 112 Part I: General Theories and Histories

The EU welcomes Ghana's signing and ratification of the EPA” in August, 2016.103 A Senior Civil Servant at the Ministry of Trade and Industry sums up the EPA ordeal with the words: ‘We are not content about the EPAs, but it’s better than not signing’ (No. 35) Around the same time the European Union decided to enter into bilateral trade agreements with African nations, the United States did also with the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA)

African Growth and Opportunity Act - AGOA Just before the European Union signed the Cotonou Agreement with ACP countries (June 2000), the United States, under President Bill Clinton, enacted the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) in May (200th Congress, United States of America 2000). AGOA has been renewed and is currently in effect until 2025.104 AGOA is supposed to enhance market access for ‘qualifying’ sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries that obey or improve upon their i.e. human rights record. Eligibility for AGOA is determined according to an annual review by the United States, sorting countries into tiers of offenses that could threaten trade accessibility and aid. In Ghana, its issues related to Child/Human Trafficking has led the US to rate it as a Tier 2 for two year with the threat to downgrade in 2017 if conditions do not improve.105 So far Ghana has not been able to take full advantage of the enhanced market access offered AGOA, as the US Department of Agriculture observes (USDA 2014, p.4). This section aimed at highlighting the power imbalances that have led to the ratification of so called ‘free trade agreements with Ghana, and other African countries, despite widespread resistance within the countries of the south. The power imbalances in the international community have favored the European Union as the United States over the past century, leading to a situation that could be described as colonialism by other means. Colonial rules have been replaced with trade rules, and masked with aid. However, as the Ex-president of Ghana, , highlighted in his speech at the UN in 2016: Africa does not need your sympathy of Overseas Development Assistance. Africa needs a fair chance to trade with the rest of the world and amongst ourselves.[...]Removing subsidies to farmers of the advanced world, would create an even playing field for African farmers to compete. Removing revenue and non-revenue barriers to African produce would give African agriculture a fighting chance (Mahama 2016, p.5) Of at least equal importance to the terms of trade and related development options/budget is the international tax regime.

103 Also see European Union – External Action posting, available: https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters- homepage_en/7766/EU%20welcomes%20Ghana%27s%20signing%20and%20ratification%20of%20the%20EP A [accessed 06.09.2017] 104 For additional information see: https://agoa.info/about-agoa.html and https://www.just-style.com/news/us- begins-annual-agoa-eligibility-review-for-2018_id131197.aspx [accessed: 10.05.2017] 105 Also see: MPs respond in: Trafficking: We cannot afford to slip to Tier 3: http://ghanamps.com/news- events/details.php?id=5508 [accessed 06.09.2017]. Part I: General Theories and Histories 113

International tax regime, the sustenance of capital outflow and debt accumulation Not all has been doom and gloom on the Sub-Saharan African continent. The statistically economic tumultuous times of the 1980s and 1990s were left behind in the 2000s (before the global financial crisis), when sub-Saharan African countries recouped with an accelerated growth rate of five percent per year (Boyce and Ndikumana 2012). However, capital remains a chief constraint to development on the continent, hindering public investment, social service delivery, and entrepreneurial finance. At the same time the sub-region has been a source of large-scale capital flight, which has been accelerated along the growth pattern over the last decade (Whittal 2013). This stunning paradox of high indebtedness and high capital flight leads to economic adjustment programs that force cash-strapped developing countries to devote scarce resources to debt-service payments. Unfortunately this is particularly true for Ghana, where we see a large part of the elite living with overseas connection and money flows (estimated US$ 12.4 billion from 1970 to 2010 in Ghana), yet the country has struggled –yet again – with interest payments taking up 30 percent of the budget over the past years. Some of the assets leaving the continent might well be acquired legally, but with great fortunes of any kind, a significant part of it can and should be questioned based on grounds of legitimacy. In 2001 Boyce and Ndikuma’s estimated the total capital flight of 25 low-income Sub-Saharan African countries between 1970 and 1996 to be in excess of US$ 193 billion (in 1996 dollars) – and US$ 285 billion with a modest interest earning on the accumulate capital stock. This US$ 285 billion in capital flight funding is juxtaposed to US$ 178 billion of combined external debt (Boyce and Ndikumana 2001). In their updated report Boyce and Ndikuma estimated the capital outflow between 1970 and 2010 of 33 SSA countries to total US$ 814 billion (in constant 2010 US$) (Boyce and Ndikumana 2012). This surpasses the total official development ‘aid’ to these countries by US$ 155 billion (as ODA stood at US$ 659 billion), or total foreign direct investment by US$ 223 (as FDI stood at US$ 306 billion) and by far exceeding external liabilities of this group, which stood at only US$ 189 billion (ibid).106 The outcome of the international finance and tax regime seems to approach another level of absurdity when interest is considered (based on a modest short-term U.S. Treasury bill rate), which leaves the accumulated capital of US$ 1.06 trillion leaving the SSA continent in 2010US$ (Boyce and Ndikumana 2012). For Ghana the total capital flight from 1970 to 2010 is estimated to have been US$ 12.4 billion, compared to US$ 8.4 billion of debt stock. In the case of Ghana, capital loss seems to be a function of substantial export under-invoicing (net outflows) coupled with import under-invoicing and unrecorded remittances (Boyce and Ndikumana 2012). This sum of money leaving the country places Ghana in the middle of the 33 analyzed SSA, as 16 countries have higher amounts of capital flight, led by Nigeria with US$ 311 billion during the time span (ibid).

106 It should be mentioned that oil rich countries accounted for US$ 591 billion or 72 percent of the total capital flight from the sub-region (Boyce and Ndikumana 2012). 114 Part I: General Theories and Histories

This severe drain on sub-Saharan African economies that seems to be intensifying over time, make the sub-region de facto a net-lender to the world – transferring more capital out of the African continent than it receives in public and private lending (Boyce and Ndikumana 2012). The subject of capital flight is a highly intransparent and too little debate issue, that could get Ghana, as well as many other SSA countries away from ODA and debt accumulations through the international institutions that don’t only charge taxes but often interfere with local policy and development trajectories. With the little money that is left within the country, Ghana has been encouraged and at times coerced of open its arms wide to court international multinational corporations, and lure them in to settle down in tax-free zones, so as to ensure the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) can make up for the lack of national budget.

Ghana Free Zones Board With limited access to international capital markets, which are strictly governed by Western rating agencies such as Moody’s or Standard & Poors, international investors have remained in doubt about the African markets.107 Doubt in creditors is reflected in rating agencies with declaring investments as risky, leading international investors demanding higher interests on loans, which in turn makes borrowing much more expensive for countries such as Ghana. The promoted neoliberal alternative to the state-led approach of concessional borrowing is a market-led approach, making many countries have to compete for FDI. FDI, or ‘the private sector’ monies for development funding is most commonly attracted to low taxes and a certain ‘favorable’ business climate. In this regard, the Ghana Free Zone Board was established in 1995 to: 1) Promote investment through the building of a ‘conducive business environment,’ and 2) Attractive incentives by allowing Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian investors to enjoy a tax free status when they export more than 70% of their production (Alipui 2013)108 The Legal Instrument (LI) 1843 of 2007, identified priority areas for development include: Oil and gas; Textile manufacturing; Agro-food processing; Seafood processing; Floriculture; Information and Communication Technology; Metal Fabrication; Pharmaceuticals; Ethnic Beauty Products; and Light industry/assembling plant (Alipui 2013).The LI 1843 is supported by the Free Zone Act 504, which provides expedition of mandatory bureaucratic processes combined with monetary and non-monetary incentives for investment in the priority areas (Alipui 2013).109

107 See Moody’s blessing Ghana as ‘stable’ from a negative outlook in 2016, after the IMF has started implementing their 3-year program: https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-affirms-Ghanas-issuer-rating- at-B3-changes-outlook-to--PR_355446 [accessed: 09.09.2017] 108 Also see the website: http://www.gfzb.gov.gh/faqs.php [accessed: 06.06.2017] 109 Non-monetary incentives include: no import licensing requirements; minimal customs formalities; allowance of 100% shares by any investor in a free zone enterprise; no restrictions on repatriation of dividends and net profits; payments to service loans abroad and remittances of proceeds from sales of any interest in a free zone investment; permission of foreign currency operation with banks in Ghana; and guarantee of Free Zone investments against nationalization and expropriation. Furthermore there are no restrictions on where investors can locate their enterprises, but they are encouraged to use special enclaves created for this purpose – mainly the Part I: General Theories and Histories 115

Importantly, monetarily investors are incentivized by 100 percent exemption from direct and indirect duties on all import and export of production items from the tax free zone: 100 percent exemption from income tax on profits for 10 years, and a limit of 8 percent of income tax thereafter (Alipui 2013). It is unsurprising that the tax base in Ghana remains weak under these conditions. Furthermore it should be mentioned that foreign experts, for example agronomists working for the GIZ or other development agencies, are in most cases tax exempt, as they fall under the double taxation agreements that most countries, including Ghana have signed with countries of the West. Yet again, depriving a developing country of the much needed hard earned cash that is needed to undertake more public investments, for example in support of the agricultural sector. The next section examines the alternatives SSA countries have been presented with to develop their agriculture sector with instead of the heavy state-sponsored investments that the West has used. Since economist have played a particularly important role in guiding the development trajectories of all countries, but particularly for the global south, their engagement and theories will be considered in more detail, and as usual, through an historic lens to uncover the origins of ideas and their progression. Tracing these prominent economist, aid practioners and agronomist’s ideas that have been influencing and shaping the development in Ghana in general and the agricultural sector in particular, can help us understand the current state of agriculture, especially since the time frames for nature is much longer than for business (ex. a cocoa plantation will take up to 7 years before you can harvest and make a profit).

4.5. Agricultural development ideas for Sub-Saharan Africa The organized study of economics pertaining to issues of developing nations hardly existed before the 1950s (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). Historically, that is related to the fact that many countries, e.g. in Sub - Saharan Africa, were de facto occupied by colonial powers that restricted the debate around development on increasing the output (mostly of raw material) of the colony. Only after the shift of powers from Western Europe to the Unites States and the Soviet Union after the Second World War did the grip on colonies loosen, and the discipline of development economics emerge. This material change was accompanied by an ideational shift in the debate on development for former colonies centered initially on modernization in a step that was seen as an all-embracing process of social change (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). More often than not, the first steps in ‘modernization’ were supposed to be taken based on industrialization programs. As has been discussed in Chapter 2, approaches to development assistance were based on technocratic solutions in the first decades. This approach coincidently led to the rise in importance of so-called ‘development experts.’ As Easterly (a development expert with the World Bank himself) critically points out:

Tema Export Processing Zone near Accra, as well as near Takoradi in the Sekondi Export Processing zone and in the Ashanti Technology Park (Alipui 2013). 116 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Economists before and during the official start of development in the 1950s got seduced by missionary zeal to become anointed as development experts, while a brave and now- forgotten few economists resisted it (2013, p.9). Keeping this caveat in mind, let’s review the original debat3es around development option that have/could have had a heavy influence over Ghana and many SSA countries.

First industry, then agriculture? One of the most famous approaches was to development around the time Ghana achieved independence, has been known as Import-Substitution-Industrialization (ISI). It was made popular in the 1960s in many developing countries and, similar to the aforementioned arguments of Friedrich List and Alexander Hamilton in the centuries before, meant to protect infant industries in nascent industrialized nations. The ISI approach is based on and attributed to the Argentine economist Raul Prebisch, who expanded the argument of Hans Singer in the 1950s, that the price of primary commodities exported by developing countries, relative to the price of industrial goods of Western Nations, ‘are doomed to fall’. This is due to the consumer tastes everywhere (buying fancy things when they get rich), and explained by Perbisch by saying that the commodities of developing countries have an income elasticity of demand less than one, while industrial goods (produced by developed counties) have an income demand elasticity that is not less than unity (Anriquez and Stamoulis 2007).110 This Prebisch-Singer hypothesis served as the basis for the dependency theory and ISI, which opposed the push towards specialization and exportation of primary commodities by developing counties (ex. export of only cocoa out of Ghana to Europe) and instead advocated for industrialization. The ISI approach was very much liked and supported by the first prime Minster of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, that attempted to industrialize Ghana to a certain extent within his years in office (more on this in Chapter 5 that discusses the general and political history of Ghana). The focus was, most importantly, investments to promote industrialization first and foremost, and not agriculture. The second economic idea influencing developing countries that was condemning agriculture was – the “big push” argument. The big push argument is attributed to Hirschman (1958), but is based on the Rosenstain-Roden’s hypothesis that assumes that industrialization can be achieved by investing in several industries separately, even if one sector is not strong enough, because positive externalities will have ‘spill-over’ effects (Anriquez and Stamoulis 2007). Hirschman opposed the balanced growth strategy (in which all sectors grow and have similar externalities that eventually lead to industrialization) equally, and argued that agriculture does not have enough ‘backward linkages’ into

110 Price elasticity refers to consumers’ demand preference, depending on the price of a good. Primary projects, such as agricultural goods/food have much less price elasticity (less than one) as people must eat even when they are poor, while industrial goods have a greater income elasticity of demand (not less than one). When wages and ultimately income rise, the demand for manufactured goods, however, increases more rapidly than agricultural goods (after all you can only eat so much). With a growing and more prosperous world population, primary producing countries will always face a disadvantage. Part I: General Theories and Histories 117 an economy. Hence, the big-push idea suggested focusing on sectors with a greater aptitude for pulling the economy forward, and not agriculture (ibid). Both of these economic theories, which were prominent after the time of independence of Ghana, had a strong agricultural bias. Nevertheless, the 1960s and 1970s continued to see State-led agriculture development in Sub-Saharan Africa and Ghana, however, mostly aimed at exporting raw commodities. This often led to supporting the largest producers that were able to compete in the international market (DeSchutter 2014). Eventually, these approaches contributed to rural-urban migration, particularly in Africa, as small-scale farmers were not able to compete with the highly subsidized cheap prices of industrialized nations. Under the auspices of Robert McNamara as president of the World Bank in the 1960s and 1970s, the development debate shifted towards distributive and social justice (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). This rhetoric continued to evolve. In the following decades, self-reliance and economic independence moved into the limelight, while reasons for the limited pace of modernization and industrialization in most African countries were still questioned (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). With the onset of the Neoliberalism in the 1980s State-support in all its forms were question, but in particularly agriculture was neglected in support for the decades thereafter. While there seems to have been a pestering persistence of the bias against agriculture within the discipline of development economics (and politicians following them) over the decades, there have been counter-currents. One important example is Sir William Arthur Lewis, one of the earliest development economists, was a clear supporter of agriculture in general, including food production for the domestic market, as the starting point for development (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). He emphasized the importance of increased scientific and technical knowledge of the problems pertaining to production and modernization of agriculture as well as better economic organization (down to the village level) and management of the sector through government promotion (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). Parallel to the essential ‘agricultural revolution’ that would be built on enlarged farm units and provision of infrastructure by the government (such as roads, energy, and irrigation) he suggested an industrial revolution, deferred but parallel to the agricultural revolution (ibid). The reason for this mandatory tandem-development is that through the modernization of agriculture, labor will be released from the land that can be absorbed in the industrial sector, which in turn can provide farmers with a remunerative market (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). In unenlightened circles agriculture and industry are often considered as alternatives to each other. The truth is that industrialization for a home market can make little progress unless agriculture is progressing vigorously at the same time. If agriculture is stagnant, industry cannot grow (W. Arthur Lewis (1953:2) in (Frimpong-Ansah 1991, p.11). In the years before independence, Lewis’s ideas became prominent through a report for the colonial authorities of the Gold Coast where he reiterated the need for modernization of agriculture with maximum incentives and facilities for production increases and proper machinery, to be in sync with a 118 Part I: General Theories and Histories carefully planned manufacturing program (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). Issues with this idea then, as well as now, are transport cost and market access due to the scatteredness of farmers in rural Ghana, in many cases living far from roads, which increases transportation cost and has often forced them to accept an arbitrary lower price from traders (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). He writes: It is unrealistic to expect farmers to accept modern methods of producing goods they cannot store or transport to the market because of the existing fragmentation. It is after the arbitrary pricing and fragmentation have been removed and the small farmer is producing at close to his maximum capacity that the idea of using modern methods can be sold to him (Frimpong-Ansah 1991, p. 39). Furthermore, most public servants were in the administrative class on the eve of decolonization, with only a small number of them in the technical class. Trained officers were needed to initiate research and attract and advise to industrialists and investors (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). Struggling to find the best development path and overcoming the structures and obstacles that were left behind from the colonial period, many SSA countries had rather limited success to establish themselves within the international power system. By the late 1970s many developing countries had encountered crises status and, as previously mentioned, turned to the international institutions of the bank and the IMF by the early 1980s. During this time the World Bank started to become a prominent an important player in the realm of economics, development and agriculture. The Berg report was the first evidence of the tide turning towards trusting the private sector rather than the State to lead agricultural interventions.

Berg report and its - export-oriented development strategies and the rise of the private sector The Berg report (the World Bank’s report of 1981 on accelerated development in sub-Saharan Africa named after its lead author, Elliott Berg) identified a particular bias against agriculture and called for new priorities and adjustments in policy. The long neglect of agriculture was supposed to be reversed by creating a supportive environment for an export-oriented development strategy of the sector, paired with ‘critically needed social and economic infrastructure’ investments as well as research education and human talent fostering (World Bank 1981, p.6/7). It also highlighted the challenges that evolved from ‘historical circumstances’ (i.e. economic disruption from decolonization and lack of trained manpower), geographic factors ‘hostile to development’ (i.e. poor soils, weather patterns, etc.), external influences (i.e. oil crises, stagflation, and slow growth of trade), as well as the need for increased donor commitment and collaboration as ‘most of all, reform programs always take time’ (World Bank 1981, p.4-7). Issues of inflation and overvalued exchange rates intertwined with trade, and payment restriction of governments had seemingly led to wretched opportunities for smugglers and black-market profiteers, undermining and weakening the role of the state. Similar to Ghana, many sub-Saharan African governments had pursued the aforementioned Import-substitution Industrialization (ISI) Part I: General Theories and Histories 119 policies, using tariffs to project local industries against foreign competition. The key changes the Berg report was calling for then were: improved incentives for agricultural exports, realistic devaluation of exchange rates, lower and more uniform protection for industry, and lesser use of direct controls (World Bank 1981). The Berg Report, which declared a general bias against agriculture across the continent, pointed out that the Cocoa Marketing Board extorted heavy taxes from Ghanaian cocoa farmers in the 1960s and 1970s; hence disincentivizing farmers to aim for higher yields (World Bank 1981). Many post- colonial governments on the African continent inherited the institution and structures, e.g. state marketing boards, from their colonial administrators. Originally established to stabilize crop prices, Bates (1981) observed these state institutions were often used as a ready source of revenue needed for development.

Bates report on urban (elite) bias in Ghana Shortly after the Berg Report pointed toward the anti-agriculture bias in Africa, Bates published his still prominent report on Markets and States in Tropical Africa - The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies (1981), making popular the urban-bias theory for development studies, in which politicians are pressured by centralized urban populations to adhere to their needs rather than those of the scattered and often unorganized farmers of the rural areas. This would be one explanation for the agricultural bias in African development policies. Rather than investing into agriculture to promote the development of their economies, the newly independent states followed what seemed common sense based on ‘the evidence of history and economic doctrine’ and ‘shifted from economies based on the production of agricultural commodities to economies based on industry and manufacturing’ (Bates 1981, p.11). Specifically in Ghana’s case, early development strategies had focused on state-focused interventions with the socialist-leaning Nkrumah in power after independence. However, as Bates points out, these state interventions, protective measures in particular, were often used neither with the rural people in mind nor the urban dweller, but rather for ‘elite interests’ (Bates 1981). Bates also pointed out that beyond the urban bias, it was also an elite-bias at work in Ghana, writing: [W]hile the general pattern of protection may be designed to favor the consumer, the actual implementation of protective measures may redistribute income from consumer to elite-level officials (1981, p.43). In addition, Bates points to the large farmers in Ghana that have received more ‘favorable treatment’ than others and are part of likewise powerful rural elite. The orchestrators, however, were described to sit in the capital. For example, in the early 1960s the started running large foreign trade deficits, leading them to implement a system of import licensing. This concentration of power in the hands of government officials, the executive in particular, then and in other governments thereafter have led to misappropriation of funds and favoritism towards party supporters. 120 Part I: General Theories and Histories

In his analysis he also refers to Lewis, who states that industries of Ghana have “suffered greatly from outside interference, in the shape of members of Parliament and other influential persons expecting staff appointment to be made irrespective of merit, redundant staff to be kept on the payroll, [and]disciplinary measures to be relaxed in favor of constituents” (Bates 1981, p.104). While a great amount of issues uncovered by Berg and Bates were, and continue to be of high relevance to understanding the agricultural sector, it has also led to great generalization and the tacit evidence that justified the hard turn toward neoliberal ideas within international institutions of development. While their analysis is excellent on examine the status quo at their time, what they were lacking is he look at historical and social factors to trace the origins and with it the explanations for the observed behaviors. On the subject of the urban bias, for example, Boahen (1987) points out that it was the colonial period that initiated the gap between urban and rural dweller by concentrating employment opportunities, schools, hospitals, and other social structures in urban centers. Further research is need to understand all the connections between material and ideational factors influencing the agricultural development in Ghana. Since the first in-depth analysis of the sector in the 1980s, the focus has been on large-scale, privately established farms, while small-scale farmers seem to continue to suffer, as programs and projects are focus on land and capital, improved inputs, but suffer from lack of access to credit, high exposure to risk, and low market orientation (Chamberlin 2008). Interestingly in the Bank’s report Assessing aid (1998), Ghana on the late 1980s is mention as a “spectacular success” (Dollar and Pritchett 1998, p.1). Chamberlin (2008), however, highlights the strong inequalities in landholding distribution among smallholder farmers in Ghana, which vary greatly in access to land, roads, markets, credit, and inputs. Geographical differences between coastal, forest, and savannah zones are pronounced. Northern Ghana is much less densely populated, and hence, e.g. travel time to larger market-towns takes much longer in the savannah zone compared to more southern regions (Chamberlin 2008). He adds: Development strategies that emphasize increased provision of (improved) technologies will likely benefit larger and better-endowed smallholders who are already better linked to input delivery systems (2008, p.23). It is also pointed out that smallholders are best reached by supporting their stable food crops such as maize, cassava, or yam rather than focusing on high-value, export-oriented chains (Chamberlin 2008). The caveat is that private sector led agricultural projects and programs in SSA aimed at the most crude forms of mechanization and modernization of agriculture, neglecting the needs of the environment as well as the small scale farmers. In general, While the focus of agriculture in government policies of developing countries have often been limited to commercial-export-crop rather than small-scale, local-food-producers. Often there has been attention on the entire sector for the need to change to conform to international standards so as to serve the consumer demands in Western supermarkets. Intersected with aid work, plant breeders from the West spread ‘high-yielding varieties’ Part I: General Theories and Histories 121 in an attempt to aid with modernization and mechanization of the sector, as early as the 1960s and termed the Green Revolution.

The Green Revolution for Africa In modern-day Ghana, discourse continues to be strong around approaches associated with this Green Revolution. Indeed, as pointed out already, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation (partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation) has named its agricultural initiative –: Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa - AGRA. While the reference is explicit in name, all other national and transnational organizations111 that I met with in Ghana had the majority of their programs and projects aligned to the myth of a Green Revolution for Africa. In general, agricultural development models usually apply Western models of large-scale, mechanized agriculture that can make use of economies of scale. It has been ‘widely accepted’ that improved technologies – including machinery, seeds, and agricultural practices, combined with efficient sources of power and cheaper plant nutrients, will bring growth and development to the agricultural sector (Seini, W., Al-hassan and Al-Hassan 2014). Within the aid industry the support in technological transfer was seen as the process to stimulate agricultural growth. The World Bank highlights that it was the alliance of bilateral and multilateral donors, like themselves, that enabled the spread and success of the Green Revolution in developing countries in the 1960s and 70s (Dollar and Pritchett 1998). Indeed, for many Asian countries, the Green Revolution has brought a large and successful change for their agricultural development. Lessons from the Asian Green Revolution, as Djurfeld and colleagues called their analysis in a 2005 book, presents important learnings in regards to the possibilities and applicability of a Green Revolution to ‘the African Food Crisis’ (Djurfeldt et al. 2005a).

Lessons from the Asian Green Revolution The Green Revolution was built on hybrid seeds mainly of dwarf wheat and rice varieties, which were high, yielding when well-irrigated, fertilized, and treated with agro-chemicals to protect the plants from pests. It is also presented as the perfect fit for Neoliberalism as the success of agricultural production mostly depends on private sector/market-inputs, such as machinery, seed, fertilizer, and pesticides that can be bought – often on credit. In their analysis of different countries’ processes and key learnings from the Asian Green Revolution, Djurfeldt et al. (2005) point out that it relied on a ‘small-farmer based strategy’ to increase food grain self-sufficiency, while most agric initiatives in Ghana (and SSA) are focusing on the

111 Development Partners included meetings with multiple staff of the following organizations: USAID, the World Bank, GIZ, AfD, JICA, EU, KfW, AGRA, DfID, FAO, IFAD, as well as SNV, AfBD and open exchanges on projects of the governments of Spain, Israel, and Switzerland. While most of these meetings were interviews, others were less formal meetings or field visits for participatory observations further discussed in Chapter 6 on Methodology. 122 Part I: General Theories and Histories involvement large scale farmers. Similarly the Asian Green Revolutions (GR) were State-driven first market-mediated, while the neoliberal mindset in recent years has prohibited, or harshly curtailed the involvement of the State in African development schemes, focusing on the private sector/markets instead.. Djurfeldt et al. also point out that Africa will need another crop-mix, as the scope of irrigation which is needed for GR rice is much more limited in SSA [and Ghana] than in Asian countries. The authors also concede that the GR ‘unavoidable leads to a biodiversity loss’, and hence environmental degradation, they are still of the opinion that the Green Revolution for Africa has great potential, if adopted correctly, as it can increase yields, as was possible with Asia states where the GR ‘drove’ agricultural development. Their biggest concern is with the anti-state bias and ‘pervasive bias against the small farm sector’ often reflected in donor policies in SSA. They explain: It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the next-to-universal exclusion of the African smallholders from the Green Revolution is due to two persistent myths (I) the peasant's alleged hostility to change, and (ii) the superiority of large-scale production […] Another myth, especially popular among Western academia, politicians and aid agencies, is that African governments are incapable of driving development, let alone maintaining law and order in their territories. Here it should be remembered that exactly the same arguments were made about Asian government, especially loudly at the very same time that they were initiating their Green Revolution (Djurfeldt and Jirstrom 2005, p.256). While the authors acknowledge the necessity of a well-functioning market, they instead suggest a state-driven approach in which governments need to establish ownership over their agricultural policies (Djurfeldt et al. 2005b). Their apt and important observations and suggestions have a particularly hard time to find open ears and minds in the age of neoliberal thinking, in which the (African) State is mistrusted and the agricultural bias that had lasted until very recently. Their analysis also underlines the that while industrialization should run parallel to agricultural development, particular attention there must be an increased investment into the agricultural sector, with a revival of productive extension services112 and a stop to ‘misdirected policy directive in crop breeding. In conclusion Djurfeldt et al. write: Our approach implies that governments need to establish ownership over their agricultural policies and that donors need to assist them in achieving that (2005b, p.4). While Djurfeldt et al. (2005) also highlight to the very important aspect of African leadership in any agricultural initiative, they do completely sideline the issue of environmental degradation.

112 A particularly interesting example of spreading new agricultural knowledge was made popular in Japan in the late 19th century, in which veteran farmers and graduates from agricultural colleges were dispatched throughout the country to hold extension meetings (Jirstrom 2005). However, it is also pointed out that the government still had to undertake massive propaganda campaigns, provide privileged credit allocation, subsidize farm machinery, highly publicize competitions and even go so far as physically destroy fields not using the new seeds, in order to spread the improved variety (ibid). Part I: General Theories and Histories 123

It has also been observed that agricultural production growth has been mainly via land expansion rather than productivity growth (Chamberlin et al. 2007). Al-Hassan (2014) cautions that Ghana cannot continue to rely on land expansion for agricultural growth considering the existing and severe land degradation (particularly in the savannah zone) and the population growth rate of 2.5% per year (Al-Hassan 2014). The Malthusian fear around population growth sits deep with many people that talk and care about Sub-Saharan Africa. The continent with the strongest population growth rate and the youngest population has some catching up to do. As the Swedish physician and statistician Hans Rosling most tellingly visualized that fertility rates will only go down when living conditions (especially in the healthcare sector) improve.113 However, already over half a century ago a revolutionary ideas was eloquently published that should have dispelled our fears around population growth.

Boserup’s forgotten proposition In fact, it is a valid generalization to say that in feudal economies the most prosperous periods are those when population is rising rapidly, and much land clearing, irrigation and terracing of hillsides is going on [...] In other words, population growth often seems to be the cause of prosperity [...](Boserup 1965, p.98). Is the currently strong population growth in many sub-Saharan countries a threat or a blessing? The Danish economist Boserup presented the antithesis to the Malthusian myth (briefly discussed in Chapter 2), in her concise book with remarkable explanatory power in regards to ‘The Conditions of Agricultural Growth” (1965). In it, population growth is presented as an independent variable, which determines agricultural development and is embedded in a constantly evolving, dynamic social environment, which adapts to population pressures with technological change. Or put another way, agriculture becomes much more intensive, the more densely populated an area is. She explains that generally a small agricultural population will spread widely as it can ‘obtain its food by a much smaller input of labor,’ as compared to crowding together. She differentiated five agricultural systems that have different lengths of fallow/cultivation and are triggered by population growth. 114 Boserup also warns against a one-size-fits-all aid package, in which measures are recommended ‘just because they have been successful elsewhere, perhaps in communities with a quite different density of population’ often disregarding or ‘underestimating the cost in additional labour’(1965, p.66). She adds: The general belief that ignorance is the chief cause of the use of extensive methods of cultivation made colonial as well as independent governments anxious to instruct primitive cultivators in the use of intensive methods of production (Boserup 1965, p.65).

113 Sadly Hans Rosling past way this year, 2017, but left us with a large array of presentations that are worth a look, including: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth [accessed: 06.09.2017]. 114 The five include: 1. Forest fallow/slash and burn(15-20 years); 2. Bush-fallow (6-10 years); 3.Short-fallow (1- 2 years); 4. Annual cropping (a few months); 5. Multi-cropping (no fallow) 124 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Boserup highlights the issue of population density and labor, when pointing out that in many parts of the African continent it was common to have ‘domestic and agricultural slaves’ that would be responsible for much of the agricultural work, particularly observed in administrative centers and trading towns around the 116th century, when Europeans first arrived. She explains: Both ancient and more recent history lend color to the suggestion that a concentration of population, accompanied by the change to intensive systems of cultivation, will take place only under the pressure of increasing populations or when a tribe or people can force captured slaves to work harder in agriculture than free members of tribal communities are prepared to do (Boserup 1965, p.73). Besides slavery, it is then an increased population that can bring a change in agricultural development. Boserup’s forgotten or ignored proposition is in reality a hugely important and fascinating shift in looking at agricultural development and population growth. While the great majority of students of economic history have neglected or failed to notice the link between population growth and agricultural development, Boserup’s remarkable proposition is corroborated by Djurfeldt et al. (2005) in their summarizing analysis of the Green Revolution in Asia by with the words: Summarizing these results, it has been demonstrated over and again that Boserup's contention holds water (p.10).

Summarizing the misconceptions of ideas that have influenced development theories

This Chapter set out to trace the origins of the fundamental development ideas that have influenced, guided and affected Sub-Saharan states in their in general and agriculture in particular. It aimed at debunking some of the commonly accepted notions used in the most dominant (economic) ideas, cumulating in the current hegemon: Neoliberal capitalism. By having a closer look at the ideas of some of the founding fathers of capitalism and economics, their words and the circumstances of their writings, the Chapter tried to expose some of the myths attributed to thinkers such as Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes and F.A. von Hayek. It uncovered that the cold-faced godfather of capitalism, Smith, as the sentimental kind, concerned with moral behavior, and with this offers a re-interpretation of the invisible hand notion, often (mis)used by Neoliberalism as the evidence in favor of market driven development. Keynes, considered the most important economist of the 20th centuries in many regard, himself warned us against the “madmen in power” that would (mis)use the ideas of economist to their liking. The irony of, for instance, the IMF referring to Keynes as their ideational founding father, yet following strict neoliberal ideology over the past decades, which were linked with the ideas of Keynes adversary, von Hayek, was meant to be highlighted as well. Also that the ideas if the peace- loving Keynes were used to build what Eisenhower named the Military-Industrial Complex. Part I: General Theories and Histories 125

Most importantly this Chapter attempted to draw attention to Western narratives that have swayed between trusting and mistrusting the State as the governor of development. As the staunch supporter of Neoliberalism, Milton Friedman, points out himself: Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around (Friedman and Friedman 2012, p. XIV).

After the build-up of multiple small crises in the 1970s, the soil was prepared for a new idea to flourish. Built on the theories of an-almost forgotten economist, who had recently received a Nobel Prize for his description on state-interventions, paving The Road to Serfdom (1944), Keynes ideas based on his belief in the State was replaced with Hayek’s fear towards the State, and belief in the markets instead. The area of Neoliberalism began with the elections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the early 80s. However, even von Hayek’s ideas seem to have been (mis)used to fit a political agenda, rather can a common purpose, as the leader of the conservative parties of the West conveniently used the name of a Nobel price economist to sanctify their own agenda; While von Hayek saw a place for the government to protect workers’ rights and the environment, Western leaders and institutions saw it fit to erase the State out of the development agenda. Polanyi eloquently summarizes the way towards free markets: The road to the free market was opened and kept open by an enormous increase in continuous, centrally organized and controlled interventionism (2001, p.146). It was the old power-imbalances that allowed the spread of the Neoliberal agenda over the past 30 years. This change of ideological direction was felt nowhere more perniciously and lastingly than with the implementation of a so-called ‘free’ trade regime through the World Trade Organization. Against all historic-economic evidence on how the Western nations have developed, the Agreement on Agriculture was pushed down developing countries throats, allowing for a continuation of enormous agricultural subsidies in the West (now funneled through Green Boxes), while curtailing spending for developing countries at 10 percent. The World Bank highlights: Developed-country agricultural policies cost developing countries about [US]$ 17 billion per year – a cost equivalent to about five times the current levels of overseas development assistance to agriculture (2007b, p. 103). The unequal and unfair treatment did not go unnoticed, however, as the resistance with new power centers in the developing world, particularly from BRIC countries, lead to the Doha Development Round grinding to a halt. This lead to Western powers particularly the European Union trying to secure their position of power in the international trade regime by starting bi-lateral negotiations in 2002 with African, Pacific and Caribbean (APC) countries. Ostensibly to be ‘in-line’ with WTO rules, the EU-APC Economics Partnership Agreements (EPAs) have played ECOWAS states against each other, leaving only Nigeria resisting the pressures and enticements of the European markets. Ghana, 126 Part I: General Theories and Histories who ratified the EPA after over a decade of resistance in 2016, can only hope for the rendez-vous clause to re-negotiate with a stronger position in the future. The ideas to fast-track development that have been most prominently presented to, and selected by Sub-Saharan African country leaders were usually full of anti-agricultural biases, preferring industry and urban elites. In recent years, with the re-emergence of agriculture on the development agenda since 2007 the West has been promoting a Green Revolution for Africa. Steeped in neoliberal thinking the African approach has largely disregarded important lessons from the Asian experience, namely the importance of a state-let approach, as well as the small-scale farmer focus. Furthermore the crops would have to be adjusted, and the environmental degradation concerns ignored, to make sense of the idea in general. The Green Revolution for Africa is also sold to people under the threat of increased pressures on the food system with the high population growth rate estimated for the African continent. This Chapter then, last, but most-importantly, attempted to re-present and resurrect the almost forgotten thesis of Ester Boserup on The conditions of agricultural growth. In her impressive analysis of over half a century ago, she turns the fear-based Malthusian myth on its head. Instead of fearing population growth she discovers it as a necessary condition to evolve towards higher-order agricultural methods. Overall this Chapter, as well as this thesis as whole, emphasizes the importance of re-reading and understanding historical/classical writings and their contexts, as to ensure that we learn from history, rather than repeat the same mistake over again. For this reason, as well as to counter Blank Slate approach adhered to by many economists and development practitioners as pointed out by Easterly (2013), the next Chapter seeks to trace material and ideational developments Ghana over the past centuries, in order to better understand the paths that have lead us to the current state of affairs.

Part I: General Theories and Histories 127

128 Part I: General Theories and Histories

5. Power, politics and agriculture– the shaping and re-shaping of Ghana

I don’t think any of you will deny the fact that it is impossible to understand the present or prepare for the future unless we have some knowledge of the past (Malcolm X, 1967, p.11).

Two of the major and interrelated threads of thought that meander throughout this thesis are the importance of history and the constant, yet uncertain reordering of influential ideas on politics, economics and agriculture. The foundation of this thesis was made out of the Hegelian view that history is important and has significance, in tune with Malcolm X’s quote above and implementing the aforementioned saying from previous Chapters, that those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Spun around the spool of time, this chapter hopes to disentangle current concepts on power, politics and agriculture in Ghana by uncovering some of its origins. This does not imply a homogenously spun spool, or linear trajectory that could be drawn from the past, through the present into the future, if you will. Uncertainty, and with it the human-freedom to create each moment anew, are appreciated and feared by supporters and skeptics of the social sciences alike. The capricious nature of the Homo sapiens sapiens, paired with the immeasurable amount of options hidden in the social fabric surrounding her and him, can make measuring and predicting an impossible task for scholars following a social constructivist ontologically. This is the reason why this thesis followed a constitutive rather than causal logic, as discussed in the prior Chapter (4). Conceding to the difficulties presented and trying to remedy the situation with an epistemology following a constitutive logic, this Chapter then tries to clarify the view on the present state of agriculture in Ghana, by illuminating the paths that has lead up to this point. Since all Chapters were written after the 16-months field research (from September, 2015 to December, 2016), the experience and knowledge gained had an influence over the information presented and authors selected.115 It is unfortunate, however, that this privilege is rather extended in developed countries, rather than within developing countries, which would provide much more apt and experienced candidates to undertake a study of this kind. In many regard this skewed opportunity is a continuation of what has started around the 15th century, as hegemony over ideas and histories often guided by Western European influential authors and academics. Interference of the Northern nations on African communities has sunk much of their histories into an abyss, with little knowledge left on West African culture and societal organization before the 15th century.

115 A special Thank you must also be extended to Professor Abena P.A. Busia at , who guided and enhanced my reading on Ghana’s history. Furthermore the constant power supply and unlimited internet being a given, the European Universities and German universities in particular have established great linkages between their libraries and were further supplemented by online book markets, making an extraordinary amount of material available for analysis. Other Liberians and concerned colleagues around the world that have given invaluable advice in regards to understanding the history of the Gold Coast, known as Ghana since her independence in 1957.

Part I: General Theories and Histories 129

The preference and celebration of oral transmission in many African societies, through so-called storytelling, has been one limiting factor for understanding the continent’s prestige; instead the meticulous merchants of the West, starting their competitive and predatory campaigns on the African continent around the 15th century, kept track by leaving us records of trade, as well as some descriptions of empires of now forgotten times. What must be reflected on then, is what Orwell termed the mutability of the past, or in other words “history is written by the victors” as Winston Churchill has supposedly cautioned. Literally, and sadly, this is still true for many publications on and about Ghana today, as scholars with Western origin or nationality dominate many of the disciplines. It must also be repeated that my own biases, coupled with my limited prior knowledge and time are an obstacle to the quality of this study. Nevertheless an effort has been made to hear and reflect on the perceptions and voices from the continent itself, and with its limitation in mind, set the stage for further analysis and better understanding of power, politics and agriculture in Ghana. This Chapter will first start with the general overview on the geographical data, entwined with some historical facts that explain the shape and setting of modern-day Ghana. What follows then is the unspooling of time with a set departure in the 15th century when the first European merchants started arriving on Ghana’s shores. Different but Equal 116 is what Basil Davidson has aptly and inspirationally titled the first episode of his history series on Africa (1984). A wonderful exception amongst Western Historians, Davidson with his rich and detailed knowledge on African kingdoms, points out to most important point this chapter hopes to make. Perception is everything! While nowadays Africa is often shown as backward, underdeveloped and the bottom of the pyramid, five hundred years ago the cards were shuffled differently. A time of equality between the continents. A time before racism. The train that was set in motion by Columbus’ discovery of the New World for the Spanish crown, turned into a four and a half century long international rivalry over colonial possessions, as well as the development of the economic institution of slavery (Williams 1944).117 Slavery as we know it, would go on to provide the sugar for our tea, the coffee in our cups, the cotton on our backs, and slowly but surely alter our tastes as to become used to “the idea of sacrificing human life to the deity of increased production”, Williams writes (1944; p.5). The onset of what was a global conquest by Western European powers changed everything. As Williams reminds us in his analysis of how slavery contributed to the development of British capitalism: ‘every age rewrites history’ (1944, p.24). Racism, however, and importantly, was only the later rationalization, a practical conclusion of the economic realities that emerged out of the

116 The Episode of Basil Davidsons’ Africa can be watch online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X75COneJ4w8 [accessed: 25.04.2017] 117 Williams (1944) points out that slavery was already relied on as a basis for the Greek economy and a corner- building clock to the Roman Empire. Smith (1776) writes: “[A]mong the ancient Romans the lands of the rich were all cultivated by slaves, who wrought under an overseer who was likewise a slave”p.556, and adds that likewise was done for ‘trades and manufactures’. 130 Part I: General Theories and Histories slave trade. This Chapter hopes to illuminate these horrendous shifts that have occurred around the world and within Ghana that are still influencing power, politics and agriculture today. Leading through the centuries, hence, attention is paid to shifting power structures, ideational shifts, as well as policies and praxis of agriculture within West Africa. With increasing preciseness consequential events that relevant to the political economy analysis are described (such as the many regime changes since independence in 1957), before honing in on recent development strategies and agricultural policies. The end of the Chapter details the current economic situation, agricultural production data and recent election outcomes. With the constructive approach in mind, an emphasis is on uncovering surreptitious models of ideas that have accompanied the physical interferences of outside powers on general development paths of power, politics and agriculture in Ghana.

Figure 18: Map of Ghana (Source: World Bank 2016b, p.50; Annex 7; Map of Ghana). Part I: General Theories and Histories 131

Geographical content of the study Ghana is located in West Africa, framed by the Gulf of Guinea in the South, sharing her land borders with three French-speaking countries: Côte d’Ivoire in the West, Togo in the East, and Burkina Faso in the North. It spans an area of 238,533 sq. km (Germany in comparison has 357,022 sq. km), with 2420 km land boundaries and 539 km coastline (CIA 2017). Ghana is mostly a lowland country, with the slight exception of highlands towards the Togolese boarder west of the Volta River, where Mt. Afadjato marks the highest point above the sea with 884 meters (GSS, GHS and ICF International 2015). It has a tropical climate which is warm and humid in the south most of the year, while the north is warm but varied in humidity as it experiences a clear separation between rainy season (May to November) and the dry season (December to April). It can be said that temperatures and rainfall patterns vary according to the distance from the coast and elevation (GSS, GHS and ICF International 2015). The climate is influenced by the hot, dry and dusty laden air (particularly during Harmattan season – December to February) which moves across the Northern Savannah from the Sahara, and the maritime air mass which moves south to north from the Atlantic ocean most influential in the two southern ecological zones: Coastal and Forest (see also Oppong-Anane 2006). With the absence of high altitude and the closeness of the equator the mean annual temperature averages 27°C, with maxima approaching 40°C and minima descending to about 15°C (ibid). Rainfall generally decreases from the south to the north and is heaviest from May to October in most of Ghana with an average annual precipitation of 1187 mm (World Bank 2017a, 2017c; Oppong-Anane 2006).118 The following graph from the World Bank database shows average temperature and rainfall in Ghana (1960-1990):

Figure 19: Monthly average temperature & rainfall; 1960-1990 (Source: Climate Change Knowledge Portal from the World Bank Group).119

118 Also in the South of Ghana large variations exists with 2,030mm/year of rainfall in the south-west, while coastal zones near Accra receive 890 mm/year Yaro et al. 2012. 119 Additional information is available at: http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal/index.cfm?page=country_historical_climate&ThisCCode=GHA [accessed 05.04.2017] 132 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Figure 19 shows the highest amounts of rainfall between the months of May and September. Rain is most abundant in the south where the Western regions can receive between 1600-2200 mm of average annual rainfall. In the far north of Ghana, (Upper East or Upper West region) people can expect between 830-1100 mm of average annual rainfall (Chamberlin 2008). At the same time the North suffers from a high inter-seasonal variability (ibid). It is noteworthy that the average amount of rainfall per year (1187mm) compares quite favorable to other parts of the world, i.e. Germany where the averages is around 700mm of rainfall per year. While the total amount is of great value for the growth of plants, its concentration, particularly in Northern Ghana where half of the year is dry while the other part has some heavy downpours, makes this a mixed blessing (World Bank 2017c). Being a country that is mainly depended on rainfall for its agriculture this unequal distribution frames a main challenge that has yet to be tackled with rain-water harvest and irrigation schemes. Generally, Ghana can be split into three major ecological zones: Coastal, Forest and Savannah – starting from the south progressing to north in this order. While the Coastal Zone has low, sandy plains with several rivers and streams, the Forest Zone located in the middle and western part of Ghana is marked by a heavy canopy of semi-deciduous rainforest, also crossed by many stream and rivers, while the northern Savannah is drained by the Black and White Volta Rivers (GSS, GHS and ICF International 2015). Based on these God/Nature-given circumstances the inhabitants of the ecological zones plant and grow a variety of different crops and use different methods of cultivation depending on their geographic circumstances. Thanks to the first Prime Minister and President Kwame Nkrumah, the Akosombo Dam was constructed and completed in 1965, making it one of the largest manmade reservoir in the world by surface (8482 sp. km)– Lake Volta (CIA 2017). The country has 10 administrative regions of which Northern, Upper West and Upper East are considered the North of Ghana, while Ashanti, Greater Accra, Eastern, Western, Brong , Central and Volta are considered South (GSS 2012; Yaro 2013). USAID likes to divide Ghana by the 8th Parallel (Latitude 8°N) for its Feed the Future ‘Zones of Influence’, which has been another way to divide the country into north and south. The 10 Regions, however, are further divided into currently 216 Districts. As will be discussed in the Chapters to come, the state of Ghana has been independent for just 60 years, and structures and subdivision are still taking shape. In 1988, with the onset of a more decentralized government structure, Ghana had 110 Districts, which were increased by 28 in 2004, another 32 districts were added in 2008 and a further 46 districts in 2012 bringing the total to 216 districts in 2016 (GSS 2012; GoG - Government of Ghana 2013). By the time this study is finalized the number might have changed again, as a new government just took office six months ago (in January 2017) and has talked about splitting certain regions. It is worthwhile noting that before 1988 regions were further divided into local authority systems of administration, whereby localities was defined by a distinct population cluster that had a locally recognized status or a name (i.e. fishing hamlets, mining camps, farms, market town etc.) (GSS 2012). Part I: General Theories and Histories 133

The importance of locally recognized and traditional forms of administration has played and continues to play an influential role in Ghanaian power structures and politics, even after previous governments (Nkrumah’s’ government in particular) has tried to discredit and replace it with a constitutional system of Democracy. The data compiled from the 2010 Population and Housing Census (PHC) yielded a population of close to 24.65 million, which represents an increase of 30% since the census of 2000 (GSS 2012). The population growth rate between census years was 2.5 percent and would mean that the population of Ghana would roughly double within 28 years or until 2038 (GSS 2012). As of 2015 the Bank estimates the population to be around 27.41 million (World Bank 2017b).The Ghana Demographic and Health Survey 2014 (2015) estimated the total population to stand at 27 million (GSS, GHS and ICF International 2015). The density rose from 79 person per square kilometer in 2000 to 103 persons per square kilometer in 2010 (GSS 2012). Current estimates by the World Bank suspect an increase to 120 people per square kilometer in 2015 (in comparison Germany is at 234 people per square kilometer).120 Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) in the South is the most densely populated region (1,236 persons per square kilometer in 2010), while the Northern region remain the most sparsely populated region (35 persons per square kilometer) (GSS 2012). The most populous regions (based on the PHC, 2010) are: Ashanti (19.4%) and Greater Accra (16.3%), while the least populous regions were Upper East (4.2%) and Upper West (2.85%). The following figure shows the distribution for all regions of Ghana: Greater Accra Eastern 16% 11%

Northern 10%

Ashanti 19% Western 10%

Upper West Brong 3% Ahafo Upper East 9% 4% Volta Central 9% 9%

Figure 20: Population distribution in percent for 10 Regions of Ghana (Source: Ghana Statistical Service GSS 2012 Figure 1: Percentage share of population by region p. 1).

120 Additional information can be found The World Bank, Population density database: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST [accessed 06.04.2017] 134 Part I: General Theories and Histories

As the figure above shows, the Ashanti, Eastern and Greater Accra regions constitute about 50% of Ghana’s population, while the Upper West is least populated region with less than 3% of the population residing there. The distribution of sex in Ghana is 12,024,845 male to 12,633,978 females, with 5,467,136 households with a size of 4.4 people per household in 2010 (down from 5.1 recorded in 2000) (GSS 2012). Ghanaian society is quite youthful with large proportion of society under the age of 15 years (38.3% of the population in 2010), and a small proportion of elderly people 65 years or age and older (4.7% of the population in 2010).

Religion: The dominant religion is Christianity121, with 73% of the population professing their faith to Jesus, followed by 20% that believe in the prophet Mohammed and the Islamic religion (GSS 2014a). In previous surveys the 2010 GLSS Christians as well as Muslims were slightly lower, and instead 5% of people also stated that they were adhering to traditional religion, while 5% are not affiliated to any religion (GSS 2012). Islam is the dominant religion in the northern region (60% of the population in 2010), while traditional religions were most popular in the Upper East region (28% of the population in 2010) (GSS 2012). It is worthwhile to point out that traditional beliefs can play a role even if a person is a fierce believer in one of the dominant world religions, and great tolerance exists between people of different faiths making Ghana a wonderful example of peaceful cohabitation. Conflict in the past have often only localized in the small area of the Northern regions, caused by power struggles between Chieftaincies and based on ethno-political motivations. Ethnic affiliation and traditions are plentiful in Ghana, but the major tribes can be grossly divided in: the Akan (49.7) people (which include the Asante, and Fante among others) mostly found in southern and western parts of Ghana; the Mole-Dagbon (14.2%) mostly living in the northern part of the country; the Ewe (13.3%) mostly found east of the Lake Volta (and across the border in Togo and Benin); and the Ga-Dangme (7.4%) living mostly around the Accra plains (GSS 2012, 2014a).122 Considering the ethnic and religious diversity within Ghana, her record of peace is even more remarkable. While English is the official language of Ghana, people grow up with their local languages along ethnic lines. Akan languages (including Ashanti and Fante) covers the largest area in Ghana’s south- southwest, while Ga and Ewe cover the south-east. The north is dominated by Mole-Dagbani, while Guan languages corridor buffers them from the Akan regions in the south. In the Figure 21 below one can see the major language groups across the country.

121 This includes Catholic (16.5%), Protestant (24.6), Pentecostal/Charismatic (43.8%) and other Christians (15.1%) (GSS 2014a) 122 Other ethnic groups include: the Gurma (5.7%), the Guan (3.7%), Grusi (2.5%), Mande (1.1%) and others; also see CIA 2017. Part I: General Theories and Histories 135

Figure 21 Major Language Groups in Ghana (Source: Getz and Clarke (2017); MAP 2 Major language Groups of Ghana).

Migration seems a consistent part of Ghanaian society, as 48.6% of the population is made up of migrants – predominately within the country. More than half (52%) of the population migrates to rural areas – most popular (52%) are rural forests (i.e. work on Cocoa farm in the south), followed by rural costal area with 45% (i.e. presumably for opportunities in fishing or other year around farming 136 Part I: General Theories and Histories opportunities). Despite the draw of the big city lights only 11% relocated to Accra, while the rest (37%) chose to live in another urban area instead of the rural area (GSS 2014a). Migration seems strongly related to age, as it is mostly the young (below 30 years of age), and sometime even the too young (below 15 years of age) that seek better opportunities elsewhere. 123 In the 2010 Census households also reported on family members that emigrated for six months or more outside Ghana’s’ borders (GSS 2012). At that time one percent or 250,623 emigrants (160,276 men and 90,374 women) left to other continents including: Europe (37.7%), Africa (35.8%) and the Americas (23.6%).

Education: 57.2% have an educational level up to the basic level, while a quarter (25.2%) of the working population has no education124, and more than half (56%) of the adult population is literate in English (GSS 2014a). The Urban-Rural divide can be seen among the adult literacy rate, where 72% urban dwellers are literate, while the same is true for only 45% in the rural areas. Particularly badly affected is the Savannah zone in which the average adult literacy rate is 37%.

Employment: Based on the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GSS, 2014) 75% of the population is employed (15 years and older), with the majority (44.7%) engaged in Agriculture, with the caveat that 62% in the agricultural sector are underemployed (working less than 40 hours in a week). This is linked to a variety of reasons, but certainly also to the reliance of rain-fed agriculture that allows for little activity in the dry season, particularly in northern Ghana. It is estimated that 83 percent of rural households own or operate a farm, with the highest rate (93%) in the rural Savannah, while the national average is estimated to be a little over half (GSS 2014a). In the rural forest and rural coast areas it is still 86 percent of households deriving their livelihood from agriculture, with 90 percent of all farmers cultivating less than two hectares (IDEG 2012). Interestingly enough 26.6% of urban households still claim to own or operate a farm on location or close by (4% of households in Accra (GAMA), 37% in other urban areas).

Agro-ecological zones: Ghana is covered by a variety of agro-ecological zones that range from coastal savanna in the south- east to rain forest in the south-west, followed by semi-deciduous forest to the north of it. Stratified a transitional zone is followed by guinea savanna and Sudan savanna to the north, as depicted in Figure 22 below.

123 Out of 48.6% that constitute migrants, 17.1% are classified as in-migrants, while the other 31.5% are return migrants. Considering the two categories together as migrants it is the 25 to34 years old that have the highest proportion of the population to migrate (22.3). However, separated, the in-migrants have 10.3% people between the ages of 10 and 14, while 6.1% are between 7 and 9 years of age! Similarly out of the return migrants there are 3.6% between the age of 7 and 9 years, and 22.7% between 10 and 14 year of age (GSS 2014a). 124 Basic education can start with 4 year of age (Kindergarten) and lasts till age 11 (Junior High School) and is supposed to teach basic literacy, numeracy and problem solving skills. Part I: General Theories and Histories 137

Figure 22: Agro-ecological zones in Ghana (Source: Rhebergen et al. 2016 p.11 Fig. A1: Map showing six agro- ecological zones in Ghana).

Poverty: The latest Poverty Profile results of the Ghana Statistical Service (supported by the World Bank, ILO, UNDP, UNICEF and DFID) show that about a quarter of Ghanaians are poor; slightly less than a tenth (8.4%) of the people suffering from extreme poverty (GSS 2014b). This is based on a lower poverty line of 792.05 Ghana cedis (175 EUR) per adult per year, which would provide for the minimum calorie requirement (based on a minimum food based equivalent to 2,900 calories per adult per day), while the upper poverty line is set 1314.00 Ghana cedis (290 EUR) per adult per year. Within this definition 6.4 million people in Ghana are poor, or 24.2% of the population, down from 31.9% in 2005/06 and 51.7% in 1991/92. Extreme poverty reduces from 16.4% in 2005/2006 to 8.4% in 2010/13 (based on the 792.05 Ghana cedi per year threshold) (GSS 2014a).

138 Part I: General Theories and Histories

The North-South Divide- Geographically stratification of Poverty in Ghana Incidences of poverty are quite stratified by locality in Ghana, as they remain the highest in rural areas, particularly in northern Ghana (GSS 2014b; Yaro 2013). The Ghana Living Standard Survey Poverty Profile results (GSS, 2014) have shown: 1.Poverty continues to be more common in rural areas. 2. Among rural areas it is particularly the Rural Savannah that is stricken hardest by poverty and extreme poverty. During the 2012/2013 survey 50% of the population lived in rural areas, yet it accounted for 78% of those living in poverty. Rural Savanna, northern Ghana, is affected the worst as a quarter of people that suffer from extreme poverty, with the Upper West being the poorest region overall with 70% living below the poverty line.125 Juxtaposing urban centers such as Greater Accra (GAMA) is the region with the least incidence of poverty with incidence of poverty of 3.5%. Although most regions have been able to reduce the incidences of poverty since 2005/06 the pattern of poverty by region has remained the same (GSS 2014b). Similarly the quality of educational facilities and staff availability as well as capacity show great disparities between urban and rural Ghana, resulting in better schools and hence chances to enter university in urban areas (Opoku-Asare and Siaw 2015). The World Bank (2013) strategy paper points out that: [M]igrants from the north to Ghana’s major urban centers in the south have been much less successful than their southern peers in capitalizing on economic opportunities owning largely to their lower levels of education and skills ( p.i). The persistence of poverty in the north of Ghana can have multiple explanations. The difference in rainfall patterns, and hence vegetation and growth of plants across Ghana, can manifest itself in food, work and poverty variance. Similarly to Ghana as a whole, the North can be used as an example how geographical condition have only partial explanatory power of current circumstance. History has to be considered as a second supporting leg in erecting the structure of development in Ghana. Yaro (2013) for example claims that the disparities between rural and urban living standards are the continuation of an urban bias first described by Lipton in the late 1970s and later advanced by Bates (1981). Lipton believed that developing countries, especially in Sub-Sharan Africa, pursued policies that had a bias against the rural sector in various ways and, hence, fostered high incidence and severity poverty in rural areas (Lipton and Ravallion 1993). By the 1940s the British colonizers shifted their policy approach to food production in the North, mostly to cater for the growing needs for the slowly urbanizing South (Yaro 2013). Projects were initiated to research yield-increasing approaches (i.e. consolidation of holdings), introducing new technologies (i.e. animal drawn ploughs and), and spread of water and soil conservation measures (i.e. manor making). Already then, however, the projects suffered from a lack of seriousness in implementation and many areas witnessed deterioration in crop output due to

125 Just as reminder: the Poverty line for this survey was set at 1,314 GHC per year, and extreme poverty line at 792.05 GHC per year. Upper West (70.7%) is down from 89.1% in 2005/2006 and followed by the Northern Region that has 50.4% living below the poverty line, down from 55.7% and the Upper East Region with 44.4% in 2012/2013 down from 72.9% in 2005/2006. Part I: General Theories and Histories 139 impoverishing soils (Yaro 2013). Other initiatives such as commercial livestock rearing, didn’t succeed, while other opportunities, such as the shea butter industry remained unsupported, leaving traditional agriculture in the North at best unchanged and at worst in decline due to indifference during the colonial period. By the time of independence there had been only fragmented and dispersed projects spread thinly over the large territories in the Northern Ghana, leaving it without significant social or economic development (Yaro 2013).126Nevertheless, Nugent points out:

A ‘big man’ from the North Region is instantly recognizable as such in Accra: the dress may differ, but swagger the swagger is the same (1995, p.34). But how did get to this point? Beyond the North-South divide that is rooted in colonial structures, many of the present-day power structures, development trajectories, as well as material and ideational endowments were set in motion and directed by events that started half a millennium ago.

5.1. European encounters on the Gold Coast From different-but-equal, to turning tables of slave trade: 15th to 18th century

In the 15th century, an area now known as Ghana, newly found itself between the competitive and predatory European nations to the North and the labor-hungry plantations to the West. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive, closely followed by the British, Dutch, German, Danish, Prussian and Swedish traders who proceeded to leaving their mark – physically as well as psychologically on what was then known as the Gold Coast. These were seemingly first encounters, because evidence that the ‘Gold Coast’ had been visited as early as 600 B.C by Phoenicians sent from Necho of Egypt, as West African history had died in Europe before the commencement of modern history (Nathan 1904). The trade records and first observations of Europeans arriving after the 1470s have been used in writing the history of the continent and are supposed to help us today to understand the shaping and re- shaping of the societies they have encountered over the centuries. The Portuguese were the first explorers which ‘conceived Military Orders of Jesus Christ’ to obtain slaves and started to ‘secure captives’ along the coast of West Africa in the early 15th century (Nathan 1904, p. 34). Original interested these explorers were lured by gold that had appeared in Europe and through the basis of guesswork was traced back across the Sahara to – the Gold Coast (Rodney 1973). Soon thereafter, however, they started erecting forts along this coast of modern-day Ghana, to engage and focus on the ‘trafficking of Negros’ instead (ibid). Some 11,000127 annually by

126 Akoto (1987) points to the Gonja Development Company as one of the first projects that attempted to introduce large-scale agriculture in the Northern region, by attempted to resettle the Frafra people into the Gonja district and develop an area of 32000 acres in the early 1950s. By 1954 only 3209 acres were cleared, 1200 planted, many settlers returned to their place of origin and the company was liquidated in 1957 Akoto 1987. 127 Exact numbers are disputed as Kea for example writes that between 1485 and 1540 Portugal took about 150 and 700 slaves per year, while all together adding up to 12,000 slaves taken between 1475 and 1540. 140 Part I: General Theories and Histories the 1530s were taken from the Coast of Guinea to the plantations in Brazil, the Caribbean and North America (Nathan 1904).128 The important caveat to note is that formal European control in West Africa was generally limited to the coastal areas until the scramble for Africa towards the end of the 19th century (Lewis 1970). Only in the rarest of occasions did white raiders enter the interior of the country, the ‘reservoirs’ of human labor themselves. Rodney observed:

Europeans found it impossible to conquer Africans during the early centuries of trade, except in isolated spots on the coast (1973, p.121). It was local black merchants, referred to as ‘berrenbucs’ (which is said to be a transcription of abirempon or ‘big men’ of the pre-colonial Asante kingdom Kea 1982 p.197), who gladly sold their war captives and unruly citizen in exchange for additional weaponry and other goods offered by the white traders. What it means is that some African rulers found European goods sufficiently desirable to hand over captives which they had taken in warfare. Soon, war began to be found between one community and another for the sole purpose of getting prisoners for sale to Europe, and even inside a given community a ruler might be tempted to exploit his own subjects and capture them for sale (Rodney 1973, p.122). The English arrived shortly after the Portuguese, followed by the French and the Dutch in search of ‘trading opportunities’, looking for humans, gold and elephant tusks at the time. The Europeans proceeded in fighting each other, as well as certain natives that disagreed with the terms of trade offered by the permanent visitors, over the next century (Nathan 1904). The almost forgotten empire building exercise of the Dutch used a two-pronged approach – trade and actual warfare – to gain control over what includes modern day Ghana. The Dutch West India Company was incorporated and given monopoly in trade over West Africa in 1621, proceeded to “undersell and ruin Portuguese trade”(Nathan 1904, p.36). This was accompanied with good old fashion warfare, when it came to pursuing the Portuguese to handing over their forts along to the coast (Nathan 1904). Europeans kept busy along the coast for four centuries, mostly wrangling for the best position to take away their lively purchase across the seas to work in inhuman and horrendous condition on plantations of the New World. In a twist of words and worlds, it was in fact the European nations that managed to emerge out of the dark ages and shape the World anew. A new sheriff was in town. And he had no government to adhere and no laws to obey. The anarchical state system was born. Driving his campaign through the African continent to fuel his mission in the Americas, he did not yet halt long enough to wreak havoc completely on the two continents simultaneously. Rather, some Africans

128 It might of interest for the reader to point out that the majority, about half of all slaves were taken to the plantations in Brazil, followed by another third going to the Caribbean, leaving only an estimated 1/10 of slaves being taken and sold in North America. Part I: General Theories and Histories 141 were made willing participants in the labor supply chain needed to fuel old and eventually build new world powers across the sea. Seemingly the few Africans that benefitted from the triangular trade unwittingly paved the way to a delayed yet equally atrocious turn to be oppressed and gutted of any valuable materials, as the Americas had suffered before them. This ‘participation’, Rodney (1973) claims, was due to the lack of nations or territorial solidity, and rather a plethora of political divisions and fragmentation of African empires and groups, creating what Europeans called a ‘slave trader’s paradise’ (ibid, p.123). Indigenous Indians in the Americas were unable to withstand European diseases (i.e. small-pox) and hence left the invaders searching for other forms of labor supply. Europe’s’ population was very small itself, so the invaders turned to the nearest continent – Africa – who ‘incidentally had a population accustomed to settled agriculture and disciplined labour’ (Rodney 1973, p.120). The millions of healthy men and women that were sold over the centuries preceding would eventually be missing in the defense against the trader that turned conqueror, once the time came to look for additional treasures to loot. The voracious beast of greed is hard to tame, and eventually would turn to bite the hand of the African that had been it. For now, Europeans established trading opportunities and brought: Dutch linen, Spanish iron, English pewter, Portuguese wines, French brandy, Venetian glass beads, German muskets to the ‘guaranteed markets in Africa’ (Rodney 1973, p.118). Meanwhile these willing buyers, a multiplicity of kingdoms, continued to develop a variety of sophisticated societal and agricultural arrangements, which were spread across the hinterlands of the Gold Coast and beyond/West Africa. Ray Kea (1982) tells the stories most vividly in Settlements, trade, and polities in the seventeenth-century Gold Coast. By 1640s, for example, in what we now call Ghana, the Accra Kingdom relied on food importation from neighboring as well as distant agricultural districts, while the urbanized heartland of the Akwamu Oman was food self-sufficient, largely depending on the production of slave cultivators in later parts of the century (Kea 1982). The urban population, notwithstanding the recognizable amount of ‘urban agriculture’ that was ongoing already then, depended much on the rural areas for their food supply. The countryside, consisting of peasant communities and slave farming settlements, were able to keep the towns well supplied, with the irregular exception of periods of prolonged warfare or successive bad harvests (ibid). Hence “the nonagricultural urban population was directly related to the size of the agricultural surplus drawn from the countryside” (Kea 1982, p.43). This is in line with Boserup’s analysis on conditions of agricultural growth. On one hand, many societies in the seventeenth-century Gold Coast were stratified and hierarchical similar to other part of the world. With nobility ranking highest in privileges and entitlements, such as the right to own, buy and sell slaves, while they themselves and their children were explicitly exempt from enslavement (Kea 1982). On the other hand the rank of the nobles was not an exclusive birthright, but open to anyone who performed some great and honorable exploit for 142 Part I: General Theories and Histories the benefit of the state, or had the wealth to purchase the ‘stool’ via (pricy) public ceremony to which nobility titles were attached. Kea (1982) adds that commoners would often immediately apply for the ennobling ceremony, even if it would impoverish him again through the process. Therefore a certain amount of fluidity was present in the societal hierarchy. The peculiarity of slavery as part of the social structure in states and kingdoms within the Gold Coast demands further discussion, as it was a drastically different concept as what would be applied to their brothers and sisters that were shipped across the oceans. The state of Assini, for example, with the capital Asoko, had five quarters [districts] in 1692, each with its own ruler that was allowed to possess slaves that would either live in the wards with their masters, or in villages dispersed throughout the state where they were engaged in production i.e. of salt (Kea 1982). Similarly the Akan tribes129 had nobles and chiefs (abirempon and afahene) who could buy, own and sell slaves. They were differentiated between ‘debt slaves’ (serving until their debt was paid off), pawns (that went to pay off someone else’s debt), judicially condemned (i.e. for their inability to pay court fines), as well as people suffering from poverty which placed themselves in the ‘service’ voluntarily (ibid). What becomes clear within this short description is that the ‘slavery’ definition we use in the West becomes inoperative within the West African context. Rather than a life sentence in bondage, so called retainers could use the structure as a kind of social system and be ‘employed’ on a variety of tasks ranging from “domestic servants, attendants, craftsmen, agricultural laborers, market vendors, brewers, caravan leaders, trading agents, concubines, porters, soldiers and personal guards, gold miners, fishermen, salt producers, herdsmen, and prostitutes” (Kea 1982, p.293). Undoubtedly working conditions were still harsh as many slaves suffered from abject poverty and were severely punished when they tried to run away. However, there were also those who acquired wealth and considerable authority themselves, to the point that their former Master had to ‘anticipate their wishes’ (Kea 1982). Walfin point out: [S]eldom, if ever, was the status of slavery rigidly perpetuate over the generations. A slave’s descendants in Africa could hope eventually to leave behind the stigma and disadvantages of their origins (2008, p.294). However, the afahene, the nobles, much like the white slave owners across the pond, considered their servants as somewhat simple-minded and not in full possession of their rational faculties (Kea 1982). Alas, on both sides of the Atlantic upper-class propaganda was used to justify the inhuman treatment many slaves suffered.

129 Akan tribes are mostly found in southern Ghana (as well as in Côte d’Ivoire) and include the well-known Asante or Ashanti, as well as Akyem/Akim, Fante, Bono and others. Most Akan tribes speak Twi or can understand it fairly easily. Since ancient time they have been politically divided into numerous kingdoms and wars were fought in between them Part I: General Theories and Histories 143

Empires, Trade and Agriculture in West Africa

Contrary to popular belief African agriculture was equally organized. An excellent contribution to understanding historical agricultural development in the region is made by Hopkins (1973) that tries to demystify the view of West Africa to be a “static, inflexible, uniform, and essentially simple, subsistence economy” (Hopkins 1973, p.28). Instead the reader is presented with diverse indigenous economies that were accepting and initiating novel types of activities within their complex organizational structures, to purge our mind of the ideas of backwardness in ‘traditional’ societies (Hopkins 1973).

Agriculture in West Africa - a historic perspective

The debate around the beginnings of agricultural development in the West African region scholars debate the starting point between 5000 B.C. to 1500 B.C, but all stress the antiquity and variety of pre- historic agrarian activities. Staples like millet, fonio and rice were found in the savanna region, while yams and oil palm were dominant in the forest. Over the century there was vivid and widespread exchange with the rest of the world as plants and seeds continued to flow into and out of West Africa via a complex and efficient organization of trade routes and markets. Asian yams, cocoyams, bananas, and plantains reached West Africa by way of the Near East between the first and the eight century A.D.[.. And.] Most households regarded trade as a normal and an integral part of their activities, and planned their production strategy accordingly (Hopkins 1973, p.29. and p. 51). In fact, no less than seven headings are needed to classify the main cultivation practices in West Africa that were present in the sixteenth century and most likely long before then. They are: shifting cultivation; rotational bush fallow; rotational planted fallow; mixed farming; permanent cultivation; tree cultivation; and floodland and irrigated farming. It should be noted here that Boserup’s argument needs qualification as different systems of cultivation do not only depend on population density, but also the intensity of farming – mainly the range of crops and the availability of fertilizer – that determine cultivation practices and fallow periods. By the time the Portuguese arrive on the Gold Coast in the 15th century they were greeted by swamp rice was wildly cultivated in the western parts of the forest, while yams were the main staple in the east. Europeans did add important crops such as maize, cassava, groundnuts, tobacco and later cocoa to the mix of variety of fruits they brought mainly over from South America/Brazil. Centuries later the colonial officials developed rather unfavorable impressions of the capabilities of African farmers, due to their lack of understanding of the systems at hand. Where there was a lack of variety in the crops available, the number of rotations was limited, the soil soon became exhausted and farmers were forced to move to new land. European commentators were scandalized by this “wasteful” means of cultivation because 144 Part I: General Theories and Histories

they failed to appreciate that unused land was an integral part of a method of cultivation which involved the maintenance of long fallows, and that to use it for another purpose (such as European plantations) was to risk the indigenous system of production” (Hopkins 1973, p.35). Rodney (1973) points to the great diversity of farming methods, such as terracing, crop rotation, green manuring, mixed farming and regulated swamp farming that had all had been established before the Europeans arrived. He reckons that the most important agricultural technological change was the replacement of wooden and stone tools with iron tools, such as the axe and hoe that spread parallel to making pottery around the time after the birth of Christ (Rodney 1973). Notwithstanding these facts, Rodney also concedes that the standards of taking care of the land and livestock in Africa were not as high as in most parts in Asia and Europe. He explains: The weakness in Africa seemed to have been the lack of a professional interest in acquiring more scientific knowledge and in devising tools to lighten the load of labour as well as to transform hostile environments into areas suitable for human activity (Rodney 1973, p.64). Nevertheless, Kea (1982) describes the plentiful foodstuff sold in local markets in the seventeenth century Gold Coast, such as maize, millet, guinea corn, rice, yams, plantains, legumes (beans), eggs, sugar cane, fish, fowl, palm oil, palm nuts, pepper, beer, palm wine, citrus and a variety of other fruits. Africans hadn’t been shy about adopting useful food plants from Asia and the Americas that allowed them to diversify their agriculture (Rodney 1973). It might have been the plentifulness of goods available that didn’t pressure farmers into further increases of productivity. Why fix something that is not broken? In this regards Boserup’s theory of population pressures leading to agricultural change might be an additional valuable explanatory framework. Furthermore it seems reasonable that once slave-raiding became more common, people started to be preoccupied about their freedom rather than with improvements in agricultural production. Rodney (1973) speculates that the reason for the lack of initiators and supervisors of agricultural development of the time might have been linked to the predominant role of trading non-agricultural products. The markets of the Gold Coast provided basics such as firewood, charcoal, beeswax, palm oil for lamp fuel, matches, and earthenware lamps already more than four hundred years back. Gold and silver jewelry was produced and worn by the nobles who also invested heavily in textiles, while the other folks wore personal ornaments like seashells or cuprous or iron bracelets (Kea 1982). Trade of these later goods was pervasive amongst linked-up African societies (Rodney 1973). An elaborate tax system was in place in the late seventeenth century, levying half of fisherman’s, and gold producers daily profits and presumable similar levies ranging from a minimum of one-tenth to maximum of one-half of annual earnings on peasants, palm-wine tappers, craftsmen, salt producers and so on (Kea 1982). Furthermore the state had “death tax, market tax, religious tax, war tax and poor relief tax” in addition to judicial fines and extraordinary taxes (Kea 1982, p.312). Part I: General Theories and Histories 145

With this empire in mind, it might be easier to follow Williams (1944) claim that contrary to common belief it was not slavery being born out of racism, but rather the reverse of causal explanations – racism as a consequence of slavery. In the beginnings of the New World, unfree labor came in every color and religion – “brown, white, black, and yellow; Catholic, Protestant and pagan” (Williams 1944, p.7). Only after the white servants and Indian slaves proved to be ill-adapted, inadequate (and limited in number), particularly for the arduous work on large farms of mono-crops, did the “robust Negroes” displace other labor forces (Williams 1944). Both Indian slavery and white servitude were to go down before the black man’s superior endurance, docility, and labor capacity (J.S. Bassette in Williams 1944, p.20).130 Racism was only the later rationalization, a practical conclusion of the economic realities: the New World needed labor and the African was simply the cheapest and the Best. Racism was a necessary consequence of slavery. Not the other way around. The British historian, Africanist and prominent scholar on histories of Africa including colonialism, Basil Davidson, depicts the change of attitude beautifully and appallingly in his 1980s video series Africa. Local, black salve-traders would meet their white partners on eye level when it came to selling the most important commodity of the 16th century. The demand, and hence the profit was too enticing for the shrewd businessmen of their times to do anything but go along with the demands of the markets. Davidson underlines the argument from Williams when he says: It became normal and even necessary for white people to think of their victims of less than human. Racism grew out of slavery (Basil Davidson, 1984).131 However, the story extends beyond economic reasoning. Unexpectedly, the economic case for slave labor is not as clear cut as one might think. In fact, contrary to the opinion of slave traders and plantation owners, free labor was determined more profitable than slave labor in most cases by respected economists of this time. This was so because a person without the hope to acquire property or freedom would simply try to eat as much as possible and labor as little as possible. Williams points to Adam Smith who propagated the argument that it was, in general, pride and love of power in the master that led to slavery” (Williams 1944, p.6) [emphasis added] rather than just greed and feasibility. Smith explains: The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. Whenever the law allows it, and the nature of work can afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of freemen (1776, p.388).

130 J.S. Basset, Slavery and Servitude in the Colony of North Carolina, Baltimore, 1896, p.77 131 Episode 5, The Bible and the Gun; Basil Davidson’s series Africa has been available to watch online for several years now. Originally it was a VHS production that was release in the late 1980s. Online available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X75COneJ4w8 146 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Notwithstanding the factor of power-hunger, ‘inefficient’ slavery labor was still ‘beneficial’ for large- scale plantation owners of mono-corps such as sugar, cotton and tobacco, who were able to profit from economies of scale (Williams 1944).132 Justification of this repugnant practice was furthermore sought through the holy scriptures of Christian-based institutions once the trade came under the control of Christians from the 13th century. 133 Neither the Church of England nor the Catholic Church saw particular evil in the taking and enslaving of innocent African people on the American continent. In fact, ‘Christian Law’ permitted slavery by arguing that the religious difference justified the enslavement of non-Christians (MacKechnie 2017). The Anglican Church took it a step further and has been said to have directly involved in slavery (Walfin 2008). Other Christian institutions had only ‘isolated objectors’, such as Bartolome de las Casas134, to the trade, but overall the discourse would soon shift, focusing on racial difference to legitimate the enslavement of Africans (Walfin 2008; MacKechnie 2017). It was almost as if the slave trade was morally neutral [...] The suffering of the African on the ships and plantations were undeniable, but raised barely a whimper. Indeed godly men came to think of the trade as a simple fact of life (Walfin 2008, p. 189). Slave traders as well as owners were only too happy to claim the Bible as the guiding star for their exploits.135 Not just religious justifications were sought out and spread, but also secular, ‘rational’ thinkers conveniently started to corroborate the claim of the inferior African race discourse, that would need support from ‘civilized’ nations to see the light. Influential Western Philosophers, such as George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, would proclaim in the early 19th century, that Africa proper was closed up to the rest of the world, as the land of gold and ‘the land of childhood’, ‘enveloped in the dark mantle of Night’ (Hegel 1837/2001, p. 109).While Hegel conceded that much of Africa ‘proper’ was entirely unknown to Europeans, it did not stop him from claiming that ‘the Negro’ had not developed the consciousness to recognized God, or Law, and since the African was so completely wild and untamed the Europeans had to “lay aside all thought of reverence and morality – all that we call feeling”- to comprehend him (Hegel 1837/2001, p. 111). Based on missionary accounts Hegel thought of concluding that there was nothing harmonious to be

132 Adam Smith writes to this issue: “The planting of sugar and tobacco can afford the expense of slave- cultivation. The raising of corn, it seems, in the present times, cannot. In the English colonies, of which the principal produce is corn, the far greater part of the work is done by freemen [...] In our sugar colonies, on the contrary, the whole work is done by slaves, and in our tobacco colonies a very great part of I [...] Both can afford the expense of slave-cultivation, but sugar can afford it still better than tobacco. The number of negroes accordingly is much greater, in proportion of that of whites, in our sugar than in our tobacco colonies” (1776, p. 388/389). 133 By no means was Christianity the only faith that was seemingly untroubled by the trade of fellow humans. Muslim Merchants had transported Christian and pagan slaves to the Middle East and North Africa between the eighth and 12th century (MacKechnie 2017). 134 De las Casas has originally had opposed the enslavement of the Native Americans by Spanish colonizers, and advocated for the use of African slaves instead (and with it promoting the Transatlantic slave trade. Later on in life he ended up retracting that view and believed that all forms of slavery were equally wrong. 135 The bible has scriptures that justify slavery, such as Colossians 3:22, which says: “slaves, obey your earthy masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord” Part I: General Theories and Histories 147 found in the character of African people that could lead to ‘development or culture’, and hence no need to abolish slavery haphazardly. [S]lavery is itself a phase of advance from the merely isolated sensual existence – a phase of education – a mode of becoming participant in a higher morality and the culture connected with it. Slavery is in and for itself injustice, for the essence of humanity is Freedom; but for this man must be matured. The gradual abolition of slavery is therefore wiser and more equitable than its sudden removal (Hegel 1837/2001, p.117). Reflecting the general sentiment of the time, it might be self-evident from preceding words that Hegel did not see a particular value or contribution coming from the African continent, as was common at the time. He determined to ‘leave Africa behind, not to mention it again’ in his lecture on world history, as it ‘no movement or development to exhibit’ (Gray 81, p. 117). Racist folly would increase with elitist and truly-unequal thinkers like the French Arthur de Gobineau, applied by the likes of Ludwig Woltmann and peaking in Europe with race researchers and eugenicist during the Third Reich. Racist rhetoric and histories in the US peaked before the First World War but infected minds for decades thereafter and sadly still until today. For the African continent the effect of the ideational turn was felt in material terms. In 1963 Kwame Nkrumah remarked: For 300 years slave trade dominated Africa’s history, and in fact, influences it still today through our diminished population and its brutalizing and retarding effects upon our socio- economic order (Nkrumah 1963, p.5). Meanwhile slave trade had other baneful consequences within the Gold Coast where the men and women were taken from so plentifully. While the balance between coastal and forest polities during the first half of the seventeenth century remained fairly stable, firearms136 from the trade for slaves, were becoming more popular by the 1650s and during the course of the eighteenth century the Asante slowly but surely established their hegemony based in Kumase and spread over the region. Indeed by the 18th century the wealth amassed in Kumase far exceeded that accumulated in any sixteenth- or seventeenth century state capital. Asante’s success was based on a military revolution, including new forms for military organization, conducts of war, as well as the adoption of the musket as the main arm (Kea 1982).

18th century Ghana – the rise of the Asante Empire and invasion of missionaries The Asante (or Ashanti) are the best documented and towards the end, the most important partner with the trade of slaves (notwithstanding other tribes participating and cooperation with the Europeans). The Empire was known for their working confederacy, as well as for the ‘ability, diplomatic skill and martial ardor’ of their kings (particularly Osei Tutu and Opoku Ware) (Boahen 1975, p.14).

136 Firearms initially mostly used for hunting than for warfare the Ahene of Shama for example, considered the gun cowardly as you could not see the bullet approach unlike javelins and arrows (Kea 1982) 148 Part I: General Theories and Histories

The trade of human beings had emerged as the ‘dominant economic activity of both white and black’ close to the coast of Ghana in the 18th century (Boahen 1975, p.31). The Asante Empire that had moved into a dominant role during this time, and had been content to dispose of the numerous prisoners of war that could not integrate in their society through these business transactions (ibid). Outside the Asante empire, the upper elite of urban centers along the cost, such as Accra, , Anomabu or Sekondi, were also involved as traders and importers, which allowed them to accumulate wealth and passed on to educate their children that eventually supplied the first lawyers, doctors or engineers of the Gold Coast (Boahen 1975). It is interesting to note here, that: The emergence of these elite or new social groups is of extreme importance because it was primarily their frustration with the colonial system, arising mainly from the economic and political limitations it imposed on them, that was to generate a feeling of nationalism and anit-colonialist which heralded independence (Boahen 1975, p.104). In the meantime the Astane had been in the best position – geographically with easy access to the hinterlands, beyond which is now Northern Ghana, as well as martially with a well-equipped, well organized and lead fighting force. Needless to say that the Asante were not particular excited when the British announced the abolishing of slave trade (not slavery) 137 in 1807, just when the Asante had invaded and defeated the Fante (Boahen 1975). The economic vacuum that the abolition of their hideous trade left for the Asante was in parts filled with agricultural products such as palm oil, rubber, groundnuts and cotton in the initial years. By the 1860s Britain had ‘bullied’ Portugal and Spain into also abolishing the trade of humans, and slowly but surely the focus shifted towards Ghana’s minerals and cocoa (ibid). The British, full of contempt and uneasy about the strong position of the Asante, started to wage wars in 1824 (won by the Asante), 1826 and 1874 of open the hinterlands to mercantile enterprise for themselves, and to ‘bless the people with the mild government of the crown’ (Boahen 1975, p.31). With their superior weaponry, such as Enfield rifles and Congreve rockets (the Asante had muzzle- loading guns, firing slugs, clubs and stones) the British were victorious in 1826 and 1874. These wars fought for ‘humanity and civilization’ were preceded and accompanied by an invasion of evangelists and other missionaries, who had been on the forefront of the abolition of the slave trade and were now ready to ‘save’ God’s children with their Christian gospel and western education (Boahen 1975). In between the slave trade and colonization came Christianity. The first European educator on the ‘Gold Coast’ was Rev. Thomas, who wrote a pamphlet in 1778 entitled: The African Trade for Negro Slaves Shown to be Consistent with the Principles of Humanity

137 While the trade of slaves was abolished in 1807, slavery itself was only taken on within the British Empire in 1833 Williams 1944 – surviving in the USA until 1865 and in Brazil until 1888 Walfin 2008. Already in the decade before 1800 the capital invested into the salve trade had far diminished (to less than five percent of total export trade of Great Britain), as many ship-owners began to find the West Indian monopoly irksome (Williams 1944). Part I: General Theories and Histories 149 and the Laws of Revealed Religion (Rodney 1973). In fact, Rodney sees Christian churches as a main tool for cultural penetration and dominance in Africa when he writes: [I]n colonial Africa churches could be relied upon to preach turning the other cheek in face of exploitation, and the drove home the message that everything would be right in the next world (Rodney 1973, p.401). In some case’s religion and slave trade came as one package, as for example at the infamous Cape Coast Castle. The Chapel, meant for praise and worship within the Castle, was located right above the dungeon where hundreds of male slaves had to endure inhuman conditions while waiting to be taken through the door-of-no-return that would lead them to more pain and suffering away from home. The Christian churches seemed happy to accompany the suffering of the African people on both sides of the Atlantic, and never shy for finding reasons to justify the absurdities and cruelties of the white Europeans. James Baldwin, an African-American philosopher that has written so eloquently about the plight of racism and the conundrum of religion, had the following words: I knew that, according to many Christians, I was a descendant of Ham, who had been cursed, and that I was therefore predestined to be a slave. This had nothing to do with anything I was, or contained, or could become; my fate had been sealed forever, from the beginning of time. And it seemed, indeed, when one looked out over Christendom, that this was what Christendom effectively believed (Baldwin 1964, p.38). The Christian Missionaries penetrated the hinterlands of modern Ghana in the early-nineteenth century and proceeded to question all traditional ways of life. Across the country this intrusion starting a time of unseen accelerated transition. It should be mentioned that in the hinterlands, North of Kumasi, they must have encountered followers of the Islam religion as well. The more compressive incorporation into the Western World and its ideas, commencing with the spread of Western Education, first along the coast, before embracing the forest belt of Ghana, would be the harbinger of things to come. However, “[t]heir worst fault lay in the condemnation of African culture”, in which all “African art, dancing, music, marriage, and even names were condemned as pagan, barbaric or evil” (Nugent 1995, p.87). On the one hand, missionaries’ zeal to do away with music and dance that until then had accompanied every important occasion in life such as birth, initiation, marriage, death etc., was only outdone with by the attempt to erase something as basic as languages (Rodney 1973). Fanon points to the hegemony of the English language that was spread with these efforts: Every colonized people – in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality- finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nations (1952/2008, p.189). In Achebe’s 1958 unadorned yet pungent novel Things Fall Apart he describes the influences of the British colonizers and Christian missionaries on a Nigerian village of the nineteenth century, and the changes that they have brought about. 150 Part I: General Theories and Histories

On the other hand, it introduced the opportunities of written words and mathematics taught in so many missionary schools throughout the not-yet colonies. Ghanaians in particular have embraced this model of education with vigor, and maybe unsurprisingly the first African student at the University College, Oxford in England was a Brong Ahafo man named Kofi Abrefa Busia. He would later on become the Prime Minister of Ghana from 1969 to 1972.

The slave trade, racism and the missionaries paving the way to the Scramble for Africa

The preceding destruction of centuries of the slave trade, which in turn led to the birth of racism and was corroborate by claiming to have a superior belief-system, i.e. Christianity, paved the way to a supercilious and ferocious conference. Rodney explains: The simple fact is that no people can enslave another for centuries without coming out with a notion of superiority, and when the colour and other physical traits of those peoples were quite different it was inevitable that the prejudice should take a racist form (1973, p.137). Racism has established itself in the hearts and mind of most Westerners; notwithstanding a small but fierce group that had fought for the abolition of slavery on the basic belief of equality of all. However, while the slave trade had been ceased, by and large white racism extended more violently and openly in capitalist, western societies, such as the U.S.A, Great Britain and other mainland European countries in the 19th century, as Rodney (1973) adds. Aided by the missionaries to underline the inferiority of the African ways of life and the need for obedience towards the European believes, leaders on the continent itself, and the changes in the balance of powers in Europe had, once again, far reaching consequences. The interest had moved from demanding humans to other products, such as ivory and rubber (soon needed for the pneumatic tire in the automobile industry), and agricultural commodities (i.e. palm product, groundnuts, cocoa etc.)

New heights of contempt –the Berlin Conference138 - and the effect on Ghana In the midst of the scramble for new materials and markets the contempt towards Africa reached new- heights when a continent away, seemingly arbitrary lines were drawn on maps, seldom knowing the content of the area or the people inhabiting it. After the French lost the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 against the (now) unified German Empire, they turned their focus on the neighboring continent in an increasingly gripping fashion. While the French forces were the first to intensify their quest for African soil and glory in North and West Africa, they were soon followed by the Germans, British, Portuguese, Italian and lastly, but most infamously by the newly crowned king of nascent Belgium.139

138 Sometimes this meeting is also referred to as the Congo Conference as King Leopold II was particularly eager to ensure his piece of the ‘magnificent African cake’ and had lied his eyed on the Congo. 139 After the defeat of Napoleon and the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, followed by a Revolution in 1830, Belgium became a constitutional monarchy and Leopold II their king in 1865. How that affected the Congo (Kinshasa) for decades to come can be read in the fascinating book by David Reybrouck – Kongo, Eine Geschichte (2012). Part I: General Theories and Histories 151

While the Brits wanted to expand their empire and hold on to their markets, Germany was similarly eager to leave its mark. For a variety of reasons, oscillating between greed and glory, the European powers were now eager to secure their share of the African pie. Otto von Bismarck, the Chancellor of the newly united Germany organized this scramble for Africa in the Berlin conference from December 1884 to Feburary1885. In the Name of God Almighty was the headline to establish the rules that were to disregard any African voices, while deciding over territorial and maritime access as well as free(r) trade while carving up the continent in the General Act of the Berlin conference on West Africa, 26 February 1885.140 The creation of these states, Boahen (1987) highlights, could have been beneficial if the borders were drawn within “any well-defined, rational criteria and in full cognizance of the ethnocultural, geographical, and ecological realities of Africa” (Boahen 1987, p.95). However, the arbitrary and euro-centric nature applied to in this big “Scramble for Africa” has left most nations with lasting quagmires that more often than not created conflicts in the search for more realistic resolutions. Even within the mostly peaceful Motherland of Ghana did the random quilt of ethnocultural groups, united into a supposed nation, cause power struggles that divided different traditions, cultures and languages, towing along tribalism and nepotism in the decades to come. Even though Ghana has been blessed with fairly peaceful elections and transfers of power, one will be hard pressed to find a NDC voter in rural Ashanti, or an anti- JJ Rawlings voter in the Volta region. How tribalism has affected the democratic system, as well as the civil servants will be discussed again in later sections. The scramble for Africa was implemented promptly with the British, claiming the southern part of modern day Ghana as their ‘Gold Coast’ colony, howbeit without consulting with the Ashanti that claimed part of that very colony (Kay and Hymer 1972). Kay and Hymer (1972) add that economically this hasted move might seem nonsensical as the gold trade remained small and cocoa would only become important after the turn of the century. Not all was bad. A positive side effect of colonialism, Boahen (1987) claims, was nation building and generating a common sense of identity within a colonial state. Furthermore, colonialism perhaps through the common sense of frustration and oppression enhanced the spirit of Pan-Africanism that was so powerfully exhibited during the time before and around independence in many sub-Saharan African countries (Boahen 1987). With the establishment of colonial rule in many part of the Gold coast the role of the Chief, who had been the all-powerful judge, spiritual leader, commander-in-chief, principal trader, economic entrepreneur, as well as political leader, decreased, while the lower and upper elites gained more wealth and power (Boahen 1975). The insertion of district and regional (British) commissioner, as well as the spread of the cocoa industry that open economic opportunities to all, further engendered the redistribution of power away from the Chiefs (ibid). The quest was to find an effective administrative

140 The Full Text is available here, with the note that slave trade was also explicitly forbidden within it: http://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1885GeneralActBerlinConference.pdf [accessed 28.04.2017] 152 Part I: General Theories and Histories structure that would be supported by the limited local revenues, soon led the Brits to utilize the puissance of the ‘traditional rulers’, the chiefs. Via ‘indirect rule’ the ‘native institutions and sensitivities were respected’, monies were saved as it reduced the number of European officials in the field, and traditional chief exercised direct administrative control under British supervision (Rathbone and John Alex Ruben 2000).141 The model of indirect rule was established, albeit the collaboration of some Chiefs would not pass without contention and led to ‘extensive popular distaste in the late colonial period’ (Rathbone and Ruben 2000, p.150). It must also be noted that the Asantehene, the king of the Asante, remained a powerful figure until the last wars waged to capture the Golden Stool around the 19th century. In fact, the British could only claim the Gold Coast as their colony by 1901, while the Eastern part of Modern Ghana became a German protectorate known as Togoland in 1884, but was lost to the British with the onset of the Frist World War in 1914.142

Gold Coast Colony – 19th century

As the British taxpayer was unwilling to foot the bill for colonial adventures the colonies had to be administered ‘on the cheap’ (Nugent 1995, p. 23). The focus had to be on areas of investment that would offer swift economic returns. Overseas colonies would be restricted to producing cheap raw material for export back to the parent country and be forced to buy their finished manufactured goods from the home country – mostly at inflated prices. Efforts of the colonies to manufacture their own goods for domestic use or for trade abroad, was forbidden, and any infractions were usually punished. Infrastructure investments for road and railways were undertaken only where material could be extracted. Hence all roads in West African countries seem to lead to the ports on the coast, rather than interconnecting urban or trading hubs within the region still today. Similarly, large parts of the Gold Coast colony were bypassed, as “[t]he northern Territories, in particular, were left in a state of benign neglect and lagged far behind the south in terms of every economic and social indicator” (Nugent 1995, p.25). Agricultural policies in African colonies had a focus on food production and raw material supply to the metropolitan areas of the colonial powers (Girdner et al. 1980). In the case of Ghana the British crown encouraged a policy of export-oriented production of palm oil in the nineteenth and cocoa in the twentieth century (ibid). Cocoa, which was introduced in the mid-19th century, started to experience exponential growth by the mid-1880s when a fall in world prices for palm oil pushed farmers to search for alternative export crops (Kolavalli and Vigneri 2011). Compared to other parts of the continent, it has been said that Ghana was spared the influx of colonial settlers that often established a hegemony

141 In contrast to the British, the French followed a policy of assimilation in which she hoped that have a ‘favored class’ of African that would adopt the French culture and ‘civilization’ which would be raised to the status of Frenchmen Nkrumah 1963. 142 Togoland was split into French (East) and British (West) administrative zones. British Togoland, todays Volta Region, only joined Ghana after a plebiscite in 1956. Part I: General Theories and Histories 153 over plantations to grow ‘European crops’ elsewhere in Africa (i.e. Kenya, Tanzania, Rhodesia etc.) as peasants in the Gold Coast were productive and eagerly supplied the demanded goods (Girdner et al. 1980). Kay and Hymer (1972) note that support for cocoa as well as agriculture sector under the colonial administration was generally limited, hesitant and ‘mainly misdirected’, as ‘no single agriculture station, which would have carried out the required research on the crop in the cocoa belt’ was established until 1937(Kay and Hymer 1972). This led to scattered farms infected with disease, and farmers simply left them to recuperate on their own over time (a tactic that supposedly worked more often than not) (ibid).During colonial times support for the agriculture sector varied and can be, as Kay (1972) does, split in four phases: Phase 1: 1889-1905 with limited importation of plants to study their behavior in local conditions – the botanic garden era. Phase 2: 1905-1915 with more instructional and demonstrational work disseminated via agricultural stations. Phase 3: 1915-1922 with a ‘marked change’ as instructional work was organized on a provincial basis and specialized staff was provided. Phase 4: 1922- 1957 with the Department of Agriculture continuing their work from previous phases, and also becoming the main source for policy formulation for development plans of the sector.

By the early 20th century cocoa production continued to grow rapidly and accounted for 83% of total exports of the Gold Coast in 1920, despite receiving little direct or sustained economic or technical assistance from the colonial administration (Kay and Hymer 1972). However, Economic conditions have changed in the Gold Coast largely as a result of the successful development of cocoa industry. The average farmer instead of being as formerly a labourer himself has now become an employer of labour (Kay and Hymer 1972, p.200). Yet, Nkumah notes: [i]n keeping with the imperialist policy of fostering single crop agriculture in the colonies, our farmers, having found that cocoa did well in our soil and climate, were encouraged to concentrate on its production to the neglect of local food crops and a diversity of cash crops” (1963, p.25). Nevertheless, the monolithic cult around the export commodity cocoa has been a mainstay of Ghanaian agricultural and development policy ever since. On a positive note, the international trade the British, and other European invaders were so keen on, also brought and established maize and cassava as main staples in Africa (Rodney 1973).

Gold Coast strategies under Guggisberg – a positive intervention in the early 20th century

While Ghanaian society underwent the greatest changes between 1890 and 1911, Ghana ‘leaped forward’ amongst colonies of eastern and western Africa during 1919 to 1927 when Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg was governor of the Gold Coast (Boahen 1975). With a rather independent mindset from the colonial office in London, Guggisberg was of the opinion that no country could 154 Part I: General Theories and Histories develop without incurring the debt for the construction of the necessary infrastructure (Frimpong- Ansah 1991).Guggisberg himself noted: Unless the Gold Coast spends every penny it can justifiably afford on extending its present lamentably inadequate facilities for transport, education and sanitation, its progress must, and will, be so hopelessly retarded as to give real cause for discontent, unrest and failure (Guggisberg, 1922 in Frimpong-Ansah 1991, p.55).

Different from his contemporaries, and even from development economists and practitioners that would come long after him, Guggisberg’s plan was based on proper diagnosis of development problem specific to the context, rather than abstract theories or broad politically inspired approaches (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). He identified the essential ingredients for successful economic development in “the provision of maximum incentives to producers, the removal of identified bottlenecks to production potential, public capital mobilization, and the proper management of all these elements” (Frimpong-Ansah 1991, p.21). He had a deep-water harbor built in Takoradi, infrastructure erected, tried to plead for a diversification of agriculture (albeit unsuccessfully),143 and built (co-educational and racial) schools such as Achimota144, which went on to educate many African leaders such as Edward Akufo-Addo, Kwame Nkrumah, Jerry John Rawlings and John Evans Atta Mills (Boahen 1975). Boahen adds importantly that: [P]erhaps the greatest debt owed to Guggisberg is the confidence he had in the Ghanaian people, and above all, the belief which he infused, that the black man was capable of the highest development and achievement and that ability had nothing to do with colour (1975, p. 117). While Guggisberg was a great star that seemed to have helped Ghana back on its feet after the centuries of mixed trade relations and oppression, development efforts from the Colonial Office after Guggisberg were very limited. Out of the £1 million Colonial Development Act that was passed in 1929, only £142,002 was disbursed between 1930 to 1940 for water supply, urban electrification, and an agricultural scholarships scheme in the Gold Coast (Frimpong-Ansah 1991, p. 24). Furthermore it can be claimed that the later colonial period (1929-1942) was marked by a discernible reversal of Guggisberg strategies and a return to the Colonial predatory state in which the focus was commodity extraction for international trade and exclusion of the wider development needs of the indigenous population (ibid). This approach led to the creation of a dual society with a “prosperous export sector superimposed on an impoverished peasant economy” (Frimpong-Ansah 1991, p. 69).

143 Guggisberg envisioned cocoa and palm oil from the south, groundnuts and shea-butter from the north, along a rice, copra, sisal, corn, sugar, coffee and tobacco and pleaded his case to the Legislative council in 1921. While being unsuccessful, he might have been one of the first to see the dangers in a monocrop economy (Boahen 1975; Frimpong-Ansah 1991). 144 Achimota’s motto Ut Omnes Unum Sint-“That all may be one”- symbolized in an excerpt of a piano keys, was to reflect the philosophy that black and white, male and female should integrate and has to play ‘a tune’ of sort. Part I: General Theories and Histories 155

The disparities that might have existed within the borders of what now is known as Ghana, exacerbated already by the slave trade, were certainly further entrenched by the British colonial administration as they used the northern territories as a labor reserve for mines and cocoa plantations in the South (Yaro 2013). Under a system called abusa, migrant workers from the North (including Burkina Faso, Niger or even Mali) flocked to Ghana’s forest zones where they were paid one-third of the sales price of the harvested cocoa (Kolavalli and Vigneri 2011). The foreign administrators made it clear that policies were pursued that subordinated the interest of northern development to those of the southern Ghana, where education, infrastructure and agriculture were developed while the North had to “wait for their turn” (Yaro 2013, p.5). Rodney (1973) reasons that the Northern Territories were simply neglected because they didn’t offer the British any products for export. The workers in the south of Ghana, while benefitting slightly more than their northern counterparts, by no means were on par with their white colleagues. If a Ghanaian was able to gather one of the rare wage positions at all, wages were extremely small145- justified by racist theories – and for the rare occasion that a white and a black filled the same position, the white man was sure to be paid considerably more (Rodney 1973). As Rodney points out: In the period before the last world war, European civil servants in the Gold Coast received an average of £40 per month, with quarters and other privileges. African got an average salary of £4. There were instances where one European in an establishment earned as much as his twenty-five African assistants put together (1973, p. 235). The wage inequality between European and African, sometimes still in similar dimensions, is an issue that still plagues many parts of the continent today.

5.2. Effect of colonialism: economic, social and psychological As stated earlier, education was provided, a sense of national identity vaguely created, and ideas for a pan-Africanism forged – even though not always on purpose. The focus on cash crops had a plethora of effects. On the downside, the focus on cash crop for export into the European market, most colonies were left with monocrop economies (Boahen 1987). In 1987 Boahen still saw this hypnotic focus on single cash crops as so deeply ingrained within the Ghanaian economy that little had changed over the 30 years since independence. Then, like now, this export-oriented cash crop focus tends to neglect the needs of people within the country, particularly when it comes to food crops such as rice, maize, sugar or vegetable oils, that all have to be imported (valuing US$ 1,5 billion by 2015, GoG 2014a). As Boahen phrased it: Africans were encouraged to produce what they did not consume and to consume what they did not produce (1987, p.102).

145 Rodney (1973) claims that the wage was often so small, that is was insufficient to keep the worker physically alive. 156 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Trade, which was such an integral part between West African nations, also came to a halt during colonial rule. Ideas around gender that have unfortunately not been part of the focus on my study, most certainly changed to the negative in the Ashanti region that had seen such strong female leaders like the ‘Queen Mothers’ 146 or ‘Queen sisters’, as well as female warrior heroes such as Yaa Asantewaa. In this regards, Boahen (1987) also points to the fact that there were far fewer facilities for girls than for boys and that no colony had ever a female governor, overall downgrading the status of women in African societies. On the upside, Boahen (1987) observes that rural Africans that had often been hampered by the undue weight that was given to birth in African societies were now able to acquire wealth and status by producing and selling of cash crop – such as Cocoa in Ghana. Colonial powers often introduced the emphasize on individual merit and achievement, as well as Western education, employment opportunities, cash reserves based on crop sales, and the abolition of slavery, all contributing to new social structures between ruling aristocracies, peasant and slaves - set in motion during the century of colonialization (ibid) . The most serious effect that has often been ignored, however, was the negative psychological impact of colonialism. This time, plagued by racism and oppression, also manifested a mentality of condemnation of anything traditional that can be observed with the preference for imported goods (particularly since independence), style of dress – i.e. wearing of three-piece suits in tropical climates – and that public property and finance belong to the (colonial) government and can, even should be taken advantage off at any given moment. In fact, Boahen claims that the disassociation between the people and the budget has often led to “reckless dissipation and misuse of public funds and property” (1987, p.107). Back then, just like now, foreigners live after the ethos of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ – preaching hard-work and frugality while living ostentatious and flamboyant lives in the colony, or now foreign country, usually beyond any measure possible in their home country.147 Similarly colonizers liked to preach Protestant work ethics, frugality and minimal consumption, while they enjoy the catering service with the most splurged on conspicuous consumption and extravagant lifestyles for local standards (Boahen 1987). In the end, Boahen highlights: The Final and worst psychological impact [of colonialism] has been the generation of a deep feeling of inferiority as well as the loss of sense of human dignity among Africans (1987, p.107).

146 Queen Mothers were females of royal blood, who were maybe a mother, sister or aunt to the reigning king in empires of the Asante/Ashanti. Inheritance, which is a complicated matter, was always linked through the mother also. 147 The ‘excuse’ for this behavior nowadays is often to be ‘compensated’ for the harsh work and life conditions in a developing country. However, a junior consultant in her 20s, for example, would never been able to take home a monthly salary shy of five figures and still get a car, house and four servants paid in Germany. Yet, in many of the African countries such treatment can be observed for aid organization such as the GIZ. Part I: General Theories and Histories 157

This psychological impact, of course, makes up part of the center question of this research. What has the condemnation of everything African over roughly a century and a half, combined with racial discrimination, constant humiliation and oppression done to the African psyche? Rodney (1973) describes the effects of colonialism as leaving people with a ‘cultural and psychological crisis’ which has been intensified as many ‘have accepted at least partially the European version of things’(1973, p.36). What Rodney, Baldwin, Fanon and Boahen amongst others, have pointed out is that the African people run danger to manifest the European ideas and simultaneously manifest doubts in their own capacity to transform and develop their natural environment independently. With such doubts, he [the colonist] even challenges those of his brothers who say that Africa can and will develop through the efforts of its own people (Rodney 1973, p.37). Have they been able to regain belief in themselves, their people and their destiny over this brief period since independence? At the time of Boahen writings (1987) he felt that the inferiority complex has not been overcome. So his charge against colonialism is not that it did nothing for Africans, but that it did so little and rather unintentionally, with lasting negative side effects instead. Yet Baldwin adds: This past, the Negro's [black man's] past, the rope, fire, torture, castration, infanticide, rape; death and humiliation; fear by day and night, fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that he was worthy of life, since everyone around him denied it; sorrow for his women, for his kinfolks, for his children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect; rage, hatred for white men so deep that it often turned against him and his own, and made all love, all trust, all joy impossible- this past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful. I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering – enough is certainly as good as a feast – but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are (Baldwin 1964, p.84). As much as the psychological effects of slavery, racism and colonialism on its victims are not fully understood, and demand much more research, the perpetrator has also not been fully understood. Similarly to Smith’s additional explanation to slavery being the pride and love of power, Mannoni occupied himself with understanding the psychological effect of colonialism on both ends. Mannoni came to the conclusion that it was not just the greed for profits but rather for “other psychological satisfactions” that motivated the Frenchmen, and other Europeans, to establish colonies overseas (1956/2008, p.33). In his fascinating Freudian analysis Mannoni finds the white man’s inferiority complex that arises through the ‘abandonment’ from parents in the individualistic societies of the West (where the child is meant to leave the home), as well as sexual derangements, to be the main sources of the oppressive behavior. The need for attachment, Mannoni believed, is a hereditary characteristic of mankind, hence, the anguish of abandonment can only be overcome with suffering to sever the ties to ones’ family, either leading to tremendous freedom, or continued pain that is being paid forward by domineering others. 158 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Based on Mannoni’s analysis the colonial conflict and racism, then, are the results of the colonizers’ projection of elementary and deeply-hidden fears and desires onto the colonized. The question whether this “maniacal fixation on violence and death is the substitute for a forbidden sexuality” was also taken up by Frantz Fanon in Black Skin White Mask (1952, p.111). He examines the ‘civilized white man’ unusual longing for sexual absurdities (such as unpunished rapes, unrepressed incest etc.) along Freudian lines, and suggests that these desires are projected onto the black man. While the Jewish community is suspected to take over wealth and power, the black man is cast in the role of sexual threat (Fanon 1952/2008). Fanon summarizes: The Negro symbolizes the biological danger; the Jew, the intellectual danger (1952, p.127). The over-sexualization of the black man in particular, can by now look back on a long tradition, despite evidence to the contrary.148 Similarly but in the opposite direction of causality, Fanon writes about the ‘dependency complex’ of the colonized toward the colonizers that Mannoni had thought to have identified as another deep seeded development with causal explanatory function: I wonder sometimes whether school inspectors and government functionaries are aware of the role they play in the colonies. For twenty year they poured every effort into programs that would make the Negro a white man. In the end, they dropped him and told him, ‘You have an indisputable complex of dependence on the white man’ (Fanon 1952/2008, p.168). The Ghanaian historian Boahen (1987) leaves no doubt that colonialism had made an impact on the African continent, however, he has also underlines that despite its harshness, the colonial empire building was a rather brief experience, a short episode in the long history of people on the continent. After all, colonialism did not last longer than a hundred years anywhere on the continent - mostly from 1880s to the 1970s. Berry points out in No condition is permanent that rather than seeing the colonial period as “a time of transition – from isolation to global incorporation, from social equilibrium to turbulence, from collective solidarity to fragmented alienation” we should rather understand it as “an era of intensified contestation over custom, power, and property” (1993, p.8). While the time of colonialism might have been harsh but rather short to some, others were eager to end it as fast as possible. The road to independence was not an easy one on the African continent, but Ghana, taken everything into account, seemed well prepared for the task.

5.3. The road to independence (1940s-1950s) The Second World War had far reaching consequence, way beyond the border of Europe yet again. Just like in the war before, many Africans were asked to fight imperialism and sacrifice their lives for the freedom of their colonizers. The ‘democratic enunciation’ of Western statesmen against the oppression, such as from Nazi-Germany, were received and carefully reflected upon in the colonized

148 Fanon, for example, points to the study of Dr. Pales finding the penis of black men rarely exceeds 120 millimeters, the same figure as for European men.” (Fanon 1952/2008 p. 130-131). Part I: General Theories and Histories 159 world, as Nkrumah points out (1963). The Atlantic Charter of 1941, which was drafted by US and UK leaders alike, included the claim on self-government to those who have been deprived of it. The ideational butterfly was let loose and the tsunami would soon follow. On the material end of explanatory factors, describing the change of approach towards its colonies, particularly in the case of Great Britain, was the reshuffling of power in a broader scene. The old colonial powers had been severely weakened in the war; as one empire declined, another one or two would rise. America and Russia emerged as the new powers out of the struggle within Europe, and both had a keen interest in ending the hegemony of the colonizers over African people and soils. Ghana supported the war efforts of the allies in so far as the British as well as the United States started operating on her soil. She also sent 65000 men to fight for the freedom of the Europeans and the World into the war. During the Second World War then the development and extension of harbor and airport facilities (including the establishment of the US Army Air Force Base in Accra in 1941), and the active encouragement of additional agricultural goods grew. The Gold Coast administration then started to support more agriculture activities and vegetable farming in particular (including that of potatoes), to supply the demand of the British and American allied forces stationed in the Gold coast.149 While planting other crops besides cocoa were encouraged during this time Rodney (1973) points out that the price of cocoa decreased from £50 per ton to £10 per ton during the war. It also marks the first time Urban Agricultural was promoted as vegetables were grown in Accra and other cities along the West African coast (Asomani-Boateng 2002). 150 Many decades later Gen. Acheampong would attempt similar undertakings when he encouraged urban dwellers to use all spaces available in Operation-Feed-Yourself in the 1970s. Until then, however, cultivation of indigenous staple crops, as well as the livestock or poultry rearing was officially prohibited within city and town limits for reasons of public health (Asomani-Boateng 2002). Industrial products such as building materials, concrete, furniture, leather and household goods started to be manufactured within the Gold Coast’s borders (Boahen 1975). Beyond affecting the structure of the economy, Boahen (1975) believes that these activities “whetted the appetite of people for more” industrial development (p.151). Meanwhile, Ghanaian soldiers and other African soldiers alike witnessed the white man’s superiority vanish in the trenches of Burma, India and beyond, as their white comrades suffered from the same fears, pains and agonies of death like all other men on earth.151 Boahen describes:

149 A curious side note on the agricultural production while British troops were stationed in the Gold Coast is the growing of potatoes. The British had insisted that the climate was not suitable to grow the Brits favorite crop before the war, yet quite miraculously during the time of war potatoes grew magnificently. Once the shipping lines were open again after the war, however, these costal potatoes were deemed ‘unfit for human consumption Nkrumah 1963. Since then potatoes are imported again from Europe (mostly via the Netherlands). 150 It can be added that before the Second World War European vegetables and ornamental plants were grown in the residences and behind castles walls to provide for the European settlers food preferences and to beautify their gardens(Asomani-Boateng 2002). The scale, however, was understandably much smaller. 151 On rare occasions African were even put in command of white soldiers, such as the example of Ghanaian Seth Anthony (Boahen 1975, p.153) 160 Part I: General Theories and Histories

The war definitely shattered the prestige of the white man and the myth of his inherent superiority and this removed an important psychological barrier for the Africans (1975, p.153). Once these African war veterans returned home after saving the colonizers from the yoke of German imperialism their eyes saw differently. When their natural expectations of adequate employment opportunities or pensions did not materialize in the years after, they became ‘very active in the postwar nationalist agitation’ (Boahen 1975, p.154). The participation of Ghanaians/Africans in the Second World War is described by former president Kwame Nkrumah with the following words: Thus we have witnessed the greatest awakening ever seen on this earth of suppressed and exploited people against the powers that have kept them in subjection. This, without a doubt is the most significant happening of the twentieth century (1963, XIII). While the returned soldiers certainly did their part of paving the way towards freedom, it was also the Ghanaian business and intellectual elite that had their role to play.

Politics and business - The United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC)

African businessmen had held positions of some power up until the 1920s. However, they were put under tremendous pressure by the European monopolies that were aided and abetted by the colonial government after the WWI (Rathbone 1973). In 1947, then, lawyers, academics, chiefs and businessmen were brought together by Dr. J.B. Danqua, Edward Akufo-Addo and others who formed the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) with the slogan “Self-Government in the shortest possible time” (Meredith 2005). Boahen (1975) described the UGCC as “a moderate bourgeois or elitist movement drawing support mainly from the traditional rulers and their elders, the professional classes and the disgruntled private businessmen.” (p.160). Rathbone adds: [I]n the late 1940s, the ‘big men’ of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) decided that the time was ripe for them to cash in on their political entitlements as the pre-eminent citizens of the colony. Moreover, because money has always been a vital ingredient of electoral success, the rich have always enjoyed a material advantage. The men of means (few women have entered politics) have conventionally sought to win over potential voters by insinuating that some of this wealth would rub off on them – either directly (through patronage) or indirectly (because of the application of their business acumen to national affairs) (1973, p.5). Rathbone’s quote underlines that the main concern of the UGCC was economic, rather than nationalistic. He sees the discontent of the Ghanaian elite represented by the UGCC against unfair trading practices, favoritism towards expatriate business and the monopolistic European commercial organization, which was called the Association of West African Merchants (AWAM). Rathbone observes that despite the oppressive atmosphere and strong preference of the British to use and support Part I: General Theories and Histories 161

‘natural rulers’, chiefs, in their indirect rule of their colonies, it ‘is hard to escape the general conclusion’ that a significant part of the colonial elite power-structure were modern, entrepreneurial and professional elites of the Gold Coast (1973). These elites, despite their status in general society, were “undoubtedly stung by the persistence of racialism at all levels” and extremely limited career opportunities (Rathbone 1973, p.393).152 Notwithstanding their elitist urban party image the UGCC invited the 39-year old, focal and charismatic Kwame Nkrumah to be the General Secretary in December 1947. Nkrumah had been living abroad for twelve years, first studying economics, sociology and philosophy in the United States before moving to London in 1945 where he had intended to study law, but was soon caught up in ‘left-wing politics’ (Meredith 2005, p.18). In February 1948 British soldiers killed two war veterans and injured many more during a peaceful protest (Boahen 1975). The accumulated sense of anger, frustration and humiliation produced by the oppressive, discriminatory, and exploitative system of colonialism was best expressed by the young Nkrumah. However, his fervor and left-wing views soon led to a split from the UGCC and the formation of his own Party in June 1949: the Convention People’s Party (CPP) (Meredith 2005). With the slogan ‘Self-Government- Now’, in combination with his winning smile Nkrumah’s radical approach spread ‘to trade unionist, ex-servicemen, clerks, petty traders and primary school teachers’ alike, and to a new generation, frustrated and impatient people seeking a better way of life (Meredith 2005, p.19). Nkrumah and his ‘veranda boys’ of the CPP 153 , which represents the more radical and downtrodden masses, were attractive to small businessmen also. Partially in defiance to the interests represented by the UGCC, the CPP businessmen hoped and attained exclusive economic opportunities that were denied to UGCC businessmen. The CPP on her part benefited from the capital, as well as the followings of these businessmen (Rathbone 1973).Describing the CPP members and their motivations, Rathbone writes: [S]ome men were undoubtedly convinced ideological nationalists, proud tribalists, social democrats or social fascists or whatever, but behind the rhetoric lies an unmistakable struggle for scarce resources which acquire a heightened value simply because of their scarcity (1973, p.399). Representing the hopes of many Nkrumah grew ever bolder, spoke out against the British plan for constitutional reform and announced a campaign of ‘positive action’ (including strikes, boycotts and agitation). These actions, however, ultimately led him to a three year imprisonment sentence before the scheduled election in 1951 (Meredith 2005). Meanwhile, using the letters of the law, Nkrumah

152 Rathbone (1973) underlines that even under benevolent leadership of Governor Guggisberg’s as administrator of the Gold Coast, the Africanization plans started in the mid-1920s only 93 Senior Service posts were held by Africans/Ghanaians, as of 1947. 153 The nickname was given to Nkrumah and other young CPP members that would sleep on the verandas of the wealthy during their political campaigning. 162 Part I: General Theories and Histories managed to get his name on the electoral roll, and with the CPP, won the majority of votes forcing the colonial administrator Arden-Clark to release him from James Fort in February 1951 (Meredith 2005). [F]reedom is not a commodity which is ‘given to the enslaved upon demand. It is a precious reward, the shinning trophy of struggle and sacrifice (Nkrumah 1963, p. XV). While the British administration ‘shared its power’ it was clear that their influence over the colony had to come to an end. Nkumah writes about this change: The social effects of colonialism are more insidious than the political and economics. This is because they go deep into the minds of the people and therefore take longer to eradicate. The Europeans relegated us to the position of inferiors in every aspect of our everyday life. Many of our people came to accept this view that we were an inferior people. It was only when the validity of that concept was questioned that the strings of revolt began and the whole structure of colonial rule came under attack (1963, p. 32).

With a good organization and propaganda machine, the CPP won the June election in 1954 (72 out of 104 seats) (Boahen 1975). Changing from a system of direct rule of kings and chief, with the detour of indirect rule with British paternalism and supervision, now democracy was hoping to spread. Challenges were manifold, including the attitude and expectation of the people. Hoping for big changes to come fast, and despite Nkrumah reminding everyone that hard work would be required, the reliance on the head of the nation was enormous. From early morning, queues would form outside his [Nkrumah’s] home, people seeking advice on anything from martial disputes to sickness, infertility, job recommendations, financial assistance and settlement of debts (Meredith 2005, p.23). Their direct reliance of the people on their political leaders has not ceased to exist, even today, as will be discussed again in later Chapters. Besides changing the mindset of the common women and men, the old rulers, the chief would be a major challenge to his rule. Understandably they would try to protect the old order while Nkrumah was attempting to bring change by living and serving modern democracy (Meredith 2005). In parallel the Gold Coast Government formulated its first agriculture (1950-1960) Development Plan, which aimed at mechanization and diversification of export crops by replacing “the traditional labor-intensive methods of farming with large-scale capital-intensive techniques” (Akoto 1987, p. 246). The While the Department of Agriculture was given the responsibility to provide extension services to small-scale farmer the majority of resources remained dedicated to the (disease control in the) Cocoa sector (Akoto 1987). Rodney adds: The most decisive failure of colonialism in Africa was a failure to change the technology of agricultural production. The most convincing evidence as to the superficiality of the talk Part I: General Theories and Histories 163

about colonialism having ‘modernized ’Africa is the fact that the vast majority of African went into colonialism with a hoe and came out with a hoe (1973, p.344). While agricultural progress was slow, the political transition was unstoppable by the end of the 1950s. The official hand over of power came with the third elections in 1957.

5.4. 6th of March 1957 – The birth of the Black-Star of Africa On the 6th of March 1957 Kwame Nkrumah woke up to an economy in which 90% of the country’s imports were in the hand of foreigners, 96% of timber concessions were held by overseas timber companies, all the seven gold mines and half the diamond concession in what was now called Ghana were held by expatriates (Boahen 1975). Competition in trade and retail business came mostly from Lebanese, Syrian, Indian, British and other European firms (ibid). Furthermore, as much as the British had left ‘peacefully’ and in agreeance with the will of the Ghanaian people, they had not been ‘too eager’ to leave and expressed their ‘sense of injury in act of petulance (Nkrumah 1963). The intention to cut off all links with its former colony is described by Nkrumah moving into the former official residence of the British governor- Christianborg Castle (now Osu Castle) – with the following, words: Making our tour through room after room, we were struck by the general emptiness. Except for an occasional piece of furniture, there was absolutely nothing to indicate that only a few days before people had lived and worked there. [...] It was as though there had been a definite intention to cut off all links between the past and present, which could help us finding our bearing. It was a covert reminder that, having ourselves rejected that past, it was for us to make our future alone (Nkrumah 1963, p.XIV). Nkrumah had gigantic tasks ahead of him and he would waste no time. Following the ideas of the Argentinian economist Raúl Prebisch, the socialist government under Nkrumah attempted to transform the country rapidly into an industrial nation under the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI). Projects like the Akosombo Dam construction, which created the largest manmade lake in the world (Lake Volta) and simultaneously produced electricity for the envisioned aluminum industry, was undertaken with breathtaking initiative and conviction. Moreover, daring projects were undertaken in an attempt to close the development gap between the different regions within Ghana, – notably with respect to roads, schools and state enterprises created to drive industrialization (Nugent 1995). It is self-evident that under Import Substitution Industrialization the focus would be on building industries which could add value to Ghana’s products that had been exported mainly as raw materials, or not produced locally at all. Nkrumah explains: Under colonial rule, foreign monopoly interest had our whole economy completely tied up to suit themselves, in a country which output of cocoa is the largest in the world, there was not a single chocolate factory (1963, p.27). The sad reality was that raw materials, such as cocoa or lime, were shipped out from Ghana to the UK and re-imported, now as bottled lime juice (and in rare cases chocolate, which has been and is mostly 164 Part I: General Theories and Histories produced for Europeans), to be sold for a much higher price even though Ghana would have had all the material necessary to produce the good on her soil (Nkrumah 1963). This kind of ‘Alice in Wonderland craziness’, as Nkrumah described it, still exists in Ghana and across the continent that is still known for its raw-material rather than its value-added products. After independence was gained education as well as infrastructure development took center stage also: primary and secondary schools, universities, roads, hospitals, airports and seaport were built (Owusu-Baah 2012). The Gold Coast was renamed after the ancient kingdom of Ghana to indicate that modern-day inhabitants descended from migrants of this great empire154, which has a centralized state- structure already in A.D. 800 (Nkrumah 1963).155 In 1947 the Cocoa Marketing Board had been established as the sole purchase agent for coca beans and its profits were directed towards reserves that were meant for public investments (Kolavalli and Vigneri 2011). 156 The reserves, mostly from the sales of Cocoa beans stood at $252 million (equivalent to 17 months’ worth of imports) in 1957 (Akoto 1987). Ghana was in quite the unique situation having these large financial reserves, perhaps to the determent of orthodox economics, as they gave the impression that these reserves would be adequate for a long process of development (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). In fact, cocoa continued to be a strong focus for agricultural development under Nkrumah, and through new planting and expanded acreage increased production (Owusu-Baah 2012). However, despite an increase in production, a slump in international prices caused a decline of government revenue from 76 million cedi in 1957 to only 13 million cedis in 1965. As a result Ghana’s deficit grew from US$19 million in 1959 to US$135 million already in 1961 (ibid). Nkrumah before and until shortly after independence was known as hard-working, morally upright, with frugal tastes and abhorring money, wealth and ostentation (Boahen 1975). He was understandably eager and impatient to see change come for the people of Ghana as well as for Africans as a whole. Nkrumah’s vision went far beyond the borders of Ghana. In fact, he might be best remembered today for his Pan-African initiatives and his pioneering work in African liberation (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). As he declared in his independence speech: Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent (Nkrumah, 6th of March, 1957).157 Dei-Anang (1975), who was part of Nkrumah Foreign Relations administration from 1959 until 1965, adds:

154 The kingdom of Ghana itself centered around an area ‘some 200 miles north of the watershed between the Senegal and Niger rivers’ in modern-day West-Africa Nkrumah 1963 p.2. While the empires’ origins date back to before Christ, it reached its peak between the 9th and 11the century Rodney 1973. 155 Marin Meredith attributes this idea (to change the name from Gold Coast to Ghana) to Dr. Joseph Danquah. 156 A curious side note is that the chairman of the Cocoa Board, which was located within the Ministry of Food, was John Cadbury – the director of Cadbury Brothers who were buying pooled cocoa from West African farmers (Rodney 1973, p.266). 157 Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s Speech on 6th of March 1957 at the independence square in Accra can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTTdi8AjZg8 , his point on liberation on the African continent can be heard at minute 5, exact [accessed 27.04.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 165

Because he [Nkrumah] expected the best, always believing that what happened in Ghana was an inspiration to other Africans emerging from colonial rule, it was difficult to count the cost, in terms of either the human material available, or the limited resources at the disposal of a small country such as Ghana (1975, p.2). Nkrumah’s’ capacity for work seemed ‘enormous’, as he was constantly reading, consulting and planning, not seldom calling on his staff, like Dei-Anang, in the dead of night to suggest or discuss a new idea that would be on the agenda the next day (Dei-Anang 1975). Nkrumah, however, is best known as an important member and ideational father to the Organization for the Unity of Africa (OUA), the predecessor of the African Union of today. In fact, he had the potential headquarters of the OUA built in Accra, and was taken partially by surprise when Haile Selassie I declared Addis Ababa the place of the OUA. Freshly renovated in the 2000’s, this huge building is now utilized by the parliamentarians of Ghana. Nevertheless, Nkrumah has ideas that aimed to spread far beyond the borders of Ghana, as Dei-Anang writes: It cannot be denied that during Nkrumah’s regime Ghana’s pan-African posture put her in the forefront of African affairs. It helped to raise the black man in the eyes of the world (1975, p. 49). Nkrumah’s development philosophy can be categorized under the ‘Big Push’ approach popular during that period. His hope to industrialize his nation, and Africa, was thought possible only by a disruption of the circle of poverty, as he explains: One thing is certain, unless we plan to lift Africa up out of her poverty, she will remain poor. For there is a vicious circle which keeps the poor in their rut of impoverishment, unless an energetic effort is made to interrupt the circular causation of poverty. Once this has been done, and the essential industrial machine has been set in motion, there is a snowballing effect which increases the momentum of change (1963, p.73). On the agricultural front Nkrumah attempted to turn the famers into a large-scale and mechanized industry with the hope to increase output, diversify export products while creating employment for the youth (Frimpong-Ansah 1991).

Agricultural policy after independence The agricultural development model after independence followed socialist ideas, of collectivization such as forming of State farms, Workers Brigades, Youth Famers League and the United Ghana Farmers Co-operative Council. The means were then, just like now, avenues of mechanization in which agriculture was to be brought under the influence of technology, aiming at increase yield and high growth (Yaro 2013). While the state-led agricultural development policy directed the establishment of large state farms, it came at the expense of small-scale farmers, which were seen as inefficient, and hence ignored in most of Nkrumah’s plans (Owusu-Baah 2012). Frimpong-Ansah explains: 166 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Although our emphasis is on helping the small Ghanaian farmer, we have also had no difficulty in deciding that it would be helpful to have some sort of large scale modern agrarian projects in this country, partly to demonstrate to the farmers the profitability of new crops and new methods and partly because this is the quickest way to develop some of the empty space in our large and under populated country (1991, p.84).158 The enthusiasm from the government seemed to be difficult to transfer to the people. The state farms, which were meant to absorb much of the unemployed urban dwellers, were often overstaffed with workers, which often had antipathetic attitudes when they were moved from other organizations, combined with high level of corruption associated with input purchase, distribution, usage and management of the farms. In the end, Yaro points out that peasant production was known to be more efficient than that of the state farms despite all the investments (2013). Akoto adds, that the focus toward agriculture, which received around 10% of total fiscal expenditure159, came at the expenses of infrastructure development which hampered the linking of ‘food-producing rural areas and the fast growing urban areas, which were then becoming a major source of demand for these surpluses’ (1987, p. 24). In table 3 the agricultural expenditure from 1900 to 1960 can be seen: Table 3: Government Total expenditure and agricultural spendings in £ (Source: adjusted from Frimpong-Ansah, 1991, table 5.4, p.80 based on Kay and Hymer, 1972, Table 26d (2000 constant 1920 prices); : Data for the years 1900 to 1950 are annual averages for the five year following the respective years).

Years 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960

Total 1678 599 1411 252 338 3070 7793 4930 5590 8295 7779 9972

Agriculture 12 54 78 91 158 1569 3150 2562 2465 2710 2842 3970

In regards to the developmental needs of the Northern Regions, they were once again designated to be the food producer for the urban South, while cotton and shea nuts were designated for export (Yaro 2013). However, the government also worked fervently on improving infrastructure, as well as bringing social services such as healthcare and education (ibid). Also Soviet and Israeli equipment was spread over the Northern region, state farms became centers for mechanized agriculture, loans were provided (particularly for the rice and groundnuts), yet, providing and incorporating of appropriate machinery for the tropical soil turned out to be a challenge. While Yaro (2013) observed that the collectivist style of projects seemed to have fit well with the traditional system of mutual assistance as output rose in the Northern regions, Frimpong-Ansah (1991) writes that the assumption of the elite on African communalism and its organizational structure on the

158 Frimpong-Ansah (1991) refers to the Gold Coast, The Second Development Plan, 1959-1964 (Government Printer, Accra, 1959), p.6 in the footnote for the quote. 159 The 10% share, based on Akoto (1987) is most likely still an underestimate considering the resources committed to the import of farm machinery and equipment for state farms between 1962 and 65. Part I: General Theories and Histories 167 household level, proved to be incorrect also – African communalism was not equal to modern-day definitions of socialism, and hence existing structures could not simply be converted to ideologies of the day. Similarly, the government’s created Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC) in the Northern Regions (created in 1951), established the Gonja Development corporation (GDC) with the objective (among other things) to introduce mechanized farming in Northern Ghana, however, it remained largely unsuccessful, because it addressed ‘second-stage’ issues – such as better seeds and fertilizer – before adequately acknowledging and remedying the fragmentation of peasant farmers which resulted in inadequate feeder roads, storage and marketing facilities, as well as arbitrary producer prices given by traders (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). Moreover, the failure of the GDC, and northern mechanization in particular, was due to the frequent breakdown of heavy machinery and lack of skilled operators to provide maintenance, exacerbated by initial land preparation often taking away the most fertile top soil (ibid). As will be discussed in detail in the results section of this study, many of the issues from 60 years ago are still prominent today. The Second Development Plan (1959-1964) of the Nkrumah’s regime was focused on improving yields and growth through – yet again- farm mechanization – of cereals in Northern Ghana and cocoa in the forest region (Akoto 1987). It also included irrigation works for the Volta region, promotion of the use of fertilizer and the establishment of plantations of rubber and plantain in the south-western part of the country (Akoto 1987). The Seven-Year Development Plan of 1964 hoped to ‘revolutionize’ agriculture and industry based on the use of science and technology with the “greatest emphasis on the modernization of agriculture” to provide sufficient food for the people while supporting “secondary industries based on the products of our agriculture” (Government of Ghana 1964,p. Foreword). Smallholder farmers were acknowledged for their importance in the development of Ghana: The small scale farmer with his hoe and cutlass has virtually created Ghana as she is today (Government of Ghana 1964, Seven Year Development Plan, p.45). However, it was also made clear that modernization is needed to feed the growing population, and that the country should not continue to rely on them (stallholder farmers) for development in the long run, but rather aim to transform into an industrial nation (Government of Ghana 1964). In conclusion, Nkrumah’s agricultural plans might have been too aggressive and demanding for the fragile peasant production structures, while the Cocoa sector was squeezed so hard that in the end resources ran out more quickly than productivity in the food sector increased, as Frimpong-Ansah (1991) points out. The initial windfall of financial reserves could not be grown fast enough alongside Nkrumah’s ambitious plans. Any further aggressive development stood the risk of squeezing the cocoa sector even harder, which risked destroying the long-term foundation of the industry and therefore of the long-term development strategy itself (Frimpong-Ansah 1991, p.91). 168 Part I: General Theories and Histories

The top-down decision making of the time also did its part to mute the voices of the beneficiaries, i.e. the smallholder farmers. The ‘veranda boys’ that surrounded and supported Nkrumah during the formation of the CPP, stayed loyal to him through most of his reign, and, in fact, made it possible for him to build such an authority over them and the country (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). Civil servants then, as well as today, followed an institutional ideology that emphasized formal hierarchy, in which the bulk of everyday decision were made by lesser functionaries who passed many ‘more important’ issues up the chain of command/hierarchy for fear of being seen as undermining the ‘big man’ (Nugent 1995). The overburdening of the top of the hierarchy with a plethora of decisions and actions items, even of the mundane kind, created an inefficient work environment that can be observed in Ghana (and elsewhere) today.

International climate and changes within Not all was bleak, but surely more complicated than first envisioned when independence was gained. In 1960 Ghana officially became a republic within the commonwealth, with Nkrumah as president and head of state. The ex-colonial powers, which were fairly quick to realize the inevitability of the idea of freedom blossoming into a reality in African hearts and mind after having had sent their troops to die for it in the Second World War, were yet slow to come to terms with the final conclusions of this development. Similarly to a disgruntled ex-partner they were determined to make it as difficult as possible for the newly independent states to create their own lives and successes. In the case of Ghana, old and new foes across the ponds used cunning technics to in an attempt to keep the old balances of powers in place. A particularly good example of these contradicting attitudes were the involvement of the British and Americans during the Akosombo Dam construction.

Box 3: Akosombo Dam and the aluminum production Ghana had discovered bauxite reserves in the early 20th century and just as long plans for the production of aluminum from the local ore reserves were debated. In this regard the Volta River basin was subject of study by the British to assess the possibility of generating hydroelectricity as early as 1915, efforts and plans where intensified in the 1940s and 1950s, but Britain declined any interest in the project after independence. In need of financing, the nascent Ghanaian government ultimately approached the U.S. Government in 1957 to see if they could help bring the project to life (World Bank 1961).160 Initially uninterested, Eisenhower invited the Minister of Finance for breakfast after an embarrassing incident of the Ghanaian Minister being declined an order of orange juice in Delaware during his visit, because he was black. Vice president Nixon was supposed to help set up financing thereafter.

160 Rodney (1973) adds that Western capitalists only became interested in building the Volta River Dam when they realized that the Soviet Union would come to rescue in due time, if they didn’t come to a concord . Part I: General Theories and Histories 169

Eventually, The California firm: Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corporation agreed to partner with the GoG to build and run the aluminum smelter, but only under the condition to use imported alumina (World Bank 1961). It can be debated on why Kaiser and the U.S. government demanded this slight, but important change to plans, but certainly Nkrumah had envisioned the use of alumina naturally occurring within the boarder of Ghana. A second caveat was the price for the electricity that would be generated by the dam and sold to Kaiser for their aluminum smelter, which was set to be so low, to ensure a ‘reasonable’ rate of return to Kaiser’s shareholders, but burden Ghanaians with subsidizing Kaiser’s electricity.

In the end a substantial part of the project financing was supposed to be done through the then newly established the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)/ World Bank. Analyzing the project the IBRD warned the Nkrumah government of the “need for satisfactory agreements covering the sale of power to the smelter” with ‘unattractive return’ that the Ghanaians would have to expect with the agreement slanted in the favor or Kaiser and Co. (World Bank 1961). While Nkrumah realized the quagmire Ghana was in, he wanted and needed this project to go through.161

Eventually a loan of US$98 million 162 was signed with a repayment plan of 39 semi-annual installments (from 1968 to 1987) was set up (World Bank 1961). A time, with new negotiation techniques had begun.

The quagmire Nkrumah was facing was between development for his country and conceding control, yet again, back to Western powers. It seemed that one would only come with the other. Ghana, being the first of many African countries, stared down the road of balancing money and power with the burden of debt, development and subordination to international lending institutions. As much as Nkrumah struggled on the international front, by some accounts he had become the subject ‘of a most nauseating personality cult’ within Ghana by the 1960s, and supposedly became ‘superstitious, corrupt and immoral’ (Boahen 1975, p.209). 163 This rather harsh criticism of Boahen’s 164 on his rival of earlier times might have to be relativized in the light of international turmoil and hegemonic threat that swept into African politics of that time. While some of this criticism needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, it is easy to see why an African leader would become afraid of

161 Further details on the reports and agreements by the World Bank can be found here: http://projects.worldbank.org/P000834/volta-power-project?lang=en&tab=overview [accessed: 15.05.2017] 162 IBRD gave $US47 million, the United States government loaned US$ 37 million, while the United Kingdom actually contributed US$14 million (World Bank 1961). 163 Some reports state that Nkrumah became a bit of a Showboy, acquiring ever more mistresses, which he lavished with all sorts of gifts, while taking bribes and being involved in corrupt behavior, Boahen claims (1975, p. 209). His changing attitude might have also been fueled by the sycophantic hero-worship that he received from colleagues, friend and advisors (Boahen 1975). 164 It should be pointed out that Boahen, notwithstanding his impressive academic achievements within the realm of history, joined the (NPP) and ran as a presidential candidate in the 1992 election, which he lost against Jerry John Rawlings. 170 Part I: General Theories and Histories his position and his live in the years after colonialism had official ended, yet interferences on the continent continued. In the atmosphere of the Cold War, lines were drawn in more clandestine manners and leaders around the globe had to fear the wrath of the Western powers if they leaned too far to the left. While the 1950s saw operations against democratically elected leaders in places such as Iran (replacing Mossadegh with the Shah) or Guatemala (where Jacobo Arbenz was replaced with a more United Fruit Company friendly government), the 1960 marked the year of decisive and contentious interventions on the African continent. The democratically elected, and rather outspoken, Patrice Lumumba was hunted down (over many month) through the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and was assassinated early 1961 in collaboration between African and Western forces (i.e. the Belgian secret service and the CIA). Nkrumah, a victim of assassination attempt himself, passed the Preventive Detention Act in 1958. And indeed over the years to come, multiple attempts to take Nkrumah’s life resulted in death and injuries of people around him, as a Reuter’s news article in the New York Times of 1964 describes.165 It was to this backdrop that discussion of a one-party state became public. Yet Nkrumah was also a founding member166 of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and with his party, the CPP, was being an anti-imperial and nationalist movement, however, with clear socialist leaning within the Ghanaian government. Some CPP leaders had tried to link the Ghanaian socialism to African communalism, others were hoping to develop a new “African socialism”, while some advocated for a soviet-style scientific socialism (Duodu 2005). Left-leaning government, however, were not well received in the Western world of the time. Discussions became more serious in the 1960s when Ghana had established itself as an independent nation, and was respected and admired for its progressive leadership way beyond its borders – particularly within the African-American community of the United States of America. Nkrumah, who had also lived in the US, attracted visitors like W.E.B. DuBois, Maya Angelou, Mohamed Ali and Malcom X among others to visit Accra, as he was regarded as an enlightened leader that was restoring the African image in the world (Malcolm X 1964). During this time the struggle to re-visit and re-shape the African image in the world, was at a high, as civil rights movement leaders such as Malcom X, Martin Luther King and Fred Hampton in the U.S. fought – and died for – the humane treatment of African-Americans. The killings and assassination attempts against independent- thinking leaders around the globe were ongoing when Nkrumah tried to shift gears in his development agenda for Ghana.

165 There were at least 5 assassination attempts ranging from hand grenades to shots fired at him at different location all over Ghana between 1962 and 1964. For details see: http://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/03/nkrumah- escapes-assassin-5th-time.html [accessed: 29.05.2016] and New York Times JAN. 3,1964. It can also be mentioned that the Preventive Detention Act was utilized to imprison (over 1000) people that were a threat to Nkrumah’s life, and at times also to his position, in the years prior to the attack. 166 Nkrumah was one of five statesmen that during a United Nations meeting founded the NAM (Non-Aligned Movement)- the others men included Tito of Yugoslavia, Nasser of Egypt, Nehru of India and Sukarno of Indonesia. Part I: General Theories and Histories 171

Cocoa-money makes Ghana’s world go ‘round

Nkrumah had big ideas while being under big pressures, yet for the kind of development envisioned by him large amounts of foreign exchange was needed, as Ghana had to import many different kinds of equipment (for agriculture and industry) as well as consumer goods. Large reserves of foreign currency had been accumulated by the good world cocoa prices until 1956 (Government of Ghana 1964). From independence until the mid-1960s cocoa production had grown steadily and significantly, despite first declines in world prices between 1960 and 1962.the eventual collapse in 1964/1965 (Kolavalli and Vigneri 2011). With this price collapse in the mid-1960s borrowing of money increased, imports were further restricted, and the government resorted to printing money in an attempt to finance its expenditures (Owusu-Baah 2012). Rising price-inflation, including food items, coinciding with public-sector workers demanding higher wages, and while external debtors demanded their repayment the economy stumbled into a crisis which caused the people to lose confidence in their government (ibid). Nkrumah’s CPP rash decision to declare a one-party state and passing laws to curtail peoples’ freedoms might have paved the way for Ghana’s first military coup (Owusu-Baah 2012). However, maybe also other international forces were at play. In general, Nkrumah spent a large amount of time reflecting and was also a prolific writer, publishing his ideas on African progress and development even while in office. In 1965 he published Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism in which Nkrumah describes the Western powers exercising control through economic and monetary means, instead of conquering and occupying territory physically. He observes: The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside (1965, p.3). It has been said that Nkrumah’s continued proclamation for African Independence and Unity, as well as his writings against Western imperialism, mixed with non-alignment and socialist tendencies in the time of the cold war, made him an enemy of subsequent U.S. governments (Azikiwe 2017). Local narratives abound, still today, on the US involvement in Ghanaian affairs of this time. Notwithstanding these speculations on CIA and U.S. State Departments’ involvement in the preparation of the overthrow of the CPP government, there was serious and real disgruntlement within Ghana against the leader of the party. Despite the remarkable achievement of the Ghanaian government during the first term, economic turbulence in the 1960s had left nearly all classes of Ghanaian society alienated, as people felt “hungry, afraid, insecure, frustrated and humiliated” (Boahen 1975, p.211). On February 24th, of 1966, just one month after the inauguration of the Akosombo Dam, Nkrumah was then overthrown and replaced by the National Liberation Council (NLC) with the proclamation that they would break the myth of the previous leader (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). The Political Committee of the ruling Army and Police junta of the NLC took over power in a bloodless coup while 172 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Nkrumah was on a state visit in China and Vietnam (Rathbone and John Alex Ruben 2000). Nkrumah was not able to return to his motherland until after his death. Despite conflicting accounts on how power was wielded and overturned, it can be said that Nkrumah and the CPP have successfully lead Ghana into independence, took control over the state apparatus, but might have and wielded it largely for their own ends when times started becoming rough in the 1960s (Nugent 1995). Despite their shortcomings, Nkrumah and the CPP nevertheless were trailblazers and proved that Africans are very able to manage their own affairs, as they coped with complex problems and lead their young nation on a road to development (Boahen 1975). International occurrences, particularly the fluctuations of the world cocoa prices, left Ghana vulnerable and in combination with the chilled climate towards socialist states during the time of the Cold War, made the task to lead a nascent independent country all the more difficult. In the end Nkrumah’s government was unable to sever colonial set development trajectories, including the dependence on cocoa revenues, and turned onto a road of seemingly ‘typical’ politicians habits of self- glorification and accumulation of material wealth meant for the masses. With the bloodless coup in 1966 the Ashanti bourgeoisie would receive the chance to “exploit its access to power as assiduously as had the stalwarts of the CPP before it”, as Nugent (1995, p.20) phrases it. It also seemed to have paved the way of a tacit acceptance towards nascently powerful elites within Ghana to misuse it powers. The issues, already previously mentioned, is most eloquently described in Chinua Achebe’s novel A man of the people (1966), where it is highlighted that many Africans felt that the all-powerful white man had come, ate and went, and now it was the turn of the new African elites to come and eat. Let them eat,' was the people's opinion, 'After all when the white men used to do all the eating did we commit suicide?' Of course not. [...] It may be your turn to eat tomorrow. Your son may bring home your share (Achebe 1966, p.144). This dangerous attitude has been seemingly set up with the first sovereign government of Ghana, but sadly has been carried into the current regimes, as will be discussed in later parts of this thesis.

The National Liberation Council (1966-69) to Busia’s Progress Party (1969-1971)

The moderate military and police leaders of the National Liberation Council (NLC) aimed for economic recovery without the desire of indefinite rule (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). Hence shortly after the coup in 1966, Busia, Nkrumah’s archrival that had fled into exile, was invited back to Ghana under the NLC government. Busia had been heading the National Liberation Movement (NLM), which was centered in the Ashanti region, and joined up by J.B. Danquah and disaffected CPP members in 1954 to constitute the opposition to the ruling party (Rathbone 1973). The NLM members were forced into a mixture of spasmodic but unconvincing underground activities and exile polemics by the CPP’s harassment.167 Notwithstanding these circumstances many NLM members (that had to be converted

167 Under the Preventive Detention Act in 1959 people could be detained without trial, and for reasons such as showing ‘active opposition to Government and decisions and policy (Rathbone and Ruben 2000). Part I: General Theories and Histories 173 into the United Party after Nkrumah in 1957 outlawed parties based on ethnicity), merged with left over UGCC members to form the Progress Party (PP) around Busia (Nugent 1995). With the world price of Ghana’s main export commodity cocoa still collapsing the NLC government turned to the printing presses to compensate for the loss of revenue, further fueling economic instability (Kolavalli and Vigneri 2011). By May, 1966 the IMF had established certain lending arrangements168 with the NLC government and by July, 1967 the government conceded to ‘severe external pressures’ to launch a rigorous IMF-backed stabilization program that commenced with the announcement of a 30% currency devaluation” (Chazan 1983). This IMF program marks the first active intervention of an international institution into the policies of a sovereign state to ensure that their money was used properly in Ghana. During this first episode of military rule there was some internal struggle (with General Kotoka being killed and replaced by General Ankrah) but ultimately the road was paved for a return to civilian rule and elections were held in October, 1969 (Boahen 1975; Owusu-Baah 2012). A new constitution had been introduced and with the promise to reverse the legacy of Nkrumah’s state interventions Dr. Kofi Busia and his Progress Party (PP) won in a landslide victory in 1969 (Boahen 1975). While the CPP had established a broad national base, the election of 1969 started to divide the country along ethnic line (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). The PP won no seat in Ewe areas (east of the Volta) and the National Alliance of Liberals (the opposition party) won no seats in the Akan area (Southern Ghana, west of the Volta) (ibid). Issues of ethnic division will be discussed time and again in this study, as they have remained relevant ever since then. The CPP has been proscribed, even though observers suspected that they could have united and commanded the support of the majority of the electorate (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). The urban masses that Nkrumah had paid much attention too, then now had to be ‘serviced’ by Busia. Yet, Busia also followed policies that would concentrate on rural development, whilst having to deal with the depleted financial resources and low production within Ghana (ibid). Issues were plentiful, as Frimpong-Ansah (1991, p.100) describes: Busia as leader of the government was, in political economy terms, at the center of an essentially Nkrumaist state that he did not identify with, and therefore could not control. However, Ghana was also undergoing an IMF stabilization experiment that asked for reduction of service, education and health expenditures. The Busia government, with Edward Akufo-Addo169 as the figurehead president, remained in agreement with the IMF-main ideas and austerity measures, despite stark workers unrest the years prior. Instead the Progress Party tried to incorporate their foci on rural development, agriculture and trade, all while fortifying the private sector rather than the public sector coupled with industrialization (Chazan 1983). They seemed to have had a deep confidence in the

168 For a short overview of the lending history of the IMF in Ghana see: https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/tad/extarr2.aspx?memberKey1=350&date1key=2015-06-30 [accessed 24.04.2017] 169 Edward Akufo-Addo, who is one of the ‘big six’ leaders of the UGCC was not voted directly, but through an electoral college. It is worth pointing out that Edward is the father of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the current (2017- ) president of Ghana. 174 Part I: General Theories and Histories entrepreneurship and ingenuity of the private sector as a whole (Owusu-Baah 2012). Chazan (1983) writes: The political economy was consequently recast in an avowedly capitalist mold (p. 159). Socialist rhetoric changed to a capitalistic one. Again the government vowed to reverse Nkrumah’s state intervention. And certain trade and retail business were taken from Lebanese and Syrian firms in an attempt of Ghanaization of the economy (Chazan 1983). In the end, however, Nugent (1995) claims that it was mostly talk to win Western sympathy, as in reality only few state enterprises were privatized and both governments (NLC and Busia) added new names to the list of state enterprises. With Busias government’s interest in rural development, concrete efforts were made towards expanding service and infrastructures as well as promoting ‘peasant entrepreneurs’ (Chazan 1983, p.160). Nugent adds: In fact, the Busia regime actually placed renewed emphasis upon the redistributive role of the state in its rural development programme (1995, p.25).

Busia and agriculture Despite issues of excessive taxation of the cocoa sector that had led to reduced levels of planting and increased smuggling across the permeable borders Busia’s administration was able to benefit from improved world cocoa prices in 1970, which allowed for a rapid expansion of public expenditure (Kolavalli and Vigneri 2011; Owusu-Baah 2012; Nugent 1995). With the emphasis on private capitalist development, some state farms were sold, but extension services revived, and single-product development boards formed (Yaro et al. 2012). Yaro adds in regards to the Northern Region: A green revolution was unleashed on northern agriculture with the introduction of new improved crop varieties, infusion of capital in the form or credit, strengthening of extension services, and land redistribution (2013, p. 8). Cotton and rice were given prominence during this time, credit facilities made available for the purchase of inputs, and even guaranteed prices were set for food crops, all aimed to move the peasant agricultural system to a large-scale market-oriented modernized agriculture (Yaro 2013). However, most of these incentives were made available to a few elites only, such as civil servants, educated elite and co-opted chiefs, while decaying the social structures in society (ibid). The initial windfall profit generated by high cocoa prices were quickly used up, and while urban middle classes benefited briefly from liberalized imports, it soon would led to food being cheaper in the towns than in the villages (Chazan 1983). This overzealous action was followed by balance-of- payment problems in late 1971, with a reemergence of commodity shortages, including food items, exacerbated by the foreign obligations incurred form western borrowers (such as the IMF, USA, UK and West Germany) (ibid). In December 1971 Busia succumbed to external advice (mainly from World Bank economists and Harvard’s Development Advisory Service) and devalued the Cedi by 80 percent (Chazan 1983; Part I: General Theories and Histories 175

Owusu-Baah 2012). Civil servants’ salaries were increased, but not enough to compensate for the loss of real income and there was considerable resentment among the population (Owusu-Baah 2012). The weight of civil servants was a heavy one from the early hours of independent Ghana, and continues to be an issue today. Busia, indeed, inherited an extremely elaborate administrative apparatus, including the series of state corporations that were set up by Nkrumah in key areas of economic and social endeavors (Chazan 1983). With a limited budget and high cost of the bureaucratic structures he let go of some 500 civil servant, however, with an ethnically slanted aftertaste – “not one of those dismissed was of Akan extraction” (Chazan 1983, p.49). Also, the introduction of political flavor into state structures has lessened but still has its relevance in Ghana today, as will be discussed again later. In the end, Busia’s stint in office turned out to be a rather brief one. Chazan suspects it was because of his thin skin and lack of political acumen and foresight as (1983, p.83). Frimpong- Ansah (1991, p.100) adds: If as a leader Busia did not personally possess authoritarian characteristics, nevertheless he could not prevent other member of the Party leadership from developing this tendency. Leading, planning and predicting of economies and other actions are notoriously difficult. Busias PP’s ‘Alien Expulsion Act’ of November 1969 which asked over half a million West African migrants to leave (IDEG 2012), for example, ostensibly motivated by severe unemployment within Ghana, but would lead to a sort of a retaliation act by Nigeria a decade and some year later, worsening a situation in the early 1980s to a degree that would force Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings back into the arms of international institutions to launch the first ‘Structural Adjustment Program’ on the continent. Though, already in Busia’s time this expulsion act had a damaging effect on much needed supply of seasonal labor for agriculture and mining sector. Eventually Busia would be ousted by a man a generation younger than him, a catholic coming from the Eastern region – Lt. Col. (later to become General) Ignatuius Kutu Achempong (Chazan 1983).While Busia’s government achieved some success in providing water, electricity, feeder roads and health services, the overarching situation inherited from Nkrumah, with problems of foreign indebtedness, underproduction, state mismanagement, sectoral disequilibrium (cocoa being the main export commodity), as well as food shortages persisted during the short time Busia remained in office (ibid).170

5.5. General Acheampong & Operation Feed Yourself (OFY) (1972-1978) A month after the outside suggested and enforced devaluation in December 1971, Ghana would witness her second military coup within a decade (Owusu-Baah 2012). Dr. Busia was overthrown in a bloodless coup, yet again while the head of the nation was away (on this occasion for a medical check- up in Great Britain) in January, 1972. Busia was blamed for the negative repercussions of the

170 On another side note, how the past is linked to the resent John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor was a minister under Dr. Busia’s government. He would become president of Ghana in 2000 and be re-elected in 2004. 176 Part I: General Theories and Histories devaluation, accused of corruption, an elitist attitude and inability to empathize with the common man (Chazan 1983). It is without doubt, however, that another contributing reason for Acheampong’s takeover was “that the two Busia budgets had reduced the real incomes of the military and the public servants” (Frimpong-Ansah 1991, p.108). And Frimpong-Ansah adds: The coup can therefore be interpreted as a rejection of the policies of the later Busia period that were beginning to recognize the inherent weaknesses of the economy and the legacy of Nkrumah (1991, p.108). Lt. Col. Achempong and his National Redemption Council (NRC) repudiated the odious debt accumulated by Busia and Nkrumah, with the slogan of Yentua - “we shall not pay”-, revaluating the Cedi, restoring benefits in the public service, and launching Operation Feed Yourself (OFY) to have greater autonomy from world markets through self-sufficiency in food production (Chazan 1983; Yaro 2013; Frimpong-Ansah 1991). OFY was until, and since then, the most comprehensive attempt to develop the agricultural sector of Ghana. The NRC had estimated that $180 million per year were spent on the food importation and raw materials, and often sold cheaper than local products since farmers produced too little, and hence expensive alternatives (as the little supply pushed up prices) (Girdner et al. 1980). Trying to turn this situation around the military regime targeted a 6% growth rate for the agricultural sector171 with OFY and relied on the Ministry of Agriculture with the formulation and implementation of the program (Girdner et al. 1980). Government expenditures and ratio of imports to GDP shrank significantly between 1972 and 1974, and in 1972 in particular the country recorded a trade surplus in every month of the year, while both gross and net external reserves rose to levels several times those in the Busia period (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). Frimpong-Ansah adds [...][P]erhaps most importantly, the Bank of Ghana suggested, and Acheampong agreed, that with unilateral debt repudiation, the possibility of both concessional and long-term bilateral capital flows and capital imports for industrialization and economic development was not to be considered for several years. Any chance of future economic growth therefore rested on the incentives for domestic agriculture. This short period was perhaps the only one, outside the war emergency, when public policy focused on actively promoting the food sector (1991, p.109) (emphasis added). Yaro (2013) highlights that subsidies were never higher for agriculture than under Acheampong’s regime and that fertilizers, seed, bullock ploughs, tractors and combine harvesters were made available to farmers during Operation Feed Yourself. Akoto (1987) highlighted that by 1974 fertilizer was subsidized by 77% (of its cif price)172, yet also pointed out that 78% of it was distributed in the Northern and Upper regions to (mostly) encourage rice production. It was particularly Northern Ghana

171 Six percent growth rate was quite ambitious at the time, as the previous year it was estimated to have been around 2.6% (Girdner et al. 1980). 172 CIF stands for cost, insurance and freight and means that the seller of the goods my bare these costs. Part I: General Theories and Histories 177 that had been long neglected and now immensely benefited from considerable support for rice and cotton, as well as tomatoes, groundnuts, and shea nuts (Yaro 2013). Furthermore improved rice seed distribution increased from 3200 tons in 1970 to 75000 tons by 1975 and subsidies equally increased by 75% (ibid). 670 combine harvesters were imported by the Ministry of Agriculture (indirectly subsidies by the overvaluation of the Cedi), yet only one seems to have been located outside the rice growing region of Northern Ghana (Government of Ghana 1964). Still today, praise for OFY is unwavering among farmers of the North and MoFA members that have experienced this time of unprecedented focus on agricultural growth. Not all was rosy during the time of OFY, however. Individuals were able to prosper with OFY by engaging in mechanized rice cultivation in Northern Ghana, but the scarcity of spare parts, inputs as well as the deterioration of roads rendered these investments often unprofitable, as Nugent suggests (1995). While human efforts were great, guaranteed minimum prices for commodities such as cocoa, maize and rice where unfortunately also countered by low rainfall, low commodity prices and high tax rates (Sarpong and Al-Hassan 2014). Girdner et al. (1980) claim that the large-scale operations that were supported and often be financed through loans of the Agricultural Development Bank (AdB), were notoriously inefficient, as. loans that were granted to purchase inputs such as fertilizers, improved seed, and farm equipment, were often diverted towards ex. old debts, personal allowances, salaries or acquisition of capital items unrelated to production. Coupled with poor repayment performances AdB discontinued its loan program (Girdner et al. 1980). 173. In 1974 the NLC purchased the entire rice crop and requested its citizen to alter their food-consumption pattern in an effort to alleviate food pressures (Chazan 1983). Chazan adds that Early 1975 Ghana was, according to many, en route to economic recovery. Most evaluations of the performance of the military regime were not only positive, but actually almost effusive (1983, p.168). By October 1975 the National Redemption Council ‘transformed’ into the Supreme Military Council (SMC), and the Lieutenant Colonel into General Acheampong. Around the same time (mid-1970s), world cocoa prices started to fall again, and with it government revenues raising the budget deficit to 127 percent of revenue (Kolavalli and Vigneri 2011). The volatility in world cocoa prices and its recent downturn took place against the backdrop of international producers joining the market (i.e. Indonesia and Malaysia) and known competitors (i.e. Côte d’Ivoire and Brazil) expanding production (Kolavalli and Vigneri 2011). Mass coco-spraying activities (introduced by Busia) were replaced in favor of granting subsidies, but despite efforts to support the sector production fell sharply and Ghana was unable to benefit from high cocoa prices towards the end of the decade. While impressive yield increases were achieved for maize, rice and cotton, Chazan (1983) points out that still ‘food shortages abounded’ and the government had to subsidize food imports and even

173 It might be important to point out that Girdner et al. 1980, due to a lack of statistical data available on Acheampong’s rule, relied on a 300+ survey undertaken in the Ashanti region to judge its results. More negative views can be expected. 178 Part I: General Theories and Histories requested foreign food aid. In spite of its reputation of fierce opposition to the debt of international institution, such as the IMF, the Supreme Military Council (SMC) government was forced, much like their predecessors, to request support from the World Bank, as well as other bilateral donors such as the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Canada but also China and the Arab nations (Chazan 1983).174 After some relief for debt repayment had already been negotiated for Ghana in Rome in 1974, the SMC had to ask for additional ‘capital injections’ to finance its development programs (Chazan 1983). Kwadzo and Srofenyoh summarize: Agriculture in the 1970s performs well in the 1972-1975 period before going into sustained decline until the Economic Recovery Program (ERP) was introduced in 1983 (2012, p.107). A critical point was reached with the drought years of 1976 and 1977, amalgamated by the insufficient investment capital, inflation, a poor infrastructure, and inadequate transportation system, an undertrained labor force and over centralization, which made governing, once again difficult, as Chazan points out (1983). The droughts and related bush fires are linked to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) weather phenomenon which also affected Ghana in 1998/99 and 2006/2007 (IDEG 2012). The 1970s were hard going for many places around the globe. In midst of the Vietnam War, President Nixon had to dissolve the “Gold Standard” in 1971, followed by the first oil crisis in 1973 after Israel fought the Yom Kippur (Ramadan) War against Egypt and Syria. The United States battled stagflation and with it Keynesian economics, while weapons were finally put down in Ho Chi Minh City (albeit sometimes rudely in the case of the helicopter) by the middle of the decade. Jimmy Carter, then, had to oversee the next energy crisis by 1979 which was triggered by the Iranian Revolution and the overthrow of the Shah. The oil price hikes also drove up prices for agricultural inputs, such as fertilizers, transport, as well as food imports which in sum led to an exacerbation of food insecurity in Ghana (BRD 2016). It was the first decade when food security concerns came to the forefront of international aid agenda. While world oil prices tripled, Ghana had additional battles to fight – against currency fluctuations, debt conditions, drought and ultimately food shortages, especially for urban dwellers who didn’t produce much themselves and couldn’t afford the exorbitant prices of food items (Asomani-Boateng 2002). The final judgement on his Operation Feed Yourself seems unclear, as actual yield figures of the time are particularly difficult to obtain. Some claim that estimates based on available statistics look rather grim (Girdner et al. 1980). Countering, Yaro (2013) distinguishes between the initial years of high success (1971-1975) and the years from 1976 onwards, which were less favorable for a variety of reasons just mentioned. The bureaucratic apparatus erected was supposedly notorious for producing ‘exceptionally high losses’ and for a ‘lack of, or poor implementation’ of projects (Chazan 1983, p.49). Girdner et al. (1980) claim further that small-scale farmers were sidelined or ignored by

174 For more information about the financial relationship between Ghana and the World Bank can be found on the following website under IBRD/IDA Operations Approved by Fiscal Years: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD): http://data.worldbank.org/country/ghana [accessed:24.04.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 179 government policies. Yaro (2013) juxtaposes the privileged peasant farmers who were included in the operation and very much benefited, to the famine in the midst of plenty that caused the Red Cross to intervene with food aid in the mid-1970s. Furthermore, the narrow focus on ‘Green Revolution’ crops and neglect of traditional staple foods, such as millet and guinea corn can be criticized (Yaro 2013). However, Acheampong’s OFY, is still the most talked about intervention in the agricultural sector of Ghana today. Many of the civil servants of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, and farmers of the North today like to reminisce about ‘OFY’ as being the most intensive, efficient and well-organized effort by any Ghanaian government. All planting of food crops was welcomed and encouraged – in rural AND in urban areas. It was the first time since independence (and since the British Administrators in WWII) that Urban Agriculture was encouraged all over Ghanaian cities, including everybody’s backyard. In an attempt to curb smuggling and black marketeering the new government introduced more stringent administrative controls (Owusu-Baah 2012). But to no avail. Ghana would experience the worst commodity shortages and see higher inflationary conditions than during the previous regimes (ibid). Achempong and his NRC tried to solidify the bureaucratic-military alliance, bolstering operational autonomy of ministries, but with little structures for project oversight or review, replaced by the occasional yelling at subordinates and shuffling in positions for power (Chazan 1983). Frimpong-Ansah observes: Acheampong was able to hold out a little longer because he was politically more cunning than Busia. He was prepared to use national resources to buy his security (1991, p.111). Importantly, personal investments done by the officers of the Supreme Military Council (who came mostly from humble backgrounds) in urban property and commercial agriculture were made possible only by the assiduous extracting of wealth by virtue of their privileged access to power (Nugent 1995). Considerable amounts were also spent on conspicuous consumption. Actions that would soon be punished. Despite having twice the amount of time as Dr. Busia in office (1969-1971), the length or rule was cut quite short. When food prices skyrocketed by the 1977, grossly intensifying malnutrition within the population, the government was blamed for serious lack of foresight and responsibility (Chazan 1983). At the same time, inflation, that had risen from three percent in 1970, to 18 percent in 1973 to 166 percent in 1977 (Owusu-Baah 2012).Calls against undemocratic, military leadership were meant to be assuaged by suggesting a ‘Union Government’ (between civilian and military leaders) and even holding a referendum in March of 1978 (Nugent 1995). First Lt. Gen ‘Fred’ Akuffo, however, led a palace coup to overthrow General Acheampong in July 1978 (Chazan 1983). His regime set in motion a program that was meant set Ghana back on track to civilian rule (Nugent 1995). Akuffo and his Supreme Military Council II (SMC II) also attempted to bring back main features of the IMF stabilization program of 1967, introducing tough monetary measure and currency devaluation of 139 percent (Frimpong-Ansah 1991; Owusu-Baah 2012). 180 Part I: General Theories and Histories

While preparations for constitutional rule were ongoing, urban unrest returned and with it a young Flight Lieutenant rose to popularity: Jerry John Rawlings (JJ Rawlings). JJ, who led the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) to yet another uprising, caused what the political elite first found this to be a ‘quite unnecessary interruption’ as the process towards democratization was in motion (Nugent 1995, p.29; Frimpong-Ansah 1991). Indeed the young the Flight Lieutenant was arrested and sentence to death in May 1979. JJ was, however, freed by a group of fellow young military men, after he had publicly taken the blame as the person centrally responsible for this first coup attempt in front of the court and giving a cogent and infectiously popular speech on why this intervention was justifiable (Owusu-Baah 2012).

JJ Rawlings first takeover

Being freed, JJ and his Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) rose again on the 4th June 1979 to take over power – now successfully. During a harsh (and rather brutal) housecleaning exercise that followed between June and July of 1979, the AFRC executed the three former military head of states: Acheampong, Afrifa and Akuffo, in addition to marking some 207 officers ‘for liquidation’ by their junior ranks (Nugent 1995). In the end scores were settled in other way in regards to the 207 officers, but the tension in the air was almost visible, as Nugent describes (1995). Despite the heavy-handed manner of Rawlings AFRC, public sympathy was high. Stiff prison sentences were imposed, also on civilian offenders that were put in front of special tribunals, assets were seized and a number of (Lebanese) businessmen deported (ibid). Despite this ultimate punishment against the former leaders being executed in all its harshness, and the many other judgments that followed, Nugent adds: [T]here remained a feeling in certain quarters that the housecleaning exercise had not gone deep enough before the inauguration of the Third Republic (1995, p. 30). Ultimately this sentiment, that the housecleaning had not gone far enough, would be one reason for JJ Rawlings second takeover a few years later. However, for now the Third Republic was allowed to commence and the People’s National Party (PNP), which played the Nkrumahist card that created a sense of nostalgia about the CPP period, won the election with Dr. Limann as president (Nugent 1995). It is worth noting that Nkrumah, who had passed away in 1972, had never returned to his homeland Ghana after the coup in 1966, and in the meantime was restricted to write (prolifically) out of exile in Guinea, where he resided as a guest to President Ahmed Sékou Touré. Despite his shortcoming during the later part of his term in office, it must have been with great distress that he had to continue life two countries over, before he eventually succumbed to prostate cancer and died in Bucharest, Romania in April 1972. After a small disagreement between Acheampong and Touré on the conditions of the transfer, Nkrumah found his final resting place in a large memorial park close to the ocean and the ministries in Accra by 1972. Since his death his popularity has returned ever more strongly as time passed. Part I: General Theories and Histories 181

Dr. Hilla Limann from the Upper Region, educated in London and Paris, playing on the now positive sentiments of the Nkrumah’s era, won as the presidential candidate for the PNP in a run-off in July 1979. Similarly to his immediate predecessor(s) his first priority was agriculture, as he found it “unacceptable that a country which abounds in arable land should import food or else go hungry” (Chazan 1983, p.311). He also attempted to reduce smuggling, black marketeering and hording, while his attempt to curb government spending and control inflation, but was met by public sector worker resistance (Owusu-Baah 2012).His two-year plan of accelerated agricultural revitalization announced by Limann’s government in 1980 was coinciding with plummeting world cocoa prices and consequently followed by a further increase of debt, reaching $1.4 billion in 1981 (Chazan 1983). Yet again the government of Ghana resorted to deficit financing which would increase inflation (Owusu- Baah 2012). With the exacerbated economic situation another revolution was in sight.

5.6. JJ Rawlings and the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) (1981-1992) When overthrowing Limann in 1981, the revolutionary and selfless spirit that came with the young Flt. Lt. JJ Rawlings and the newly renamed Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) infected people across the nations. Their criticism on foreign capital and the political elite cornering the most valuable resources, while they saw in the great potential in creative energies of the population at large had, resonated with the people. The involvement of the wider population played a crucial role in the development agenda, including agriculture, of the PNDC’s revolution. As Nugent points out: During 1982, the regime looked to feats of communal labour as evidence of what could be achieved once the initiative was taken out of the ministries and returned to the wider society (1995, p.53). Workers Defense Committees (WDC) and People’s Defense Committees (PDCs) were organized and encouraged to establish communal farms, which made it possible to bolster food self-sufficiency in Ghana, as well as generate financial means to finance other projects (Nugent 1995). In fact, the dispatch of a Students’ Task Force to free locked-up cocoa plantations in the countryside, and their successful delivery of the crop, was one of the most visible achievements of these kinds of undertakings in 1982 (ibid).Currency printing was halted, government spending curtailed, currency in circulation withdrawn, foreign exchange controls tightened, borders closed to curb smuggling and traders arrested and forced to sell their hoarded goods at controlled prices (Owusu-Baah 2012). Kalabule - the trickery, or con-artistry used by people to manipulate the market or state machinery for their personal benefits – had become a usual perception among common people of the ‘Big men’. Nugent explains: [The] working assumption was that larger merchants were hoarders and smugglers; that contractors were almost certainly bogus; and that the senior managers of state corporations were by definition corrupt (1995, p. 28). 182 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Included in these ‘larger merchants’ were also the market women (responsible for selling also tall the agricultural produce in Ghana), i.e. Makola Women, that had the reputation of hoarding and increasing prices of items to their personal benefit. The PNDC was determined to take action against these merchants and Kalabule in general. Senior government officials were investigated as well and when found guilty sacked and severely punished (Owusu-Baah 2012). The actions taken by soldiers under the command of Rawlings, who descended upon urban markets, seizing goods and inflicting punishment on the spot, caused a certain amount of controversy since then (Nugent 1995). The self-imposed austerity measures of the PNDC failed to show quick results, and 1983 started out particularly tough as the Nigerian government expelled all foreign nationals without proper papers over a two-week period starting in mid-January (to return in the shortest possible time); which lead an estimated 1.2 million Ghanaians to return after they had attempted to flee the crisis (Nugent 1995). This was a retaliatory action for Busia that had expelled West African workers in 1970. Unfortunately for JJ and the rest of the Ghanaians, a severe drought in 1983 (and 1984) caused crop-failure, further compounded by bush fires that destroyed many hectares of cash-crops, including cocoa the same year (Nugent 1995). With the imminent collapse of food production system, and further overburdened with the newly arriving Ghanaian migrants from Nigeria, the PNDC was pushed into the arms of international financial institution in the search of help.

The Economic Recovery Program (ERP) of the 80’s and its aftermath

The 1980s marks, as previously discussed, the onset of neoliberal ideas and their distribution within and through international institutions like the Bank. In April 1983 the Economic Recovery Program (ERP) was launched under the hospice of the Bank, and largely within the newly arisen neoliberal logic of market supported, and constricted state development. This was also due to the realization of many pro-socialist African regimes of this time, that their socialist allies were only providing military aid, rather than the desperately needed economic aid (Owusu 2003). Rawlings would be the first of many to trade in his populist rhetoric for western economic recovery policies and their financial assistance (ibid). Nugent adds: While [Rawlings] personality was notoriously a bundle of contradictions, it was this that (ironically) equipped him for the task of mediating the ambiguities of the regime as a whole. Rawlings could speak as the heady idealist and as the dour realist with equal conviction – and be believed (1995, p. 107). The PNDC, then, learned rather quickly how to combine economic liberalism with political populism, and was able to benefit from a $254.5 million ERP disbursement of the World Bank between 1983 and 1986, while keeping their revolutionary image fairly intact (Nugent 1995). Owusu-Baah (2012) also writes about a standby credit from the IMF of US$382 million that was granted in August 1983, giving Ghana a ‘clean bill of health’ that would entice other donors to follow. The Economic Recovery Part I: General Theories and Histories 183

Program was structured in two phases initially: ERP I from 1984-86 and ERP II from 1987-89, differentiating between shorter- and longer term goals (Frimpong-Ansah 1991). With investments in infrastructure (road and railway) and export industries (rehabilitation of timber, cocoa and mining) the government also had to implement a row of successive devaluations and became the harbinger regime for the African continent to fully embrace the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) that followed in the years and decades thereafter (Nugent 1995). Measures were wide and harsh. The cedi devaluation in Ghana 1983 represented 971% from the previous year and followed this trend, so as the total currency deprecation accumulated to be almost 18500% at the end of Rawlings’ military regime (Owusu-Baah 2012). Strict actions also had to be taken in the agricultural sector. Input subsidies, fertilizer imports and marketing schemes were abolished (Owusu- Baah 2012). In general, government involvement in the sector was supposed to be minimized. The World Bank and the IMF did not have a focus on food production during the first six years of the program, and hence did not provide particular support to the sector. Nevertheless, the Government of Ghana had an agricultural plan for 1984-1986 in which they aimed at export and increase cash crop production (Sarpong 2008). They also aimed at 100% food self-sufficiency in cassava, and between 50-80% in maize, rice, meat, fish and other starchy staples, cereals, vegetables and industrial crops (ibid). In 1986 a second phase of the Ghana Agricultural Policy (GAP) aimed at strengthening the capacity of the public sector (i.e. support for provision of research and extension, irrigation and policy planning among others) with the goal to expand agricultural production (Sarpong 2008). By 1987 the World Bank and USAID started funding GAP via the Agricultural Services Rehabilitation Project (ASRP) with US$53 million, which shortly thereafter led to the Medium Term Agricultural Development Program (MTADP) in the 1990s (ibid). In line with the neoliberal thinking that arose in the 1980s minimum price guarantees were abolished for maize and rice, while cocoa has been and continues to be the only crop with state support (Kwadzo and Srofenyoh 2012). Frimpong-Ansah (1991) notes, that the peasant agricultural sector remained fragmented and underdeveloped, and that the food situation was precarious with sector policies being ambiguous and inadequate. He adds: As in previous economic strategies in Ghana, the peasant sector has been neglected in the current programs (Frimpong-Ansah 1991, p.150). At the same time the MTADP was set in motion, the Berlin wall came tumbling down, changing the international balance of powers and in fact general Weltanschauung (ideology) would take new or reinforced directions. The end of communism had come quicker and more peaceful than anyone could have imagined. Instead the message started to be broadcasted louder and clearer as time went on: Capitalism has ‘won’ the race and would and will prevail. With the end of the Cold War also came the end of support of many undemocratic regimes across the globe, but in African in particular. The PNDC and Rawlings were encouraged to make the transition towards democratic governance. And not just capitalism took over center stage, but the fade of the decade, which had been crowned by the same man that asked Gorbachev to tear down the wall, Reagan, who had decided to focus on 184 Part I: General Theories and Histories free-markets over state support: Neoliberalism. As Stiglitz (2002) points out, the shift in economic development policy thinking toward more neoliberalism occurred around the globe and was advocated most heavily by international institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and the WTO in the 1980s and 90s. And Owusu adds for the case of Ghana and its ERP: (D)ue to its immense financial resources and international support, the Bank’s views became dominant as African countries overwhelmingly chose pragmatism over ideology and implemented Bank-supported SAPs (2003, p.23). By the time the fourth Republic of Ghana was established “all major parties were firmly committed to the logic of capitalist accumulation and accepted the inequalities this would inevitably entail” (Nugent 1995, p.273). In line with capitalism, now democracy was as put on the agenda of to-does for development country. Similarly to the acceptance of the neoliberal ideology, Ghana was one of the first and most efficient to take on and return to democracy.

5.7. The 4th Republic and Ghana Today (1992-2017) Under the auspices of the Provision National Defense Council (PNDC) the 1992 Constitution was made available to the people in May 1992 (Republic of Ghana, 1992). It established a multi-party democracy with an executive president that is elected every four years, with a maximum of two terms, while the parliamentarians who are also voted in every four years, are without term limits (GSS, GHS and ICF International 2015). The 1992 constitution has been instrumental in creating the flavor of democracy and its balance of powers, as Ghana’s democracy was established as a hybrid of a Presidential and Parliamentary system of government (World Bank 2011). In reality, it is a structure concentrating vast amounts of power in the executive branch – particularly the president. However, Ghana’s democracy has been impressively stable yet also called a ‘winner-takes-all’ system, with little room for parliamentarian initiatives, as well as severely impairing parliaments oversight role on the executive (CDD 2014). It also has purposefully included customs and traditions -most notably leaving lands in the custody of the traditional rulers, such as the chiefs, stools or clans in its power framework. For the concerned and avid reader some of the important peculiarities of the 1992 Constitution are summarized in Box 4 below.

Box 4: Peculiarities of the 1992 Constitution Traditional rule(r)s:

Article 11 (2) and (3) Laws of Ghana include not just common laws but also customary laws, which are defined as laws ‘which by customs are applicable to particular communities in Ghana’. The importance and rule of tradition is only curtailed in 26 (2) where all customary practices which dehumanize or are injurious to the physical and mental well-being of a person are prohibited. In article 36 (8), the ‘managers of public, stool, skin and family land’ are held responsible as fiduciary functionaries. But “all stool lands in Ghana shall vest in the appropriate stool on behalf of, Part I: General Theories and Histories 185 and in trust for the subjects of the stool in accordance with customary law and usage” (267). Article 270 guarantees ‘the institution of chieftaincy, together with its traditional councils as established by customary law and usage’. Furthermore there shall be a national House of Chiefs, and the ‘house of Chiefs of each region shall be elected as members of the National House of Chiefs, with five paramount chiefs from the regions (270, 1 and 2) Decentralization

Article 35 (6)(d) already mentions that one political objective is to decentralize the administrative and financial machinery to the regions and districts, as to allow the people to be involved in the decision making process of the government. Chapter Twenty is then dedicated to decentralization and local government, where article 240 (1) states that “Ghana shall have a system of local government and administration which shall, as far as practicable, be decentralized.” Under article 252 the District Assemblies Common Fund is then established, where not less than five % of the total revenue of Ghana is dedicated to the District Assemblies for development initiatives. The role of the President:

The president, in consultation with the Council of State, shall appoint a long list of people, including:

Minsters of State (half of which must be elected Parliamentarians) and Deputy Ministers (with approval of Parliament)The Governor of the Bank of Ghana, the Chief Justice and other Supreme Court Justices; the Justices of the Court of Appeal and of the high Court as well as the Chairmen of Regional Tribunals; Regional Ministers (10); Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (216);175 the Inspector-General of Police and four other members of the Police Council; the Director- General of the Prison Service and four additional members of the Prison Service Council; the Chief of Defense Staff of the Armed Forces and the Service Chiefs; the Commissioner for Human Rights and Administrative Justice and his Deputies; the Auditor-General; the Audit Service Board of not more than four member; the District Assemblies Common Fund Administrator (DACF); the head of Civil Service (with advice from the Public Services Commission); the Chairman and other members of: the Public service Commission, the Lands Commission; the Electoral Commission; a National Council for Higher Education; the chairman and not more than five other members of the Statistical Service Board; three members in the National Security Council; the chairman of the National Development Planning Commission the Secretary to the Cabinet; and the governing bodies of public corporations! Also the salaries and allowances the majority of the aforementioned positions, as well as the Chief Justices and other Justices of the Superior Court, are determined by the President (albeit on the recommendations of the committee of not more than five peoples appointed, by: the President, while acting in accordance with the advice of the Council of State)

175 The current ruling party – the National Patriotic Party (NPP)- has, however, proposed to change this feature of the constitution, and instead proposed elections for all MMDCEs within 24 months of election NPP 2016. Gender issues remain untouched: see http://www.graphic.com.gh/news/politics/34-women-make-president-s-list- of-212-dce-nominees.html [accessed: 23.05.2017] 186 Part I: General Theories and Histories

The President is also responsible for bills, while Parliament ‘shall not’ introduce such (bills), nor impose taxation or any other charge that would change the compositions of debt. De facto, the constitution makes the parliament a toothless tiger in article 108. At the same time ‘no taxation shall be imposed otherwise than by or under the authority of an Act of Parliament’ (174). Debt

A majority of parliament must authorize any agreements granting loans, i.e. for concessional loans from Development Partners (DPs). While only the Minister of Finance is allowed to sign such agreements (giving enormous responsibility to his role when it comes to ODA agreements in the recent past, as DPs changed from mostly grant aid structures to loan options). Miscellaneous

While an economic objective under 36 (2)(b) was the fostering or an enabling environment ‘for a pronounced role of the private sector in the economy.

As important articles that are important for a working democracy, however, not always implemented , include: Article (14), which requires all political parties to (a) “declare to the public their revenues and assets and the source of those revenues and assets; and (b) to publish to the public annually their audited accounts.” Civil societies, such as the Citizen Ghana Movement have requested the publication of the data from the Electoral Commission most recently, but until now the public has not be among the privileged eyes to see and search through such data.

Similarly, Article 21 (1)(f) of the Constitution grants all persons the right to information (subject to such qualifications and laws as are necessary in a democratic society). The Right to Information Bill (2007) (also known as the freedom of information act) was supposed to establish systems and procedures to ensure citizens access to such information from government agencies. It would also force public officeholder to disclose their assets. No parliament has passed the bills in the last decade; however, the NPP government under Nana Akufo-Addo has announced that they hope to pass the bill in the next parliamentary session in 2017 (as of June, 2018, it has not taken place). Also it should also be mentioned that under NDC’s government President Prof. Mills’ did initiate a ‘constitutional review’ in 2010, as it was declared most needed, even though these fundamental changes are unpopular amongst the political elite, yet this process has also not moved forward (CDD 2014).

In conclusion, the 1992 Constitution, notwithstanding some concentration of power within the executive, has been able to start and grow a democratic Ghana that has allowed for peaceful, competitive multi-party election, flourishing civil societies and free media.

Part I: General Theories and Histories 187

The Fourth Republic, based on the 1992 Constitution, was inaugurated on January 7th, 1993, ironically by the man that ‘consistently scorned formal democracy’ – Flt. Lt. JJ Rawlings, as Nugent points out (1995, p. 261). JJ transformed the PNDC to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and led it to victory in the presidential as well as the parliamentary election in 1992 against the New Patriotic Party176 (NPP), who had boycotted the later under the suspicion of fraudulent presidential election. In 1995, Ghana adopted Vision 2020 – also known as the Coordinated Program of Economic and Social Development Policies- which aimed for Ghana to become a Middle-Income Country by 2020 (Whittal 2013). In 1996 JJ Rawlings and the NDC government were re-elected to govern Ghana an additional four years. 177 And in 1997 the NDC government initiated the Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Development Strategy (AAGDS), which set the agricultural sector growth target to six percent (Sarpong 2008). 178 At this time 60% of the population derived their livelihood from agriculture, which contributed 39% towards the national GDP and 46% of export earnings (World Bank 2007a). The constraints that were identified then, based on the World Bank (2007a, p.14), were, and continue to be: 1. Low factor productivity 2. Weak technology and transfer systems 3. Weak Farmer-Based Organizations (FBOs) 4. A land tenure system that hampered sustainable land development, and 5. Overexploitation of natural resources Under the AAGDS the first proposed program, the Agricultural Services Sub-Sector Investment Program (AgSSIP) was developed and financed by the World Bank Group, to address these issues (Sarpong 2008). While the analysis and aims on paper were admirable and appropriated, the implementation lagged, and lags, behind the vision. By the end of the 1990s the ‘negative and sluggish’ growth rates of the agricultural sector in late 1980s had improved by 3-4% of ‘credible’ annual growth (World Bank 2007a, p.14), and surely not because of the Agricultural Services Sub- Sector Investment Program. While the exact conditions promoting agricultural growth remain unclear, the issues around aid are more evident. While the AgSSIP was first thought up in 1997 the World Bank Board only approved the program in August 2000 – in the middle of intense parliamentary and presidential election campaigns (World Bank 2007a). As with election years nowadays, there was a

176 The New Patriotic Party could be called a successor of the UGCC, the NLM and the PP of Busia. It easily represent the educated elite and Akan (South, South-West) region of Ghana. NPP’s presidential candidate was the well-known historian and academic Albert Adu Boahen, who is also much quoted in this very study. He received 30 percent of the votes. Alas, voter turnout was only 28 percent of registered voters. 177 JJ Rawlings won 57% of the presidential vote and 9 out of the 10 regions (all but Ashanti), against John Agyekum Kuffour. For more data see: http://ghanaelections.peacefmonline.com/pages/1996/ [accessed: 18.05.2017] 178 Under the AAGDS a growth target that would also be declared under the CAADP a few years, and that is still in use now (2017). Goals of the AAGD were: increased access to markets; developing and ensuring improved access to technology for sustainable natural resource management; improving access to agricultural financial services; improving the quality of agriculture-related infrastructure; and ensuring human resource and institutional capacity (Sarpong 2008, p.9) 188 Part I: General Theories and Histories considerable amount of political uncertainty and government’s activities slowed down; hence, the project could not move forward. Looking back at the first tow-terms in office, the NDC could claim to have launched the Vision 2020, out of which the JJ Rawlings government launched the First Medium-Term Development Plan (1997-2000), which planted and solidified neoliberal ideas to development as the government’s role was supposed to be minimized and private sector involvement maximized in most sectors, including agriculture (Owusu-Baah 2012). Between 1991 and 2000 the first comprehensive sector strategy was adopted as the Agricultural Sector Adjustment Program, in which the means remained the same: market reform and withdrawal of government subsidies for most of the agricultural sector (Sarpong 2008). Owusu-Baah adds: [T]he new liberalized conventional wisdom abolished credit allocation to the agricultural sector, abolished agricultural input subsidies, advocated for private sector funding of agricultural research, introduced a unified agricultural extension system/privatization of extension services, partially privatized veterinary services, eliminated agricultural price support and reduced/eliminated agricultural tariffs (2012, p.143). Ghana was not an exception. By 2000 most African countries were able to look back on 20 years of intervention in agriculture along the line of the ‘Green Revolution’ agenda, as Berry called it (1993), which despite promotion even from the local governments – had “not been very successful” (Berry 1993, p.182). With the focus on private sector development, and hence, continuous disinvestment in agriculture between 1980 and 2000, a significant reduction in work on irrigation infrastructure was perpetuated (IDEG 2012). This ultimately lead Ghana to have less than one percent of all cultivated land to be irrigated by 2012, making it one of the lowest in Africa and ,hence, still highly dependent on rain fall and exposed to climate change (ibid). In December 2000, however, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) led by Mr. John Agyekum Kufuor won the –peaceful - general elections. This has been a long time coming, as Mr. Kufuor had served as a minister under Dr. Busia’s government Progress Party, which turned into the New Patriotic Party, and since the violent takeover by Gen. Acheampong the party hadn’t had another chance at governing Ghana. Finally it would be the turn of the center-right, liberal conservative New Patriotic Party to finally return to power after 20 years of military rule and two lost elections (1992 and 1996). It was also the nascent steps of Ghana towards becoming the ‘beacon of democracy’ on the African continent, as it is hailed as today. While the hand-over of power has been always been peaceful in Ghana, just like in other democratic countries, opposition parties relocate their battle field onto other sectors. Peaceful handovers, then, have always been accompanied by a replacement, revision and reorientation of people and policies in most or all sectors. What continued to stay the same was that most policies were fueled and constrained by the financial support of Development Partners. Ghana’s future then, was tightly entwined with that of major donors. Part I: General Theories and Histories 189

Ghana’s relationship with donors had been improving after JJ Rawlings government had accepted the Economic Recovery Program of the World Bank in 1983, and over the years Ghana had ‘earned’ the support and goodwill of the international community ranking among the top recipients of FDI in Africa (Sarpong 2008). By the 200s many Ghanaians were trained (many of the elite of Ghana are educated in Western Institutions) and ordered (through conditionalities of the donors, MDG etc.) that the aid darling Ghana started producing the requested donor documents in impressive fashion. Hearings, meetings, platforms, participation and validation workshops were organized, consultants hired, flown in, shown around, to produce strategy papers, investment plans, development policies, and improvement programs. Helped along by the digital revolution around the millennium, and supported by a good-record of donor cooperation development projects started to flourish. After the big goal of trying to reach Lower Middle Income Country status in the NDC’s vision 2020, the NPP followed up with their Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy- GPRS- (2003-2005). GPRS I was adopted in 2002 with the aim promote economic growth via the development of infrastructure, improved governance, improved social service provision, and mainstreaming crosscutting issues such as gender, HIV/AIDS and the environment. Ostensibly new, the ideational framework established in the area of neoliberalism was retained with GPRS. It has been argued that certain aspects of the GPRS, such as good governance or growth through liberalization/open market mechanism etc., were conditionalities introduced by the WB and the IMF and adhered to in order to access future financing, as well as the debt cancelation campaign under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative (World Bank 2007a). Alipui adds that the GPRS paper “was directed primarily at responding to the anti-poverty objectives of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)” (2013, p.62). In the end, however, it was the HIPC Initiative of debt cancellation from bilateral and multilateral creditors that was high on the agenda for the Kufuor government (Owusu- Baah 2012). The idea of debt cancellation had already emerged under the Busia, in which when Kufuor was working under. Half a century later, in the early 2000s, US$ 4 billion of debt in Ghana was written off. A substantial relieve that would free up monies for developmental project, but that would unfortunately be of short duration with international debt rising back up by the 2010s. For the agricultural sector is meant selectively increased support. The NPP’s focus was naturally on Cocoa, as their party member strongholds are mostly in cocoa growing regions, ex. Ashanti, and allowed state support for old farms that were rehabilitated, new cocoa seedlings that were supplied free of charge, and mass spraying that were ordered in all the cocoa growing regions (Owusu-Baah 2012). Cocoa, however, was the exceptions that it has been from the beginning of the neoliberal age, while the crop and livestock sector continued under the hospice of free-market idealism and donor influence. Yet the Agricultural Sector Services Improvement Program (AgSSIP) sponsored by the Bank - and a left-over of the Rawlings NDC era - was frowned upon and subsequently only signed by the NPP government after the delay by one year and under the condition that necessary adjustments would be possible thereafter (World Bank 2007a). 190 Part I: General Theories and Histories

With the organizational strength within MoFA and the Bank, AgSSIP also managed to ascertain the need for a closer donor coordination and wider financial support of the agricultural sector as a whole. AgSSIP then paved the way for the Government of Ghana (GoG) and the Development Partners (DPs) to make concerted effort to come up with a holistic, Sector-Wide Approach (SWA). It also gave the impetus to a policy process that was initiated led up to the development of what is known as the Food and Agriculture Development Policy, or FASDEP I, an umbrella policy framework for agriculture in Ghana (Sarpong 2008). Under MoFA Minister Major Courage Quashigah – a man named as one of the most impressive Ministers of the MoFA by many of my interviewees – FASDEP I was supposed to unite all ongoing and future programs and projects within the agricultural sector, with the main concern on food security. FASDEP, as previous programs, set out to modernize and mechanize agriculture, and make Ghana a leading agro-industrial country in Africa by 2010 (MoFA 2002). It also hoped to bring all donor-funded projects within a coordinated framework to avoid duplication and waste, while emphasizing the promotion of investment of the private sector. The focus on the private sector was also retained, because ‘whatever the goodwill of donors, external funding has never been adequate and is likely to dwindle in the future’ (MoFA 2002, p.2). In line with AgSSIP, FASDEP also hoped to strengthen Farmer Based Organizations (FBO). It was also the first policy to make mention of bio-technologies that have become increasingly prominent a decade later.

Increased Donor Coordination in Ghana From the early 2000s onwards Donor involvement with the Government of Ghana started to become more extensive, visible and coordinated through what is now known as the Project Coordination Unit within the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. This unit that was set up in particularly to coordinate the plethora of DPs that had become active in the agricultural sector in Ghana by this time. They were also present and influential during the policy process. FADEP I, a 58 page document, then listed multiple strategies and objectives, identifying various so-called pro-poor crops as focal points of investment (Chamberlin 2008).However, the top down approach, with many international experts involved, led to a document rather detached from the beneficiaries originally in mind. Later analysis of the FASDEP I then showed, that it had multiple flaws, including weak problem analysis, poor targeting and in fact not being pro poor after all(Kwadzo and Srofenyoh 2012; Sarpong 2008).Yaro et al. add: In the first instance, modernizing agriculture is an uphill task in an environment where access to credits, technology, markets and good infrastructure is limited. Secondly, it was also observed that FASDEP did not adequately reflect farmers’ views of their needs and priorities, simply because they were not adequately consulted or involved in the policy development process (2012, p.39). The criticism voiced against FASDEP I is still relevant today. Similarly Box 5 is a brief summary on an AgSSIP analysis, as it exemplify common structures and struggles of development programs today Part I: General Theories and Histories 191

Box 5: Agricultural Sector Services Improvement Program (AgSSIP)179 AgSSIP was unique in its attempted to bring together financing from different donors including the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), the British Department for International Development (DFID), the European Union, the World Bank (through the International Development Association – IDA) and the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD). The project design was aiming to use country systems in place, which meant the channeling of funds through the budget (eventually anyhow) and the implementation through the MoFA Directorate: Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (PPMED) – instead of a separate Project Coordination Unit (PCU). Originally it was a three year (2001-2003) project that aimed at increasing agricultural productivity and diversification; reduce rural poverty and food insecurity, in addition to contribute to overall economic growth in an environmentally sustainable basis. With the change of government in the midst of contract negotiations, project implementation and disbursement of funds were unfortunately delayed ‘very significantly’ and the project was considered a ‘problem project’ until a mid-term review in June 2004 (World Bank 2007a, p.21). After the requested adjustments of the NPP were incorporated, commitment and communication improved and the project moved from being unsatisfactory to ‘moderately satisfactorily’.

Lessons learned: The bureaucracy associated with DP programs is enormous, especially the fiduciary standards associated with World Bank operations. This demands a well-equipped and organized structure, filled with informed, capable and motivated members of the ministries (MoF and MoFA in particular). Furthermore rigidness of many projects and the steep hierarchies have led to a plethora of frustrations, particular of people working in the field that are in no position to address project management, which are often only located in far-away capitals. The World Bank points out in its review that projects that seriously try to address the agricultural sector and, hence, are complex with a variety of stakeholder spread over different geographies, need ‘not less than 5 years’ just for their first phase (World Bank 2007a, p.34). They also highlight in their analysis of AgSSIP that agricultural statistics are of upmost importance for adequate planning, and that systems must be in place to collect data easily to do the necessary monitoring and eventually evaluations of the project. And while most donors are from Western cultures and speak English acceptably well, communication and coordination has been a notorious problem. Therefore the World Bank suggests to: explicitly and formally discuss and agree to procedures and leadership arrangements among the various donor representatives in the field, as well as in their headquarters, at the outset of the project.

179 Based on World Bank 2007a 192 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Sadly the great majority of issues and necessary improvements highlighted in this agricultural project 15 years ago still hold true today, as will be discussed in later Chapters. While the AgSSIP was still ongoing, the next intensely contested election campaigns were run in 2004. As in the elections before and after, there were supposed abuses of power by incumbent members of the government and even officially non-partisan members such as the DCEs (e.g. of the Northern Region) accused of using publicly provided goods to advance their campaign (CDD 2004). In the end the re-election of Kufuor’s NPP government was secured, and benefited from the freed up financial resources under the HIPC initiative, so as to initiate the Ghana’s School Feeding Program (GSFP), which was piloted in 2005 and expanded in 2007. The scheme for ‘feeding the nation’s future leaders through sustainable agriculture’ was, and continues to be administered through the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection. 180 In November of 2005 the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) then published the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy II (GPRS 2006-2009), which had been designed with the goal to accelerate economic growth and reach the middle-income country states “within a measurable planning period” (Alipui 2013, p.62). At the time the GPRS II was developed agriculture still contributed 40% to Ghana’s GDP, and was hence still named the ‘backbone of the economy’. The strategy continued to pursue commercialization of agriculture with focus on eliminating bottlenecks in: irrigation, credit and ag input accessibility, crop development, mechanization, extension service, marketing, as well as agro-industrial improvements, but all in line the neoliberal ideational framework, and hence, through private sector engagement.

On the international level

A few years prior, while the Bank was re-negotiating AgSSIP, the US government across the pond under George W. Bush established the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in 2002, to support low and lower-middle income countries in their development. Administered through the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) and implemented by the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA), projects in agriculture and infrastructure were financed within the framework of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy II (GPRS II) by 2006 (CDD 2006). Substantial amounts were released towards the end of office in 2007 that will be notable for the MoFA budget analysis. In 2005 the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness attempted to address an issue that many disadvantaged countries had been facing since the onset of the age of aid: development partners wielding considerable power and influence in developing countries policies and affairs (Sarpong 2008). Issues of ‘ownership’ of development policy and donor harmonization had long been discussed within the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD, as pointed out in Chapter 1. Now the discussion was broadened on aid effectiveness and accountability. Donors declared a commitment to ‘respect partner countries leadership’ and align their support to the national development strategies (OECD 2005).

180 For additional information see: http://www.schoolfeeding.gov.gh accessed: 17.07.2017 Part I: General Theories and Histories 193

The implementation of this declaration would be a truly revolutionary change, as aid dependence in many poor countries had led to a (tacit or debated) ‘acceptance’ of programs and projects often conceived and imposed in the glamorous offices in headquarters in Washington, Paris and Berlin. The struggle for leadership and independence will haunt us through the results section of this study and beyond. Also in light of the a meeting commitments re-affirmed three years later, in 2008, when the aid community stakeholders came together once more to pass the Accra Agenda for Action (OECD 2005). Importantly this agreement added a section on transparency to the aid agenda, which reads: Donors will publicly disclose regular, detailed and timely information on volume, allocation and, when available, results of development expenditure to enable more accurate budget, accounting and audit by developing countries (OECD 2005, p.5). Outside Ghana and within, however, the overall development goals had been entrenched in other international ideas. Two decades after the collapse of the so-called communism, the neoliberal approaches to development had made it on top of every body’s agenda. And why shouldn’t it? After all it had ostensibly brought Western Nations tremendous prosperity and development. For all sectors including agriculture it had been decided that big is beautiful, and with the help of machines humans would no longer depend but would be able to manipulate nature in giving to us what we request. To other assumptions came along with this neoliberal approach to develop agriculture: the superiority of Western style life and food production, as well as the dominance of man over nature and, hence, his destiny. The Anthropocene had seemingly commenced. While it has also brought debate about man- made climate change, finite resources, ecological footprints and sustainable living, discussions peaked after the international financial and economic crisis in 2007/2008 that drove up food prices to new heights, and brought agriculture back onto the development agenda, but still within the free-market thinking established under Neoliberalism. In Ghana agricultural policy then still continued to focus on the transition from small-scale farming to commercial production by setting up Agricultural Mechanization Services Enterprises Centers (AMSECs) across the country under the NPP in 2007. Credit facilities were extended to ‘qualifying private sector companies’ to purchase agricultural machinery, such as tractors, combine harvesters, etc. at a subsidized price and lower interest rates. These ‘private qualifying companies’ were in turn supposed to rent these machines for ‘affordable prices’ to rural farmers. The program has been extended and as of 2015, 89 AMSECS were supposedly established. However, as the FAO (2015, p.3) point out: Analyses on the viability of AMSEC enterprises indicate that they do not represent a viable business model attractive to private investors, even with the current level of subsidy. Meanwhile, the Ghanaian currency, the cedi was redenominated in July to December 2007 with GHc 10,000 re-set to GHc 1, and in in the same year, just a few months after celebrating Ghana’s 50-year anniversary, the discovery of an off-shore Jubilee oilfield was announced by Kosmos Energy in Ghana. The (Gold) mining industry, which was always a strategic sector of the economy, was now 194 Part I: General Theories and Histories joined by the oil industry with high hopes and expectation on how this discovery would contribute to public budget and coffers. It will be argued elsewhere in this study that the focus and hopes of oil riches caused the government’s attention to withdraw even further from agriculture as a strategic sector for Ghana’s development. However, first Ghana, who was not hit as hard as other countries by the international economic and food price crises, was still burdened with an estimated increase in price of food items between 20 to 30% (Osei-Asare and Eghan 2014). In the early part of 2008, then, the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) was first introduced to alleviate poverty among the most vulnerable by providing cash transfers and subsidized health insurance (FAO et al. 2013).181 In the agricultural sector the re-introduction of the Fertilizer Subsidy Program in 2008 was the biggest outcome of the International Crisis aftermath. Originally intended to soften the blow of the international price hikes for just a couple of years, the program was continued and even scaled up from $10.8 million in 2008 to $63 million by 2012. It has been a volatile program with dips and peaks closely related to the election cycle. The elections in the end of 2008 were, yet again, strongly contested and only won narrowly by John Atta Mills and the NDC in a runoff against Nana-Akufo-Addo. This ‘Two-horse race’ led the NDC ensuring 114 out of the 230 in parliament seats while the NDPP captured 107 (leaving 1 to the CPP, 1 to the PNC and 4 to independent candidates) (CDD 2004).182 And John Atta Mills had big shoes to fill within the NDC, as he was the successor to JJ Rawlings, who had lead Ghana from 1981 until 2000 and was still the leading personality of ‘his’ party (ibid). It had been Mills third time running for president and his health was already a concern. Yet Prof. Mills was determined to put bipartisan politics aside and aim for equal, national development. Prof. Mill tried to advance Ghana’s democratic development further by initiating a comprehensive review of the constitution inter alia to curb the excessive power of his/the president’s position. Meanwhile the international community was reacting to the food price hikes, and with it we saw a re-emergence of the CAADP – Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program. Officially it has been promoted as a pan-African initiative that was first announced in 2003 at the African Union (AU) summit in Maputo (Mozambique) as an integral part of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).183 The best well-known target of the CAADP is the 10% allocation of public expenditure to the agricultural sector and with an annual growth rate of 6% (NEPAD 2003). Ghana then signed the CAADP in October 2009, making it the 10th African country to do so (Sarpong and Al-Hassan 2014). Signatories were the MoFA and the MoFEP (now MoF) on behalf of the government of Ghana, the AU/NEPAD and ECOWAS, as well as Development Partners, FoodSpan (on behalf of CSOs), Farmers Association, Parliament (Select Committee on Agriculture), Private sector and Traditional Rulers (Sarpong and Al-Hassan 2014).

181 Households are eligible for LEAP with at least one of three categories: households with an orphan or vulnerable child; elderly poor; or a person with extreme disability unable to work (FAO et al. 2013). 182 Also see: http://ghanaelections.peacefmonline.com/pages/2008/ [accessed: 24.05.2017] 183 NEPAD is the planning and coordinating technical body of the African Union. For more information see: http://www.nepad.org/ [accessed: 17.05.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 195

As can be seen in the cover to the CAADP to the left, the aim is to modernize and mechanize by promoting monocultures and a transition to commercial agriculture, similarly to other agricultural policies on the continent, and along Western, neoliberal lines.

(NEPAD 2003, p. Cover).

At the same time CAADP became of importance in Ghana, MoFA and the Development Partner were working on FASDEP II - Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy II - 2011-2015, which was developed and approved in 2009. FASDEP II is explicitly connected to the 2006-2009 Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRSII) – even though it was passed under the opposition government – and continued to aim at increased productivity and modernization of agriculture. Similarly the private sector continued to play an important role and was supposed to help to provide irrigation, roads, storage, energy, and information (Yaro et al. 2012). The six main goals of FASDEP II were stated as: 1. Secure food supply

2. Increased and more stable incomes

3. Greater competitiveness and better integration into local, regional, and international markets

4. Sustainable management of land and environment

5. Application of science and technology

6. Better coordination within and between government agencies, and between government, development partner and the private sector.

Honoring and integrating the CAADP measures, the Medium Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan I (METASIP 2010-2015), which was developed to add and implement FASDEP, was closely aligned with the CAADP aims. Similarly to FASDEP II, METASIP I has six priority programs, but while FASDEP was reflecting policy objectives, METASIP was supposed to provide the Investment Plan. With aging farmers being recognized for the first time as a key constraint for agricultural growth and technology adaptation, the Mill’s government aimed to inject capital into the sector to attract young people with the Block Farm Program in 2009. Subsidized mechanization services and inputs, in additional to extension services were supplied to the Block Farms, which were supposed to be repaid by farmers in-kind by the farmers after the harvest. The issue that Nkrumah had already 196 Part I: General Theories and Histories lamented half a century early, which is the over-reliance of the Ghanaian/African citizens on their government, mixed in with the negative perceptions on the ‘big men’ of the government, led to a notoriously low repayment of these credits, and the ultimate failure of the Block Farm initiative. Further analysis and implementation of problems identified would be highly beneficial for this program, just like the predecessors, and successors. At the same time NAFCO –the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) -another initiative of the Mill’s government, aimed at reducing post-harvest losses, providing more price stability to farmers and establishing emergency grain reserves. It was meant to be a state-owned enterprise that would purchase, store, sell and distribute excess grains in warehouses across Ghana. In 2015 there were 73 Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs) mandated to purchase maize, rice and soy beans from farmers at minimum prices. However, yet again, the perceptions of farmers were not understood (or potentially considered) when conceptualizing this program. Famers, it turned out, were unwilling to hand over their grain to the national company, and would prefer to rather store their harvest any nook and cranny available in their houses, seemingly ‘wanting to count every grain of rice, at any given time’ as a MoFA civil Servants snidely remarked about the issue. Programs implemented by MoFA under the Mill’s NDC government on a national level then included: Fertilizer Subsidy Program, the Block Farming Program, Agricultural Mechanization Services Enterprises Centers (AMSECs) and the Irrigation Development Program (FAO 2015). It is estimated that together these programs comprised about 85 percent of the ministry’s capital expenditures (FAO 2015). Mill’s government also adopted the overarching Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda (GSGDA), 2010-2013, targeting accelerating employment creation and income generation for poverty reduction (Whittal 2013). A focus on supporting oil and gas development, with investments in infrastructure, energy, housing, as well as the continued pursuit of agricultural modernization were targeted. Yet without any particular government program or project, however, the biggest change for Ghana was about to come by a simple number readjustment on an equation counting and ranking the economy.

5.8. Movin’ on up? Ghana as a Lower Middle Income Country (2010-2017) In 1995 JJ Rawlings launched – Ghana’s Vision 2020 – in 1995, trying to make Ghana the first African nation to become a developed country by 2020 (FAO 2015). While not the first, Ghana reached the goal already in 2010, when: [T]he Ghana Statistical Service revised the base year for Ghana's national accounts series from 1993 to 2006. The new GDP data were about 60 percent higher than previously reported and incorporated improved data sources and methodology(World Bank 2016).184 With the re-calculation of national statistics with the base year of 2006, Ghana was officially classified as a Lower Middle Income Country (LMIC) by July 2011, based on the World-Bank Group (WBG)

184 More information at the following link that allows for BBSC Excel ZIP to download: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/data-on-statistical-capacity [accessed: 09.05.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 197 per-capita income threshold (World Bank 2013).185 Current average per capita GDP of Ghanaians is US$1,427 in 2016 (World Bank 2016b). This move up the ladder of country classifications was after a decade of high growth patterns (average rate of 5.7% for GDP (World Bank 2016b) and significant poverty reduction, which however, was also accompanied by growing geographical disparities and inequalities (World Bank 2013). Particularly the northern regions, which have a high proportion of people living from farming activities in rural spaces, continue be left behind after this statistical move up. Nevertheless, Ghana has one of the best records in Sub-Saharan Africa as it halved extreme poverty from 36% to 18% between 1991 and 2006, and being one of the first African countries to reach the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) of halving poverty and hunger before 2015 (UNECA 2015). As the star performer on the continent, Ghana has been viewed as a benchmark for other African countries (Kolavalli et al. 2012). This transformational act of impressive growth and poverty reduction is not without its caveats. While the service sector has gained, manufacturing has stagnated (or even declined), leaving little development for agro-processing, weak production linkages and a poor environment for private-sector-led industrialization (ibid). So why do so many people in rural Ghana still struggle with poverty, despite its statistical ‘star performance’? And how come Ghana had to return to the IMF for a US$ 918 million loan by 2015?

Sources of the Ghanaian Economy’s struggles beyond agriculture

Reasons for the lack of equitable and sustainable growth in Ghana are plentiful. But to understand the Ghanaian economy, it must be understood that it has been build and a very few and select commodities, that abetted and facilitated behavior of leaders that did not have the national well-being on the very top of their agenda. Despite the LMIC status unprocessed commodities like cocoa and gold continue to be the main drivers of economy, with some hope for the oil and gas industry to emerge, should the world market prices improve in the future. The variation of international cocoa prices and its influence on Ghana’s economy has been discussed at various points through the historic section of this Chapter. Equally important and leading back even further in time than cocoa is the sale of gold. However, the Bank explains: Despite a remarkable history of its mineral endowment that led to the country being know in colonial times as the Gold Coast and despite being Africa’s second largest gold producer after South Africa, modern day Ghana has not succeeded in translating its mineral wealth into overall economic development (2011, p.1).

185 Currently the WBG-classifications are as following: $1,025 or less of GNI per capita (using the World Bank Atlas method for calculating the GNI), is considered a Low-Income Country; GNI per capita between $1,026 and $4,035 is considered to be a Lower-Middle-Income Country, GNI per capita between $4,036 and $12,475 is an Upper Middle Income Country; while economies with a GNI per capita of $12,476 or more are considered High-Income. For additional information see here: https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519-world-bank-country-and-lending-groups [accessed: 09.05.2017] 198 Part I: General Theories and Histories

In recent years there has been increased activity of illegal mining - so called galamsey – undertaken by local and foreign seekers of riches, many from China, who have been expelled and arrested in recent years). The current NPP government has indeed declared a fight against the destructive form galamsey that has left large tracts of land and waterways poisoned and destroyed. Beyond the environmental consequences Ghana exposes herself to the risk of international price variation, as can be seen in the chart depicting gold prices (inflation adjusted) over the past 100 years.

Figure 23: Historical Data for Real Gold Prices (per ounce); 1915 -2017 (Source: Macro Trends. Net Historical data for real (inflation-adjusted) gold prices per ounce back to 1915).186

Even when looking at just the past 10 years it becomes clear that planning security is little with gold.

Figure 24: Real Gold Prices (US$): Ten year daily average; 2007-2017 (Source: Macro Trends. Data for real (inflation-adjusted) gold prices per ounce; 10 year gaily chart).187

186 Available on the net: http://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart [accessed: 05.06.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 199

Also sizable deposits also exist of manganese, diamonds and bauxite (World Bank 2011). Gold is, however, the largest contributor to Ghana’s economy (World Bank 2011). In 2007 then, oil and gas became Ghana’s new hope for an economic boost when the Jubilee Oilfield discovery was announced. While expectations were growing oil prices started falling, from a peak around US$140 per barrel in 2008 to below US$ 40 in 2009 as seen in the graph of Figure 25 below:

Figure 25: Crude Oil Prices (US$); 2007-2017; Daily Chart (Source: Macro Trends. Net Crude Oil: 10 Year Daily chart).188

The volatility has been extreme in past decades, and it remains unsure how the gas and oil prices will develop with the looming peak of oil production, while energy hungry states (particular the United States) have found new, while destructive ways (such as tar sands) to increase output. Figure 26 below depicts the Crude Oil Prices over the past 70 Year, showing great increases and drops over the past century. As of May 2017 the barrel of oil was worth US$51.47.

Figure 26: Crude Oil Prices (US$)- 70 Year Historical Chart (Source: Macro Trends. Net Crude Oil Prices - 70 Year Historical Chart)189.

187 Available on the web: 10 Year Daily Chart: http://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100- year-chart [accessed: 05.06.2017] 188 Available on the net: http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart [accessed: 24.05.2017] 200 Part I: General Theories and Histories

For oil, the threat even greater than international crude oil prices, is the challenge that the sectors can easily fall prey to outside ‘expertise’ and end up in the avaricious grip of foreign capital. Ghana’s governments have been struggling and renegotiating contracts in the oil sector, yet the government’s share on certain oil fields has been less than 20%. As anecdotal evidence, it should be mention that the most expensive apartments in Accra (ranging from US$2,000 to US$8,000 per month) are usually rented to oil and gas sector workers – from Italy, France and the United States among others. Another danger to the oil riches Ghana is dreaming of was its maritime border dispute with Côte d’Ivoire over the Tweneboa, Enyenra, Ntomme (TEN) oil fields. The International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, however, issues a favorable first ruling in 2017. While the gas and oil sector development remains a high hope for Ghana, it also led to early and undue spendings of incumbents, particularly during the election year of 2012.

Challenges beyond the economy

Since Ghana returned to “the Principle that all powers of Government spring from the Sovereign Will of the People”, as stated on the title page of the Ghanaian constitution, the prelude and aftermath of every election has been serious challenging. While Ghana has developed into a mature democracy, with two strong parties, the competitive campaigns surrounding elections have becoming expensive. As running an election campaign costs considerable amounts of money, and staying in office offers considerable benefits, whoever is in power might be tempted to use available resources for purposes other than fostering equal prosperity of the people of Ghana. This issue arises generally, independent from the party in power, but was particularly palpable before and after the December 2012 election. This election confirmed John Dramani Mahama, the vice president that had taken over office after the death of Prof. Mill in July 2012, of the NDC as president against Nana Akufo-Addo of the NPP. The aforementioned election spending became an issue by 2012, but during this time it was also the long planned implementation of the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS)190 between 2010 and 2015 that increased the wage bill. This was also done to curb corruption among civil servants, and police officers in particular, that have long been underpaid and attempted to make ends by other means. Furthermore Ghana had to battel with a sharp increase of energy costs: Firstly because the West African Gas Pipeline was cut off due to the conflict in Nigeria with Boko Haram; Secondly because the Akosombo Dam – which is a main energy provider for Ghana- was low in its levels the past years due to poor rains leading to a row of rolling blackouts, and, leaving the Ghanaian

189 Available on the web: http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart [accessed: 24.05.2017] 190 The SSSS, aimed at motivating public service workers and improve service delivery and productivity took effect in January 2010. It was also put forward to restore equity and transparency in public service pay administration GoG 2009a. It involves a 25-Level Grade Structure (up from 22 under the Universal Salary Structure, which was implemented by JJ with the help of PricewaterhouseCoopers in the 1990s) and discussion around a new and more appropriate pay scale for public servants was already discussed under the NPP government in 2007/8. Finally the SSSS was approved and was implementation finalized in 2015. Fair wages, so the word on the street, would also decrease corrupt practices, i.e. from Police Officers, whose salary was too little to afford common goods. Part I: General Theories and Histories 201 government scrambling to find energy solutions to what locals called; Dumsor (twi for off and on, describing the constant off and on of grid electricity).191 Beyond the energy crisis a Donor crisis was looming. Unable to keep Ghana in the ‘Least Developed Country’ many Development Partners slowly but surely had re-categorize Ghana as LMIC, which meant switching a larger part of their assistance from grants to loans. When the economic crisis intensified and the debt ratio became ‘too high’ some donors, i.e. France, suspended all lending activities. Others, like the Canadians, where on a hiatus as monies were discovered to not have reached planned beneficiaries192. All this happened while the tax base for Ghana remained rather stagnant. In the meantime spending in healthcare and education were desperately needed as maternal and infant mortality remained serious issues (World Bank 2013), and only 15% of the population had access to improved sanitation (GSS and Ghana Health Service (GHS) and ICF International 2015).193 A substantial deterioration of the current account deficit was leading up to the election, while a fast pace public debt accumulation and other macroeconomic risks remained since the (World Bank 2013). The hope and fears continued to be centered on the petroleum sector, whose output is projected to double over the next decade, as well as how governments in power will respond to the increased fiscal revenues (ibid). In light of the rich natural resources, in combination with the country’s stable democratic institutions, growth was supposed to be predicted to remain positive despite the macro- economic challenges (FAO 2015). However, with government expenditures growing while government revenue remained mostly stable, or decreased, Ghana’s fiscal deficit grew from 4% of GDP in 2011 to 11% in 2012 (World Bank 2016b). The current account deficit, measuring Ghana’s trade, also grew from 9% in 2010 to 11% of GDP in 2012 (ibid). These twin deficits were accompanied by a sharp depreciation of the and a steep increase of inflation to 17% by 2015, while growth retracted to 4%. Financing of these deficits was done through domestic as well as external borrowing, however, at increasingly higher rates as the World Bank (2016) describes: When the public debt stock increased from 40% of GDP in 2011, to 56% in 2013, and then 72% in 2015, the Government of Ghana increasingly turned to short-term domestic financing options (i.e. 91 &182-day Treasury bills) with interest rates averaging around 25%. The GoG also issued three rounds of Eurobonds, raising a total of US$ 3 billion between 2012 and 2015, and recently a 5-year bond raising US$750 million in 2016 – the last one with an interest of 9.25%. 194 The high stock and cost of financing was reflected in the interest payment reaching 6.5% of GDP in 2015 (World Bank 2016b).

191 In 2015 and 2016 the Ghanaian government had to order power barges from Turkey to augment their energy supply. 192 In early 2016 during my interviews with the representatives of the Canadian government secrecy dominated the conversation. At the time, however, no monies were paid and a new contract was negotiated that would have stricter guidelines and monies flowing directly into districts instead to national development units (i.e. the MoFA office/departments). 193 Improved sanitation would include a flush toilet, ventilated improved pit latrine, pit latrine with a slab, or a composting toilet, none of which must be shared with other households GSS and Ghana Health Service (GHS) and ICF International 2015. 194 Also see: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-08/ghana-selling-benchmark-size-eurobond-in- fourth-issue-since-2013 [accessed 12.05.2017] 202 Part I: General Theories and Histories

The turn toward the old frenemy, the IMF and other international institutions, was inevitable, and described by the Bank, which writes: To address the macroeconomic challenges, Ghana has embarked on a stabilization program which is currently being supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and other development partners (World Bank 2016b, p.1). Since April 2015 the IMF has supported Ghana with a three-year Extended Credit Facility (ECF) of US$918 million. The ECF was requested after the economy had sharply slowed down in 2014 due a fiscal crisis linked to the drop in prices of crude oil, and to some degree gold, in combination to the aforementioned election year spendings. At the same time the donor community started to withdraw aid funding in recognition of Ghana’s new status as Lower-Middle Income Country. At the same time the Bank has also issued a ‘Guarantee’ for Ghana as it released its US$ 1.0 billion Eurobond that was used, according to the guarantee conditions, to refinance short-term domestic (and expensive) debt (World Bank 2016b). The Bank explains: Domestic revenue mobilization is the most sustainable way to create fiscal space, finance much-needed infrastructure and other development needs, and reduce reliance on public debt and vulnerability to external shocks (2016b, p.3). Justifying the neoliberal approach, the Bank also observes that State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) pose another risk, as they play an important role in regards to capital investments and public service provision, but have often underperformed causing high economic and financial costs (World Bank 2016b). Sadly, this threat has been real for Ghana. Despite these struggles in government and the economy, Ghanaian farmers have continued to produce and sell, as their survival depends on it and their alternative remain few.

Agricultural production and imports When looking a data on the agricultural sector in general one has to keep the importance of the cocoa sector in mind, and with its dependence on international commodity prices. Growth of the sector has been marked as significant since 2007 by the FAO, due to high international prices for cocoa (FAO 2015). Depending on what statistics one wants to trust, the sector still is responsible for providing a livelihood for at least half of Ghanaian labor force.195 Furthermore, as explained in the beginning of this Chapter, agricultural production in Ghana is influenced by the environmental conditions of the three ecological zones: Coastal, Forest and Savannah Zone. Each zone can be split up further, e.g. the Savannah zone into guinea savannah and Sudan savannah zones, however, some staple crops such as maize or cassava can be found all over Ghana (Asuming-Brempong 2014).

195 Recent FAO publications estimate the agricultural labour force to be 54 percent of total labour force (FAO 2015). Part I: General Theories and Histories 203

The major crops harvested and sold in Ghana are: cocoa, maize, rice, cassava, groundnut/peanut, oil palm, yam, plantain, tomatoes and leafy vegetables (GSS 2014a). The following Table is an overview of the top crops as per annual value of harvest in the three different zones: Table 4: Estimated Annual value of harvest crops by household for the three zones (Source: Own compilation based on GLSS 6 GSS 2014a p.108/109).196

Top Crops based on value of harvest (Thousand GHC)

Costal Cassava (167,725), Cocoa (82,825) Oil Palm (67,828), Maize (63,270)

Forest Cocoa (1,785,338), Cassava (1,102,705), Plantain (866,323), Maize (591,417)

Savannah Yam (1,347,621), Maize (1,052,863), Groundnut (331,946), Cassava (257,495)

For livestock raising the focus is on chickens, goats, sheep, guinea fowl and cattle, while the later animals are mostly reared in the Northern region, poultry is mostly around Accra and Kumasi. Despite a large part of the population involved in agricultural activities households on average have to spend almost 47% of their total annual household expenditure on food. This could also be related to the fact that the hourly earnings for men and women working in agriculture, forestry and fishing is the lowest (0.69 GHC/hour, equivalent to 0, 16 EUR/hour) out of 20 different industries that were compared (GSS 2014a). 197 Also, despite Ghana having enacted the Children’s Act in 1998, which prohibits children from exploitative or hazardous work almost 29% of children (ages 7-14) are employed, 91% of them in agriculture also poorly paid, as their monthly income out of 15 pay categories- ranking highest to lowest paid - is 11 for agriculture (GSS 2014a). Samuel Asuming-Brempong (2014) study on land management practice explains how they affect food crop yields. It also points out that only large farmers will be able to afford and use of inputs, especially fertilizer, but also agro-chemicals for pest control in appropriate amounts, that will enhance yields (ibid). It also highlights that smallholder farmers are able to obtain higher rice yields than farmers on larger plots. While the fertilizer subsidy programs by the GoG have only focused on inorganic fertilizers, many research experiments have shown the importance of a mixture of organic and inorganic fertilizers. However, many farmers are not able to access either. Farmers also estimate that they have to spend about 16% of inputs expenditure on purchasing inorganic fertilizer, while 52% of households reported as hard to come by (GSS 2014a). Similarly, out of the 3.4 million households that claimed to be engaged in agricultural activities in 2012/2013 about 1.9 million purchased herbicide and one million insecticides to use on their farms (GSS 2014a). Since 2012/2013 then access to agro-chemical is estimated to have sharply increased.

196 Other important cash crops include: Beans, Cashew nuts, Coconut, Sorghum, Millet, Rubber, Sheanut, Sugar cane, Avocado, Bananas, Cocoyam, Colanut, Garden eggs, Leafy vegetables, Mango, Okro (Okra), Onion, Oranges, Pawpaw (papaya), Pepper (Hot pepper), Pineapple, Plantain, Rice, Soybeans, and Tomatoes among others. 197 For households in the highest quintile the percentage decreases small to 41.5%, while the poorest households have to spend 56.3% of their income on food items (GSS 2014a). 204 Part I: General Theories and Histories

The highest expenditure (31%) on crops, however, is spent on hiring farm laborer, which was done by 1.6 million households. A particularly important fact when interested in sustainable agricultural methods, which are usually are very labor intensive. The high rural-urban migration for young people in Ghana, as well as the high enrollment in school programs, has sharply decreased the available labor on the fields, and left politicians worrying about the aging sector. At the same time food and agricultural imports have been steadily on the rise, reaching a whopping $1.5 billion in 2013 (USDA 2014). The have been consisting mostly of bulk and consumer-ready commodities such as rice, wheat, sugar and poultry (ibid).This list constitutes items that very well could be produced within Ghana’s boarders, with proper support. However, the Foreign Agricultural Service of the United States comments on this development this way: The Ghanaian market continues to offer many opportunities for U.S. exporters of bulk and consumer-ready food products and remains a key access point for entry into the West African regional market (USDA 2014, p.1). Ghana’s growth potential and ‘liberal import policies’ makes her an important U.S. agricultural export market.198 However, the top suppliers of food stuffs have been: the European Union, Asia (China, Thailand, Vietnam, India, and Dubai), as well as South Africa (USDA 2014). The European Union in particular is responsible for 35% of agricultural imports to Ghana, and has recently re-affirmed its trading ties with the (rather forced) passing of the Economic Partnership Agreements, as previously discussed. Asuming-Brempong (2014) points out that declining food production and strong population growth rates have led to increased food importation in West Africa as a whole since the 1980s (Asuming-Brempong 2014). Declining crop yields can be contributed to destructive traditional land use practices that have led to reduces soil fertility (ibid). Encroachment of marginal lands (e.g. on superficial soils or steep slopes), absence of soil and water conservation practices or breakdown of traditional enforcement mechanisms for conserving common property are mentioned as causes for declining yield which are exacerbated by changing rainfall patterns (Asuming-Brempong 2014). However, the changing food cultures can also be attributed to the change in taste that has been forged by the food aid distributions over the past 50 years, selectively (Western) crops that have been promoted by Development Partners, and the onslaught of marketing campaigns targeting busy urban consumers that spent more time in traffic than cooking traditional meals. A billboard close to 37 Military Hospital, one of the busiest intersections in Accra, displayed a poster of a Ghanaian family, reading: “In our family...mealtimes are always delightful....because we

198 Based on the GAIN report the products with the top 20 products with the best prospects/sales potential in Ghana are: Frozen poultry and fish products, fruit preparations and juices, canned fruits and vegetables, tomato puree/ketchup, bottled vegetable cooking oil, milk (liquid mils, skimmed and whole powered milk), spices and sauces including soy sauce, mixed seasoning, condiments, breakfast cereals, margarine/butter, pasta products, snack foods (biscuits, cakes etc.), confectionery products (candies, gum etc.), ice cream and yoghurt concentrates, spirits, liqueurs, beers and wines, non-alcoholic beverages (tea, coffee, fruit drinks), bakery and other food ingredients (yeast & baking powder) and Mayonnaise and salad dressing (USDA 2014). Part I: General Theories and Histories 205 use the best products from the USA! –U.S. Rice -American Poultry –American Peanut Butter; Great in Quality, Great in Taste”, as can be seen below.

Figure 27: U.S. Rice, Poultry and Peanut Butter Billboard in Accra Billboard seen 2016 – website says it has been in existence since mid-2015. (Source: U.S. Rice ‘Delightful’- Billboard in central junction of Accra – as seen by Author in September 2016).199

Even while sitting inside the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Ghana, sales people came by to promote ‘American raised turkey’, and almost all restaurants, also on government grounds, use imported food items from the US and elsewhere. Unfortunately, the quality of local products can in fact often lag behind the highly subsidized, but also well produced food and agricultural products from abroad. Nevertheless, the marketing campaigns are relentless and should be further researched on how they affect consumer behavior.

5.9. Current developments and conclusions in the year 2017 Over the two decades since the 1992 constitution was passed, Ghana weathered seven competitive general elections with three power transfers across party-lines. She has evolved in a ‘stable and mature democracy’ (World Bank 2013), even a ‘model of democracy in Africa’ (Mahama 2016), and hence a beacon of hope for the continent that has been continually pressured to follow the rule of the majority game. Running against the incumbent, John Dramani Mahama, Nana Akufo-Addo’s third try to become president of Ghana in December 2016 was successful. The distinguished lawyer and veteran campaigner for democracy has served as an attorney general and foreign minister during the Kufuor’s administration. Interestingly, and maybe more importantly he is also the son of a former president –

199 Additional Information on the billboard and the campaign at: https://usarice.com/blogs/usa-rice- daily/2015/07/13/u.s.-rice-advertising-in-ghana-takes-off U.S. Rice Advertising in Ghana Take Off, Jul 13, 2015; picture description: Delightful! [accessed: 05.06.2017] 206 Part I: General Theories and Histories

Edward Akuffo-Addo (CDD 2004). 100 days after the inauguration of Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP administration the CDD commended both the John-Dramani-Mahama-NDC and the Akufo-Addo-NPP government for a “relatively smooth and peaceful transfer of power” process which was marked by “high levels of cooperation and accommodation, notwithstanding the occasional disagreement and miscommunication” (CDD 2017). While the Center for Democratic Development also lauds president Addo’s allocation to fight corruption200, they expressed their displeasure for appointing 110 ministers which is bloating the government and stressing the public purse while further bloating the state bureaucracy. One the bright side, the new Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, seems like an energetic, capable man that has the ear of the president, as they have been friends for many years. The NPP Budget of 2017 presented in March was then appropriately titled “Sowing the Seeds for Growth and Jobs”, and aimed at economic growth 8inlcuding agriculture) and a tax reforms that tried to grapple with a debt stock of almost 73% of GDP, which had claimed 42% of tax revenue to service the debt (GoG 2017).201 This marked a substantial increase in debt of GDP over the past years, since the HIPC initiative had decreased the debt burden successfully in the mid-2000s, which left debt of GDP at 28.6% in 2008. It has climbed up slowly but surely since then. The only specific expenditure demanding even more of the Budget than Interest Payments is the Compensation of Employees In the meantime it has become public that the Government of Ghana has requested and an extension on the IMF credit facility until December 2018, despite original claims by Akufo-Addo wanting to end the program on time, April 2018.202 In conclusion this Chapter has endeavored to unwind the spool of time, to illuminate the broad currents that have swept over Ghana and its agriculture, erecting material and ideational structures that are confining the sector and its actors still today. It attempted to uncover some of the potential sources that have been nourishing the stream of ideas often taken for granted and present value only. In particular it is hoped to draw attention to the multiplicity of perceptions one can have on Africa in general and Ghanaian society in particular. Instead of the helpless, dependent and poverty stricken dwellers on Gold Coast, the intent reader of histories must concede and appreciate the robustness, creativity and perseverance of Ghanaian people and their agriculture. Racism, so to say, the white elephant in the room (pun intended) , has become so omnipresent that he turned invisible for the ones benefiting from it. While there was hope for change within the world system when Sub-Saharan

200 GHC 1.2 million were allocated to the Commission on Human Rights and administrative Justice (CHRAJ) 201 A majority of debt (56%) is owed in foreign currency; hence, the depreciation of the Cedi would drive up interest payments further. It is important to note that even 73% is quite moderate compared to recent, mean Government debt of GDP in Europe, which stood at 91.7% in 2016. See here for more details: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7573561/2-22072016-AP-EN.pdf/16cdaec5-3f1c-4cab-a8cf- 954b917e04a9 [accessed 30.03.2017] and http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=teina225&plugin=1 [accessed 12.05.2017] 202 For more information see Reuters, Ghana to request extension of IMF programme to Dec 2018 -govt sources https://www.reuters.com/article/ghana-imf/ghana-to-request-extension-of-imf-programme-to-dec-2018-govt- sources-idUSL8N1IO1TS [accessed: 24.05.2017] Part I: General Theories and Histories 207

African countries started to claim independence, starting with Ghana in 1957, the decade after soon made pan-African leaders realize that the walls erected by the old powers would take much more time to overcome, as the rules of the game have changed with the structures of power. While determined leaders such as Nkrumah, Busia and Rawlings all their best to develop the Ghanaian economy, they often focused on industrialization rather than agriculture as the engine for growth. The most noteworthy attempt to help farmers since independence – albeit mostly large scale ones – continues to be Gen. Acheampong with his Operation Feed Yourself. Most other government efforts in the agricultural have been directed towards the cocoa industry only. Since the onset of the neoliberal ideational dominance of the 1980s, represented in Ghana via the Economic Partnership Agreement of the 1980s, the crop and livestock sector has been left to fend for itself in international markets, with very limited state support, independent of the changing governments in power since the return to democracy in the 1990s. The reliance of the Ghanaian economy on cocoa and gold created certain vulnerabilities that affected government revenues and development effort particularly in recent years, as world prices fluctuated (Chang 2012b). In general, the constraining factor effecting the restricted fiscal space have been the increased debt burden, which has been sadly growing again since 2008, and exacerbated by election year spendings due to two-party state with competitive elections. The rather high wage bill, in combination with a large informal economy, tax free zones, and double taxation agreements for foreign experts created a small tax base that spelled trouble despite the discovery of oil in the past decade. Looking back at the last 60 years of agricultural policies, one notices the focus of Cocoa as an export commodity, which is produced by well-organized smallholder farmers, yet the crops and livestock has continuously been pushed and pulled towards modernization and mechanization to consolidate power in commercial farmers, without offering proper alternatives for the labor force. This is particularly obvious when seeing the rural youth drifting towards urban centers, which are left without proper opportunities, while in the meantime Ghana has a serious problems with it aging farming population. With a plethora of Development Partners involved policies over the last decade have been vastly composed by self-proclaimed experts in the capitals, while the real beneficiaries have only be consulted to have an alibi. Meanwhile the privileged civil servants that have participated in the policy processes have exposed themselves of lacking understanding about the opinions and suggestions of the beneficiaries of the programs. Hence most initiatives have proved to be failures, and while at times very well analyzed (for example by the World Bank) the lessons learned have scarcely been applied. The next Chapters will present the Results in Part III, where the finding of the empirical study undertaken in Ghana from September 2015 to December 2016 are discussed, but first introduces the Methodology and issues on data reliability in Part II following.

Part II: Methodology 209

Part II: Methodology

6. Nature and relation of ideational research methods in development studies

Ontologies inevitably influence the content of our substantive theories (Wendt 1999, p. 370).

The following Chapter hopes to give an overview of the methodology used in this study. Before entering into details of the research design, data acquisition and analysis it gives a brief reminder of the ontology underpinning the research. While the initial part of the Chapter might seem like an accolade for qualitative methods, it should be reiterated that the study is based on the belief that there is need for of quantitative and qualitative methods, and equal importance positivist as well as constructivist paradigms. There are, however, limitation and assumption in each that deserve further consideration in the developing country context. The first section of this chapter is more theory laden, while the second section is praxis-oriented, with a focus on the interviews that were conducted. The third and final section returns to and exemplifies further caveat of the limitations of data in developing countries in general, and the agricultural sector in Ghana in particular. The last part is merged with results and builds a transition Chapter between Methodology and Results by describing the current situation on data reliability and dependability in the agricultural sector and the role of aid within it.

Chapter 3 has already briefly pointed out that the main ontological pillar is social constructivism. In support of this other chapters have also highlighted the importance of history, in an attempt to trace influential ideas to their source, as well as to do away with the common ‘blank slate’ approach in most development studies. It is also based on the belief that events long preceding the present moment have been passed on to people through local narratives, stories and histories that are still influencing the thinking and, hence, actions today. One such idea, as just exemplified in Chapter 5, is be the myth of inequality based on race, which has often subconsciously tainted the clarity of our views in politics and development, as well as everyday life. While the historical explanatory layer has been added to the social constructivist approach, the study does subscribe importance to material factors, such as wealth, for example used for aid funding that are used as budgetary support for the agricultural sector in Ghana, as will be discussed in the Results Chapter. Ontologically the study then follows a Thin Constructivist approach, as it promotes a dualism of material and ideational factors (Gofas and Hay 2010). While following an easily accepted, balanced social constructivist approach ontologically, epistemologically it fights for a more “revolutionary” adherence to a constitutive logic, as it hopes to shatter the hubris of causality by depicting the immense complexities of events in our socially constructed and globally connected world. It then follows a constitutive rather than a causal logic, which is often attributed to the ‘radical’ Thick Constructivist (opposing Wendt) (Gofas and Hay 2010). 210 Part II: Methodology

The current quest for causality in most disciplines, particularly in the Anglophone scholarly world, seems unreasonable for even the most pedestrian events, such as a farmer purchasing fertilizer in Yendi district of Ghana, as capitalism has so successfully spread communication techniques and tactics to make the tracing of causal variables tremendously difficult and unfathomable for complex webs of decisions for policy making. Without a stake in the causality debate the purpose of this study is to illuminate the web of connections and various influences, aiming to provide a better, more thorough understanding of issues of the agricultural sector in Ghana and the role of aid within it. It then follows an applied research questions approach, in the sense that I hopes to uncover what we must understand before we know what to do (Turbian 2007) This applied research is then neither a theory-proposing dissertation work, which would advance a new hypothesis, nor a theory-testing approach, which would be evaluating existing theories (van Evera 1997). It started out as an exploratory approach, and turned into a descriptive research, that could be called a theory strengthening approach, as it aims at spreading and strengthening a constructivist ontological approach relevant to disciplines from political science to development studies in particular, as well as promoting ideational approaches and interdisciplinary work in general. While anthropologists, ethnographers and political sociologists have embraced ideational approaches effortlessly and willingly, most development theorists, and economists in particular, have shied away from these more complex, and sometimes messier approaches to explaining the world we live in. There is much left to be done, however, it is a step in a process that aims to draw additional attention to the importance of ideational factors, such as local narratives and perceptions influencing action, in the social sciences, which has been dominated by material explanations, most often interlinked with quantitative methods. The most noteworthy exceptions are the aforementioned constructivist scholars who have been fighting the expansion of ideational ontological approaches from the sidelines of International Relations since the end of the Cold War, and to a certain degree historical and behavioral economists. However, interests and ideas are difficult to operationalize empirically (Hay 2011). This difficulty has led committed political science scholars away from empiricism and rather concentrated them around theoretical debates, when they accepted ideas as explanatory variables (ibid). This low standing of ideational approaches and the use of qualitative methods within the sciences in general has been intensified by critics who voiced skepticism towards their validity, reliability and generalizability, and arguments that qualitative data, i.e. from interviews, should be treated as opinion rather than fact, despite acknowledging that inquiries in the social world are best undertaken by allowing the respondent to talk (Rathbun 2008). The focus on ideas and ideologies in particular, must follow what Berman (2011) calls a Janus-like approach, in which theory and practice, abstract ideas and everyday realities, must be considered in equal parts. On the material end, it implies also a balancing act of agency and structure, of understanding key individuals and their local contexts, as well as influences of the broader environment and structural factors (Berman 2011). The challenges for this research, then, included Part II: Methodology 211 finding a balance between theory and praxis, structure and agency, and develop a research design that is suitable to capture material as well as ideational factors, within a qualitative framework that is accepted, respected and applicable in a developing country context. With the dualism of material and ideational factors as substantive theories in mind, the next two section of the chapter will give an overview of my research design, preparation and methodology, as well as data acquisition.

6.1. Research design and additional concerns As established in the preceding paragraphs, the general aim of this research is to follow the applied research question of understanding the powerful decision makers and the ideas they have on (sustainable) agricultural development in Ghana, as well as the role of aid within it. While it started out to be exploratory in nature, it turned into a descriptive research study, in an attempt to add to the knowledge available on potent ideas pertinent for development themes on the Sub-Sharan African continent. It hopes to uncover and revive ideational influences on hardened power structures, as well as investigate the role of aid agencies within developing countries in general by drawing from concrete examples of the agriculture sector in Ghana. It ultimately wishes to offer a springboard to additional ideational research, particularly in the developing country context where culture and, hence, belief structures is often far different from the assumptions used in social science (epically economics) taken from and drawn out of Western societies. As mentioned, inquiries into social constructs necessitate listening and speaking with the persons affected. Linguistic competency cannot be overemphasized when doing qualitative research in a foreign country. Speaking, writing and understanding English - the official language of the decision makers in the case of Ghana – is therefore a prerequisite for investigating power and ideational relations, operationalized via semi-structured interviews as further discussed in the next section. As the study speaks on development, politics and agriculture on the African continent the case selection was limited to English-speaking countries, due to natural talent of the author in this language, despite being a German. Ghana has multiple other supportive characteristics stemming from favorable historical development as well as cultural tendencies, i.e. extreme hospitality and extraordinary peacefulness. Being the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence in 1957 under a charismatic and proud pan-Africanist, Kwame Nkrumah has made for an interesting ideational history, added to by an unfortunate back-and-forth of military and civilian governments as discussed in Chapter 5. Hence, Chazan’s words of 1983 still hold true today, that: Ghana has in the past, and continues today to serve as a microcosm of political analysis in Africa (p.5). In certain regards Ghana than represents West Africa or maybe even SSA in general. Nugent adds that Ghana has always exerted a great influence over African affairs and over external perceptions of the continent than its limited size and population [...] might lead one to expect (1995, p.9). 212 Part II: Methodology

Developing into a beacon of democracy on the continent, with seven peaceful elections between 1992 and 2017, as well as three transfers of power, Ghana is somewhat a ‘best case study’ for development policies. She almost seemed predestined for an inquiry of politics, power and ideas. From an agricultural perspective Ghana is of interest as she offers a diversity of climatic, agroecological, cultural and economic patterns that can represent West Africa, as well as other Sub- Saharan Africa countries. After the food price hikes of 2007/2008 it was one of the first countries to sign up for the CAADP in 2009. Last, but certainly not least, the affiliation of the Albert-Ludwigs- University of Freiburg to the UrbanFoodPlus project that operates in three West African countries, including Ghana, played a role in the selection of Ghana as a country for this case study. Independent of the country selection, the chosen method has been qualitative in nature, with a special interest in semi-structured interview with the influential decision makers of the sector. Participatory observations, as well as focus group discussions, were added at later stages of the research, as opportunities presented themselves during the field research stay. All methods, however, were based on a thorough and deliberate understanding of the historical circumstance and the current material/economic context. It should be underlined that while ideational factors were of interest, material factors were of equal importance.

6.2. Preparation - On the importance of history and network The desk research part of this study was supported by the infrastructure of the Albert-Ludwigs- University library, online journal portals and cheap second-hand online bookstores, systems that, unjustifiably, scholars in Sub-Saharan Africa who would have been equally suited to undertake this study, often lack access to. The second important preparatory step was the building of a network within Ghana, while still in Germany – also to guide and advise me on relevant sources for reading on history. The initial hope was that contacts of the UrbanFoodPlus project, which I was part of from beginning of 2015 until mid-2017, would provide such avenues. Unfortunately the integration into the research network was rather limited, and hence, personal initiative and connections were needed to arrive well-prepared in Ghana.203 Administrative support was generously and continually provided by the Albert-Ludwigs- University and the UrbanFoodPlus project, ensuring access to visas, letters of support as well as office space – even within Ghana, thanks to the project partner: the International Water Management Institute IWMI and the University of Development Studies (UDS). One of the vital practical preparatory steps, which was taken while still in Germany, was the printing of business cards,

203 Two contacts that had the largest influence in the beginning stages are worth drawing attention to: the Godmother of a previous roommate of mine, who turned out to the daughter of a former head of state of Ghana and a Professor of African and Gender studies (Prof. Abena Busia at Rutgers University). She guided my historic explorations. The second was an agricultural trade specialist from a German NGO called Brot für die Welt (Francisco Mari) – who fortuitously was able to set me up with a contact at the GIZ head office in Eschborn, who in turn connected me to the head of the GIZ agricultural project in Accra, Ghana. There were a plethora of additional supporters that shall remain unnamed, but the importance of these connections and networks enablers have undoubtedly contributed immeasurably to the ease and quality of data collection process. Part II: Methodology 213 including a Ghanaian phone number, as it created and added to the sense of professionalism of the research immediately upon arrival. Bottlenecks of political and developmental power that exist so commonly in all societies are best explored by approaching the individuals directly. There is nothing that can replace thorough and detailed preparation work ahead of the interview, which includes historical development, people of importance, jargon used, policies passed and public events that have influenced the research objects. Rigorous preparation and sincere interest will shine through and more often than not the interviewee will pick up the minute cues of the interviewer being able to follow along and, hence, can build trust.

7. Qualitative research - semi-structured interviews

Interviewing, despite its flaws, is often the best tool for establishing how subjective factors influence political decision-making, the motivations of those involved, and the role of agency in events of interest (Rathbun 2008, p.68).

Qualitative research methods were used, as they still lend themselves most naturally for inquiries of politics and ideas. Indeed, within the qualitative research arena, it has been interviews in particular that have been most widely used to investigate social science matters (Holstein and Gubrium 2004). Triangulation of evidence, fact-checking as well as discourse analyses of publicly available resources (such as speeches, laws, regulations, policies etc.) and the selection of a larger sample of respondent were ways to ensure credibility and dependability of data. On the material end of this investigation particular interest was on agricultural and development policies passed - over the past decades in Ghana. After the initial exploratory research revealed that policies in the agricultural sector were plentiful and outwardly beautiful, that, however, no budget was made available to implement such policies, the processes of budget creation and distribution were added, which also provided a plethora of material evidence, supplementing the qualitative data collected. The third pillar of this study turned out to be implementation as it also became clear (during the later part of the early exploratory stages of the research) that policy AND budget decisions and distribution were mostly undertaken on the national level of the MoFA, that is to say in Accra only, but failed to trickle down to regional or district levels were the actual implementation were to happen. This third pillar often neglected but, indeed, the most important to actually evaluate the effect of aid and agricultural policies and budget decision on its actual beneficiaries – the farmers – gave impetus to spend more time in and ‘on’ the fields of Northern Ghana, as well as conducting some focus group discussion with small scale farmers around Tamale to catch a glimpse of their ideas and opinions. This data was supplemented by other local research publications on the subject (i.e. by Ghanaian researchers of UoG, UDS and KNUST, as well as DP studies undertaken and financed by USAID, GIZ, WFP, etc.). Again, preparation was of upmost importance to conduct good quality research. 214 Part II: Methodology

Caveats must be considered carefully, so as to avoid unnecessary mistakes in the process of attempting to create reliable and dependable data.

Caveats and reflections on qualitative research Researchers have also feared dishonesty of respondents when interviewed. However, as Rathbun (2008) points out: researchers are not nearly as threatening as journalists, also because readership among academic circle is severely restricted. The creation of a comfortable and trustworthy environment is then a necessary prerequisite to give interviewees the opportunity to respond openly. Since all interviews are necessarily interactional, another real danger is the creation of meaning that supposedly stems from the respondent, while in fact originates and reflects the interviewer’s thoughts and beliefs (Silverman 2004). The active acknowledgement, even capitalization of this mutual constitutive contribution to the interview data, as well as the awareness of the social construction of knowledge, is highlighted by Holsten and Jaber (2004) in their debate on active interviewing. To counter these dangers special attention has to be paid to the formulation of questions, as well as to provide a conducive atmosphere to allow for open and undistorted communication between the interviewer and the respondent (Silverman 2004). The interviewer must use an appropriate amount of self-control to suppress personal opinion, preconceived notions, as well as unnecessary self-consciousness, to make the interviewee comfortable to answer freely during survey interviews. At a later stage of the research, once the bases have been laid, and the analysis has moved to next stage, it can be helpful to use what has been termed creative interviewing techniques to increase rapport and optimize cooperation (Silverman 2004). In this stage it can be helpful for the interviewer to share her or his own feelings and thoughts on occasion, as to assure the respondent and build mutual understanding and disclosure (ibid). The challenge is to find a common understanding between interviewees and interviewers as both are fenced in by their own experiences and ideas. The perceived burden of subjectivity within interviewee data could be turned around when the subject of inquiry is exactly this subjectivity: the attitudes, perceptions and expectation of stakeholders involved. Nevertheless, the interviewer has to pay close attention, reflect over opinion and facts presented by interviewees, and keep his/her own political and theoretical beliefs outside the interview space (Rathbun 2008). When appropriate it can be useful to confront the respondents with data contrary to his or her view point, however, this is a thin line to tread on as it often exposes the interviewer’s political inclination depending on the data and argument presented (Rathbun 2008). Keeping a neutral position and allowing the interview to unfold and the interviewee to feel free in their description of the situation must take precedence. Nevertheless, internal contradiction of the respondent should be addressed and adjustments noted (ibid). In the great majority of interviews, silence was deployed rather than counter arguments, with awesome and surprising effects on information shared after a two-second pause in between an Part II: Methodology 215 ostensible end of an answer and the next question. Active listening, prompting and probing, following along and going as far as mimicking body posture, on top of creating an environment to maximize the degree of freedom (such as meeting in a separate room, after working hours, or during a lunch break) after displaying patience and persistence created the underpinning to the qualitative method used. Qualitative researchers can also be inspired by spy activities, as one Professor described, as both are in foreign countries to listen and learn, while keeping their own opinions at bay.

7.1. Data acquisition -process and practicalities Rathbun (2008) suggests that interviewers should exhaust all of the secondary sources and publicly available primary sources before beginning the interview processes so as to target questions most effectively. Furthermore it is appropriate to start the research with lower-ranking members of a given respondent group, so as to gather basic information that will be relevant for the interviews that take place with respondents at the top of the hierarchy. It is also helpful with regard to trying out interview techniques and question structures. A delicate balance between being ‘fully prepared’ and taking opportunities when they arise was struck when great fortune presented itself just days after my arrival in Accra, when I met the head of the agriculture program of the German Development Agency (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit- hereafter GIZ) Market oriented Agriculture Program - MOAP in September 2015. Generously he took me along to the bi-monthly meeting of the Agriculture Sector Working Group (AgSWG) just a day after our first meeting, where all DP (Development Partner) heads of agricultural projects in Ghana met to share information. After having had a seat on their discussion table, as well as an introduction and endorsement from the GIZ/MOAP head to support my research, following up and setting up interviews became an incredible opportunity that could not be wasted. So despite limited time to prepare in-country, data acquisition started almost immediately after arriving and without exhausting ALL primary and secondary sources first, but after having read great amounts of history on aid and agricultural in Ghana. In general, all interviews were designed to be more like conversations, with me being a quiet and active listener, but in an amenable atmosphere that allowed the respondent to express him or herself freely first and foremost. Semi-structured interviews were meant to be guided with targeted yet flexible questions that were open ended, mostly broad, and short in format. As time progressed a set of questions for each group of stakeholders including development partners, civil servants, researchers and parliamentarians was developed. Most sets of questions were targeted towards one hour interviews and had a maximum of twenty questions, with the exception of the set for the parliamentarians which were always less than 10 questions and targeted towards 30 minutes. Some questions were the same for similar groups, such as development partners and civil servants, but with reverse targets (as in asking for the perception of the other group respectively), others overlapped. The group which I targeted with the most open and creative interview questions was the researchers, as they often identified me as one of them and in some regards behaved in supervisory or guiding roles. 216 Part II: Methodology

Initially I tape-recorded all interviews, as well as taking general notes on the side. Many heads of DP programs (usually international expats on short-term (under 5 years) contracts) were confident and straight forward, mentioning more critical issues even while the tape-recorder was on. However, others were less comfortable with the tape recording, with reactions ranging from pushing the recorder away, through asking me to turn it off after a few minutes of the interview, with the remark that if I wanted them to speak openly it must be off, to simply refusing to be taped from the start. Using a tape-recorder for social science research has the advantage that the interviewer can completely focus on the interviewee (to build rapport) and provides a full description of what was said. It inhibits, however, the revelation and discussion of confidential or sensitive material (also see Walsham 1995). While it lightens the burden during the interview it requires extensive time for transcription afterwards. In comparison note-taking is necessarily only partial and can make the building of rapport more difficult, as eye contact is limited while the focus is on taking down as much information as possible. It allows, however, for a more informal and confidential atmosphere, making a more open and honest exchange of information possible. As respondents voiced their concerns, despite my reassurance to each of them that all data is confidential and would be anonymized, I adjusted my approach toward extensive note taking and a full write-up of notes as soon as possible thereafter, instead of tape-recording, to build trust and enable respondents to share more controversial information within the interview. Flexibility, sensitivity and full commitment to the interviewees’ needs were key to gathering the most relevant data in social science research. As Flick points out: [T]he successful carrying out of such (semi-structured) interviews depends essentially on the interviewer’s situational competence (2006, p.81). Flick (2006) also highlights that it requires a great degree of sensitivity, as well as overview on the part of the interviewer to determine what and how questions were answered already and what the relevance of the question is to the study at hand. This goes hand in hand with utilizing the freedoms of semi-structured interviews to follow-up and probe into subjects of expertise and interest. As my understanding of the subject increased and the research moved from exploratory into descriptive sage the interview questions became more specific and flexible and sometimes rose ad hoc, based on the expertise the interviewee revealed. The double task of taking notes and preparing the next question mentally, sometime outside the guide of questions and within a time frame that didn’t leave awkward pauses and utilizes interviewee’s time most honorably, added a certain level of difficulty in the later interviews.

Timeline I arrived in Accra in September 2015 and intended to stay for one year of uninterrupted field research to maximize the learning through partial integration into every-day Ghanaian life. As the aim was to identify and interview the decision makers for agricultural policy first, shortly after adding the and Part II: Methodology 217 budget pillar also mostly decided in the capital, a home base in Accra was established, as most foreign as well as Ghanaian elites (including development partners, politicians and higher ranking civil servant) reside in there. As time progressed and it became clear that beyond policy and budget the implementation pillar needed to be understood to accurately analyze the agricultural sector and the role of aid within it, a visit to the regions, particularly the north (where most DPs were active), as well as some districts, became necessary. The second pillar – budget – became of interest within the first weeks of arrival/interviews, ,made it necessary to partially extend my research to district level as well, to explore the idea espoused by some respondents during the exploratory stages that funds dedicated to the agriculture sector were ‘stuck’ in the capital and didn’t trickle down to district level. The separation and operation in silos of, for example the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), the Ministry of Finance (MoF), Local Government Service (LGS) etc., made it necessary to spread out the research over multiple ministries, while the MoFA was and continue to be the key ministry of the investigation of aid and agriculture in Ghana. The Northern part of Ghana is of particular interest as the majority of Development Partners are implementing their agriculture sector projects in one of the three northern regions (Northern, Upper East or Upper West). This is also due to Ghana’s geography, as the Northern Region (NR) in particular is a savanna region; less populated, less forested and having large areas of flat land that offers potential for the development of commercial agriculture, often aimed at in aid projects, including the application of certain technologies i.e. tractors. Nevertheless, there are traditional plantations, particularly for cocoa, in southern parts of Ghana, which were not considered for this study, as it focused on the crop and livestock sector under the hospice of the MoFA only. After a few weeks of exploratory research that seamlessly transitions into descriptive research the first nine months were spent in Accra, only interspersed with a few day-long field visits to farms and irrigation projects in Central, Western and Volta region. In mid-May 2016 I left to Tamale with tremendous support of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (particular the Extension Directors that made multiple phone calls to introduce me to their colleagues in the north), as well as development partners (including USAID, GIZ, WB and AdF in particular).

Table 5: First nine months of field research in Accra (Source: own compilation).

Accra

Sept O N D J F M A May

2015 2016

With the support of the Regional Agricultural Development Unit (RADU) and its Director (Mr. Boakye Acheampong) I was able to visit agricultural departments in four Districts of the Northern 218 Part II: Methodology

Region (Savalugu, Chereponi, Yendi, and Tamale Metro) and set up meetings with a plethora of agricultural stakeholders, as well as observe numerous field activities, as May constitutes the beginning of the rainy and hence agricultural season in the North. In July and August I was back in Accra mainly to interview parliamentarians (specifically members of the Select Committee on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs) who would be unavailable after the parliament summer recess, as it was an election year that would require them to start their campaign activities in September.

Table 6: Eight months of field research split between Accra and the Northern Region (Source: own compilation).

NR Accra NR Accra NR

May J J A S O N Dec

2016

At this point of the year (July 2016) the elections were still scheduled to be on the 7th of November and since that was just three months after my original planned departure date, the field research was extended to observe the election campaigns, as well as use the time for additional visits to the Northern Region that would allow the capture of voices from some rural farming communities. While I had shied away from ‘bothering’ the farmers who have been pestered with researchers over the years without getting very much in return (often not even the outcomes of the research), in addition to the substantial and crucial hurdle of language skill (the vast majority of farmers in Northern Ghana do not speak English and researchers therefore must rely on translators) I adjusted plans once I had the good fortune to meet a fellow PhD student from Canada (Siera Vercillo) that had lived and worked in Savalugu District (an hour north of Tamale) and was able to recommend an extension agent that was experienced and trustworthy with agricultural research in the area. In addition I had guidance from experienced local researchers, such as Prof. Saa Dittoh (Department for Climate Change and Food Security, UDS) on how to conduct focus group discussions in the Northern Region to simply catch a glimpse of famers’ perceptions on policies and politics. Out of this, four focus group discussions (12 older men, 22 younger men, 18 older women and 33 younger women) in the Chahiyili Village, near Tonpong (about an hour motorcycle ride north-east of Tamale) were undertaken at the end of August and in early September. Also additional interviewees, which I was not able to meet with during my first visit in the Northern Region, were met, as well as interviews with MoFA and MoF staff of the capital of the Upper West Region of Wa were conducted. I also passed through the Upper East, but was unable to meet with stakeholders at the time, yet had phone interviews with a handful of stakeholders from this region as well. The extension of my stay allowed me to observe the election campaigns of the two dominant parties (NPP and NDC), as well as attend election rallies in the regional capital and then again back in Accra where I also managed to shake hands with who turned out to be the new President Part II: Methodology 219

– Nana Akufo-Addo. While I was unable to interview him, I did manage to capture the perceptions and expectation of three parliamentarians that are now in leading positions within government including the Minister (Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto), as well as the two Deputy Ministers (William Agyapong Quaitoo and Dr Sagre Bambangi) of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. As time progressed the election date was pushed back to December 7th, 2016, which made me extend my stay yet again until late December, which simultaneously allowed me to participate and observe the late part of the agricultural season – the harvesting of rice, soy and maize – through a commercial farmer and seed producer, Miles Apobona Adongo, in the Northern Region. In general, I was able to attend a total of 14 events, workshops and other gatherings of agricultural stakeholders during the 16-months stay in Ghana that helped me understand the roles, responsibilities and structure of the various stakeholder groups active in the sector through participatory observations (see Table 7).

Table 7: Workshop and Events (Source: own compilation).

Workshops & Events

Sep 15 Mr. Seth Terkper - Minster of Finance at UoG - Legon

Sep 15 AgSWG - Agricultural Sector Working Group Meeting

Oct 15 FAO 2-day Policy workshop on gender, policy and agriculture

Nov 15 Reading of the Budget in Parliament by Minster of Finance

Nov 15 Women's Peasant Day Celebration in Winneba

Dec 15 Food Policy Discussion by SEND and the PFA

Feb 16 AGRA workshop on HUB program

Apr 16 Lecture on Animal Agriculture and Public Health at UoG - Legon

Apr 16 FARA presentation by Dr. Wole at FARA

Jul 16 SADA (Savana Accelerated Development Authority) Workshop

Jul 16 Reading and Passing of ECOWAS rules in Parliament

Jul 16 Farmers -Day Kick off at MoFA

Nov 16 GCAP - World Bank and USAID celebration event in NR

Dec16 World Food Day Celebration at Parliament

I also had dozens of informal meetings with development partners, civil servants and researchers over lunches and dinners, at times being invited to events outside as well as inside of their homes, particularly while living in Accra and at times sharing a similar circle of friends as the Expat community tends to flock together. 220 Part II: Methodology

7.2. The Interviews During the 16 months a total of 260 official interviews were conducted with 234 different stakeholders ranging from 14 different development partner organizations (including USAID, GIZ, WB, AdF, AGRA, DFID, EU, Global Affairs/CIDA, IFAD, AfDB, JICA, WFP, SNV and KfW) civil servants of seven different government institutions (including MoFA, MoF, LGS, MoTi, EPA, GSS, and Parliament), a range of researchers (including from IFPRI, various departments at the UoG and UDS, as well as researchers with CSIR and FARA), politicians (mostly NPP and NDC), NGOs members, private sector participants (including Nestle, Wienco and various farmers of different sizes) and journalists. For a complete list of Interviewees, their position, their anonymized title, point of duty/area of responsibility, as well as additional notes (i.e. how often I was allowed to interview them, if the interview was recorded etc.) can be found in the appendix. A, while a list of abbreviations can be found in the beginning of this thesis. The difference between the 260 interviews and 234 interviewees is due to the fact that 26 people were interviewed more than once - eight people twice, two people three times, and one official four times – as the time in country allowed for the building of trust and returning to key informants multiple times with follow up questions. A snow-balling method was used, and beyond the initial contacts the last question of each and every interview was if they (the interviewee) think I should speak to anyone else. Besides the two-second pause this was the most powerful and easily used tool during in the interviews to improve the quality of the data. Thirty-three interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim - 227 interviews were conducted while taking notes, which were written up in the shortest possible time thereafter, mostly within a day or two, and on rare occasions in the week thereafter during high frequency of interviews i.e. during my first visit to the Northern Region. The great majority of interviews were conducted face to face (255), while three were conducted via phone and two via Skype. The great majority of respondents were interviewed alone, and the greatest care possible was taken to have the interview in a pleasant and confidential environment (i.e. in their office, or an empty office next door, in rare cases also over lunch or a drink after hours outside the office). Thirty-three interviews, however, were set up in something similar to group interviews – 18 of which were grouped in twos, while 15 were in threes. In the majority of cases it was the respondent (often holding a high rank in their organization) who added a specialist to our interview; sometimes co-workers were added or ad hoc joined the conversation if they came by and overheard the conversation. Five interviews were undertaken in a collaborative fashion with a fellow PhD student from Canada, conducting the interviews jointly (questions were traded off from one another or given after the other person finished their set of questions). This had the added benefit of receiving direct insights and feedback from a fellow researcher with a similar research interest on interview techniques and structure. Part II: Methodology 221

Out of the 234 interviewees, 96 were civil servants, 53 were working for Development Partners, 40 were researchers, 10 politicians, 15 NGO staff members, 18 were from the private sector and two were journalists, as depicted in the chart below.

Total Interviewees: 234

2 Development Partners 15 18 Civil Servants 40 Politicians 53 10 Researcher

NGO Members

Journalists 96 Private Sector

Figure 28: Total Interviews (Source: own compilation).

Civil Servants Civil servants made up the largest portion of the interviewees with a total of 96 respondents. The majority (66) of them were from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), followed by 15 from the Ministry of Finance (MoF), five from Local Government Service (LGS), four from the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI), two from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), one from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), and one Parliamentarian clerk.

Civil Servants: 96 Ministry of Food and Agriculture

Local Government Service 66 Ministry of Finance 1 1 2 Ministry of Trade and Industry 4 Environmental Protection Agency

15 Ghana Statistical Service

5 Parliament

Figure 29: Civil Servants (Source: own compilation). 222 Part II: Methodology

The extreme hospitality of Ghanaians and the easy-going nature of civil servants in particular was the most important contribution to the successful and extensive data acquisition process. In fact, many of the civil servants met with me many more times than the interviews reflect. Initial meetings during the exploratory phase were simply to introduce myself and to start building rapport and trust that was crucial for the gathering of qualitative data. The busy schedule of many of the higher ranking member of the ministries (i.e. Directors within the MoFA) made it necessary for me to be flexible, patient (waiting to up to 20 hours) and persistent, returning to their offices up to half a dozen times before an interview was possible. In the end, when the meeting was possible, they were always friendly and patient in answering the questions ‘of yet another researcher’ and certain directors met me up to four times for official interviews spread over the 16 months of field research. The frequent visits and long waiting hours at the ministries made it possible to familiarize myself with civil servants’ every-day struggles (such as frequent and ad hoc meetings, power shortages or internet cuts, just to name a few). It also gave me the opportunity to befriend the lower ranking team members who shared their experiences in countless informal conversations, as well as official interviews at later stages (as will be discussed later, the hierarchies within most ministries are steep and hence the Directors had to sanction meeting with team members first). Thirty-seven respondents were senior-level civil servants (i.e. Directors) often having served more than two decades for the government of Ghana. Forty-one respondents were mid-level civil servants – technocrats that served as right hand women or men under the directors – but also higher ranking civil servants at the Regional or even District Level (i.e. District Director of Agricultural Departments), while Junior civil servants counted 18 – this label (Junior) was often used for younger civil servants as promotions are most often granted based on the years in service (plus educational requirements) and hence includes people below 40 years of age, or less than 10 years of service. In terms of location 50 respondents were located in the capital of Accra – responsible for the national level – while 30 were located at the regional level (most of them from the Northern Region) and 16 respondents at district level (also mostly from the Northern Region). Last, but not least, it is worth mentioning that four respondents were retired civil servants, and hence even more at ease to speak about hurdles and issues within the service. The ministry I spent the most time in was (as may be expected) the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, followed by the Ministry of Finance, which are, geographically speaking, quite close to one another in Accra, yet, ideationally speaking, quite distant from one another, as will be further discussed in Part III- Results and Discussion - of this study.

Development Partners Development Partners made up the second biggest group of respondents. As mentioned above, the head of the GIZ (MOAP) program played a pivotal role in introducing and connecting me to other leading officers of agricultural programs (in some cases literally picking up the phone to set up an Part II: Methodology 223 appointment with hard to reach colleagues). In total 53 officers of DP programs sat with me, 21 working for programs sponsored or supported by the US government – the largest part being with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) (19), one from the Alliance for a Green Revolution (AGRA), and one from the World Food Programme (WFP). This large representation of the USA makes sense, as USAID is the largest Donor in terms of number of projects in Ghana as well as financial contribution via their Feed the Future (FTF) program, as discussed previously. Germany, particularly the GIZ, is ‘over-represented’ with a total of 10 respondents - due to the good relationship I had with the various officers of the programs (due to language and culture compatibility), while they are followed by five official interviews with World Bank officers. USAID, GIZ, and the Bank officers should also be lauded for being particularly supportive of this study, meeting many more times than reflected in this list, often also informally for lunch or dinner and often with generous support connecting me to colleagues and acquaintances, despite (and maybe also because) their doubts on the alignments of our values.

Development Partners - 53 USA (USAID, AGRA, WFP)

1 GER (GIZ, KfW) 2 2 CAN (CIDA/Global Affairs) 2 European Union 4 21 World Bank

5 MN (IFAD, AfDB) GB (DFID) 3 JPN (JICA) 3 10 HOL (SNV) FRA (AfD)

Figure 30: Development Partners (Source: own compilation).

Out of the 53 interviewees 34 were ‘international staff’ – often from the country that sponsored the program, but sometimes officer also came from other countries such as Denmark, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, Honduras or Kenya – working for programs of other nations, i.e. a French citizen working for USAID. 19 officers were considered ‘national staff’, quite frequently employed as ‘local experts’ that had worked for i.e. the Ministry of Food and Agriculture previously, or seconded to one of the DP programs for a certain amount of time. In terms of information gathered on development projects in general, the number of (53) respondents is slightly misleading, as many of the Civil Servants work on or for DP projects, even when they are official MoFA civil servants. This can happen in a variety of ways. Some DPs, e.g. USAID, do not fund any MoFA programs or projects at the national level, rather using private sector implementing agencies that then often work with specific MoFA extension staff at district level only. 224 Part II: Methodology

Other DPs seconded people from the MoFA for a particular timeframe into project units outside the MoFA office, e.g. World the Bank for the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Program (WAAPP), yet not for the Banks’ Ghana Commercial Agricultural Program (GCAP). Yet other DPs support MoFA at the national level and have their officers sit inside the MoFA office (e.g. FAD, the African Development Bank, AdF). AdFs’, the French Development Agencies’ Rice Sector Support Project (RSSP), for example is run from within MoFA’s offices. While yet other DPs do so just at district level (e.g. Global Affairs Canada). Some simply use ex-MoFA members to be their employees thereafter (e.g. GIZ, KfW, USADI and others). This small paragraph depicts the complex and sometimes confusing nature of development programs within the agricultural sector in Ghana.

Researchers In total 40 researchers were interviewed, 33 from Ghana, while 7 where international researchers staying in or visiting Ghana. The great majority of them were academic researchers (19) from the University of Ghana (UoG), Accra, or the University for Development Studies (UDS), Tamale. Non- academic researchers included staff of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) including members of the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (SARI), Nyankpala, as well as the Soil Research Center (SRC) in Kumasi; IWMI (International Water Management Institute); IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute), and FARA (Forum for Agricultural Research) Accra.204

Politicians In total I was able to speak with 10 members of parliament (MPs), who were mostly part of the Select Committee on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs, besides the Deputy Minister of Crops (NDC) and the Minority Leader (NPP), and evenly divided between the two parties dominating Ghana: NPP and NDC. Flexibility and patience were particularly necessary for meeting with these gentlemen (I was unable to speak to the only woman on the committee).205

NGO Members There is a plethora of Non-Governmental Organizations active in the agricultural sector of Ghana; particularly in the North. Indeed, many of the Development Partners reach out to NGOs to use their

204 As with the respondents above, the researchers were very lavish with their time and support, connecting me with several of their colleagues, meeting more than once and more than once with multiple hours of interview time. They had rich experience to draw from decades of research and were generous with sharing it, often pointing me to additional reading material that was hard to find/access outside the borders of Ghana. Yet again they gave crucial support to the data collection phase, with particular support from the academics at the University of Ghana (Legon) that provided me technical as well as emotional support when research ‘got tough’ – as it inevitably does, as well as the IWMI that hosted me in Accra for the entire time of my stay and provided me office space when needed. 205 The biggest contribution was made once more by a civil servant, as it would have been close to impossible to meet with these members of parliament without the dedicated and kind support by the clerk Kofi Menkah to the select committee who helped me to overcome the hurdles of setting up interviews with MPs (i.e. letters needed, travel schedule considered etc.).

Part II: Methodology 225 existing knowledge and connections. Most of the NGOs therefore had long running experience of working with the DPs as well as farmers. Their perspective was crucial to understanding issues of implementation and realities on the ground. Working with senior NGO members, who had decades of experience in working with a variety of communities in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions, was also the ideal way to overcome the language hurdle and learn more about farmer’s attitudes and actions. A few organizations were also picked because of their background in sustainable agriculture, i.e. the Association of Church-Based Development NGOS (ACDEP), the Social Enterprise Development Foundation (SEND) Ghana, and the Economical Association for Sustainable Agricultural and Rural Development (ECASARD). Incorporated into the category of NGOs were also interviews with the Deputy General Director of the General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) and a founding member of the Peasant Famers Association (PFA). I also interviewed two journalists as the opportunity arose. As mentioned in the Table on Workshop and Events I also attended meetings of various NGOs, who were all very supportive and welcoming towards researchers joining their activities.

Private Sector The definition of the private sector varies, but in general stands in opposition to the government sector and is characterized by the reign of private interest and ambitions. Members of the sector vary greatly in size, from Multi-National Corporations that have funds available that are at times larger than budgets of many governments of the world, to the smallest entrepreneur, including farmers who sell their produce with the goal of making enough money to support the survival of their family. While the private sector is incessantly talked about by Development Partners and the Government of Ghana alike, as natural during the age of Neoliberalism, it was surprisingly hard to find and capture their direct voices for this study. The 18 members of the private sector interviewed varied from large companies, such as Nestle and Wienco, through large scale farmers with many hundreds of hectares (which is considered in the upper section of farm size in Ghana), e.g. GCAP farmers supported by the World Bank, down to farmers with under 2 hectares, e.g. FBO members of a pineapple NGO in the central region. As mentioned in the timeline section of this chapter, it was decided to undertake a number of focus group discussions to further capture the voices of the famers/the private sector.

Farmers Focus Group Discussions As mentioned above, I was able to organize four focus group discussions (two with women, two with men) in a community an hour north-east of Tamale. The AEA and I went at different days in August and September –the middle of the agricultural season. The visit had to be timed to fit with the need of women who spend long hours in the field harvesting groundnuts. Respecting the harvesting schedule, we started our focus group with the older men (12) who were most easily available, after the extension 226 Part II: Methodology agent talked to the Chief of the community to sanction the activities. We simply collected chairs around and sat underneath the tree at the entrance of the village. I would ask a short question and the extension agent would translate the question and then the answers, which I noted down in my notebook. To avoid the domination of certain personalities I asked questions that demanded an answer from everybody at certain points, as well as paying attention to and calling on individuals who seemed interested but reserved. The biggest step engendering more equal participation was, however, splitting the participants into four groups to overcome issues related to age and gender. Ghanaian culture pays a lot of respect to age, and hence young people would be inhibited to speak freely in the presence of older community members. In addition, Northern Ghana has a tradition of male leaders, while women are used to being relegated to lower ranks within the family and society. In the following days we then returned (by motorcycle) to repeat the process of questioning with 22 younger men, 18 older women and 33 younger women. The surprising results will be further described in Part III for this thesis.

A word on gender: Gender aspects became apparent in two ways. Firstly, the great majority of decision makers, and, hence, interviewees were men. In the Agricultural Sector Working Group, which constituted 26 heads of development projects, only has one woman. Similarly, all directors of the MoFA, but one, were men (plus a temporary head of the WIAD- Women in Agriculture Development - department). The Select Committee of Food, Agriculture and Cocoa in Parliament in 2016 had one female member; out of a group of 22 (in general the Parliament of Ghana is dominated by men as only 24 out of 275 Member of Parliament (MPs) are women in 2017).206 Secondly, while this is a sad state of affairs – echoed across the globe without real exceptions - it came as a benefit in certain regards. As many interviewees were older men they actually seemed less threatened, and at times even flattered, to be interviewed by a younger woman. Appropriate questions and building of rapport also helped.

7.2.1. The questions: As mentioned, separate sets of questions were used for different stakeholder groups. Questions for Development Partners and MoFA Civil Servants were similar, just with opposite phrasing of perceptions of each other. Similarly, questions for other ministries such as MoTI, MoF, EPA or GSS as well as the NGO sector used the core structure with only slight modifications. The challenges with parliamentarians were the official time restrictions (with a maximum of 30 minutes), even though a few of the honorable members did grant me more time after all. Researchers had rather different questions, depending on their area of expertise, similar to the private sector. However, in all cases the aforementioned strength and weaknesses of qualitative research were considered and carefully implemented. This included that as time progressed slight modifications were undertaken to adjust to

206 See a complete list of female parliamentarians here: http://ultimatefmonline.com/2016/12/15/full-list-female- mps-ghanas-parliament-2017/ [accessed: 06.08.2017] Part II: Methodology 227 feedback or new learning. The overall atmosphere and feedback towards my interviews was positive, with interviewees granting me additional time or commenting on questions being interesting and important. Great care was taken to allow interviewees to respond freely. After respondents were informed about the confidentiality and anonymity of the interview, the first question was most often about themselves: how they came to their position or what their role at the relevant institutions was. Then the positive aspects about the projects were asked, before room for improvement issues was encroached on. Usually next the collaboration aspects were asked about, before perceptions and expectations on agriculture was asked about. It was kept track of and is curious to note that the great majority of interviewees did not mentioned anything about sustainability concerns in the first part of the interview. Hence, I usually asked them about it during the later part, so as to make it seem inconspicuous. At the very end of the interviews the last two questions would usually be “is there anything else you want to share?” and “is there anybody else that I should be talking to that you can recommend?” To give an overview of some of the key prompts and questions asked, here is a list of additional questions out of the verbatim transcripts of recorded interviews:

• So maybe we could start with the responsibilities and the role that you hold here within the World Bank?

• Can I ask why you decided to join the World Bank?

• And for how long have you been in Ghana? / For how long have you worked on this project?

• Could you tell me about the project and specifically what outcomes do you hope to achieve with it? / So when the project ends what do you hope the outcome of the project to be?

• What would you say are the biggest obstacles to reach your targets?

• Would you do anything differently if you could start the project over again?

• The next part is about the collaboration with the development partners. So how do you perceive the collaboration here in Ghana between the Development Partners?

• Has there been certain aspects that you feel have been particularly successful, in the collaboration with other development partners?

• Do you see any areas where there is room for improvement for the joint work?

• So who do you work with in the government of Ghana, if I may ask? / On the government of Ghana, if you could just kind of describe the experience you had with your joint work with the government of Ghana.

• OK, and what do you feel, I don't know if you can judge, but the commitment of the government of Ghana to the program? 228 Part II: Methodology

• What kind of Agricultural development do you envision for Ghana? / What kind of agriculture would you think is most beneficial for Ghana?

• How important are commercial farms vs. small holder farms in your opinion, in the successful development of the agricultural sector?

• What about sustainable methods? / Has there been any environmental concerns as part of the project design?

• Do you feel like you have quality data to make your decisions?

• We have talked about so many different points, is there anything else that we haven't mentioned that you feel is important? For the Civil Servants the questions were adjusted and reversed, such as

• Could you tell me how you came to work for the MOFA please?

• What has your experience been like in regards to collaboration with other development partners? / Is there anyone of the Development partners that has been particularly active in Ghana?”

• Have there been certain examples where the collaboration has been going particularly well?

• Great. Ok. And had there been certain challenges with development partners that you can describe?

• Are there any other things that you feel that are important that I should look into? By far the most important question was the one noted by Rathbun (2008), and asked after I had turned off the tape-recorder: Who else do you think I should talk to?

As can be seen from the above examples of DP and Civil Servant questions, most interviews started with questions around agency, about their arrival at a certain role and their responsibility (often trying to demonstrate an interest in the personal history of the respondents at first) before moving on to general questions about structure, the projects and programs, before trying to tackle more controversial questions on collaboration with other stakeholders and ideational factors such as expectations and perceptions on different approaches to agricultural development (commercial vs. small-scale), as well as sustainability. The aspect of sustainability had often to be clarified as most interviewees interpreted it to mean the financial sustainability of projects once DP funding was no longer available. A Mid-Level Officer at a DP Program (USA) conceded that ‘is a bit confusing because the word [sustainability] shows up in the material’, but frankly suggested: “you might want to re-think the title” [of the thesis because] “there is no sustainable agricultural here” (No.56). Part II: Methodology 229

Similarly parliamentarians were asked about their perception of the state of agriculture including: fulfilling its potential, the biggest obstacles and the ideal type of agriculture to propel Ghana’s development forward; their perception of collaboration with DPs; which stakeholders have the ability to shape the sector, their perception of the importance of agriculture for the Government of Ghana (past and present) and if they had any environmental concerns related to ensuring that future generation of Ghanaians can feed off the land. Other stakeholder questionnaires were built on what can be seen above and were adjusted to the person’s specialty as the interview progressed. Understanding and following the interviewee along in her or his story to come up with the necessary follow-up questions was a mandatory first step. Picking up more subtle cues and “reading between the lines” was a crucial second step for uncovering the issues around agricultural in Ghana and the role of aid within it. Clearly there are large disparities of attitudes between respondents in terms of eagerness to share their insights, ranging from those who were ‘just waiting to tell their story’ to others who were simply fulfilling their duty. All interviews were welcoming, and only one (GIZ/SEWHO) officer denied my request to be officially interviewed for this study. Important preparatory steps for all interviews included becoming familiar with the context, including history of the institution, structure and common acronyms as well as names of people (e.g. heads of other programs, directors and ministers), as well as policies and laws that had influence over the sector. This greatly increased the fluidity of the interviews, and created more of a conversational atmosphere, rather than making it seem as of the respondent was simply being questioned. I believe that my patience, persistence and professionalism (including the use of high quality business cards) in the arrangement of the meetings, involving long waiting hours or a multitude of e-mails and phone calls, played a role in the equal dedication of my respondents once we met. Personality match, mood of the day, charismatic tendencies and body language must have certainly also influenced the respondents’ answers, even if it will be difficult to say to what degree. Multiple visits/interviews tried to remedy this volatility and increase familiarity with interviewees. Particularly for civil servants and other Ghanaian respondents, it also helped to have a rudimentary knowledge of Twi, as it is the unofficial language of the bureaucrats in Accra. Twi is the language of the Ashanti who originate from the central belt of Ghana, around their traditional capital of Kumasi. The Ashanti make up a large proportion of the civil service, and there is a clear language hegemony within the ministries and parliament (e.g. the librarian in parliament proceeded to talk to me in Twi for the entire three hours of my initial Hansard search).207 Knowing basic greetings simply sets a good tone, as it showed proper respect to local culture and put smiles on many Ghanaian faces.

207 Hansard is the official, edited verbatim report of the proceedings and parliamentary debates, made available for a small fee to the interested public. The full collection, however, is kept in the basement of the Parliament and only accessible with special support of an informed insider, as most research will not know the series, volume and numbers of the report. 230 Part II: Methodology

It was helpful, as described by Flick (2006), to make additional notes on the behavior of the interviewee, the rapport, the setting or external influences on the interview right afterwards or with the typing up of notes as well.

Other documents reviewed In many cases my interviewees referred me to additional material – policies, papers, reports, government publication or other written documentation – related to the subject at hand. Some policies were downloaded and reviewed before my arrival in Ghana, but the majorities of documents were read while in Ghana and, hence, improved my knowledge as interviews progressed.

Policies: Ghana has published a plethora of policies, many of which are available online, others were provided to me via MoFA upon request. These included the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda GSGDA (2010-2013) I & II (2014-2017); Medium Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan METASIP I (2011-2015) & II (2014-2017); Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy FASDEP I (2002) & II (2007); National Irrigation Policy (2011); ECOWAS Agricultural Policy (ECOWAP)/Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Compact (2009); Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (2003); Ghana Technology Needs Assessment Report (2012); Youth in Agriculture Programme (2011); Agricultural Extension Policy (Abridged Version), October (2003) and National Seed Policy (2013), as well as the National Climate-Smart Agriculture and Food Security Action Plan (2016-2020).

State of the Nations Addresses – the president of Ghana addresses the Parliament annually to report on the State of the Nation including economic, social and financial developments, in accordance with Article 67 of the constitution. Many of these addresses are available online, and for this study the years 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 were reviewed with regards to their agricultural content. These years span three presidencies and cover the regimes of the two main parties (NPP and NDC). Hence they widened and balance the perspective and commitment of Governments of Ghana towards the agricultural sector.

Budget Statements – the Minister of Finance (with the authority of the president) is responsible for presenting the Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the Government of Ghana for each year to the Parliament. In years where there is no election scheduled, this usually takes place in November. In 2016 I was able to attend the presentation of the honorable Minister of Finance, Seth Terkper, in person, however, most budget statements are available online. For this thesis, 16 budget statements from the years 2004 to 2017 were reviewed with regard to their content on agriculture and general economic development. Part II: Methodology 231

Parliamentarian Hansards – the verbatim transcripts of discussions in Parliament that are accessible via the Parliamentarian library provided enormous additional insides and historical perspectives on agricultural debates and budgets. The full collection, however, is kept in a basement and only accessible with special support, since an unknowing researcher will not know the series, volume, and number of a report Through the tremendous help of the librarians, the clerk to the select committee on food, agriculture and cocoa affairs, the editor of debates (director) and his assistant in the department of official reports of the parliament of Ghana, I was able to purchase the Hansards of 25 parliamentary debates pertaining to agriculture which took place between 2006 and 2016 (covering issues such as annual estimates, policy debates, and urgent matters brought to the attention to parliament etc.), as well as 14 reports of the select committee on food, agriculture and cocoa affairs between the years of 1999 and 2015, which revealed remarkable detail on the state of affairs, perceptions and expectations on agriculture in Ghana and the role of aid within it.

Additional Documents In regards to the Budget estimates that are discussed on the floor of Parliament, but are notoriously hard to confirm in terms of actual spending, as will be discussed in Part III, I was assisted by a supporter within the MoFA. The Finance Directorate of the MoFA does indeed publish the actual spendings internally, but they are only released upon request and approval of it. As this approval process proved difficult for me, I was allowed to sit in the office of a senior civil servant and copy down some numbers for actual spending from the publications that were made available to this person. In this regard I should also mention the personal copy of the Parliamentary handbook that was made available to me to better understand the structure of the civil service. In addition I was able to purchase copies of the Employee Handbook of the Ghana Civil Service (2013), the Guidelines on Appointments, Upgrading, Conversions and Promotions (AUCP) 2015, the Scheme of Service of the Secretarial Class (2012) and the Scheme of Service for the Administrative Class (2012). Most remarkable, however, might have been the release of Appendix B of the Single Spine Salary Structure for Civil and Local Government Services (effective: January 1, 2010) for many of the MoFA positions (showing grade only); also Appendix A (effective January 1, 2013) and Appendix A (effective January 1, 2015) which showed the Single Spine Salary Structure of the Civil Service with Grades and Steps/wages (in Ghana Cedi). This allowed insight to the salary structure that revealed the large pay differences between Ghanaian public servants of different grades. Furthermore, Senior Researchers at the University of Ghana have shown me their online banking records revealing their salaries, while different GIZ employees have told me and shown me their monthly salaries. While this information is secret, it must be said that the stark differences are common knowledge, and need to be included into the debate around incentives and issues of aid and agriculture in Ghana. 232 Part II: Methodology

Last, but not least, it must be mentioned that I brought a 23 kg suitcase full of books with me to Ghana for additional reading and as a time filler for the expected wait time for interviews.

7.3. Data Analysis As mentioned above, all recorded interviews (33) were transcribed verbatim208, while for all other interviews (227) notes were written up in Microsoft Word documents in the days following the interviews. The process of transcribing a total of 260 interviews took many weeks of full time work and was spread over many months. Every transcript was re-read multiple times. The first times were just for error checking of content and spelling. Once all 260 interviews were transferred into a Word document format a second round of reading began to develop and apply codes pertaining to the most significant and reoccurring themes. The challenge, and the art, is of course to filter out and distinguish the significant from the trivial information (Smith 2011).

The costs & benefits of having to wait and letting the data settle The extension of my field research in Ghana due to the election (and then again due to the postponement of the election) gave me the opportunity to interview additional respondents. In the later interviews I was able to draw on comments made by previous respondents to elicit the opinions of industry insiders as to how far they were generalizable or could be disregarded as a simple, single utterance unrelated to the overall theme. Yet again credit must be given to the patient experts in the field who took the time to qualify, support or reject the suggestion of the relevance of certain themes. In addition to the official interviews, attention must be drawn to the countless informal conversations with Ghanaians encountered in every-day situations (e.g. sitting next to me when waiting for hundreds of Tro-Tro rides across Accra or while waiting at the ministries) 209 , innumerous debates with passionate and patient roommates, as well as people in the field – particularly workers of the commercial seed farm I was allowed to shadow over end of my stay in Ghana. Box 6 described the participatory observations I was allowed to take in while spending around six month in Northern Ghana.

Box 6: Participatory Observation in Northern Ghana

During my first visit to Tamale I established contact with a local mid-level farmer and producer of soy, maize and rice seed through the introductions of fellow researchers. After having visited his fields a few hours’ drive from Tamale a few times in the beginning of the season when plowing, application of fertilizer and weedicide was just commencing, I returned during my second visit to observe progress. I also was allowed to participate in actions such as fertilizer application on the soy fields, as

208 11 of the interviews were transcribed by the author while the other 22 were transcribed by students of the University of Ghana, Legon. No additional software was used outside audio player (i.e. VLC player in my case) 209 Tro-Tro refers to the minibuses that are privately owned and operated but provide the public transportation system across Ghana in general and Accra in particular. Part II: Methodology 233 well as observing the application of pesticides against a worm attacking the maize fields of the Northern Region. During the third visit in November and December of 2016, a couple of the foremen, as well as other male workers of the seed farmer, started to have more candid conversations about agriculture and politics with me, as we spent time on the fields together (many of the female farmhands were unable to speak English). It was also the weeks leading up to the presidential and parliamentarian election in December of 2016. Over a period of six weeks I visited the different fields close to every other day and was able to participate in some activities on occasion (such as soy bean harvesting and heaping) while mostly being an observer due to my limited capacity during most activities. Having the opportunity to witness the challenges of the farmers first hand (e.g. lack of and breaking down of equipment, being a captive to weather, lack of and misuse of material, misconduct of farmhands, treacherousness of manual activities, lack of effectiveness, transport and storage challenges etc.) allowed me to connect theory to praxis and reflect on the answers and comments of my respondents of the previously collected interviews. Reflecting and relativizing the data over the extended period while undertaking more practical activity in the agricultural sector primed me for the analysis upon my return to Germany at the end of 2016.

Organizing Data: Creation and counting of Codes Returning to my data after half a year (in May 2017), which had been filled with participator observations in Ghana in November and December of 2016, and additional reading and time to reflect and starting to write in Germany in 2017, assisted me in filtering out the significant from the trivial. With respect to my interview partners I had been able to capture a very wide array of voices ranging from a Deputy Minister, Members of Parliament, Directors, Team Leaders, Deans, Professors, Chairs, Chief Executives and Heads of agricultural projects on the national level through Regional Directors and Project Officers down to District Extension Agents. The great majority of respondents had decades of experience. In this regard my interviews could be considered ‘expert interviews’, each of which represented an entire group of stakeholders or experts (Flick 2006). Re-reading each transcript I started to organize data in an Excel document with four sheets. The first sheet was simply to keep track of the respondents’ names, positions, institutions, and anonymized titles, and also contained a ‘notes’ section, including a color code for recoding vs. note-taking, frequency of meeting with official, interview medium – e.g. phone or Skype if applicable, as well as if the person was alone or interview together with others. Table 8: Headlines for interviewee list (Source: Own compilation).

No Name Position and Institution Anonymized Title Location Notes 234 Part II: Methodology

On the second sheet color codes for each stakeholder group were developed as follows:

Table 9: Overview of stakeholder categories and colors (Source: Own compilation).

Research - Ghanaian

Research - Outsider

Development Partner - International Staff

Development Partner - National Staff

Civil Servants- National

Civil Servants - Regional/Metropolitan

Civil Servants - District

NGOs

NGO with private Sector Link

Private Sector

Politicians

The third sheet was to keep track of the different codes that were assigned to the different parts of the interviews that were entered in the fourth sheet ‘story collection’. Before returning to the assignment and analysis of codes here is a brief overview of the- most important story collection sheet:

Table 10: Example of excel table used for analysis (Source: Own compilation).

Position Anonymized No. Name and Issue 1 Issue 2 Issue 3 Issue 4 Title Institution

Retired Land & Senior Agricultural Fertilizer xx xx Head of Lease Policy Researcher Education Subsidy CSIR Issues

xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx

Transition - Senior Head of subsistence Manager at GIZ - how Challenges xx xx MoAP/ agriculture Policy DP Program it works - DPs GIZ to (GER) commercial

xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx

Part II: Methodology 235

The issue columns continued to number 20 and in a handful of cases extended to 22 (for respondents who were interviewed multiple times and hence had covered a large array of topics. In the cell underneath the code e.g. Land & Lease Issues, the words of the respondents were pasted. The blue color in column A marked with xx, indicated that the interview was recorded on tape. As the interviews were re-read the different codes were initially decided on, e.g. Land & Lease Issues; Agricultural Education; Policy; Fertilizer Subsidy; Transition – subsistence agriculture to commercial; GIZ – how it works; Challenges – DPs etc. In total, 166 codes were assigned to the different important sections of the interview. Each time a new code was assigned it was noted on Sheet III of the Excel document, while it also functioned as a source for existing codes. This high number was due in part to sub-codes of the “how it works” code – as many different respondents from a variety of institutes and directorates were interviewed and explained their institutions, and hence a new code was initiated each time, e.g. NDPC – how it works; Nestle – how it works; SADA – how it works; WFP – how it works etc.; similarly a separate code was initiated for particularly interesting roles, e.g. Role – Clerk of the Committee (in parliament); Role- District Assembly – Planning Officer; Role – the Parachutist in ATT (USAID) etc. To make analysis easier a macro was written to count all codes used in the entirety of the ‘story collection’ sheet. This revealed that 65 codes were only utilized by one respondent each, and another 21 codes were used by only two respondents each, bringing codes mentioned by more than 2 respondents down to 80. Since 260 interviews were considered for the analysis it was decided that a code should be mentioned by at least 10% of respondents, meaning 26 respondents. This calculation is not 100% accurate because some respondents had a code applied twice, if they were an expert on a certain subject e.g. Policy and their notes took over multiple cells in the excel sheet. To illustrate please see the table below: Table 11: Example of coding in excel (Source: Own compilation).

Position Anonymized No. Name and Issue 1 Issue 2 Issue 3 Issue 4 Title Institution

Director Senior Civil DP- Ghana xx xx of PP&B Servant at Policy Policy Government Politics for MoFA MoFA Relations

Ten additional codes were deemed important enough through the experience of the interviewer, as to include in further analysis bringing the number of codes to 36. The following list starts with the most often to the least often utilized code, the frequency of usage indicated in parenthesis: Donor Coordination (192), Sustainability (115), Policy (102), Ghana Politics (102), Perception on agriculture and farmers (99); Future Agriculture (92); MoFA Budget (85); Extension (77); Decentralization (75); Data & Research (70); Hierarchy & MoFA Structure (68); International Trade (66); Seed (49); Fertilizer Subsidy (49); Challenges – Civil Servants (48); Transition - subsistence agriculture to 236 Part II: Methodology commercial (47); Soil (47); Importance of Agriculture in Ghana’s Development (41); Technology (39); USAID – how it works (35); Minister of Agriculture (33); Agricultural Education (33); General Budget Process (28); fires in the North (28); Agro-chemicals (28); DP-Government Relations (27); Challenges –DPs (25); Banking & Loans (25); Corruption & Aid (24); Land & Lease Issues (23); Inter-Ministerial Work –Silos (23); Outgrower Management (22); Irrigation & Rain (22); Quality of Food (19); GCAP – how it works (18); and Salary Difference & local work conditions of Civil Servants (15) Having the list of the 36 codes, the most prominent themes, such as Donor Coordination, Sustainability, Policy and Ghana Politics, were considered and separated into exclusive categories. While looking through the codes, four clusters emerged based on my own experience and judgment, of which three can be associated with the different stakeholders while the last cluster was summed up under a technical heading. The four groups with related color codes and one sub-group were as follows: 1. Ministry of Food and Agriculture (purple); with a subgroup of Ministry of Finance (light purple) 2. Development Partners (rose) 3. Government of Ghana (light blue) 4. Technical and Cultural Challenges (light turquoise) Furthermore, colors were used for each of the four groups. Table 12: Overview of four coding groups (Source: Own compilation).

Ministry of Food & Development Technical and Cultural Government of Ghana Agriculture Partners Challenges

In cases where a code was assigned to a particular group, yet had a relation to another group, the color was used to indicate this connection. For example Corruption & Aid was grouped under the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, yet is connected to the Development Partners. So, while the code is dedicated to the MoFA the color is rose to signal the connection with the DPs. In another step the 36 codes were assigned to the four groups (and one subgroup). In case a code was applicable to more than one group the color scheme was used to indicate the connection with another group. For example Policy is officially under the control of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture cluster (depicted below), but is also part of/influenced by the Government of Ghana (light blue) as well as realistically also by the Development Partners (light pink). So while Policy is listed under MoFA the color scheme includes a rose and a light blue to signal the connection. The following table visualizes this overlap and depicts the rest of the codes applicable to MoFA, with one more overlap to Development Partners with the code of Corruption &Aid. Similarly Decentralization is related to the GoG, and the MoFA Budget and General Budget Process related to the Ministry of Finance. Part II: Methodology 237

Table 13: Codes under the Group: Ministry of Food & Agriculture (Source: Own compilation).

Ministry of Food & Agriculture Hierachy & MoFA Structure Minister of Agric Salary Difference & local work conditions of Civil Servants Corruption & Aid Inter- Ministerial Work - Silos Agricultural Education Challenges - Civil Servants Extension MoFA Budget

Policy

Decentralization Future Agriculture Ministry of Finance General Budget Process

The second group is in regards to Development Partners with the issue of Donor Coordination being of interest for the Government of Ghana as well as for MoFA. Furthermore, the Outgrower Management code is related to Technical and Cultural challenges, and DP-Government Relations to the Government of Ghana, as depicted in the Table below: Table 14: Codes under the Group: Development Partners (Source: Own compilation).

Development Partners

Donor Coordination

Challenges - DPs USAID - how it works Outgrower Management GCAP - how it works DP-Government Relations The third group, Government of Ghana, has the issue of Data and Research that is overlapping, as seen here: Table 15: Codes under the Group: Government of Ghana (Source: Own compilation).

Government of Ghana Ghana Politics Importance of Agric in Ghanas Development International Trade

Data & Research

238 Part II: Methodology

The fourth group, Technical and Cultural Challenges, has three codes that are inter-related to the other three groups, on top of being interrelated to one another: Transition – subsistence agriculture to commercial, Sustainability and Perception on agriculture & farmers, as seen in the table below: Table 16: Codes under the Group: Technical and Cultural Challenges (Source: Own compilation).

Technical and Cultural Challenges Agro-chemicals Technology Quality of Food Irrigation & Rain Soil Land & Lease Issues Banking & Loans Fires in the North Fertilizer Subsidy Seed

Transition - subsistence agriculture to commercial

Sustainability

Perception on agriculture & farmers

The above ordering and assigning of codes into four groups with color signifying a connection is one way to start the analysis of the data. However, other ways are possible, and additional reservations must be considered.

Caveats of coding- you get what you ask for? The caveats of research are manifold and increased for the empirical social sciences. As Watts points out: The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions, and definitions, are the products of his own thought (1951/2011, p.149). Alvesson and Sköldberg (2013) add that data and facts are almost always results of interpretation. In their book on Reflexive Methodology (2009) they encourage the use of qualitative methods under the auspice of attention and reflection over linguistic, social, political and theoretical elements that are used in the development of knowledge from empirical material. As indicated in the previous Chapters, I originally had biases against commercial agriculture, traditional development assistance, as well as the international trade regime. The first bias has lessened over time, and made room for a more pragmatic approach to improve food security, as sustainable agriculture methods are simply more cumbersome and require serious structure and organization that Part II: Methodology 239 is simply not present in Ghana as of yet. The code ‘sustainability’ reflects, however, my immense interest in the subject, rather than the interviewees. Other guiding frameworks were the eager search for ‘the culprit’ that I suspected to be the DPs, including the World Bank who was on top of my ‘suspect list’ – or the focus on understanding the policy process as a crucial part of the analysis. Both constructs proved to be an incomplete bases for analysis. The World Bank is not ‘the one culprit’ – indeed I would not list them in the top three if I had to pick a list today. Policy, which was originally the center of my investigation, turned out to be less important, as the great majority of policies look superb on paper, however, prove to be detached from the budget, and hence reality in the case of Ghana. This learning led to adjustments to the investigation with two additional pillars necessary to investigate: Budget and Implementation. Other issues included linguistic details. Sustainability for example was originally defined as a method of agriculture that would consider and honor the strength and health of the natural environment and ensure future generations to feed off the land. However, as described above, the great majority of respondents linked sustainability concerns to a lack of financial resources in the Government of Ghana, which has led to a discontinuation of projects and programs when DPs withdrew in the past. Understanding cultural difference – for example of the organizational culture within MoFA, which was captured under the code Hierarchy & MoFA Structure, emerged through observations and participation during the many hours of waiting at the ministry, in workshops and events, as well as through comments made by lower ranking civil servants. Indeed the candid conversations of junior level civil servants has revealed a great amount of detail, as this new generation of educated and ambitious workers is eager for change and seemingly less patient than their predecessors. Understanding the social and cultural nuances is still beyond my complete comprehension. In fact, the limited knowledge about the different culture and ethnic histories continues to be a hurdle to this analysis, and would be an area of additional research needed. Another disadvantage was the limited contact with large-scale private sector actors. While rumors abound, about the influence of food importers in particular, it is difficult to identify, isolate, and interview the companies concerned (such as Olam or the Continental Commodity Trading Company). Even more obscure are the often talked about connection of these companies with the Ghanaian elite and politicians and their wives in particularly. When representatives from multi-national companies were interviewed, such as Nestle or Wienco, the respondents were so pleasant, slick and seductive with their theories of free-market approaches that I often left their offices with the highest of opinions on their operations. Investigative journalists, such as the famous Ghanaian Anas Aremeyaw Anas might be able to uncover the deeper structures and issues of this professional and often secretive sub- group of stakeholder within the private sector. 240 Part II: Methodology

Keeping these limitations in mind, a new look should be had at the codes and their structure. The great appearance of codes such as Donor Coordination (192), Sustainability (115) or Policy (109) for example, is unsurprising in so far as questions in this regard were addressed to almost every respondent to satisfy my biases. Other codes emerged more ‘naturally’, such as MoFA Budget (85), Extension (77), and Decentralization (75), as they were not part of my initial question and bias framework. However, soon into the interview process and after a few experienced respondents made the importance of these issues clear I started to include them in my interviews as well. Yet others were added by my own volition as I determined them to be crucial, often without obviously integrating them into direct questions, but rather by observation of answers that were related to the subject, e.g. Hierarchy & MoFA Structure (68), Data & Research (70) or Minister of Agriculture (33). Nevertheless, they were identified in the interview process, and once time for coding came they became more prominent. To a certain extent this exactly is the goal of qualitative research. The line to tread between qualifying and allowing trends and themes to emerge is a fragile, thin one. The above grouping of codes was an interesting exercise to observe the frequency and see alternative connections; however, the overarching and better fitting framework of analysis is: Policy, Budget and Implementation. Bringing together the codes and grouping into the overarching framework will be undertaken in Part III of this thesis. Keeping the limitations in mind, the information gathered presents a great opportunity, due to the inclusion of such a multitude of experienced respondents in a wide range of rank and stakeholder groups.

7.4. Summary notes and lessons learned This chapter elaborated on the qualitative method used: interviews and briefly reviewed the ontology and epistemology the method is embedded in. It described the research design and the data acquisition process before giving a detailed overview of the six respondent groups: Civil Servants, Development Partners, Researchers, Politicians, NGO members and the Private Sector. To overcome the secrecy of any sector, different tactics may be employed to gather data, which are worth summarizing here once more:

• Build the right network. This is paramount for a study of power and politics • Learn the acronyms of the sector. Professional behavior, as well as diligent follow up, showing persistence and patience • Establish trust by ensuring confidentiality through arranging a suitable setting as well as a comfortable atmosphere, guiding the interview with few but targeted questions. Arouse the sentiment of a conversation with an active listener, rather than an interrogator, while speaking as little as possible but as much as necessary. • Have a framework of questions ahead, but build on the expertise of the interviewee and read between the lines for data that is offered which can be revealed with delicate questioning. Part II: Methodology 241

The data analysis was initiated by entering the transcribed interviews into an Excel document. They were coded, and the document was color coded to facilitate stakeholder and code frequency counting. Grouping the top 36 codes into four groups of: Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Development Partner, Government of Ghana and Technical & Cultural Obstacles helped to further understand the relations between codes and leading themes that will be used in the overarching framework of analysis of: Policy, Budget and Implementation Being aware of biases is a necessary basis for all researchers. After describing the caveat of coding for this thesis the hope is to offer further understanding that builds the base for solutions for questions around aid and agriculture in Ghana. However, social scientists in particular have to consider the possibility of our world developments being random, nonlinear, dynamic and not normally distributed (Blyth 2011). What we have to grapple with in Part III of this thesis is our left ‘logical’ hemisphere making up stories that might not exist. Kahneman wonderfully educates us on the pitfalls of human cognition in Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011). Before, however, the issue of critical reflection on quantitative data of is taken up in the next Chapter, as this research originally attempted to rely on the statistics and stories already available on the agricultural sector. Simply put, good solutions can only derive out of good data. The evidence based decision making often mentioned by my interviewees, however, only spuriously exists in Ghana.

242 Part II: Methodology

8. On data reliability and dependability in Ghana

Foreign aid is as much about knowledge as it is about money. Helping countries and communities generate the knowledge that they need for development is a prime role of assistance. And aid itself is a learning business that continually evolves as lessons of success and failure become clear (Dollar and Pritchett 1998, p. xi).

As depicted in the quote above the creation of knowledge has been a crucial part of the development assistance programs of many DPs, particularly by the World Bank over past half of a century and joined by USAID in recent years. Knowledge can be gained through experience, but certainly also through the gathering and processing of reliable data. Reliable data in turn should be sufficiently complete and error free to be used by policy makers, politicians and other stakeholders to make valid decisions for a stable development path. With the onset of the presidency of Dr. Jim Yong Kim the aim of the World Bank Group was broadened from knowledge generation to applying “evidence- based, non-ideological solution to development challenges”, and Kim adds that: [t]hrough decades of development work I’ve learned that the best solutions to economic and social problems often lie with the individuals and communities coping with these challenges in their daily life. They have been my greatest teachers. We must listen to and act on their insights (The World Bank 2012). This honorable goal is easily said, but much harder to be done, especially considering what Easterly has presented and summarized in his book titled the Tyranny of Experts (2013). Beyond the solid and often static structures in place inside international institutions, it is their sterile quantitative method preferred and taught to the economists that populate many of the leading development agencies. So when the call is to “listen” the words received will still have to fit the drop-down menu options on the tablet of the investigator, in an attempt to avoid mistakes that could be called ‘human’.. As discussed in the previous chapter there has been a preference for quantitative methods in the social sciences, and within economics in particular. Economists have engendered the institution that has been the most prolific producer of development data – the World Bank (WB). With a plethora of publications they have flooded the developmental data market in an attempt to demystify the causes and calamities of development cases. The effort of the Bank to make this data available has been unprecedented, with access to a huge amount of reports and analysis via their e-Library. It allows the reader to look at publications of the past 60 years with the click of a button, and with relatively good search options if she knows what she is looking for. In the case of Ghana an unrestricted search will indicate a total of 5,282 related search results that reflect the tremendous effort of the WB to help share and create knowledge.210 Together with other donors there has been an honorable attempt to not just produce research for their own institutions, but share it with the rest of us.

210 See: https://elibrary.worldbank.org/action/doSearch?AllField=Ghana [accessed: 05.08.2017]. Part II: Methodology 243

This has also been true for Ghana where it is the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (particularly the Statistics, Research and Information Directorate – SRID) that provides data for development in general and agriculture in particular. In 1985 The PNDC government (which was undergoing the Economic Recovery Program under the hospice of the Bank) passed the Statistical Service Law (PNDC Law 135) that established an autonomous, independent public service responsible for overseeing the collection, compilation, analysis, publication and dissemination of official statistics in Ghana (World Bank 2013). The Ghana Statistical Service was born.211 As the main body intended to provide data for evidence-based decision making in the policy and budget processes, GSS started conducting large-scale household surveys, including population and housing censuses. One of the major challenges facing many developing countries, including Ghana, has been the need for comprehensive, reliable and up-to-date statistics and indicators to monitor and evaluate the impact of development policies and programmes on the living conditions of their citizens. The Ghana Living Standards Survey [GLSS] was an initiative aimed at addressing this need (GSS 2014a, p.1). The GSS then started to conduct the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS) as a nationwide, cross- section household survey designed to generate information on living conditions in Ghana and was first conducted in 1987/88 (GSS 2014a). Since then the GLSS has undergone six rounds covering important issues for development (e.g. education, health and employment), compiled by educated, trained and supervised field staff often over the course of one year (see GSS 2014a). Continued improvements and modifications to the methods, however, have made comparison of the GLSS a challenge. Nevertheless, the last two rounds (GLSS5, 2008 and GLSS6, 2014) used the same sampling methodology, and were slightly extended to provide national and regional indicators that would be comparable over time (with slight modifications in GLSS 6) (GSS 2014a; Ecker and Fang 2016). Round 5 of the GLSS was conducted by the GSS between September 2005 and September 2006 and included 8,687 households, containing 37,128 household members (GSS 2008). GLSS Round 6 covered a period between October 2012 to October 2013, and covered 16,772 households (GSS 2014a). Both of these survey rounds included questionnaire modules pertaining to food consumption; however, the responsibility to collect and analyze agricultural data in particular was shared with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. In general all ministries have a Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Division/Directorate (PPMED). In the case of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, PPMED was split in 2012 into the Policy, Planning and Budget Directorate and the Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate (while also adding a Project Coordination Unit to keep track of projects and data from the Development Partners, as well as an agri-business unit to disseminate information to interested private investors). The main directorate providing data for the agricultural sector, however, is the Statistical Research and

211 For additional information on GSS see here: http://www.statsghana.gov.gh/About_us.html [accessed: 09.05.2017] 244 Part II: Methodology

Information Directorate (SRID) of the MoFA. Beyond the evident hurdles of coordination and communication due to overlapping responsibilities, the real issue has been described by the Bank (2013, p.141) as follows: Despite the importance of agriculture to the economy, agriculture data systems have often been neglected and funding constrained. This makes it difficult to get an accurate and timely view on the agriculture sector, changes over time, employment issues, production and profitability and on the impact of issues such as food price crises and climate change. Poor human and logistical resources limit the effectiveness of the MoFA in general and in the process of data gathering relevant for the agricultural sector in particular. Data collection used to be based on an active army of Agricultural Extension Agents (AEAs), who visited farmers regularly and brought information back to the District Agricultural Office, which forwarded it to Regional and then to the National MoFA headquarters. The ratio between AEAs and farmers has been estimated at between 1:1400 and 1:2500 (Sarpong 2008).212 While in the early 2000s fuel and maintenance allowances still allowed AEAs to visit farmers reasonably frequently, economic turmoil in recent years has made fuel allowances and, hence visits unreliable. One district level extension agent lamented that they are forced to provide the data, despite the lack of financial support, and adds on his strategy of providing data that he ‘will sit on the desk and read you to bed to think over it’ (No. 134), implying that the pressure to create data without the necessary financial support creates unrealistic reports. Other respondents alluded to or frankly admitted similar solutions to the requirement to produce data without being provided with the necessary funds. SRID holds the main responsibility to collect and disseminate data on the agricultural sector, as it conducts annual surveys called MRACLS – Multi-Round Annual Crop and Livestock Surveys. The crop and livestock data (supplemented by the Veterinary Services Directorate estimates) in combination with other data (e.g. import and export data from MoTI, as well as the WFP) are usually published annually? In Agriculture in Ghana: Facts and Figures. In theory 17,000 agricultural households are sampled annually by Agricultural Extension Agents (AEAs) whom, in the best case, receive training in data collection (World Bank 2013). ‘We pretend to pay the worker and the worker pretends to be working’ was the statement from the previous President Kufuor reiterated by a district senior-level MoFA civil servant who had been responsible for data collection in the field (No.53). Further elaborating on the ’terrible subject’ of data reliability he explained that due to a lack of financial resources extension agents have been unable to undertake the mandatory field visits and hence forced the ‘top’ to create ‘fantastic reports’ every quarter by looking at the old tables and ‘juggel(ing) the numbers a bit’ (No.53). Agricultural Extension Agents have long lamented the lack of funds for most rudimentary requirements, such as fuel or maintenance for their mode of transportation (usually motorcycles to reach the widely dispersed farming communities, in hard to reach places without paved roads close

212 The international standard is said to be 1:500(Sarpong 2008) Part II: Methodology 245 by). Additionally it could be questioned whether the AEAs are the best, unbiased observers and data collectors, since they are also supposed to provide support to farmers as to increase their yield. Over- reporting would be a risk, if indeed AEAs were able to gather data in a timely fashion (funding flow in agriculture is extremely time bound – even more so for rain-fed production as in the case of Ghana). The situation is only different for districts that receive financial support via USAID and IFPRI to undertake Ghana Agriculture Production Surveys (GAPS) that were first piloted in 2012/13 in 20 districts and extended to 57 districts (out of a total of 216 districts), as a senior MoFA civil servant at the national level explained (No.187). Of the GAPS 50 samples districts were located in the Northern Regions, and seven in the Brong Ahafo Region, as these are the intervention areas of USAID, yet even here funding was due to run out in March of 2016, as the civil servant lamented (No.187). This case is a good example of issues of sustainability (of funding), as project usually run out between three to five years. The issues of reliable agriculture has long been lamented, even by highly respected leaders within Ghana such as the previous and late Minister of Food and Agriculture, (rtd) Major Courage Quashigah who in 2003 blamed the failure of agriculture after two decades of structural adjustment programs on the absence of reliable, timely, and comprehensive statistical data, as well as the lack of proper planning, maintenance and evaluation because of the lacking data(Ocansey 2003).

8.1. Census of Agriculture To provide the most accurate estimates for crop and livestock production activities, the FAO recommends undertaking a Census of Agriculture (CA) at least every 10 years. The last time this kind of benchmark data was collected in Ghana, however, has been over three decades ago. The CA conducted in 1984/85 has been the basis for many of the estimates in the agriculture sector since then, as funding was not made available for the 1994/1995, nor for the 2004/2005 rounds. A senior civil servant of the Ghana Statistical Service recalls that even the 1984/85 CA was flawed due to a lack of timely funding (No.198). Although staff was trained to conduct data collection in the early 1980s, money was not forthcoming in a timely fashion, causing the trained personnel to leave in search for other opportunities. When the money finally did arrive, he recalls that other staff had to be ‘hurriedly trained’ to conduct the census (No.198). This ‘hurried’ census has been the base for SRID to build on and add to by conducting annual agricultural surveys with a limited budget, using rather limited categories of traditional crops and disregarding emerging crops such as non-traditional export crops. In 2011 the GSS and the SRID approached the Food and Agriculture Organization asking for technical assistance to organize another Census of Agriculture..213 The FAO granted their request in 2012 and sent an agricultural statistics experts’ mission, which conducted a stakeholders’ meeting in Accra the end of 2012. However, the estimated cost of $20 million to conduct a CA that would finally provide reliable and credible agriculture data was deemed too expensive by the donor community. Instead, publications such as the 2010 Population and Housing Census, or the Ghana Demographic

213 See http://ghana.countrystat.org/news/detail/en/c/454436/ for more information [accessed 10.05.2017] 246 Part II: Methodology and Health Survey (2015) are used as alternative sources of data, beyond what each Development Partner tries to collect by themselves. However, as the World Bank (2013, p.141) points out: Household surveys collecting agricultural data as supplementary information to the main purpose are unable to collect the depth and wealth of data on agriculture that is required There are additional obstacles that must be considered when dealing with data collected in developing countries, including Ghana. Firstly there is a general informality of the economy, and of the relationship between the central government and its citizens, spread across the country without adherence to mandatory registration, i.e. of births. Hospitals are few and far between in rural Ghana, with childbirth still happening in ‘the bush’ far from the authorities. Secondly, while education has been a priority for many decades, adult English literacy in farming communities is still very low, and while there is support by the younger generations to support and translate, the aging farmers must be interviewed in their local languages that count over 200 in Ghana. Hand in hand with rudimentary education is the ability to estimate, as the census staff cannot continually monitor the activities of the farmers, but must rely on approximation and evaluation provided by the respondents. Thirdly, infrastructure in combination with tropical weather intensity can cut off communities in the second half of the rainy season in Ghana as river are overflowing their banks (GSS 2014a). Hence, funding problem that pertain to the collection of reliable data extend far beyond budgetary allocation for agricultural research, and include similar problems pertaining to the healthcare and education sectors and the standard of rural infrastructure. In 2013 (p.99) the World Bank wrote: A sector-wide budgeting system is being established. Until then, no accurate data are available. However, for the Government of Ghana on one hand no money was made available in the past years to establish reliable data systems. On the other hand, Development Partners have a sizable amount of their budget available for annual or progress reports as well as monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities. As briefly discussed above, ministry civil servants are frequently seconded to support donor projects in well-resourced Project Coordination Unit (PCUs). Similarly field officers (e.g. AEAs) may become part of a project team that is supported with equipment and allowances to collect data for the relevant DP projects. Without doubt there have been great improvements in the experience and capacity of statistical staff in organizations such as the Ghana Statistical Service over the decades – also thanks to the financial support from the World Bank, USAID, UNDP and DFID, among others. But it has clearly not been sufficient and often only restricted to DPs interests. The power-imbalance is further increased as donors can and do commission independent studies via local and foreign consultants to fulfill M&E requirements for their respective projects. The caveat here is that data collection and analysis is limited to the area of implementation - usually northern Ghana, and then often only a couple handfuls of districts in which the DPs are active. The Feed the Future (FTF) Initiative is of particular importance in this regard, due to its size in general as well as its substantial M&E requirement and monetary allocation in particular. In fact, the data generated from Part II: Methodology 247

FTF programs is framed as ‘the best data available’, as a senior data officer at a USAID project put it (No.57) and used as such when meetings are organized. This information inequality becomes most apparent when MoFA and DPs come together for discussions, e.g. during the policy formulation process, as it gives “enormous leverage in policy formulation dialogues” to the DPs as Sarpong already pointed out in 2008 ( p.12).

8.2. Other sources for agricultural data On the national level there are additional institutions undertaking agricultural research, most prominently the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) as well as several universities within Ghana. On the continental level the African Union is supporting research in regards to the CAADP with the Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (SAKKS) and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), headquartered in Ghana. On the international level the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has outposts within Ghana that contribute to data gathering. Here follow brief overviews of the various institutions that comprise these research groups.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research overseas a total of 13 research institutes that include the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute in Tamale (SARI) and the Soil Research Institute and the Crop Research Institute in Kumasi.214 For this study I was able to interview seven researchers from the CSIR, including four of the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute. SARI’s biggest achievement was touted to be the release of two to ten varieties for various crops, including but not limited to rice, maize, sorghum, cowpea, and millet varieties. However, as will be discussed in later sections, the uptake of these improved varieties has proved to be a major challenge. It also has a long dependence on DP funding, as it was in fact the German Development Agency (GTZ now GIZ) who was responsible for the founding and establishing of SARI with the support of the French government in the late 1980s, with the headquarters at a site 16 km west of Tamale (in Nyankpala) (No. 13, 77 &.127) All CSIR researchers voiced concern over the gradual and continual withdrawal of government funding during the past decade and talked about a progressive dominance of and dependence on donor funding (No.1, 17, 91, 125,127 & 165). This development has intensified since 2008 for SARI and has gone hand in hand with a ‘projectization’, entailing ‘unprecedented’ funding from US development partners in recent years, such as USAID and AGRA (reaching US$ 5.5 million in 2016, as part of making SARI a Centre of Excellence), however, they also led to monies being spend on projects that

214 The other ten Institutes include: Animal Research Institute, Accra, Building and Road Research Institute, Kumasi; Crop Research Institute, Kumasi; Food Research Institute, Accra; Forest Research Institute of Ghana, Kumasi; Institute of Industrial Research, Accra; Institute for Scientific and Technological Information, Accra; Oil Palm Research Institute, Kusi-Kade; Plant Genetic Resource Research Institute, Bunso; Science and Technology Policy Research Institute, Accra; Water Research Institute, Accra. Further information available here: http://csir.org.gh/index.php/about-csir/structure-organisation [accessed: 11.05.2017] 248 Part II: Methodology are largely decided by the DPs only (No.127). A senior CSIR researcher in Accra added ‘if you come and have money I will gladly do the research, but the results are not to the advantage of my country’ (No.165). Similarly a soil senior researcher found that almost all activities are funded by donors ‘and they will tell you what to do’ (No. 91). A junior researcher who had previously worked at MoFA (national) and with DPs explained that the ‘aid dependency’ has led civil servants, including those responsible for deciding which projects to allow in Ghana, to ‘scarcely’ reject any ‘ project, or on a Likert scale let’s say not regularly’ (No.125). A senior researcher explained that when they have tried to reject a project the DPs ‘you talk and talk’ this is our country but it doesn't matter’ but in the ‘end once it’s written you can't do anything about it; it’s their agenda’ (No. 165) The interesting part is that the Government of Ghana pays the salaries of all researchers, while the Development Partners fund the research only. This situation is deemed ‘not sustainable’ as DPs ‘come and go’, engendering a lack of long term planning and control as ‘donors influence what we should do at each particular time‘ and ‘a lot of things will stop if USAID stops funding today’ (No.127). Even if the outcomes of a project are excellent, it was lamented by many that they are not sustainable in the sense that the farmers cannot afford the technologies pushed by DPs with large but temporary project budgets. Other issues include the development of seeds that the ‘market was not looking for’ (No. 127) or which are not suitable for the area, as a senior researcher mentioned and added: ‘farmer seeds are good seeds - to their taste and that have stood the test of time’ with tolerance against diseases (No.165). Furthermore, DPs usually demand that a maximum number of farmers are involved in their projects (e.g. 30,000) minimizing the quality of capacity building the researchers are able to do. In conclusion the quality of research at CSIR is problematic, as it is not sustainable and at times not relevant, due to the dominance of Development Partners in the financing of the projects.

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) The CGIAR is the dominant body for global research on agriculture and food security, consisting of 15 research centers, such as the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the International Institute of Tropical Agricultural (IITA) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) among others. Funding partners are plentiful and include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank as well as several of nations ranging from Abu Dhabi to the United States of America.215 I was able to speak to five IWMI researchers (two in senior positions) and one senior researcher at IFPRI. For this study all the lead-senior research positions in Ghana were occupied by foreign researchers from other developing countries (Nigeria and India in these cases). The official financial support for these research institutions comes from developing countries or their respective governments.

215 To see the full list of Research Centers around the globe and Funders here: http://www.cgiar.org/about-us/ [accessed 17.05.2017] Part II: Methodology 249

IFPRI (headquartered in Washington, DC, USA) is focused on food policy research and its impact in development communities with initiatives from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank Group and AGRA (even though AGRA also does separate policy research in West Africa and beyond). It has developed excellent models for analysis in this area, such as the previously mentioned Kaleidoscope Model, to understand drivers of changes in regards to agriculture and nutrition policy, while furthermore bridging the gap between the ideational approaches of political science and development studies (Resnick et al. 2015). In my view, the particular achievement of IFPRI with regards to the development of a model that would deconstruct policy and power was the recognition of Development Partners as serious influencers in the context of developing countries. The IFPRI research on food policy change in Ghana also emphasizes that there is “a wide disconnect between agricultural research and policy-making that inhibits the effectiveness of policies” (Chhokar et al. 2015, p. 1086). Therefore they recommend that priority should be placed on improving data collection within MoFA and in agricultural research in general to correct agricultural policy design and budget allocation. Furthermore, links between the government and research institutions, such as universities and think tanks, must be strengthened.

Foreign Experts The reliance on foreign and often rather expensive experts is common in far too many projects financed by Development Partners. A Ghanaian senior researcher who had undertaken many projects with DPs lamented that outsiders often fail to understand the broader environment and come to famers with questions that they have framed with a certain and mostly different mindset (No.126). Miscommunication can occur not only through the use of a translator, but also due to the very different socio-cultural backgrounds and experiences of foreign researchers and local farmers. The ideal situation would be that foreign researchers could stay in a country through all the seasons of a year, instead of the usual 6-week visit that is often the maximum possible for international academic researchers trying to collect data to gain a title or a publication. One researcher from IFPRI diplomatically said ‘expats like us come here also because it’s their career, so they want to expand projects’ (No.220). The same expat, that had spent a decade in Ghana at this point, was seemingly unable to understand me when I said Medase pa pa pa at the end of the interview, answering: ‘What? I don't speak Twi’. Medase pa means thank you very much. IFPRI also facilitates the work of the Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS).

ReSAKKS is meant to support the CAADP initiative of the African Union by providing data for ‘evidence-based’ decision making and implementation. While IFPRI is funded and linked to an abundance of partners, such as the African Development Bank (AfDB), the FAO, the GIZ, the Ford 250 Part II: Methodology

Foundation and Wageningen University, as well as many other well-known actors, ReSAKSS has much more limited list of funders (IFPRI 2017; Covic and Hendriks 2016). The ReSAKSS office, which is located at the MoFA campus, is easy to miss, as it can barely sit two people, and at the time of the visit during this research was without light and air flow as Dumsor 216 was happening during my interview. The researcher was veiling himself in secrecy in regards to his actual position and instead diverted my questions successfully onto other interesting subjects outside the ReSAKSS (he had previously worked for a large NGO and had many years of experience in the field). While suffering from a smaller budget and lack of transparency on the local level, the international level of ReSAKSS has published some interesting reports, particularly in regards to data reliability and food security. In the ReSAKSS Annual Trends and Outlook Report 2015, Ecker and Fang have a Technical Appendix for their Chapter on the Economic Development and Nutrition Transition in Ghana,217 in which they raise significant and perennial issues with data accuracy for Food Balance Sheets. They make mention of the ‘food availability’ statistic, which is a residual value usually determined by a row of other data whose accuracy and completeness is often difficult to ascertain, because different organizations and ministries are responsible for the collection of the data, often applying different methods as well as varying amounts of rigor (Ecker and Fang 2016).218 Calculating the Food Balance Sheet to determine the prevalence of calorie deficiency in Ghana, as has been done in the Ghana Living Standard Survey (GLSS), had the additional challenge that is it based on several assumptions. For example: consumed food is reported by survey participants in local, non-metric measurement units that may vary by region and for which standard regional conversion factors might be unavailable. Also, for food items that were purchased in the market, it is usually the amount spent rather than the quantity of foods purchased, leaving the researcher to use reported food expenditures and regional food prices to approximating the consumed food quantities in order to determine the per capita calorie consumption (Ecker and Fang 2016). 219 These data inaccuracies are of a technical nature and independent of funding, however, equally unnerving considering the data reliability can determine the intervention for people in need of nutrition support.

216 Dumsor is the Twi word for off-on and is describing the electricity supply issues that have been pestering Ghana the past years (mostly because the main producer of electricity – the Akosombo Dam has suffered from low levels of rains) 217 It is Chapter 4 in the publication listed under the editors of Covic, Namukolo and Hendriks, S.L. (Hg.) 2016 and has the subtitle: Taking Stock of Food Consumption Patterns and Trends. It is available: http://www.resakss.org/sites/default/files/Ecker-Fang-2016-Technical-Appendix-ATOR-2015-Ch-4.pdf [accessed: 11.05.2017]

218 The row of data referred to here is: 1. Total quantity of foodstuff produced within a country (this data is already difficult obtain); adding 2. Total quantity imported; minus 3. Total quantity exported; adjustments 4.Any changes of stocks; minus 5. Total quantities used for livestock feed and 6. Seed and 7. Food used in manufacturing and 8. All that is lost during storage and transportation (or on the field) 219 However, they still include The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, IFAD and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Netherlands (MFAN) are funding ReSAKKS activities currently (CDD 2004). Part II: Methodology 251

Academic Research Institutions University of Ghana (UoG) was founded in 1948 (as the University College of the Gold Coast) and is the largest university in the country. As such it has contributed significantly to research of developmental issues for Ghana in particular and African societies in general. Part of UoG is the Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research (ISSER) which undertakes socio-economic research as well as monitoring and evaluation programs for a variety of sponsors, including Development Partners. Twelve academic researchers from the University of Ghana were interviewed, in a couple of cases multiple times. Research publications coming from UoG are highly relevant, have greatly advanced this study and were often of exceptional quality considering the lack of local context in so many other publications. All academics from UoG were skeptical of the quality of MoFA data, knowing about the serious lack of funding in the field that has been there ‘for some time now’ (No. 166). A senior academic researcher added: We tend to find that most researchers would rather depend on data they collect themselves. Unfortunately such data cannot be integrated across. They are done for specific objectives and therefore the data maybe narrow but you can bet on the quality of that data (No.127). Similarly to their fellow research colleagues outside of academia, UoG staff complained about the lack of flexibility in projects, e.g. on what crops research is supposed to be undertaken, as donors have their own objectives and goals. ‘He who pays the piper call the tune’ was the summary of a senior research (No.166). A saying that was echoed by many Ghanaians in the agricultural sector in regards to the involvement of aid funding.

University of Development Studies (UDS) was established in 1992 to provide higher education to people in the Northern Ghana with a focus on pro-poor, practically-oriented research and field-based training on four campuses, including Tamale (Northern Region) and in Wa (Upper West Region). Seven academics from the University of Development Studies were interviewed (a couple of them multiple times). Academics of UDS were critical of DPs involvement in research project undertaking in the agricultural sector of Ghana, as well as data published. One senior lecturer called the involvement of the DPs ‘Colonialism 3.0’ (No.77). Another senior researcher remarked that the DPs and their consultants have many preconceived notions when designing a project from the comfort of their office in Accra and fly to Tamale only once in a while (No. 72). He added: Only to come and find out that: look, you don’t even know what is happening there! So they design all sort of things, they come and the people are just struggling in their offices USAID seems to ‘go to the village and take some pictures’ but everyone knows that they ‘just collect data to justify what you are doing, but the data they produce does not correspond to what is on the ground ’another critical senior academic research observed (No.101). 252 Part II: Methodology

At the same time it was acknowledged that without donors morale is low within academia as salaries ‘are not so much’ and that after all DPs ‘bring employment to the North’ (No.128).

Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi and the University of Cape Coast (Cape Coast) should not be missing from a list of important higher education institutions in Ghana. However, it should also be mentioned that the education system in Ghana was imposed initially modeled after the United Kingdom in structure, intention and material. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Ernest Aryeetey, describes the early years: Most of the thinking in all disciplines was largely Eurocentric. The material that was used to teach students was mainly European, as indeed were many of the academics teaching the students. [...] The discussions that took place in seminar and lecture rooms were driven largely by what Africa could learn from Europe (In Seini et al. 2014, XV, Foreword). While the 1960 and 70s have brought about more independence in structure and staffing, national (Ghanaian) academics continued to struggle being heard in debates – at home and abroad. Al-Hassan, for example, points to 24 publications by Ghanaian authors which have examined smallholder efficiencies in crops such as rice, maize, mango, vegetables and groundnuts among others, however, laments that there has not been any dissemination of findings to policy makers or other government officials (Al-Hassan 2014). Furthermore, Aryeetey points out that during times of economic and political turmoil Ghana has continued to look outside for solutions to manage the economy and society (Seini et al. 2014). Similar concerns were mentioned by all academics involved in the lecturing of agricultural in Ghanaian higher education systems, adding that the emphasis has been on theoretical, western agriculture, rather than practical, local knowledge. More research should be undertaken in how far the present education system shapes and inhibits the development of the agricultural sector, still dominated by small, scale and aging famers. Furthermore, salaries for Ghanaian academics are meager (particularly compared to their international counterparts), forcing many lecturers to consider other sources of income, including holding lectures abroad for extended periods of time, necessarily neglecting their local students and research. With capitalism reaching every part of society, including academia, the race for the numbers (e.g. publications, citations, participations and collaborations etc.) and the needed funding to accomplish these numbers has become even more critical. Incidentally the Foreword of the earlier cited University of Ghana publication in reads (Seini et al. 2014, XVI, Foreword): We gratefully acknowledge a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York that has made the publication of this series of Readers possible In summary, second data available for the agricultural sector in Ghana should be critically examined, and in many cases seem unfit to guide decision makers. Additional funding for agricultural data system, particularly for the Census of Agriculture and for the works of Agricultural Extension Agents is urgent needed to improve and create a situation in which policy and budget decision can be made on Part II: Methodology 253 reliable and dependable data. For this vision to be completed the dominant positivist approaches combined with quantitative methods must be expanded to include constructivist approaches naturally combined with qualitative methods. Furthermore increased interdisciplinary work, as well as support and confidence in national researchers would greatly enhance our understanding and therefore potential progress to guide the development of the agricultural sector in particular and Ghana as a whole.

Part III: Results and Discussion 255

Part III: Results and Discussion

As the preceding chapters outlined, it is broach set of data and amalgamation of methods that informs this Results and Discussion section. The richness data accumulated during 16months field research and 260 interviews, in addition to participatory observations, field visits, and a plethora of official documents, such as policies, budget statements, speeches and Hansards over the past decades have produced a cornucopia of potential results relevant to the understanding of the agricultural sector of Ghana and the role of aid within it. Keeping in mind time and resource constraints (for the writer and reader), this Chapter is then only a partial presentation of potential results that could be discussed. However, in the end the most prominent codes and consequential themes to understanding aid and agricultural in Ghana have been selected. The chapter also aims at balancing the material and ideational approaches, as well as quantitative and qualitative data to provide greater insights and lessons learned into the influences relevant also for other sectors and developing countries. Satisfying the material approach of a PEA the budget pillar is examined with great care, yet ideational influences, such as perceptions of agriculture and farmers, local narratives on how money can be used, and special relationships between high-level decision makers will be equally exposed. As much of the Policy has been discussed in chapter 5, as well as heavily analyzed by a plethora of other authors, this pillar plays a smaller role in this Chapter. Instead the Implementation pillar will be highlighted by presenting results on the crucial issue of Decentralization. While the budget pillar is also steeped with perceptions of Development Partners, the implementation pillar will hone in on presenting and juxtaposing expectation and perceptions towards the Government of Ghana. Political and power structures will play important roles through the entire Chapter, which closes on a discussion around the Metropolitan and Rural Divide, also paying homage for the support of the UrbanFoodPlus project support by presenting issues around urban agriculture. Anticipating the biases inherent in all research, as well as the special prejudice against qualitative methods in particular, the data selected to present these ideas and perceptions has been kept mostly in its original form, with the aim to keep outside interference at a minimum. Practically this means that the latter part of the chapter heavily relies on interviewees’ quotes that have been chosen based on the expertise of the stakeholder; with the aim of having the people (themselves) tell the stories rather than the researcher. Some interpretation is provides, but most of the quotes used are self-explanatory and aim to speak for themselves - literally. In what could be considered a collection of stories that describe the realities of the agriculture sector and the role of aid within it, it worth to recall that many of the quotes come from interviewees that have had multiple decades of experience within the sector and, hence invaluable insights into roles, responsibilities, structures, incentives, motivations, and capacities of the different players relevant to improve current systems. Within this great pool of informants quotes and comments were further selected based on particular expertise to present the most valuable 256 Part III: Results and Discussion

data here, e.g. Senior Civil Servants that have worked for multiple decades on the District Level to comment on the relationship between the Agriculture Extension Agents (AEA) and farmers. The generous and unparalleled openness and honesty, which included critical, sensitive, as well as self- incriminating remarks by many of the interviewees cannot be lauded enough and was honored by the high degree of anonymization. Keeping the overall objective of the thesis in mind, the surfeit of codes explained by and discussed with the expert interviewees were sorted into three overarching themes: Policy, Budget, and Implementation.

9. Policy, Budget, and Implementation

As previously discussed the first conceived focus on the Policy was widened during the first phase of exploratory research, as many of the first interviews alluded to the lack of Budge ,as well as the issue of neither (policy or budget) trickling down to the Implementation level. At the same time evidence arose that pointed to the calamitous condition of the transparency as well as quality of data available on the agricultural budget in particular and the sector in general. As the results organized amongst the three pillars are highly dependent on the data made available, a main results of this research is that further research – quantitative and qualitative – is necessary to truly come to a point were evidence based decision making will be possible, and further hypotheses can be derived. Special attention should be paid to the implementation level, which has often been most terribly neglected, as policy and budget analysis is much easier to conduct. The analysis of the State of Agriculture in Ghana, balancing on the quality of data, can be summarized as seen in Figure 31 below:

Figure 31: Pillars of Analysis for the State of Agriculture in Ghana Part III: Results and Discussion 257

(Source: Own compilation).

The purposeful tilt towards the Implementation pillar was also derived from the realities observed during multiple field visits and explored particularly through participatory observations and focus group discussions conducted in the Northern Region. The data collected in the four focus group discussion in particular will not be presented separately, as it leaves much room to be desired (i.e. agricultural and language skills), but led to much learning that is reflected throughout the entire thesis.

Praxis and Theory In an attempt to bring together the three-pillar approach (I) with the theories presented in Chapter 4, which included the analytical framework for understanding the political economy of a sector (see in particular Moncrieffe and Luttrell 2005), a table was constructed that includes the different states relevant for analysis in row (II). To amalgamate the results of this research within the two frames already discussed, Row III and IV were added. The top-10 codes (based on frequency) were categorized underneath the three pillars in Row III.220 It should be noted that Urban Agriculture was upgraded within the third row and will receive additional attention, while the other top-36 codes were categorized and added in Row IV, indicating a lower magnitude of importance. Here it was the Post-Harvest losses that were added to the Implementation pillar, as the theme is of importance, despite it only mentioned by two interviewee (and not asked by the interviewer). Table 17 below summarizes the analysis structure: Table 17: Analysis Structure (Source: Own compilation).

I Policy Budget Implementation

Roles and Responsibilities Financing and Spending Nature of the Relationship between Organizational Structure Incentives and Motivations Players II Management and Leadership Capacity Technical and Cultural Challenges

Sustainability (115), Ghana Politics (102), Extension (77), Donor Coordination (192), MoFA Budget (85) Decentralization (75) III Policy (102), Transition - subsistence agriculture Perception on agriculture and Hierarchy & MoFA Structure (68), to commercial (47) farmers (99) Urban Agriculture (22)

Importance of Agric in Ghana’s Seed (49), Fertilizer Subsidy (49), Development (41), Challenges – Civil Servants (48), USAID – how it works (35), International Trade (66), Soil (47), Minister of Agric (33), General Budget Process (28), Technology (39), Agricultural Education (33), Banking & Loans (25), Fires in the North (28), IV Outgrower Management (22), Corruption & Aid (24), Agro-chemicals (28), Inter-Ministerial Work –Silos (23), Salary Difference & local work conditions of GCAP – how it works (18), DP-Government Relations (27), Civil Servants (15), Land & Lease Issues (23), Challenges –DPs (25) Quality of Food (19) Irrigation & Rain (22) Post-Harvest Losses (2)

220 The number behind the codes, inside the parentheses indicate the frequency of the code. 258 Part III: Results and Discussion

As previously mentioned, the Policy pillar was the original target of the analysis, but moved into the background, as realities demanded a more serious look at Budget and Implementation. Within these two pillars, the codes of MoFA Budget (under Budget) and Decentralization (under Implementation) take center stage in this results and discussion chapter. Under the leading themes of MoFA Budget and Decentralization many of the other salient codes will be discussed. While the Analysis Structure was applied a priori, the actual transfer, the implementation of data onto the Results section of this thesis proved more complex, which lead to codes being applicable to multiple pillars, hence, will be discussed in a more ‘natural’ rather than rigid ‘structure-applying manner. For example, the code of ‘Minister of Agriculture’ plays a crucial role in the Policy pillar, but is equally important (or more so) for the Budget analysis. While material forces prevailed the aforementioned focused on ideational factors triggered the extensive use of direct quotes and comments. In this regard it is important to reiterate that 33 interviews were digitally recorded and quotes from them will be presented verbatim, anonymized, and presented within “double quotes.” ‘Single quotes’ indicate the respondent’s words/comments during an interview that was not digitally recorded. Care was taken to describe the various interviewees in enough detail to understand their expertise, while maintaining persons’ anonymity. This approach is increasingly used the further from the top a respondent is located – materially and physically speaking (i.e. senior staff in the capital). Furthermore it must be underlined that the analysis of the agricultural sector is only partial, as certain sectors, for example, cocoa, were unavailable for inquiry.

The various parts of the agriculture sector in Ghana – defining the sector As discussed in Chapter 5, Ghana has a history starting from British Colonialism in the late 19th century of supporting the cocoa sector. Overall cocoa has been deemed of such importance to the economy that the Ghanaian government took over the institution established to manage the sector: COCOBOD. The state-owned Cocobod has kept Ghana – through decades of good as well as bad times – at the top of the list of producers and exporters to the chocolate-loving West. The foreign currency-generating item on Ghana’s state budgets reached new peaks in the 2000s when the HIPC relief allowed for greater state interventions and support for cocoa growers. With greater room on the budget, mass-sprayings were undertaken, independent of party-affiliation, as a retired Cocobod civil servant highlighted. Cocoa is spread over six out of the 10 regions, including Eastern Region, Western Region, Central Region, the Volta Region and the Brong Ahafo Region, and often divided by party- lines between the National Democratic Congress (NDC) – and the New Patriotic Party (NPP). With Ghana having a highly-competitive de facto two-party democratic system, the state-owned Cocobod has become so highly politicized that the retired Civil Servant said: Part III: Results and Discussion 259

Because of politics, when you go, they will be scared to talk to you and tell you nothing. Because it has become too politicized - even they themselves, the staff themselves - if they are talking to one another they are scared because it is heavily politicized (No. 204). State-managed and smaller-scale-farmer-implemented221, the power and success of the Cocoa sector is excluded from this analysis, as it is an area that demands additional time and energy, as well as transparency, as a World Bank Senior Staff jokingly remarked in an interview ‘not even the IMF get the Cocobod numbers’ (No. 180). However, both issues – the politicization of the civil service and secrecy in the sector – were also found to be true elsewhere. Furthermore the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development (MoFAD) is separated from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), to oversee the dwindling fish stock as foreign, industrial vessels have entered and occupied much of the Ghanaian shoreline. The last significant sector contributing to the agricultural GDP is the forestry sector, which is part of the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources and, hence also outside the jurisdiction of MoFA and therefore this thesis. The three sub-areas – cocoa, fisheries, and timber - are often lumped together with crops and livestock production for economic agricultural analysis, with significant influence over growth or decline of the sector data. Most significantly this data is influenced by cocoa firstly and timber secondly, as both commodities are plentiful in Ghana and sought after on the international market. However, for a study that originated with the idea round politics and food security, the center of investigation is with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, which is responsible for crops and livestock production in Ghana with the mission [t]o promote sustainable agriculture and thriving agri-business through research and technology development, effective extension and other support services to farmers, processors and traders for improved human livelihood (GoG 2014b, p.2). As the study is not just about shedding light on the institutions, process and decision makers of the agricultural sector, but also the role of aid within it, the Development Partners are of vital importance. As indicated in previous chapters, the Development Partners active in the agricultural sector in Ghana are plentiful and powerful (e.g. USAID, GIZ, AfDB, the Bank, IFAD, AfD, JICA, WFP, AGRA etc.). Instead of a separate analysis on each nation’s development agency, a general analysis of the Donor Coordination and cooperation has been included on its effect on the Implementation Pillar, as it was found most heavily discussed in the interviews, as indicated by the frequency of codes (192), but also plays a heavy role in the Policy process, which is left out, as the donor domination can be made clear throughout other, less often discussed avenues. This is also true for the Budget pillar. The small percentage Official Development Assistance (ODA) represents for Developing Partners222 makes a large impact on developing nations’ budgets.

221 Cocoa need shade to grow, and is often intercropped – and not mono-cropped, and hence does not lend itself easily to plantation style agricultural methods. 222 Most often less than 1% of their GDP, on average about 0.3% for OECD countries, as discussed in Chapter 1. 260 Part III: Results and Discussion

This is true for Ghana’s general budget as well as for the agricultural budget in particular. Finances are managed by the Ministry of Finance, which has become increasingly involved in the agricultural sector due to the slow but steady changing nature of aid to Ghana since it became a Lower Middle Income Country (LMIC) in 2010/2011, and hence eligible for loans rather than grant schemes. While in general, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) is regarded as ‘the most important Ministry’ in Ghana (and elsewhere) and the Minister of Finance as the most influential member in Cabinet whose role is crucially valuable for understanding the Budget pillar, he is also the only person that can sign for loans (after they are sanctioned by parliament).

9.1. Overall context to remember The politicization touched on by the quote of the retired Cocobod Civil Servant is framed by and shaped by an ethno-promoting, highly competitive de facto two-party (NPP vs. NDC) democratic system, in which ethnic origins have been often equated with necessary party-membership. Originally Ghana adopted a presidentially-focused political system that can be said to combine the British Parliamentary and the United States Presidential system of democracy as Egyir et al. (2013) point out. Egyir et al, and importantly add that in their study the observation of farmers is that they “cannot give examples that significantly distinguish the NPP from the NDC in terms of interventions to promote agriculture” (Egyir et al. 2013, p.45). While not all observers of Ghanaian agricultural politics might agree with the aforementioned comment, a great majority of interviewees corroborated the issues around ethnicity and its ‘appropriate’ party-affiliation being a factor in the politicization of the civil service, as well as on the effectiveness of state-interventions. The once-so-strongly longed after national and even pan-African identify of Nkrumah’s time seems long forgotten, and instead other (his)stories and local narratives have been (mis)used to flare up ethnic undercurrents hampering Ghana’s development. During election years particularly, ethnic difference are emphasized, with the NPP claiming the Akan regions223, while the NDC represents the Ewe and the Northern Regions. In recent elections, however, the now-ruling NPP party (which won the election back after an eight year hiatus in December 2016) has a vice president, Dr. Bawumia, who established a foothold around Walewale in the Northern region and former stronghold of the NDP. Many Ghanaian were of the opinion that the change came also because the outgoing NDC- government under President Mahama had too many scandals to convince the usual voters with old, ethnical verbiage. Indeed, foremen working for the commercial farmer working in the Savalugu District of the Northern Region, a traditional stronghold of the NDC, talked extensively about the corruption cases that became public over the past years. While one left the NDC party, which he had

223 The Akan people include the Ashanti and the Akyem (among others) whose histories are well remembered, as Senior Civil Servants (including, No.102) explained that Nana Akufo–Addo is an Akyem descendent. The Akyem had famously killed an Asantehene (King of the Ashanti – Osei Tutu) in the 18th century in a battle leading through the river Pra. This defeat over three-hundred years ago would potentially weaken the Ashanti support, plus a rumored dislike by Ex-president and leader of the NPP –Ashanti: John Kufour . Part III: Results and Discussion 261 volunteered for in the previous election, another belonged to another rare stronghold of the NPP in an hour north of Tamale. In the end, Savalugu was won by a NPP Parliamentarian candidate. During this time leading up to the election of the 7th of December 2016, it also became evident how important the local-language radio (for the older generation) and internet (for the younger generation) are for civic education in rural Ghana, as farmers in the field were perfectly well informed (and always much better than the internet-relying expat). The foremen and other farm workers predicted the outcome and provided the analysis days before the electoral commission published their results. It signals a beacon of hope towards true democratic development as the critical citizen no longer are blinded by empty- party promises, but informed by an increasingly extensive and informative media in Ghana, notwithstanding the substantial amount of partisan publications and commentators. In this regard, investigative journalists, such as Anas Aremeyaw Anas, deserve special honors for allowing more clear pictures of such crucial components to democracy like the judicial system.224 In a weak system of accountability where contracts often cannot be enforced, and as Anas showed, even rape and murder cases re-negotiated, many of the respondents mentioned their feeling of helplessness. Especially within the Civil Service, the transfer into ‘the bush’ has been described as a tool that has been (mis)used particularly by politicians to engage in practices that do not reflect the strict application of the law or will of the people, commonly known as corruption, as Brierley (2017) excellently elaborated on. Equally, however, many respondents within the Civil Service allude to the fact that also within the Ministries the hierarchies rule strong, where “your boss’ interest is your interest” (No. 100), and issues and people are bent to the will of the superiors, particularly when it comes to the options around public procurement contracts where outcome/selection of contractors cannot be questioned, unless you have very strong cause to question and evidence against the selected bidder. However, many of the younger staff (below 40 years of age), who are also in lower positions of the hierarchy, have expressed dissatisfaction with current inefficiencies and inequalities. One motivated Civil Servant recounts that senior staff advised the eager staff by saying: “just wait your turn. Once you get in the position you can decide”. While and age and position are hurdles to power in Ghana (and elsewhere) that are obviously easily identified, ethnicity is too in Ghana. The racially inclined reader might think of clear and stark height or facial features that would differentiate an Ewe from a Ga, from a Fanti, however, the tribal-based ethnic-politicization has been made harmfully and much more tacitly easier through the rich Ghanaian culture of name giving ceremonies and traditions. For example, the Ashanti give a child its first name based on the day of the week and gender of its birth. Also, many northern tribes mark the child’s face with symbolic cuts and maintain certain dress traditions (sometimes intensified by religious affiliation), as well as large language differences.225

224 His newest investigation piece is meant to air in June of 2018 225While all Civil Servants must speak excellent English, many of them still grow up with their various mother tongues yet the unspoken second language requirement for the Civil Service at the National Level is lamented to be Twi, particularly by people from the Northern Regions whose local languages vary greatly compared to Akans. 262 Part III: Results and Discussion

All in all, ethnic divisions are present and used as a management tool, as one Civil Servant states plainly that “I don’t talk in meetings because by name I belong to a certain area, and therefore party” (No.48). While other civil servants confirmed that this issue exists, others added that the manner how a person was recruited also matters. For example, if the Minister himself “pushed you there” ethnicity is rather unproblematic (No.29). Much more research is needed to understand the institutional culture within and across ministries. With these additional learning great improvements for efficiency and effectiveness of the Ghanaian civil service could be possible. Keeping these caveats in mind, a closer look at the organization structure of a major stakeholder of the agricultural sector in Ghana, the MoFA, is included in this study. Under the NDC-Mahama administration the COCOBOD was placed under the hospice of the Ministry of Finance (and therefore under former Finance Minister, Seth Terkper), as the sector was deemed too important in to be anywhere else. Currently, with the NPP government in place, the new head of the MoFA, a self- described “agricultural practitioner and consultant” as well as “specialist on commodities: particularly coffee and cocoa” (No. 110) The new Minister of the MoFA, Hon. Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, had previously found his “natural place, in the [Select] Committee” of Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs as a Member of Parliament of Ghana, as he proclaimed himself in 2016 (No. 110). In his interview he also mentioned his old friendship with Nana Akufo-Addo, who was partial responsible for bringing Dr. Akoto back from overseas as another Parliamentarian and later Deputy Minister added that Nana Akuffo-Addo told the hopeful minister that “it was time to come back home and run with him for agric” (No. 112). Under these circumstances it was easily understood when it was announced in the Ghanaian news that the COCOBOD was moved back under MoFA supervision in 2017. 226 The importance of good social relations, in particularly between the President and the Minister of MoFA, has been made clear and cannot be overemphasized. However, other ministries and ministers also matter in understanding the power balance and decision made for the agricultural sector.

9.2. Main stakeholders As described in the previous chapter, a variety of stakeholders are active in the agricultural sector of Ghana. Beyond the MoFA, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and various Development Partners (DPs), the jurisdiction of several other ministries, including the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI) as well as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Local Government Service (LGS) overlap with those of the MoFA. Particularly the LGS plays a crucial role in the implementation of the decentralization process of the agricultural sector, as will be discussed under the Implementation pillar.

226 See Cocobod moved to Agriculture minister available here: http://citifmonline.com/2017/01/13/cocobod- moved-to-agric-ministry/ (Segbefia, 2017) and http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/I- believe-in-my-bosom-friend-Owusu-Afriyie-to-revive-agric-Akufo-Addo-509415?channel=B1 (Adjei, 2017) [accessed: 23.05.2017] Part III: Results and Discussion 263

These stakeholders are theoretically guided by the executive decision of the Cabinet, who in turn are checked and scrutinized by the Parliament – in the case of the agriculture sector it is done through the Parliamentary Select Committee on Food, Agriculture, and Cocoa Affairs. Since Ghana’s neoliberal turn in the 1980s, the private sector was also meant to play an increasingly important role. This ideational turn has been intensified since Ghana became a Lower Middle Income Country in 2010 and donor support has been waning because of it. This includes input (i.e. seed, fertilizer and pesticides in particular) and machine manufacturers, as well as large farming business and joint-ventures, such as Wienco, Nestle, or Olam’s operation in the Ghanaian agricultural sector. In theory the private sector also includes small-scale farmers, who are the greatest stakeholders in number and production capabilities within the sector. However in this analysis of the agricultural sector in Ghana, they appear to be separated from policy and budget decision-making processes, and hence depicted as detached from the other stakeholders, as summarized in Figure 32 below:

Figure 32: Agricultural Stakeholders in Ghana (Source: Own compilation).

In the following pages the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the Select Committee on Food, Agricultural and Cocoa Affairs will be described in more detail, as they are the key stakeholders of the sector in Ghana.

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture – MoFA The national secretariat of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture is headed by the appointed positions of the Minister, and in his absence by his Deputies, with their offices in the ministerial district of 264 Part III: Results and Discussion

Accra. The political heads of the Ministry is followed by the technical head and the civil servant position of the Chief Director, which oversees (four) Line Directorates and Technical Directorates, as well as certain State Owned Enterprises and Corporations.227 Until 2012 the 10 Regional Agricultural Development Units (RADUs), as well as the 216 District Agricultural Development Units (DADUs, now Departments) have been budgetarily moved under the auspices of Local Government Services, with technical issues that can still be addressed to the national MoFA secretariat under the implementation of decentralization, as will be discussed later on in this chapter.

Figure 33: MoFA Organizational Chart (Source: Modified from the MoFA website (2017) 228 and own compilation).

The president appoints the Minister of Food and Agriculture and hence the change of the position is closely linked to the election outcomes, as well as other political considerations. Under the NDC government of 2013, Kofi Humado headed the MoFA. Humado, who had an agricultural background, was replaced in 2015 by the often controversially debated Fifi Kwetey, an economist known for his

227 The line directorates include: Finance & Administration; Human Resource Development and Management; Finance and Administration; Policy Planning and Budgeting (PP&B)/ Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E); and Statistics Research and Information (SRID). With the split of the Policy Planning and Budgeting/ Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate into PP&B and M&E, two more units were created (mostly to promote deputy directors that were due for a promotion), including the Project Coordination and Agribusiness Unit, all located within the main building of the MoFA. The Technical Directorates include: Agricultural Engineering Services (AESD); Extension Services; Animal Production; Crop Services; Plant Protection and Regulatory Services (PPRSD); Veterinary Services; and Women in Agricultural Development (WIAD). All are located across Accra, with PPRSD being the Directorate furthest away (about one hour drive). SOE include: the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority (GIDA), the Irrigation Company of Upper Region, and the National Food Buffer Stock Company based on the recently updated MoFA website: http://mofa.gov.gh [accessed 21.09.2017], which is also responsible for the Grains and Legumes Development Board. 228 Available online: http://mofa.gov.gh/site/?page_id=58 [accessed: 10.09.2017]. It should be noted that the MoFA website has seen significant downtime over the past two years, undergoing service outages for consecutive months on multiple occasions. Part III: Results and Discussion 265 communication skills and better known as the propaganda secretary of the NDC. After a NDC scandal on the re-branding of buses in the pre-election year of 2015, Mr. Kwetey was appointed by President Mahama to replace the outgoing Transport Minister Dzifa Ativor in January 2016. 229 Thereafter Alhaji Muniru Limuna, the Minister of the Northern Region, was brought down to head the MoFA just 10 months before the elections which were originally scheduled for 7th of November, 2017. It was a surprising choice considering that Dr. Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan, the Deputy Minister for Crops at the time, was an agricultural scientist and academic, a third time Member of Parliament who had served and lead the Parliamentary Select Committee, and was distinctly described as ‘the most capable man’ (No.112) by a fellow Member of Parliament (MP) and member of the Agriculture Select Committee. However, a fourth four term was not granted to Dr. Yakubu Alhassan by his (Mion) constituency in the Northern Region. Losing the primaries might have been part of the explanation, but Civil Servants at MoFA and the Parliament also pointed out that the Deputy Minister has had a less-political and more-reasonable history within the respective institutions, and was not as polemic as other politicians. Constant leadership-shuffle makes work less productive, as every new manager will have to become acquainted with this MoFA team, headed by the Chief Director, who is also changed regularly, even though officially this post is apolitical and independent of party leadership. The influence of political agendas and connections influencing ministerial structures and positions is old news, but seems to have continued with the new government into the present. Until 2016 the MoFA only had two Deputy Ministers; however, the NPP government added a third Deputy in 2017.230 During the field research the current Minister, as well as two of the Deputy Ministers were interviewed in their (then) position as Member of Parliament and a Member of the Agriculture Select Committee. It is interesting to note that one of the MPs back then speculated on his appointment since he had become friends with the would-be Minister while working with him at the Cocobod, and that it was his colleague and would-be Minister who ‘got him to come to Parliament as well’ (No. 112). However, that times are changing after all has been shown by a twist of events, as one of these three Deputies, William Quaitoo, had to resign from his position in August of 2017 after calling farmers in the Northern Region ‘difficult and insincere’ in regards to claiming compensation for harvest losses due to an armyworm attack. A resignation of a Deputy Minister is something noteworthy, honorable, and still rather unusual in Ghana. The mistrust between the government and the farmers has been echoed by the majority of interviewees, which is exacerbated by the ethnic affiliations played on by the two parties. But the honest and public pronunciations of this prejudice and consequential resignation are new. Farming as a profession is often described to be largely work for uneducated, rural people or the retirement occupation of past Presidents and other ‘big men.’ A senior academic researcher from the

229 The scandal involved the re-branding of public buses worth GHc 3.6 million http://citifmonline.com/2016/01/19/fiifi-kwetey-appointed-transport-minister/ (Lokko,2016) [accessed: 09.09.2017] 230 Until recently they were: Mr. William Quaitoo, Dr. Sagre Bambangi, and Mr. George Oduro. 266 Part III: Results and Discussion

University of Ghana, Legon describes the general attitude as such that “nobody respects farmers. Children never want to be farmers and so we dress up farming with agribusiness to make it look more professional” (No. 217). As in many other countries, farmers in Ghana are looked down upon and regarded as backward and uneducated peasants whose approach to work must be adjusted and changed to fit a more modern, industrial and commercial idea of food production that has equally spread over the Western worlds in the past century. At the same time agricultural powerful stakeholders, such as the Development Partners, need the participation of farmers for their (impact) reports, leading to a focus where “they just want numbers” [of farmers] as a junior staff in a USAID sponsored project comments (No. 145). As the MoFA heavily depends on the funding of DPs, their approach to conducting programs and projects has become increasingly important, and as some would say pernicious. To provide the right numbers, some organizations had started to bring snacks and drinks or pay farmers a per diem for meetings and presentations, so that now the “attitude is getting things for free” (No. 145). Another local working for DP program in Northern Ghana observe that the many development projects have created a “donor dependency,” and warns donors “that they are creating a problem not solving one” ( No. 146). The general attitude of many interviewees was that the Ghanaian government must regulate the foreign interventions, or as DPs underlines, be given the opportunity to take Ownership of aid interventions, as originally proposed in the Paris Declarations in 2005. The constant re-shuffle of leadership positions within the Ghanaian institutions, particularly the MoFA has been one hurdle for a long-term, dedicated and sophisticated vision for the agricultural sector. However, it might also be the lacking oversight and capability of the Parliament, particularly the Select Committee.

Parliamentary Select Committee on Food, Agriculture, and Cocoa Affairs Beyond its law-making function, the Parliament of Ghana has an oversight duty over public funds and the executive branch, as well as a deliberation and a representational function. For the members of Parliament (MPs) to be best informed about various subjects each MP is part of (usually) multiple committees. 231 The Select Committee of Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs has a total of 20 members, including a chairman and a vice chairman. The chairman and vice chairman are usually from the ruling party, while overall committee membership is equally distributed between the majority and minority party. The biggest issue, as discussed in Chapter 5, is the undue power of the president, as well as the lack of constitutional power to increase budget allocations, for example to the MoFA. As one mid- level Civil Servant working with the committee in Parliament phrased it (No.29), the policy process “is prerogative of executive,” leaving little room for the involvement of members of the Committee.

231 For more information on the different committees of the Parliament see: http://www.parliament.gh/committees [accessed: 23.05.2017] Part III: Results and Discussion 267

However, they do vote on all expenditures, including the aforementioned loans that are suggested and shaped by the Development Partners. Partisanship is said to be another issue, as parliamentarians endorse only the policies proposed by their party as Chhokar et al. (2015) found. Partisanship and ‘toeing the party line’ proved a common occurrence for a majority of the ten (10) Members of Parliament and Select Committee interviewed in 2016. Yet, it was a welcome surprise to also uncover that the chairman and civil servants supporting the committee, while having a natural tendency to support the government in power and hence try to avoid the most controversial issues on the floor of parliament, is said to undertake work constructively and (mostly) non-partisan, as administrative staff closely involved reports (No.29). Furthermore the reports of the select committee, which have been made available to the public as to provide transparency to the interested citizen, have consistently been bi-partisan, frank, and critical on the performance and support to the agricultural sector over the past 15 years. One ongoing caveat to the power of the Committee is the standing orders of the Parliament that enable it to undertake investigations into the sector so as to inform other MPs on pressing issues (e.g. fertilizer subsidy misallocations/smuggling). Currently, however, the Committee can only table such reports in front of parliament when the speaker explicitly asks them for it and not on their own accord. There have been ongoing discussions on revising the standing order in this regard. However, the first issue to tackle in the Committee is the increase of their technical capacity, as only a small percentage of members have a background in agriculture. Furthermore the institutional memory is weakened by the regular transfer of the civil servant responsible to coordinate and to a certain regard educate the committee members every 3-5 years, as well as the constant fluctuation of the committee members themselves. An increased technical capacity in combination with additional time, for example for the examination of agricultural spending, would be of great benefit for all tasks mandated to the Committee. Beyond capacity it is the vigor of engagement in agricultural matters, with the willingness and ability to understand and support the small-scale farmers whose legal and policy requirements are meant to be represented, which seems to be lacking, as Chhokar et al once more point out:. Their knowledge base appears to be driven in large part by policy ideology, media-based reports, and international sources (2015, p. 1086). Funding agricultural data systems, as described in Chapter 8 would be a first, great step to help all stakeholders in the agricultural sector, including MPs make evidence-based decisions. While there remains great room for improvement on data reliability and dependability in Ghana, the library of the Parliament, which includes the collection of Handards and committee reports going back to the last 1990s, as mentioned already, is a great source that helped break through the secrecy of the agric sector in regards to budget information. Parliamentarian Hansards, the official, edited verbatim reports of proceedings and parliamentary debates, made available for a small fee to the interested public helped uncover the debates around agricultural issues over the past two decades, as well as the approved budgets. 268 Part III: Results and Discussion

To satisfy the material factors on the forefront of a traditional Political Economy Analysis the budgetary data, provided via the Parliamentarian Hansards, were of high importance to illuminate the budget pillar which will be described in greater details in the next section.

Part III: Results and Discussion 269

10. MoFA Budget – the financing of the agricultural sector in Ghana

budg:et (buj/it), n. v. –et:ed, -et:ing. – n. 1. an estimate, often itemized, of expected income and expenses […] for a given period in the future, 2. a plan of operation based on such an estimate. 3. an itemized allotment of funds for a given period (Webster 1996, p.193).

A key constraint to growth and progress in Ghana and elsewhere is capital. All the talk about the role, importance, and power of ideas in the process of development cannot and is not meant to negate the fact that material factors are also of importance. In this regard the budget process and its overseer, the Ministry of Finance (MoF), are of great importance. As Resnick et al. point out: Beyond the executive, the Ministry of Finance is usually one of the most powerful ministries and its opposition can be fateful for policy adoption (2015, p.26).

The quote above summarizes the sentiment of all Civil Servants interviewed for this study, with many of them also underlying the importance of the Minister of Finance, who is a “very, very, very powerful” person that comes “right after Chief of Staff” as a Senior Civil Servant at the MoF describes (No.99). Chart 34 below depicts the hierarchy of the Ministry of Finance.

Figure 34: Ministry of Finance organizational structure (Source: Own compilation based on MoF website and staff description).232

The highlighted boxes above – the External Resource Mobilization Division (ERMD) and the Budget Division – are two sources from which the agricultural sector can receive funding. In case the Ministry of Food and Agriculture has a program or project idea, they can approach the External Resource Mobilization Division (which is further split into bilateral and multilateral divisions) in the Ministry of

232 For additional data see: http://www.mofep.gov.gh/?q=about/departments [accessed: 17.09.2017] 270 Part III: Results and Discussion

Finance, which approaches Donors because ERMD “know the interest areas of those organizations, e.g. for example IFAD” to finding funding (No.219). Even if the Ministry of Food and Agriculture is directly approached by Development Partners it is still the Minister of Finance that has to approve all grants and loans. With the ultimate responsibility of Donor contributions having to be approved by the MoF, a Mid-Level Civil Servant describes the relationship to the MoFA by saying: “It’s like if you borrowed for your child. You can talk to the child, but we [MoF] are responsible like the parent” (No.219). Furthermore, almost all Development Partners have requirements for counterpart funding on their project and programs which will have to be supplied by the Ministry of Finance. A Senior Civil Servant within the Budget Division of the MoF also adds that sometimes the Development Partners ‘go behind us and won’t even tell the MoF what project they want to do,’ which leads to planning and implementation issues because the Government of Ghana (GoG) is unable to fulfill the counterpart funding requirement (No. 102). Loans in particular have to be approved by the cabinet and then Parliament before it is passed to the attorney general, as a MoF staff explained (No.219). Table 18: Agriculture Budget (Source: Own compilation based on public data made available by the Parliament of Ghana,, as well as (internal) MoFA Reports published by the Finance Directorate)

Agriculture Budget presented in Parliament Inflations Adjusted (CPI 2010) in million Ghana cedis (2000 - 2015) Total Gove rnme nt Development DP Ye ar approved/asked of Ghana Partne r percentage agric Budget 1999 792.538 258.419 534.119 67% 2000 828.919 294.938 533.981 64% 2001 1.614.770 222.278 1.392.492 86% 2002 1.086.913 318.907 768.006 71% 2003 1.027.806 335.007 692.799 67% 2004 857.339 310.233 547.107 64% 2005 1.202.605 402.357 798.359 66% 2006 1.162.075 449.876 712.199 61% 2007 1.856.666 796.702 1.059.965 57% 2008 115 41 73 63% 2009 224 71 154 69% 2010 256 92 164 64% 2011 204 96 108 53% 2012 221 124 97 44% 2013 221 118 103 47% 2014 201 84 117 58% 2015 230 148 82 36% Table 18 above was made available with the remarkable support of the staff of the Parliament of Ghana as well as the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, and lists the approved budget figures presented to Parliament every year, adjusted for inflation using the World Bank Consumer Price Index of Part III: Results and Discussion 271

2010.233 The large drop in absolute numbers from 2007 to 2008 is due to a re-denomination of the Cedi (setting cedi 10,000=GHc 1) in July 2007 (MoF 2007). While the data is limited to approved and not actual spent budget, the data can easily highlight the important of Development Partners funding of the agricultural budget, depicted in the last two columns and averaging 61% in the past 16 years. This finding is in line with the FAO’s expenditure report which is Monitoring and Analyzing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP), and its analysis for the Expenditure in support of the Food and Agriculture sector, including Administrative Costs (EFAAC). The FAO writes: [T]he dependency of EFAAC in Ghana on donor funding sources is high. While estimations of the share of donor spending within EFAAC depend on the data and methodologies used, the MAFAP analysis estimates that this share oscillated between 50 and 80 percent, for the 2006-2012 period (FAO 2015, p.6). This over-reliance on donor funding has been aptly pointed out and summarized in 2010, when the government of Ghana approved GHc 92 million while donors promised GHc 164 million as the budget for MoFA, and an MP (Appiah-Ofori; NPP) notes “that Ghana’s comparative advantage is in agriculture but it is in this sector that the Government is stingy” (GoG 2009b, p.3630). And another MP (Safro-Mensah; NPP) cheekily but rightfully asked if “it is the donors who are more serious about agriculture than the Government of Ghana?”(GoG 2009b, p.3619).Although the comment and question of the honorable Members of Parliament are valid, the table above underlines that the lack of government support to the crop and livestock sector is neither an isolate nor partisan matter. The pinnacle of donor support/reliance of the sector between 1999 and 2015 was under the John Kufuor led NPP government of 2001 (with 86% of the budget estimated to be from DPS). Arguably donor support has only waned since 2011 due to Ghana’s economy being listed as a Lower Middle Income Country (LMIC). Development Partners, such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB) have since varied their terms of credit and grants to the disadvantage of Ghana due to this graduation to a more developed category of nations. In the case of the World Bank, which is the largest multilateral donor in the agricultural sector of Ghana over the past decades, it is important to understand that it is the International Development Association (IDA), which aims to reduce poverty in lower and least developed countries and used to be responsible for Ghana until 2010. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) has taken over since than as it is in charge of Middle Income and developed countries, providing analytical and financial support based on the market rates. A Mid-Level officer at the Bank adds that Ghana is just now moving from the auspices of the IDA to be under conditions of the firmer and less generous IBRD (No. 107). What is true for the Banks operations has been true for the other

233 The World Bank Consumer Price Index (CPI) for Ghana for 2010 was used with the following values:1999: 16.9 2000: 21.1 / 2001: 28.1 / 2002: 32.2 / 2003: 40.8 / 2004: 46 / 2005: 52.0 / 2006 : 58.7 / 2007 : 65 / 2008 : 75.7 / 2009: 90.3 / 2010: 100 / 2011: 108.7 / 2012: 118:7 / 2013 : 132.5 / 2014: 153 / 2015 : 179.2 / 2016 : 210.5, available: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL?locations=GH&name_desc=false [accessed 08.09.2017] 272 Part III: Results and Discussion

Development Partners as well. While various donors have their own criteria, ranking, and mix of grants and concessional loans to developing countries, it has become clear to the government of Ghana that the ‘graduation’ to a Lower Middle Income Country will have unfavorable consequences regarding available funding for agriculture and beyond. Some government aid agencies base their support not solely on GDP statistics but also on politically determined priorities, such as the French development agency - Agence Française de Développement (AFD). France has selected Ghana as one of their (16) ‘Poor and Priority Countries’ and will continue their operations within the country, independent of the new country ranking. However, because much of the aid is provided as loans, the French government has grown increasing concerned over Ghana’s growing debt since 2012 (since it has risen from below four percent to above seven percent of GDP between 2010 and 2015234, eventually forcing Ghana into three-year extended credit approved by the IMF of US$ 918 in April 2015).235 As one AFD Mid-Level Officer explains: If the debt sustainability is high we are not lending. [...] If there is a high risk regarding the debt, we are not lending more money because we are not giving more debt to the country (No.232). And since debt has grown to what the French government has deemed ‘unsustainable,’ agricultural projects, which mostly have been based on loans, were put on hold throughout 2016. One of the difficulties for the Government of Ghana, as well as researchers in the agricultural sector is the plethora of donors active, as well as their multiple programs, projects and approaches. This problematic variety is also true in regards to their budget support, and hence the distribution of loans and grants. However, based on data made available through the office of the Director of Economic Research & Forecasting Division (ERFD) at the Ministry of Finance in 2016 (adjusted for inflation with the Bank CPI of 2010), it can be made clear that Ghana’s mix of loans and grants disbursed between 2000 and 2015, has merged to the side of favoring loans as aid since 2010, as Table 19 below shows:

234 A large portion (70%) of the accumulated debt is said to be short-term debt and hence high risk, increasing interest payments. 235 As described in Chapter 5, the IMF Program asked for fiscal adjustment and consolidation in the 2016 Budget, including a reduction of medium terms deficit from 5.3% in 2016 to 3.0% in 2018, structural adjustments including reforms in public financial management, payroll and human resources and debt management, as well as target inflation of 10.1%, among other things. Part III: Results and Discussion 273

Table 19: Grants & Loans Disbursements, 2010-2015 (Source: Own compilation based on data received via ERFD (MoF), inflation-adjusted (CPI, 2010)).236 GRANTS & LOANS DISBURSEMENTS Inflations Adjusted (CPI 2010)

in million Ghana cedis (2000 - 2015) Multilateral Proje ct & Proje ct & HIPC Debt Relief Ye ar Programme Programme Total Assistance Initiative Grants Loans (MDRI) 2000 272 858 - - 1.131 2001 560 779 - - 1.339 2002 318 418 155 - 891 2003 565 770 200 - 1.534 2004 845 740 229 - 1.814 2005 782 859 182 - 1.823 2006 616 784 128 337 1.865 2007 838 739 218 263 2.057 2008 870 883 126 88 1.967 2009 1.162 1.634 107 69 2.971 2010 880 1.711 123 78 2.791 2011 910 1.325 129 94 2.458 2012 855 1.862 48 75 2.839 2013 402 1.951 102 54 2.509 2014 532 2.643 - - 3.175 2015 1.500 2.788 - - 4.289 Total 11.906 20.743 1.745 1.058 35.454

As the table indicates, total disbursements of donor monies over the past 15-years have been stable and growing, with loans increasing since 2009 in particular and peaking in 2015. Ghana has received an average of 59 percent of aid in loans between 2000 and 2015. A sharp decline in grants can be detected in 2013 and 2014, when DPs withheld disbursements in years following the election in 2012. This has been described as a consequence to the unbudgeted spending under the John Mahama NDC government for the (very competitive) 2012 election by Ministry of Finance staff and DPs alike. In 2015 the large disbursement of grants seems to somewhat make up for the withheld funds of the previous years. The loans have been and for the most part continue to be highly concessional, even after the move into LMIC status, carrying interest rates in the single digits. Comparatively the Bank of Ghana interest

236 The World Bank Consumer Price Index (CPI) for Ghana for 2010 available: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL?locations=GH&name_desc=false [accessed 08.09.2017] 274 Part III: Results and Discussion rate has remained in the double digits over the past decades, with a recent new high of 26 percent in 2016. 237 This is still much lower than the interest rates for farmers, which many interviewees confirmed has averaged 30-40 percent in the past year (2014-2016), in the event that they qualified for a bank loan at all (less than 4 percent of all loans were granted to the agricultural sector in 2016). Column four and five depicts the additional support of the international community in terms of debt relief through the IMF, the Bank, as well as other donors. While debt relief was still supporting the budget situation, Ghana also started to gain from the oil exploration that had been announced in 2007 and came online by 2010. With great anticipation around the discovery and sale of oil and gas, the Parliament passed a Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA) in 2011, which called for (four) priority areas of investment for which the revenue out of the new sector is to be used on an annual basis. Under this Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) agriculture has been selected as a priority area in the past years and this dedicated fund has represented a large part of the MoFA budget. In 2016, for example, 52% of the estimated/approved MoFA budget was meant to be provided by the ABFA, as can be seen in Table 20 below: Table 20: Agricultural Budget Items 2016 (Source: Own compilation based on GoG 2015).

Expenditure Item GoG IGF ABFA Donor Total Grand Total 59.776.323 4.065.650 262.407.904 175.341.831 501.501.708 Percentage 11,9% 0,8% 52,3% 35,0% 100,0%

Out of the four ABFA priority areas, which included Road and other Infrastructure, as well as Capacity Building (in the oil and gas sector), Agriculture Modernization has received greatly varying shares of total ABFA spendings over the past four years. 238 The drawback of the estimated ABFA funds has been the crash of cured oil prices after a pinnacle of US$ 140 per barrel in 2008, a brief recovery period from 2011 to 2013, and another dip starting in 2014 to below US $60 per barrel.239 The current NPP Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta (2017, p.5), stated that: The year 2016 was also one in which crude oil prices, output and revenue fell significantly short of their original projections, leading to expenditure realignments in the year. While the reliance on oil funds has been equally precarious as the reliance on earning from other exports, such as gold and cocoa, the budget process had to be adhered independent of international market predictions and expectations. With the initiation of the fiscal decentralization process in 2011 the cumbersome and lengthy processes was further complicated by transferring the responsibility to the District level agricultural departments, who since then started reporting to LGS instead of MoFA for budgetary and administrative tasks.

237 For a historic overview see Trading Economics, Ghana Interest Rate: https://tradingeconomics.com/ghana/interest-rate [accessed: 09.19.2017] 238 Based on a GIZ estimates: 14% in 2012, 2% in 2013, 31% in 2014, 15% in 2015, and most recently 9% Ofori-Atta 2017. 239 As of September, 2017 the price is around US $48 per barrel. Additional information available: http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart [accessed: 21.09.2017] Part III: Results and Discussion 275

10.1. The budget process In general, all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), as well as Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) are required to prepare a three year budget (e.g. METASIP) with their respective Medium Term Development Plan in mind and based on the national Shared Growth and Development Agenda (i.e. GSGDA II; 2014-2017) (MoF 2014). The budget process usually starts with the Research and Forecast Division of the Ministry of Finance (MoF), which has the overview of macroeconomic conditions and provides a Medium Term Fiscal Framework (for 3 years) and corresponding ‘resources envelopes’ to the various sectors. Additionally, the MoF then provides budget guidelines to all MDAs and MMDAs with the reminder in 2014 that: Due to the continuous increase in the wage bill as well as interest payments, and amortization among others, MDAs are entreated to budget within the given ceilings. [And] are reminded to budget adequately for all donor funded projects to ensure that aid is on budget (MoF 2014, p.2) The struggle for resources is made clear with the above MoF reminder to the MDAs, as well as the importance of donor funding. The guidelines’ appendix provides the indicative ceilings to all MDAs from 2015-2017 and sheds additional light in terms of priorities among them based on the financial allocation which is divided by GoG funds and Public funds (that is Development Partner funds), as well as a much smaller portion of Internally Generated Funds (IGF) of the MDAs are meant to generate themselves. Despite agriculture being described by Ghanaian politicians as the backbone of the economy, and the statistics still showing that half of the population derive their livelihood from the agricultural sector, the budgetary allocation to the sector, especially crop and livestock, remain small and secondary to many other spendings of the state. In particular the following MDAs have received higher total ceilings than the Ministry of Food and Agricultural in 2014 (in descending order of importance): Ministry of Education; Ministry of Health; Ministry of Energy and Petroleum; Ministry of Interior; Ministry of Roads and Highways; Ministry of Defense; Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing; and Office of Government Machinery. In addition it should be notes that the MoFA budget allocation was among the top-10 budgetary receivers only due to the high interest of Development Partners in the sector.240 The role of the DPs, yet again, is an important one in the budget pillar analysis in general and during the budget process in particular. Many of the Ghanaian interviewees lamented the difficulty in getting financial data from Development Partners, which have to be incorporated into the various

240 The Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health have taken the largest parts of the budget, independent of the government in power. Indeed the two sectors have become of such importance that they are secured by mandatory spending, as will be discussed later on in this section. It is also important to note that when considering the Sub-Total of Government of Ghana Funds, MoFA drops to rank 16, with the following preceding it: the Ministry of Finance; Judicial Service; Parliament of Ghana; Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation; Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional integration; Electoral Commission; Audit Service; Ministry of Land and Natural Resource; and Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development MoF 2014.

276 Part III: Results and Discussion ministries’ budget estimates. In the agricultural sector with its 15 different aid agencies active in 2016, it is furthermore difficult to coordinate the plethora of donors, which were undertaking a total of 97 projects, sometimes with greatly varying funding mechanisms even if it is the same organization undertaking the project (for example GCAP vs. WAAPP of the World Bank). The real issues, however, is that DPs are fiscally responsible mostly to tax-payers or congress overseas and, hence, dependent on election cycles of their home countries. The issues of ownership and transparency have been heavily debated in the aid sector over the past decades, cumulating in the Paris Declaration (2005) and the Accra Agenda for Action (2008) that had pushed for serious change within the aid industry. Sadly, in 2016 the agricultural sector continued to be shrouded in a veil of secrecy in regards to budgetary data by the DPs to the sector. For example, a USAID project focused on Monitoring, Evaluation and Technical Support Services (METSS) worked with the MoFA Project Coordination Unit to collect and publish data all project and program data in the sector. While the effort is laudable, and such data was made available for this study’s examination, financial contributions where purposely withheld because the donors had not agreed to this level of transparency. Just as researchers are refused access to the financial data, many civil servants have lamented about similar issues. Especially as they are time constrained and pressured by the Ministry of Finance during the heavily regulated and cumbersome budgeted process. The Policy hearing, which occurs early in the calendric year, e.g. March, is led by the MoF and the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC). Box 7: NDPC - National Development Planning Commission The NDPC has a multitude of tasks including: advising the President on development planning policies and strategies; studying and analyzing macro-economic reform options; making proposals for the protection of the natural and physical environment as well as the development of all districts; and monitoring, evaluating, and coordinating development policies (Republic of Ghana 8th day of May, 1992). Overarching frameworks such as the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategies are developed and spread by the NDPC. One senior member of the NDPC describes it as ‘the king’ among the Ghanaian institutions in advising the President and highlights that many people member are indeed appointed to serve in a Committee (No. 20). The agricultural committee within NDPC includes regional representatives, whom are supposed to be elected, are also partially appointed by the President for their 4-year mandate (many of them retired ambassadors and ministers) and have ‘the best of the ruling party in mind.’ What is needed to make the NDPC more useful is a democratic or merit-based appointment system that allows for ‘more technical and professional people’ to make the Commission effective (No.20). The hearing is conducted with the different directorates of all economic ministries present (e.g. Ministry of Trade and Industry, Energy, Transport etc.) as a peer review platform and in order to avoid/coordinate overlaps. It is here where the overall budget envelope is discussed based on what the Part III: Results and Discussion 277

Government of Ghana (GoG) and Development Partners (DPs) are willing to provide. MoFA usually also prepares the budget with the differentiation between GoG and DP provisions. After the Policy hearing, the Technical hearing is conducted by the Director of PP&B (MoFA) to present the achievements/spending of the past year and give details on the plans for the programs and project spending of the following three years (but with a focus on the next year) to the Ministry of Finance. Furthermore, the MoF also has an Agricultural Desk Unit, which collaborates closely with PP&B and acts at the go-between of the two ministries to help coordinate and communicate budgetary issues. With the caveats that the budgetary support of many of the DPs is unclear, representatives of the various Ghanaian ministries attend workshops as well as budget and technical hearings with the Ministry of Finance. For MoFA it used to be the Policy, Planning and Budgeting Directorate (and much further back PPMED)241 who held consultations and meetings with a variety of stakeholders to come up with a detailed plan of targets and budgets for the agricultural sector (Chhokar et al. 2015). As will be discussed it the next section, the process has started to change in 2012 with the next phase of decentralization in which the power and responsibilities were given to the district level agricultural departments. The budget process, however, remains the same, as a mid-level staff of the Policy, Planning and Budget Directorate (PP&BD) describes: The sector ministries start the budget preparation process guided by the budget guidelines provided by MoF (No.116). The Ministry of Finance also provides a preliminary ceiling for the provisional budget to the ministries. As another staff of PPBD explains, the requirement of the MoFA usually exceeds the provisional budget, which leads them to hand in two drafts: one for “what we need” and one for “what is given” (No.48). The MoF attempts to take into consideration the budget draft of the various ministries, including that of the MoFA, when taking the matter to the ultimate decision makers: the Cabinet. However, what happens behind the closed door of the honorable Ministers and the President remains unknown. As already underlined in the beginning of the chapter, many interviewees believe that the Minister of Finance has an important role to play, because he is well-informed on the economic situation and constraints. Also, he is said to be responsible for presenting his ministries’ research to the rest of the executive. When I asked a Senior Civil Servant working in the budget division of the Ministry of Finance on what basis do the ministers and president might make their decision, the answer was: “I don’t know” (No. 102), and he adds: “Right now decisions are taken on a high political level, and we don’t know based on what criteria” (No. 102). Not completely unusual, even in developed nations, this intransparency, however, can create the image that the leaders of a nation only haphazardly decide on the crucial support of some people or sectors over others. This should be considered an issue of great importance for the development of

241 PPMED (which stands for Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate) was split into two Directorates and two Units because as a senior civil servant who was involved in the process (No. 30) describes, it had “had too many deputies” that had served for over a decade and were due for a promotion. 278 Part III: Results and Discussion democracies, and also to help leaders to make reasonable decisions that have taken the men and women of the Cabinet many hours to make the ultimate decisions in the past. A Senior Civil Servants at the MoF hence, adds that Budgetary Division is currently working on Standard Operating Procedures in cooperation with the GIZ in order to add transparency and institute criteria to help guide the Cabinet during this process. Once the final budget ceiling is decided upon by the Cabinet, it is communicated through the Ministry of Finance to for example the Ministry of Food and Agriculture as well as the Select Committee of Food, Agriculture and Cocoa. In previous ears this budget information often was transferred at the end of the calendric year. This (so-called) budget appropriations bill is then also presented to Parliament by the Minister of Finance by the end of November (unless it is an election year, when budget are presented by the winning party in March of the following year). Then, during the month of December, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture must explain and defend the appropriated budget to the Select Committee. As mentioned in Chapter 5, it is important to remember that the 1992 constitution of the Republic of Ghana currently does not allow Parliament to increase the budget, but rather only decrease items. Furthermore, keeping the varied backgrounds and capacity of the Select Committee in mind, the highly restricted time schedule amplifies the challenges of review and critical examination of the budget with regards to achieving the planned policy results. Additionally, the majority of times in the last decade, the appropriated budgets have been considerably less than what was originally planned for the implementation of agricultural policies, such as METASIP. The Chairman of the Select Committee at the time, Dr. Alhassan concluded his presentation of the state of agriculture and the budget to Parliament in December 2009 with the following statement (GoG 2009b, p.3616): The amount allocated to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture for the implementation of programmes and earmarked for the 2010 fiscal year is woefully inadequate, representing about 30 percent of the Ministry’s requirement. The Committee, therefore, urges the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning to consider the allocation of more funds to MoFA in the course of the year when a supplementary budget is being considered.242 In 2011 the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Mr. Ahwoi, added that the proposed final celling of 2012 (GHC 262 million) of donor and government funding (combined) represented 39% of the required GHC 674 million that MoFA had estimated it would need to implement the Medium Term Agriculture Sector Plan (METASIP 2011-2015; GoG 2011) and he adds “that most of these programs may not be undertaken in 2012 or may have to be scaled down considerably” (GoG 2011, p.3912). Civil Servants of the MoFA interviewed for this study have seemingly become used to the low ceilings and slashing of the budget estimates. As mentioned, in recent years MoFA submitted two

242 The Ministry of Finance was said to have been re-named Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning by the World Bank in the previous decade (also in an attempt to focus additional planning responsibilities within the Ministry that closely worked with the Bretton Woods Institutions) but regained the name of Ministry of Finance in recent years, based on multiple descriptions of Civil Servants of the MoFA and MoF. Part III: Results and Discussion 279 separate budgets: one that they believe will be needed for the implementation all projects and programs so as to achieve the overall sector policy, and a second (much lower) estimate that they correct to be in-line with lower budget ceilings given by the Ministry of Finance. Surely, developing countries have a plethora of areas where government support in form or budget allocation is necessary. However, it is surprising that within a country that still has so many people living from the agricultural sector, and with the discussed history of protectionism and agricultural subsidies that has lead the now developed countries over the past century to prosperity, that Ghana has kept its investment far from the WTO de minims threshold of 10 percent of the is overall budget. In recent years Ghana has undergone some economic woes, nevertheless it is surprising to read the agricultural Select Committee’s report of 2016 (GoG 2014b, p.9) that points out and laments that: Unfortunately it was observed that allocation to the sector in the last five years has been around 1%. Specifically, allocation to the Sector was 0.85% in 2014 and 0.94% in 2015. The Government of Ghana’s recently low commitments to the MoFA budget, however, cannot be seen only as a surprising decline due to economic woes or blamed on particular parties neglect, but rather in light of bi-partisan and rather long-standing inattention of the ministries that are responsible for supporting farmers of livestock and crops (excluding cocoa). The following graph is derived from the MoFA reviews and combined with the recent report of the Select Committee:

MoFA Budet as share of Total GoG expenditure 5,0%

4,5%

4,0%

3,5%

3,0%

2,5% MoFa Budget 2,0%

1,5%

1,0%

0,5%

0,0%

Figure 35: MoFA Expenditure 2000-2015 (Source: Own compilation based on data from (IDEG 2012, p.143) based on Ministry of Food and Agriculture Brochure 1, Review of Ongoing Agricultural Development Efforts, and Select Committee Reports (including the 1% estimate between 2010 and 2013) (GoG 2014b p.9).

As Figure 35 shows, the proportion of total government expenditure going to the MoFA has been consistently low from 2000 to 2009, and was able to reach a peak at two percent in 2010 (IDEG 2012). 280 Part III: Results and Discussion

While the Figure is a result of various sources, and hence not without its potential faults, it gives an indication that during the past 15 years, which includes two terms of each of the opposition parties (NPP and NDC) and three presidents (Kufuor, Mills and Mahama), the neglect of the agricultural sector (crop and livestock in particular) has been a bi-partisan issue. While the quantitative data must be urgently improved and transparency enhanced, to get closer to the proclaimed aim at evidence- based decision making and democracy, other data suggested that neglect of small scale farmers has been serious and lasting. Under the Minister of the MoFA at the time, Courage Quashigah, the MoFA received a “woefully inadequate” release of investments in 2002, barely marking 2% of what was appropriated to the MoFA budget in 2001 (GoG 2003). Here it is of interest to point out that even under Minister Maj. Courage Quashigah, an ex-military man who had good standing within the government in the early years of the Kufuor administration, and hence could have had a better chance to argue within the Cabinet for allocation as well as release of monies, the MoFA still suffered from lack of funds. 243 The late General also point to the issue of actual spending/releases and timing, which will be discussed again shortly. A historic perspective helps to further explain this apparent withholding of support by the Ghanaian government to the agricultural sector in the recent decades. However, as discussed in detail in Chapter 4, the neoliberal idea that the state shall no longer extend support to the sectors and rather rely on the private sector to solve issues of development and economic growth has only taken hold since the 1980s and has been introduces via the World Bank first Structural Adjustment Program, The Economic Recovery Program, in Ghana in 1983. The origins of this governmental neglect are then revealed when considering the share of agriculture (this time including cocoa) in government expenditure over time. Yet again it should be noted that some of the data displayed in the following three graphs has been sourced from a collection edited by Aryeetey et al., who note, “that the analyses in the various chapters have been constrained to a very large extent by the wide variation in data sources, each with its own degree of inaccuracies” (2000, p.4). Keeping inaccuracies in mind, their volume on Economic Reforms in Ghana (2000) provides an unmatched historic overview on budgetary affairs. The following graph (Figure 36), compiled based on Seini’s data and covering the years 1980-1995, shows the share of Government expenditure slowly declining, starting with 12.2 percent in 1980 and down to a low of 1.9 percent three years after the onset of the ERP in 1986 (Nyanteng and Seini 2000). The 12-year average of agricultural expenditure of total budgetary allocation, for 1984-1995 (the times of the ERP), is 3.5 percent.

243 Maj. Quashiga has also initiated an increased duty on the importation of poultry production (by an additional 20%), which was passed into law but stayed unimplemented before being reversed by (debated) higher powers and Quashiga assigned to the Ministry of Health in 2005. Maj. Courage Quashiga had been named by many Civil Servants of the MoFA as one of the best leaders the ministry had seen, with admirable commitment and stamina in his attempt to bolster and build up the sector. Part III: Results and Discussion 281

Figure 36: Share of Agriculture in Government Expenditure 1980-1995 (Source: Compiled from data made available (Nyanteng V.K. and Seini 2000, p.280, Table 14.9 (same title)).244

The data found by Nyanten and Seini is corroborated and expanded by Yaro et al. (2012), which find that in the 1990s the share of government expenditure going to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in particular was less than 5 percent consistently. Again, the quantitative data in Ghana suffers from a wide variation in sources, and degree of inaccuracies, hence the additional research published by Wetzel on the historic overview shows similar by slightly varying results, as can be seen in Table 21 below. Table 21: GoG Agriculture Expenditure Share of Total Expenditure in % (Source: Modified based on data from Wetzel 2000, p.122, Table 6.2 Central Government Expenditure by Sectoral Category).245

GoG Agriculture Ye ars Expenditure to share to Total GoG Le ade r Expenditure in % 1957-66 8,4% Nkrumah 1967-71 6,4% Busia 1972-82 9,1% Acheampong 1983-91 4,7% Rawlings 1992-96 1,3% Rawlings

The common threat in the table and figures above is that the support to the agricultural sector as a whole has waned since the 1980s and the onset of the ERP. As previously explained, the structural adjustment policies, which started to be rolled out as part of the neoliberal era, favored private sector involvement over government support in all sectors, including agriculture. As can be seen in the Table

244 Based on MoFA Agriculture in Ghana Facts and Figures (1991 and 1995), GSS(1993) Quaterly Digest of Statistics, Vol.1, No.9, World Bank (1991) Ghana Progress on Adjustment, Report No. 9475-GH, Washington, DC, Republic of Ghana, Budget Statement for the Financial Year 1995 245 Selected data was sourced from Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Yearbook, 1967/68, Quarterly Digest of Statistics, various years, and World Bank data 282 Part III: Results and Discussion above expenditure from the Government of Ghana towards the agricultural sector dramatically decline since then. Yet politicians over the decades continued to underline in speeches and interviews how important the farmers are to the development of the country. The late Mr. Debrah, who had been the NPP Minister for Food and Agriculture after Maj. Quashigah was moved to the Ministry of Health in 2005, rightfully asked in 2010: “Are we paying lip-service to agriculture?” (GoG 2010, p. 3587).The tables and graphs also supports the comments made by a retired Researcher and Civil Servants who points out that “we are yet to see a time as vibrant as Acheampongs” (No.1). And a retired Civil Servant of the MoFA adds that Acheampong’ Operation Feed Yourself was most successful when food was cheap and everybody was into agriculture (No.122). In the analysis of the budget the ideational and material factors can be most clearly seen. While ideational influences on neoliberal economic development theories have spread through advisors and consultants of the Bank, IMF and other DPs, leading to a withdrawal of Government funds towards the agricultural sector through conditionalities, material factors played an equally important role. The support of Development Partners to the Total Expenditure of the GoG (on average 58%) and even more so to the Development Budget (on average 78%) has been significant, and surely made their ideas spread and be heard much fast. Figure 37 highlights the importance of the DP based on Dordunoo’s data from 1990 to 1995:

Figure 37: DPs contribution to Total Expenditure & Development Budget (Source: Selected and graphically converted based on Dordunoo, Cletus, K 2000, p.99; Table 5.3 Aid Flows and Budget Expenditure, and Table 5.4 Contribution of Donor Assistance to Development Budget).

The considerable contribution of Development Partners to the agricultural budget during the same decade has been summed up Nayanteng and Seini (2000, p.280), who state that: The financing of agricultural development tends to rely heavily on external or donor sources. For example, in 1996 and 1997, 91% and 88.5% respectively of the total budget for agriculture were expected to originate from donor sources Part III: Results and Discussion 283

Similarly Sarpong (2008) underlines that influence over ministries can be traced back to the size of DP’s financial contribution to the budget. And as a CEPA publication of 2005 points out, Ghana’s reliance on external development assistance to support budget implementation is ‘legendary’ (CEPA 2005). In addition, Figure 37 above is meant to highlight the fact that it is not just the overall budget contribution, but the development budget in particular that should be considered when attempting to understand the influence of donor funding. More work needs to be done in understanding how much of this funding trickles down to beneficiaries in the field, i.e. smallholder farmers, who are often on the bottom of the hierarchy and hence are last in line to receive monies. Even in the higher ranks it is difficult for Ghanaians to know how much of the Official Development Aid reaches Ghanaian pockets, as the issue of tied aid, lack of ownership, intransparency and support of foreign industries often take priority in DP programs.. As a Senior Staff a DP (GER) program frankly explains: The Ministry of Finance [in Ghana] is already aware that most of the monies will be used for German consultants, and also for staff, so that they cannot count on the exact amount of XX million for their budget” (No.6).246 So even if an exact amount is promised by a DP, it cannot necessarily be relied on by the MoF or MMDA that are supposed to estimate their budget requirements each year. Similarly, a Senior Civil Servant in the MoFA voiced concerns about the lack of transparency and predictability of donor funding. He points out that “we don’t know how much money is coming from DPs, yet we have to report it to MoF” (No.48). He adds that Senior Government officials, e.g. the Chief Director of MoFA, should ask for more transparency and mutual accountability, as this is “not a master-boy relationship. So let everything be clear, because the biggest obstacle is not knowing all the facts” (ibid). Keeping these caveats in mind, the budget numbers for the agricultural sector can reveal further details when examining the breakdown of the expenditure items of budgetary allocations. The three main items include: Wages and Salaries (sometimes listed as ‘Compensation’ instead); Goods and Services; and Capital Expenditures. While the Government of Ghana has continued to pay the salaries and pensions of the civil servants within the sector, donors have solely focused financing of projects and programs via ‘Capital Expenditure’ and to a lesser extent also ‘Goods and Services’ (see for example GoG 2014b, p.8; GoG 2015 p.7; Terkper 2013). In effect, the GoG pays its civil servants and researchers, while relying on DPs to fund the project and programs always involve (the already paid) civil servants or researcher. “He who pays the piper calls the tune”, in this case seems to mean that the GoG pays the house, healthcare and food of the piper, but the DPs can come in call the tune. The FAO (2015) budget analysis points out that recurrent expenses, i.e. wages and salaries and administrative costs, absorb a large portion of agricultural public expenditure, representing 35percent of EFAAC.

246 The original German comment is: “Dem Finanzministerium sind sich schon dessen bewusst, dass das Geld dann die meiste Zeit für Deutsche Consultants, und für die, ja für die Mitarbeiter draufgeht, also ist jetzt nicht sagen können, jetzt haben wir mal konkret so und so viel Millionen bekommen” (No.6

284 Part III: Results and Discussion

While the 2000s (around the time of the Paris Declaration) saw attempts being made by various donors toward general budget funding (known as MDBS – Multi-Donor Budget Support (MDBS)) and sincere backing of the Sector Wide Approach (SWA), such energies have tapered off since 2010.247 While there are list of reasons why the MDBS was discontinues, the most often and frank reason must have been that monies had difficulty finding their intended recipients despite many earnest efforts. Instead DPs since then have chosen different degrees of budgetary support versus the project and program funding approach. USAID, the largest bilateral-donor, has chosen to forego government structures for a large part of the projects and program, instead hiring external implementing agents, such as international organization and companies like Chemonics International, ACDI/VOCA or the International Fertilizer Development Center. In project like those of USAD, it can then seem that the Government of Ghana pays for civil servants, while the Development Communities pays for the implementation of close to all projects and programs which in turn use, e.g. Extension agents in the districts. This tendency is true with other DPs as well, also because in 2016 the only government program that was running was the fertilizer subsidy program. Some Donors, such as Canada, and one USAID project– RING (Resilience in Northern Ghana) – deserve particular mention, as they are attempting to avoid payments to the national directorates of the MoF or MoFA, and instead funnel monies directly to decentralized structures (i.e. the District Assemblies), in line with Ghana’s decentralization policy. 248 It is part of a change that has come about recently and will be further described in Chapter 11. While many Civil Servants – on national, regional and district level - remain thankful towards the DP’s support and point out that the sector would have collapsed completely without their support, many also comment on this development by quoting: “He who pays the piper calls the tune. What remains clear is the influence of DPs already aptly pointed out in 2000 by Dordunoo, stating that: By all standards the heavy dependence of the total budget expenditure on official inflows [..], as well as the heavy reliance on donor sources for capital expenditure underscores the importance of the donor community in the budgetary process (p. 98). Notwithstanding the importance of donor funding, the GoG has provided substantial sums of monies to support the sector. However, the GoG also faces additional obligations and deviations.

10.2. Obligations and deviations As mentioned above a large part of the MoFA budget obligations is dedicated to the salary and wages of an often scrutinized, large body of civil servants. Under the Mills administration a Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) was implemented trying to create a more transparent system that incentivizes

247 The 11 DPs that were particularly supportive of the MDBS approach include: Canada, Germany, France, Japan, the European Union, the African Development Bank, and Denmark. Also see: http://www.mofep.gov.gh/?q=divisions/mdbs [accessed: 09.22.2017] 248 RING has US$ 30 million over 5 years and is the brain child of Rajiv Shah, who tried to re-vive a method of aid that already had been attempted in the 1970s in which the expensive middle man is cut – e.g. including the big salaries and cars to USAID NGOs, as the head of the project described (No.142). It is rumored that Mr. Shah had to resign in 2015 over this program approach. Part III: Results and Discussion 285 all civil servants. Since 2010 this has demanded around 40% of recurrent expenditure (see Duffuor 2014). One Senior Civil Servant at the MoF lamented this by rhetorically asking, “how can 600,000 public servants take 50 percent of the domestic revenue” (No.5). Understandably, the Government of Ghana has made it a priority to pay salaries and a constitutional obligation to provide for the Judiciary, Parliament and the Ghana Audit Services, independent of economic situation. Internationally, Ghana has another unavoidable financial obligation: interest payments to the loans and bonds the government has increasingly issued after the end of the HIPC Initiative, which was implemented under the Kufuor administration. Under the same administration, Ghana managed to enter into the Eurobond markets, which was deemed an ‘unparalleled achievement’ of 2007 (MoF 2007). Since then interest repayments have demanded another estimated average of 30 percent of the available budgetary expenditure in recent years, all the way up to 40 percent in 2017. Statutory payments (a total of eleven items) also must be made to various sectors (e.g. health, education, district assemblies common Fund(DACF), etc.). As one MoF Senior Civil Servant (No.27) named the structure of the budget’ rigid and flawed’ because of all the mandatory spendings.249 The large wages and salaries bill (that is bound by Memoranda of Understandings (MoU) with labor unions) and contractual obligated interest payment, 80% of the budget must be set aside for statutory payment, independent of the government in power. This leads to an “extremely restricted fiscal space” with one Senior Civil Servant questioning whether the “budget process is a farce” after all (No.4). The current set up, where acts of parliament create these mandatory expenditures (e.g. the DACF), which the same members of parliament stand to benefit from, can also be questioned on the bases of legality in a democracy. In the same regard, it creates conflicting policies, as decentralization was trying to guide more decision-making powers away from the central government and towards local government structures. Yet, MPs in the capital stand to benefit from the decentralization efforts, dancing at two parties at the same time. The lack of agricultural budget in Ghana is then explained by one Senior Civil Servant at the MoF explaining that “we want to solve it all” (No. 4), and another adding that “the issue is that we are a developing country and everybody needs some money” (No.5). What the experienced Senior Civil Servants at the Ministry of Finance point out is that Ghana has a plethora of developmental issues and a highly restricted fiscal space, and hence the government has spread itself thin over the past decades and is vulnerable to donor dependence. Senior Civil Servants within the agricultural sector bemoan that the situation has become more precarious since 2010. The government has been said to focus on paying salaries, pensions, interest on debt, and arrears that had accumulated towards contractors (e.g. for road constructions) that started to take the government to court over the late- or non-payments around that time. The greatest share of

249 The legislation making these contributions mandatory include: the Ghana Education Trust Fund, the National Health Insurance Fund, the District Assemblies Common Fund DACF, Road Fund, Petroleum-related Funds, as well as ECOWAS levies and youth employment authority payments. 286 Part III: Results and Discussion monies made available to the agricultural sector outside of the above mentioned payments were focused on the purchase and distribution of inorganic fertilizer. Initiated during the food price hikes in 2007 the fertilizer program has continued and has been increased and supposedly politicized in the 2010s. While this thesis is not meant to detail the issues of the fertilizer subsidy program it should suffice to say that there have been serious accusations against smugglers and great inequalities of distribution of the agricultural input (i.e. more fertilizer vouchers given to districts the ruling party had lost in previous elections; see Branoah Banful 2011). Equally noteworthy, however, are the attempts under the Mahama administration to re-align the program and focus on 2-hectare farms as well as the inclusion of organic fertilizers. Agricultural programs fully funded by the GoG since 2012 indeed focused on the fertilizer program only. The financial constraints, due to mixed priority have, seemingly bogged down the government budget and have been intensified by Ghana’s recent energy crisis.250 In combination with the aforementioned challenges of the ABFA, funds approved for the MoFA have scarcely found their way to actual disbursement in recent years. While the energy crisis, the persistent wage bill, the list of mandatory payment, the low oil prices and decentralization all at once happening, might have contributed to the lack of funds arriving at the MoFA, challenges with disbursement, however, have been known to the MoFA even before 2010. As early as 2000 the Parliamentary Committee report notes funding only arrived in November of 1999 to various Directorates and Regional Offices (GoG 2000). It underlines that: Agriculture in Ghana is time-bound, field and other preparations need to be done before the onset of rains in the two ecological zones, hence late disbursement of funds of the Ministry of Finance negate the realization of set goals by MoFA. (GoG 2000, p. 9) Furthermore, the report notes that late disbursement encourages the possible misapplication of funds by officials, because the financial regulations were not, and still are not, structured for ministries to roll-over, or in other ways benefit from unspent budget amounts (GoG 2000). The issue of monies arriving late, often towards the end of the year, as well as the threat of and misapplication of funds has been mentioned by a variety of Senior Civil Servants of the MoFA in this study. The lack of funding is lamented particularly at District levels, and will be discussed in the Decentralization section of this chapter. In 2016 a Senior Civil Servant in the Metropolitan area recounts on the budget that “you get something, but it is for less than has been approved” (No.106). Similarly, the Select Committee noted in 2001 that only 31.85% of service and investment allocations were released (GoG 2001). In 2013, Mr. Kunsu, the NDC-vice chairmen of the Select Committee, underlines once more the “woefully inadequate funding” for goods and services, and capital expenditures in particular, which has only been made worse by untimely or complete denial of approved funds from the Ministry of Finance (GoG 2013a). In his example of wasted opportunities and monies he highlights that the recently established, government-owned National Food Buffer Stock

250 What has become commonly known as Dumsor in Ghanaian vernacular describes the constant on and off of electricity, mostly due to the low rainfall and hence hydro-eclectic power by the Akosombo dam first constructed under Nkrumah. It has already been described in other parts of this study. Part III: Results and Discussion 287

Company (NAFCO) “has not received any budgetary allocation apart from an initial seed capital of GHC 15 million Ghana cedis” (GoG 2013a, p.3035). While issues of non-or late payment to the MoFA are old news, recent years have seen even fewer investments (outside of the fertilizer subsidy) and a deterioration of working conditions for many staff (such as power shortages, poor office-equipment, and building disintegration) have made work inefficient. A Senior Civil servant with MoFA recounts a confession to a friend after the end of an interview, saying: “They are paying us to do nothing.” Nevertheless, some monies have been flowing and hence it is worth to look at the effectiveness and appropriateness of the funds there were released.

10.3. Effectiveness and appropriateness Although delays can have a grave effect on time-sensitive agricultural activities (amplified in rain-fed agriculture systems), one must critically look at “prioritization, efficiency, effectiveness, and appropriateness,” since the “budget will never be enough,” as one Senior Civil Servant notes (No. 29). As has been repeatedly pointed out, the current scant, inconsistent, and/or poor support of qualitative research in Ghana (and many other developing countries) has left us with little evidence on the effectiveness of interventions in the agricultural sector. When asking Development Partners in 2016 of their current project analysis and breakdown of funds, with particular interest in how much money farmers receive, a Senior Officer at a DP Program (USA) answered in a long-winded e-mail ultimately giving no budget-breakdown but instead his own general estimate which was that: “I would say they benefit on average of about [US] $2 dollars or more of additional income for every aid dollar” (No.225). Cost breakdown or other financial allocation details were not given by the other donor either. Effectiveness of agricultural budget allocation hence can only be assessed when transparency is made a priority, especially in regards to donor funding responsible for most project and programs. Meanwhile budget disbursement of funds through the Government of Ghana has been recognized as “largely controlled by a few politicians [with] budgetary allocations altered to serve political interests,” as Chhokar et al. noted (2015, p.1087). In a highly-competitive and still nascent democracy, projects or programs have been abruptly stopped and left unfinished when there is a change of government, since NPP and NDC seem compelled to advocate for a ‘distinctive’ approach in an attempt to differentiate themselves from each other (ibid). While decision makers within DP and GoG structures might be mysteriously assessing the need and appropriateness of agricultural budgetary spending differently from the farmers’ needs, the Ministry of Finance makes their requirement very clear. With the restricted fiscal space due to rising debt since 2012, most sectors have received budget-ceiling reduction - not just agriculture. At the same time, pressures have been increased to justify projects in a neoliberal ideational realm251. Many Civil Servants from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture have described that they have been asked for presentations of agricultural business cases in order to receive funding.

251 This study was not able to assess the effects that the IMF program has had, an effect in itself of pressure to prove positive yields of budget ‘investments.’ 288 Part III: Results and Discussion

Since the onset of the ERP in the 1980s the agricultural budget foresees a large part of financial allocation for investments in the sector coming from the private sector. As the previous Deputy Minister of the MoFA explains, DPs are trying “to ring fence investment of the private sector.” Yet he adds that “as of recent it has not been easy to convince the private sector to invest in agriculture” as “the risk seems to outweigh the benefits” in Ghana (No.13). He goes on to explain why the neoliberal approach as failed for agriculture in Ghana (and elsewhere), as the sector is competing with other investment opportunities in the country, such as oil or gold, which are more easily controllable (mostly dependent on proper technology and manpower) and with extractable benefits. Rain-fed agriculture, under the auspices of nature 252 rather than men, makes for tense payouts, and the splintered and diverse land rights across Ghana make contract negotiations even more tedious. Also agriculture suffers from its “inelasticity of demand” (No.13)253. Ultimately the product must be sold in rather unstable and fluctuating world markets, leaving substantial uncertainties in a market-oriented system that: “even when you have investors sitting across from you, they will look at you and question, is that guy sure about what he is saying” (No.13). As discussed at length in Chapter 4 there have been many economic theories cautioning against the private sector focused development path, especially for agricultural economies such as Ghana, popular in the early parts for the 20th century. In recent years, however, the private sector has been selected as providing the panacea for development, even though no country has managed to successfully follow this dictated plan. Particularly for countries where agriculture is dependent on rainfall/nature, increasingly affected by climate-change, and done on land that is still largely in hands of multiple, and powerful Chiefs, such an approach might seem nonsensical. Yet the Deputy Minister at the time thinks that a transition towards a more export-market oriented agriculture would “contribute to industrial development,” if it can rely on “appropriate mechanization and irrigation” schemes (No.13). Irrigation schemes were indeed another big discussion in regards to the appropriateness of budgetary investments for agriculture. While almost all irrigation schemes in Ghana were established in the area before Neoliberalism, that is under Nkrumah and Acheampong, and have received little attention and hence money since then, the Bank has felt that still the neoliberal agenda had not gone far enough. An experienced Senior Officer at the Bank importantly remarks on the subject: What doesn’t work is irrigation having managed by the government. That has clearly shown not to work. Now do we know what does work? Well, honestly we don’t, right? But we have some ideas, and some notions and some concepts that may be here and there, maybe some examples from other parts of the world, but what will work in Ghana, we don’t know. But fortunately we still have a couple of years to think about it. Right? (No. 180).

252 Or God, depending on your belief system. 253When people earn more money, they would rather spend it on manufactured goods (e.g. cell phones, clothing, transport, etc.) and ‘just because you produce more rice, doesn’t mean people will eat more rice’ as a Senior Officer in a Political Post explains and is also discussed in Chapter 4. Part III: Results and Discussion 289

What this quote of a Senior Officer also make clear, is the lack of knowledge the Bank has on “what does work” and the frank admittance that they use Ghana rather as a guinea pig to see what does work. It is of importance to know that within the Bank structure, officers are due to constant rotation, between countries every three years, and between continents every seven years. Making it very difficult for the officers to take the time to understand the historical developments in each country, because even though the Bank has a great database, these men will not have the time to read the over 5,000 interventions that have taken place in Ghana alone under the hospice of the bank, never mind the interactional effects with the many more other DP projects. It is then unsurprising that we don’t know what works, as history is so often disregarded in the heavily time-constraint aid system. Speaking about the Banks’ GCAP - Ghana Commercial Agricultural Program254 with the same Senior Officer, he highlights the attention that must be paid to water and describes that the Program originally tried to follow government demands to expand existing (e.g. Kpong) Irrigation Schemes, which were supposed to be financed through a Public Private Partnership in the original proposal. I considered this as not viable, so cancelled it and I said ‘well, a lot of irrigation schemes in Ghana, a lot well there are several, that are all working very poorly in different degrees, but instead of bringing new schemes let’s rehab what is there and at the same time, because there is a reason why everything is in such a horrible state. That is poor management by government […] let us bring in private scheme managers (No.180). What his additional explanation to the GCAP shows, is that the single men, which had been in Ghana for less than three years, was able to attempt a re-shaping an aid program into private sector managed scheme. This decision in GCAP also meant the restructuring of the Ghana Irrigation Development Agency (GIDA) that had been in existence since the 1960s and is today still part of the MoFA. Senior Civil Servants of the agency corroborated their inability to maintain the irrigation structures that have been built mostly in the 1960s and 70s. However, their reasoning were much more nuanced and plausible, pointing towards the need of more government support, not less. They explain that in the past decades government funding has been lacking, at the same time they had already tried, but failed to convince or mobilize monitory contributions from the farmers/the private sector for the upkeep the structures. The issues are complex and numerous. First off the irrigation schemes infringe on a combination of land rights negotiations, and secondly it involves illiterate and ageing farmers that take much longer to take up new technologies. If there had been projects in the past the strict and short timelines (usually three years) of Development Partners made for a difficult climate of operation. Estimates for construction material cost that are usually submitted in the beginning of the project, for example, will increase substantially over three years, as inflation has been double digests consistently over the past years. Also, many farmers did not see the necessary to pay the government for a service, sometimes because the lack of funds available due to poverty, at times because of the expectation for the

254 Also see: https://gcap.org.gh [accesses 09.09.2017] 290 Part III: Results and Discussion

Government/politicians to provide service for free, practically because politicks will make promises to their constituencies during the elections campaigns, partially because traditionally the leaders have taken care of their people. Another Senior Civil Servant at the Agency points to the private sector that was supposed to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of government support, but has failed to materialize during past attempts of Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) initiatives for irrigation schemes, and concludes that “no private sector will come and invest” (No. 38). What results GCAP will have on GIDA is yet to be evaluated. 255 This small glimpse into issues of the biggest agricultural program running in Ghana in 2016 – the GCAP – stand to illuminate bigger issues at play. Particularly the difference of perceptions between Ghanaian ministry civil servants and DPs on the appropriateness on spending, but also the deep mistrust that has formed and intensified over the decades, in which African government are seen as untrustworthy and incapable to handle their own affairs. Many other Development Partners express similar concerns to their Bank colleagues, often using or describing what is commonly known as corruption. Trust in the state and especially the centralized structures cumulating in ministries located in Accra, have waned further in recent years. Around the time of the Paris Declaration in 2005, DPs active in Ghana attempted to release some of their powers and funneled monies through the central ministries in Accra. Next to the Bank it was the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA, now known as Global Affairs Canada) that particularly stood out as a dedicated and generous supporter of a Multi-Donor Budget Support, as well as Food and Agricultural Budget Support (FABS). While representatives of the Canadian government, in their initial interviews in 2015, did not mention the exact reason for the discontinuation of their budgetary support, their colleagues working in projects financed by the United States discussed and commented that when “you give money to government it is lost” (No.142).256 In later meetings, the Canadians confirmed leaks and waste of monies that have led them to shift their strategy to “conditioned sector budget support” with a focus on district level interventions for 2016 going forward. Other Development Partners echoed this view and added that in the past there were incidences where funds dried up before they reached intended beneficiaries. However, another experienced Senior DP of a multilateral program also noted: Out of seven projects that I had the privilege supervising here in Ghana, I had only, well, I had very good performance of financial management, there was only one where unfortunately the team was not as diligent with their financial management (No.231). The different viewpoints of DPs highlight the need for further investigation to determine the reason and gravity behind the discrepancies. A Ghanaian retired Senior Servants observed the following:

255 GCAP is financed by an IDA loan of US$ 100 and a grant component given by USAID of 45 million. It is, however, administered at the World Bank The Bank’s GCAP loan was approved in March 2012, had a low and delayed disbursement of funds, and was ultimately rated as “in need of restructuring” by 2014 when the new head of the project came to it. It ultimately led to “changed objectives” discussed above (World Bank 2016a). The project is supposed to have closed in September 2017 and is yet to be evaluated (ibid). 256 This specific comment was made when talking about US$ 150,000 that was provided for the Ministry of Finance and meant to be funneled to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in recent years. However, the money was said to have not made it to the agricultural sector. Part III: Results and Discussion 291

Donors and NGOs used to trust MoFA and the government, but not anymore. They think resources don’t go to the farmers, that we don’t do our work and that the reports are cooked. Which are all partly true (No.122). All issues raised in this short addition on the effectiveness and appropriateness of budget pillar need further investigation. As pointed out once more, the “cooked reports” in the agricultural sector make it impossible to determine the effectiveness of agricultural programs and projects. The appropriateness of projects will be discussed again further in Chapter 12, which will dig deeper on the perceptions of farmers, and hence the consideration of their needs during project conceptualization. The issues raised around the misapplication of funds by Ghanaian civil servants, however, will be slightly extended in this next section on work realities, wages and

Work realities, wages and continued inequalities The quagmire with the civil service in Ghana has been that despite the scholarly and highly qualified manpower, with degrees from various (often international) institutions, they seem to remain rather inefficient. As previously mentioned, Ghana’s energy crisis known as Dumsor, has pestered Accra in the past decade. Countless times the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the Ministry of Finance were without power, which is essential for running computers and keeping the temperatures down in their offices. A Senior Officer at a DP Program (GER) acknowledges the grotesque task of many civil servants who are forced to use ‘pen and paper’ during the many outages yet are supposed to adhere to strict deadlines given by the DPs (No. 3).257 Likewise, the lack of funding has highly restricted civil servants’ movements who are aware of their need and desire to be on the ground/in the field. Many respondents, particularly younger bureaucrats, lament the effects of unrealized potential due to missed opportunities to implement projects and visit the fields. Much potential is wasted within the ministries, as archaic structures prevail and power inequalities have returned or simply continues; particularly between the Ghanaians and the Westerners. One specific, moral- eroding issue is the large pay-gap between government positions and DPs, which is acknowledged by all discerning participants of the sector. As the interviewees point out and pay-tables confirm, a Director position within the MoFA (usually attained after two decades of service and at least one University degree) receives less than interns paid at the German Development Agency. As an experienced Senior Officer at a DP Program (GER) highlights, a motivated and competent Director at the MoFA could receive 20-times the pay if she would leave to work with one of the DPs (No.3). He also notes that DPs try to avoid yet are aware of the issue that well-educated civil servants, such as engineers, are struggling to provide basic family necessities, such as decent

257 The original German comment was: “Eine Beamte, ein Beamter kann auch nicht mit Bleistift und Papier in einem Büro sitzen die der teilweise noch nicht mal abgesichert ist vom Strom sozusagen, der also wenn da Strom cuts, elctro cuts sind, das er dann noch nicht mal weiterarbeiten kann, und er soll dann per E-Mail locker bis morgen Nachmittag der Weltbank antworten” (No.3). 292 Part III: Results and Discussion schooling for their children, which can give incentives to provide the basics by other means (No.3).258 Despite the Single Spine Salary Structure implemented under Prof. Mills, civil servants, especially the younger ones living in Accra, struggle to provide the basics for their families. At the same time a young Mid-Level Officer at a DP Program answers my question of if he can tell me why he decided to work for the EU in Ghana with: Mhm…because it’s very well paid. No. The…because I wanted to work on the field and the EU is a good employer (No. 191). The frank, first response of the EU staffer was echoed by equally honest DPs, often in more informal conversation over lunch or dinners. Until recently, certain development agents (e.g. GIZ staff) also were able to avoid taxes on their incomes259, and even in 2016 Ministry of Finance staff report stories of fights with development consultants who were unwilling to pay taxes in Ghana, even when international and Ghanaian law had established this procedure. A World Bank staff explains that international competitive hires/staff have to move every three years and are not allowed to overstay a maximum of seven years in one region (No. 107). He and other DPs point to the strain on family and children of development workers in terms of health and sometimes even life (when working in emergency areas) that should be considered in debates around pay. Many civil servants, however, express little understanding regarding the large pay gap and the inequalities around them. This is understandable made clear when considering that the after-tax monthly salary of a senior civil servant is less than the UN per diem and stipend rate for two-days in Accra.260 As mentioned in the previous chapter the UN and other DPs have started to share per diem structures, sitting allowances, or other financial incentives (such as transport costs) through project with government officials and civil servants. These incentives are of substantial size compared to civil servant salaries, and led one Mid-level official to suggest that Senior Civil Servants receive 2/3 more of the money from meetings through said sitting allowances and per diems. Meetings are indeed plentiful, with many MoFA Senior Civil Servants cancelling interviews (often last-minute) for workshops, presentations, luncheons and so on, hosted by the FAO, AGRA, GIZ, USAID etc. Through the participation of over a dozen meetings myself, I witnessed the extravagant set up and generous remuneration for just a few hours of ‘participation’.

258 The original German comment was: “Wenn ein Ingenieur in mittleren Beamtenlaufbahn, es nicht schafft, den seinen Kindern eine dezente Schule zu finanzieren, dann überlege ich mir auch ob ich nicht das Geld wo anderes herkriege, um das positive auszudrücken. Ich würde das dann irgendwann auch machen. Ja. Und äh ähm, dass sind, dass sind natürlich Probleme wo, die wir äh, wie der Teufel das Weihwasser (hemmt), versuchen auszuweichen” (No.3).

259 For the GIZ discussion, see the German publication in ‘Die Welt’: ‘Fiskus trocknet Steueroase Entwicklungshilfe aus’; 19.01.2014 available: https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article123986838/Fiskus- trocknet-Steueroase-Entwicklungshilfe-aus.html (Ehrenstein et al., 2014)[accessed 27.09.2017] 260 UN per diem and stipend rates for Ghana (i.e. Accra) are set to be between US$ 289 and US$ 476. For UN per diems and stipend rates in other cities within Ghana, as well as in other countries see: http://apps.who.int/bfi/tsy/PerDiem.aspx [accessed: 13.06.2017] Part III: Results and Discussion 293

The core matter that is avoided in most encounters between Westerners and Ghanaians is summed up by an Academic Research at the University of Ghana, who frankly states: “We still see that the master has everything.” (No168), and corroborated by a colleague at the University of development Studies who adds “White people chopped. Now us” (No. 128). Furthermore a Senior Academic Researcher observes that 80-90 percent of the Ghanaian elites have lived and been trained in the Western world and that the wealth perceived to be amassed is in part due to colonialism. He notes:

When the past still occupies your thinking, it is most likely to influence your future progress and direction. If you perceive your past to be vindictive and manipulative you are more likely to be revengeful, even in the midst of opportunity. It’s a challenge we have to overcome (No. 233). The perception of many civil servants is in accordance with the above statements. And Academic Researcher asserts: “The Europeans amassed a lot of wealth […] so now I will too” (No. 168). Since 1966 when Chinua Achebe described the greed inclined so-called ‘Man of the People,’ seemingly little has changed as Africa is still “on a lower pedestal compared to the rest of the world” (No.168). There must be further investigations on how perceived past inequalities (incl. the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonialism), passed on by local narratives, have shaped an attitude that could be described as a ‘Robin-Hood’ syndrome, where the misappropriation of funds, especially when they are received from Westerners, is justified by making equal historic and continued inequities. In this regards behavior economist could play a key role. Motivating civil servants, as well as other staff, is however not limited to salaries, wages, and even work conditions, but also management and leadership tools. Aspects concerning the encouragement of efficient staff are brought up by a range of civil servants, including role of leaders, organizational culture, or particularly the promotion of talent of the MoFA.

Ministries’ management issues: leadership, organizational culture, and promotions As described in the beginning of this chapter, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture has seen great fluctuation within its leadership team over the past decade. With the constitutional requirement for the President to appoint 50 percent of the Cabinet from Parliament, many of the Ministers have been burdened with double-duties as leaders of Ministries and Members of Parliament. Highly-competitive, democratic elections have led to partisan politics leading one Senior Researcher to assert that a “new party in power will abandon every project the old one did” (No.165).The great variance in projects and leadership in combination with large pay inequalities has led the Parliament Select Committee for agriculture already in 2002 to point to the danger of qualified MoFA staff “leaving to work with NGOs and other institutions” (GoG 2013b). And already in 1985 the World Bank Ghana Agricultural Sector Review writes the following about the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA): The MOA’s policy planning, statistical and monitoring and evaluation capabilities are at present extremely weak; the emigration of a large number of trained personnel in recent 294 Part III: Results and Discussion

years, the extremely low salaries of civil servants leading to low morale and low productivity, and serious logistical problems had their adverse impact (1985, p. xix). While the problem is an old one, it is a persisting one. In 2016 Directors of the MoFA still mention the threat of qualified staff leaving for better paying opportunities with DPs, while highlighting the recruitment freeze (which is a conditionality of the IMF loan program) that has been in place since 2013 and badly affects the Agriculture Extension Agents in particular. The effect of this ‘brain-drain’ on morale should be further investigated by additional research. The Chief Director of the MoFA at the time voices his perceived “need of more trained staff – on all levels,” as well as “increased professionalism” (No.57). On professionalism, Chazan already wrote in 1983 (p.180): The lackadaisical attitude toward work schedules in government offices, frequent absences, and the over staffing of positions are seen as significant reason for the cumbersome and exceedingly slow rates at which bureaucratic work proceeded. A Mid-level official suggested that the MoFA needs to undergo a human auditing exercise as some staff “come and sleep and go” while they all receive the same compensation (No. 125). “Within the MoFA people know which ones work hard and which ones don’t,” he comments and adds that promotions are “based on age and time spent in the system”, rather than performance and dedication (No.125).This yet again shows that Ghanaians know best how to handle their own affairs and are well aware of the issues at hand. The organizational culture and history must, however, be better understood and considered for any proposed reform. Age and rank and, hence, power often go together within the MoFA. This amalgamation has been said to influence the move away from Multi-Donor Budgetary Support (MDBS), as some of the Senior Civil Servants prefer project and program support to continue, as they were able to wield power and hence money more easily. A Senior Civil Servant reflects on discussions within MoFA regarding the MDBS by remarking, that the colleagues in the MoFA might have disliked the new process “because for power reason or they were paid well” (No.34). An important additional issue in this regard is the aforementioned public procurements, with processes and competitors well known to the Ghanaian leadership ranks. This highly regulate process has led to distortions of the process that are difficult to escape and prove unless you have very strong evidence, as the Ghanaians have learned how to play the game very well themselves. The additional perils, also previously discussed, are that out of fear of being transferred to ‘the bush,’ far away from the powers of the Executive and the Parliament civil servants are made to stay quiet (see Brierley 2017).In this regard many interviewees allude to the particular power of the Ministers, as they are well respected and rarely opposed in their decisions, such as choosing the ‘best’ contractor to implement a given project. Importantly, however, one civil servant explains that customs surrounding what is right and polite demand a show of appreciation, stating: If you get something you must give something back. And not with your mouth […] After all he changed your life (No. 100). Part III: Results and Discussion 295

Another cultural peculiarity is the leftover of communal living, still practiced in rural Ghana, in which an older person is considered a mother or father to a younger person, with rights and obligations toward him or her. In 2016 some Junior and Mid-level MoFA staff express their expectations for their Directors to take care of them like a parent, in rare occasion even referring to their superior as ‘momma’ (as described by another Mid-Level Civil Servant (No.31)). Fanon reminds us: Like all other human conduct, behavior toward authority is something learned. And it is learned in the heart of the family that can be described, from the psychological point of view, by the form of organization peculiar to it – that is, by the way in which its authority is distributed and exercised (1952/2008, p.110). In how far this cultural peculiarity as well as ethnic considerations infiltrate the relationships within Ministries, Directorates, and Units, should be the subject of further investigation. Furthermore the majority of the Ghanaian interviewees describe the importance of the extended family, with some also noting the change towards a slightly more individual society that emerges, chiefly in urban environments. It must be remembered that formal employment is still a rarity in the largely informal and mostly agrarian economy. Political and civil servant staff will be in a unique but burdensome position that “many people depend on them; yet salaries are very low” as a Senior Civil Servant describes (No. 100). In 2016 a Mid-Level Officer working for a DP (WB) program comments on the extended family system by linking it to good governance in highlighting that “I wouldn’t be so corrupt, if I wouldn’t have to pay so many people, but if you [politicians] would fix the system, they wouldn’t even have to come and ask for help for school fees and hospital bills” (No. 83).Things change slowly, as Nkrumah already wrote in 1963: At the present time, the man who makes a reasonable living finds his money eaten up by his relatives (and this includes the most extended members reaching to the nth degree of relationship), so that he simply cannot meet his personal obligations, let alone save anything (p.100). At the same time the hope that was created at the time of independence that Ghanaians, too, can prosper and break out of this cycle of poverty is supported by what a Junior academic research describes as “an inter-generational-thing” in which families hope that “at least one person is able to break out of it[poverty]” (No. 168). The researcher describes the behavior of local elites (including politicians, civil servants, and academia) as “a struggle to be like the white” and adds that it is like “the American dream coming to Ghana” that has been “blown out of proportion” (No. 168). The remuneration of Ghanaian civil servant is simply insufficient to acquire “all you think you can have” (No. 168) when formally employed. Further research should be undertaken on the influence of media and marketing of the Western way of life, most prominent in the capital and metropolitan areas of Ghana, where billboards, TV and radio arts an inescapable part of life. Similarly, a Senior Academic Researcher highlights that “religion plays a critical role in Ghana and Africa” with the looming question of “God, why have you forsaken me?” (No.233). The importance of religion, as well as 296 Part III: Results and Discussion historic resentments should receive greater attention and deserves more rigorous ideationally focused investigation, as already pointed out in Chapter 3. While there is much room for additional research, Senior Officer of a multilateral DP program points out fairly simply that despite all the historic explanations, point to a lack of managerial stringency when saying: I think in general in the public system in Ghana, there is not too much attention to accountability. So things go wrong and we kind of go with it. We live with it. The guy hasn't done his job. Well, hm, think of his family. We are not very rigid in managing performance and giving the right incentives (No. 231). This last section of effectiveness and appropriateness aims to counter-balance the prevailing and popular debate on the size of the budget, particular for the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, and highlights some of the important but often neglected ideational influences, including culture, local narratives and values that let the appropriateness of budget spending appear in a different light. It should be underlined once more that an accurate conclusion about the agricultural sector can only be drawn when additional and rigorous data will be provided and transparency - on the side of the Development Partners and the Ghanaian Government - is granted. The next Chapter is related to the Budget pillar, but speaks mostly to the implementation level important to understand the agriculture sector. The foremost important aspect to understand in this regards is: Decentralization – a way to channel more power and money away from the capital to the district level. It is a fierce zooming in onto the ground level, the district level, to understand what actually happens on the field of the Norther Region were budget and policy decisions are meant to be implemented.

Part III: Results and Discussion 297

11. Implementation - from Decentralization to Donor Disarray

Decentralization is currently anchored in the 1992 Constitution of the Fourth Republic of Ghana, where Article 35 (6) (d) states that to: [M]ake democracy a reality by decentralizing the administrative and financial machinery of government to the regions and districts and by affording all possible opportunities to the people to participate in decision-making at every level in national life and in government. The laws governing decentralization are captured in Chapter 20 of the Constitution, starting with Article 240 (1) that declares: Ghana shall have a system of local government and administration which shall, as far as practicable, be decentralized. For the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA, now MoFA), decentralization has taken a long time despite the ministry being one of the first ones to undergo the processes of shifting power back to the Regions and Districts across the country. MoFA decentralization was already discussed during of the 1980s under the JJ Rawlings (military) government. As World Bank documents from the Ghana Agricultural Sector Review state: The MOA [Ministry of Agriculture] is at present in the process of decentralization of its operations whereby the Regions would have the full implementation responsibility while the MOA in Accra would be responsible for planning and monitoring and evaluating national plans, projects and programs (1985, p. xix). A Senior Civil Servant at Local Government Services recalls that in 1988 the District Assemblies were first set up, “but the idea about decentralization was there even before JJ”(No.30). After the Constitutional decentralization requirement was enshrined in 1992, “it looked like decentralization was about to happen” and “so in 1996 the MoFA decided to start the process” (No.30). The national directorates, such as Crop Services or Agricultural Engineering, etc., were copied into regional and district levels. As for the MoFA, budget planning and disbursement remained in the hands of the National Directorate for over two decades. Even though the Bank’s Agricultural Sector Review of 1985 already noted that: First, without financial decentralization (budgeting and case releases) at the Regional level, decentralization would be without content. Given the present financial stringency and the ongoing stabilization program [the ERP], it is difficult to see how financial decentralization could occur in the near future (p. XIX). The Constitution requirement for decentralization was only followed up in 2009 by the Legal Instrument - L.I.961: to operationalize the decentralized departments at the district level as the Departments of the District Assemblies (DAs) and a transfer of responsibility to prepare, administer, and control the budgetary allocation of Departments from the National Directorates to the District 298 Part III: Results and Discussion

Assemblies under the Local Government Service (LGS).261 Similarly, staff of Departments (i.e. the Agriculture Department) was transferred to the auspices of the Ministry to that of Local Government Services with the enactment of the L.I.1961, through a ceremonial transfer by President Mahama. The Process of staff decentralization, including that for agriculture, was undertaken in 2010 after the passage of L.I.1961 and moved 30,000 civil servants from national ministries to those of regions and districts starting. Metropolitan postings continue to be preferred, and transfers to ‘the bush’ are still seen as punishment (see Brierley, 2017, on how this threat is used as a management tool by higher casts of the hierarchy, including Members of Parliament). As a Senior Civil Servant of the LGS puts it “they just told us: make sure it happens” with the announcement by the President in 2014, and adds that “people don't understand how much it takes to decentralize” (No.30).A Senior Civil Servant at a Regional Coordinating Council in the Northern Region explains that on the regional level, agricultural decentralization only came into effect by 2015 (No.78). And a Senior Civil Servant at the District level notes that “just the beginning of this year [2016] things changed. Now we report to Local Government Services” (No.134).

11.1. Organizational Structure of Decentralization As of 2016 the Ghanaian Government is still headquartered in the capital of Accra, with most decisions made there. With the onset of decentralization, decision making power was extended to Regions and Districts with the current structure of: 1. 10 Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs) 2. 216 Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) 3. Sub-district structures: Urban, Zonal, and Town councils as well as Unit Committees While the constitution provides the impetus toward further democratization, it also focuses a large amount of power with the position of the President (as highlighted in Chapter 5). Hence, in 2017 Akufo-Addo appointed a total of 110 ministers and their deputies: (90) at the national level and (20) at the regional level, as well as 216 MMDA-Chief Executives, leading some sarcastic observes to call it an ‘elephant size’ government262. The list of appointees has been enlarged (e.g. MoFA receiving three

261 Departments are separated into ‘First Schedule (1(a))’ and ‘Second Schedule (1(b))’. Regulation 1(a) lists the newly established Departments that will come ‘into force’ with the Instrument (L.I. 1961), and includes Departments such as Department of Agriculture and 10 other departments. At the same time ten departments ceased to exist including four agriculture Divisions (i.e. Department of Animal Health and Production; Agricultural Extension Services Division; Crop Services Division; and Department of Agricultural Engineering). 1 (b) deals with existing Departments, such as the Finance Department, for which Parliament must enact an amendment to the established laws, that had set them up as centralized Departments. 262 Nana Addo’s ministers now 100 available: http://citifmonline.com/2017/03/15/nana-addos-ministers-now- 110/ and [accessed: 09.09.2017] and Ghana’s President defends appointing ‘elephant-size’ government of 110 ministers available: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/ghana-president-nana-akufo-addo- appointment-110-ministers-government-a7636921.html [accessed: 30.09.2017] Out of the 216 DCE, 36 were women. For a full list of appointments see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AkufoAddo_government_ministers_and_political_appointees [accessed: 09.09.2017]. It should also be noted that the NPP government has been diligent with their online media appearance, updating and extending websites, especially within Wikipedia. Part III: Results and Discussion 299 instead of two Deputy Ministers), and the new government has announced the spilt of a few regions and creation of more districts in 2017. Importantly, the NPP is proposing to extend democracy by having people vote for their Metropolitan, Municipal, or District Chief Executive for the first time in 2018.263 The president’s appointment of “30 percent of all the members of the District Assemblies,” as specified in Article 242 of the 1992 Constitution, remains intact.264 Also the Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs) continue to be chaired by the presidentially appointed Regional Ministers, but administratively is led by the Regional Coordinating Director (RCD). The Regional Coordinating Director (RCD) is also called the Regional Chief Director, and is employed by the Local Government Services, acting as an advisor to the Minister. The RCD is also there to coordinate with the districts. For example, one Junior Civil Servant at a RCC explains that “if there is an agricultural training and MoFA [national] has a program, we write the letters to the district to release agriculture officers” (No.82). The RCCs also house the Regional Planning Coordinating Units (RPCUs) and brings together all Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies’ (MMDAs) Chief Executives. They allow representatives of the traditional authorities (two chiefs from the Regional House of Chiefs) to be included in the democratic processes, as well as create a gathering point for the various decentralized line ministries, such as the MoFA: Regional Directors of the Agriculture Units (Ayee and Dickovick 2010). MoFA is one of the three ministries that have the strongest links to the district level (the other two are the Ghana Health Service, the Ghana Education Service). MoFA has this strong link to the districts specifically due to the Agriculture Extension Agents (AEAs) that are supposed to bridge the gap from the ministries to the scattered and plentiful smallholder farmers Below the 10 RCC follow the 216 Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs). Officially, all MMDAs are ruled to be non-partisan, and assembly members are not supposed to be sponsored by or associated with a political party. The split of MMDA, as of 2016 (before the proposed additions of the NPP government in 2017) was six Metropolitan, 48 Municipal and 162 District Level Assemblies. As previously underlined, the Chief Executive for each MMDA is appointed and while technically non-partisan often has connections to the centers of power. A District Chief Executive explains about the connection to Accra “we execute locally, but still owe an allegiance to the Regional and National level” (No.73). All Civil Servants interviewed on regional and district level claim that the most important and powerful position within the District is the District Chief Executive (DCE), due to his direct appointment by the President.265 A Senior Civil Servant at a Regional Coordinating Council aptly

263 For more details see Don’t be afraid of MMDCEs election – Nana Addo to appointees: http://citifmonline.com/2017/07/05/dont-be-afraid-of-mmdces-election-nana-addo-to-appointees/ 264 The President can take into account the opinions of the traditional authorities and other interest groups in the district to make the decision over District Assembly members (See Article 242 of the 1992 ). 265 The District Chief Executives (DCE) is the political head appointed by the president, but subject to approval by ‘not less than two-thirds of members of the District Assemblies (DAs) present and voting at the meeting (Article, 234 of the 1992 Constitutions of Ghana). 300 Part III: Results and Discussion notes that “the DCE is the main actor at district level. They [the DCEs] take their position like they are the District Assembly (DA). This is also due to the fact that the District Assembly (DA) is meant to meet just three times per year and it is the DCE that keeps it running in between” (No.78).

Agriculture District level perspective: Since 2015/2016, the District Agricultural Units, formerly under the national Directorate of the MoFA, became an Agricultural Department under the District Assembly, which in turn is under the auspices of the Local Government Services National Directorate. The Regional Coordinating Councils are technically in between the District and the National level but have little power because financial flows are transferred directly from the Bank of Ghana into the bank account of the MMDAs - unless, of course, there are hurdles for the budget to reach the district, and many civil servants attest to the fact that there have been hurdles and increasingly so for the past three years. A Senior Civil Servant/Planning Officer at the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly says: “we have the plans but we don’t have the money to do what is in the plan. It’s a very nice plan, but…” (No.155). He adds that “the first priority is education, second is health and third agriculture.” Most importantly he summarizes what many interviewees in MMDAs felts that actually “the assembly rarely funds big activities in the agriculture sector. Only when Farmers day comes around” he adds (No.155). The sentiment of Farmers day, a celebration first initiated in 1984 under the JJ Rawlings government, is meant to honor ‘National Best Farmers’ with awards ranging from radios and machetes to Wellington boots and even houses. Various Civil Servants in the MMDAs echo the heightened attention on financial flows during the daylong celebration preceded by a few months of selecting the winners. While another Mid-Level Civil Servant with LSG (No.134) rightfully and cheekily asks and adds that ”the question is if the right farmers are receiving the award?” Beyond the rightfulness or politizations suggested by the previous quote of a Civil Servant, Farmers day has been a long standing even. One Senior-Level Civil Servant at the Ministry of Finance in Accra notes that Farmers Day is incidentally the only financial support that the District Assemblies budgeted for prior to financial decentralization of the MoFA took effect in 2011 (No.26). Hence, it is easy for them and makes sense that they would continue to do what they have always done. Yet for the large majority of MMDA civil servants, now part of the agricultural department, the increased hurdles/lack of financial flows are due to the implementation of Ghana’s Decentralization policy. While the MoF in the capital had implemented financial decentralization in 2011, it seemingly only arrived to the Northern Region in 2015/2016. A DCE reveals that financial planning and reporting duties are ‘a challenge’ and explains that the Districts have a variety of financial sources they must consider: monies from the District Development Fund (DDF); monies from the DACF – the District Assemblies Common Fund (which is a mix of GoG and DP monies); and monies from Internally Generated Funds (IGF) (No.73). A Mid-Level Civil Servant at the Ministry of Finance explains that the DACF comes from the Government of Ghana by

Part III: Results and Discussion 301 law and is based on a formula considering population and land size as well as level of underdevelopment (No. 99). Indeed the District Assembly Common Fund was established under Article 252 of the 1992 Constitution to ensure the flow of funds from the Central government to the MMDAs. Parliament added the DACF Act (Act 455) in July 1993, which provided five percent of Ghana’s total revenue to the MMDAs based on a formula (of population and poverty indicators). In 2007 the percentage of national tax revenue flowing to the DACF was increased to seven point five - 7.5 percent, (while also adding 25 more districts) with the aim to accelerate development at the district level (MoF 2007). The then Vice President of the National Association of Local Authorities of Ghana (NALAG) criticized the formula that divides the 7.5 percent for the 216 District Assemblies and MMDAs. He points out that factors such as doctor to patient ratio, nurse to patient ratio, teacher to pupil ration, and road or water coverage are based on false statistics that “do not correspond with the situation on the ground in the MMDAs” (Amoah-Nai 2014, p. 5). NALAG adds that the DACF fund has further restrictions in terms of mandatory spending that are allocated at the national level, including a five percent share that was added to the formulary to channel monies towards Parliamentarians (as well as 2.5 percent to the Regional Coordinating Councils (Amoah-Nai 2014). 266 Last but not least, it is underlined that despite the constitutional obligation to transfer funds quarterly, at the time of writing – in December of 2014 – the first quarter allocation has just been communicated to the various MMDAs. The issues around the DACF, two decades after its inception, are all the worse since it continues to be the most important source of funding (covering an estimated 80-90 percent of annual expenditure) for the MMDA. This is also due to the fact that the Internally Generated Funds (IGF) remains greatly limited because of capacity, particularly in regards to valuing and re-valuing property to raise taxes and lack of appropriate skills on financial management and budgeting as Fynn (2014) points out. One Senior Civil Servant at LGS adds that District Assemblies also generate their own IGF with market tolls, lorry parks, and building permits (No.106). A local Mid-Level Officer at a DP program (WB), however, cautions that IGF are often poorly perceived, remarking that “on market day they take the money from the ladies; they take 20 pesewas and incidentally half the money is pocketed by the revenue collectors” (No.83).The situation has been exacerbated by weak oversight of District Assemblies (DA), and their District Chief Directors. The Office of the Administrator of the DACF laments that there seems to be a low appreciation for the members of the DAs and the IGF revenue mobilizations activities, as many citizens do not see the benefits from taxes paid and services provided (Fynn 2014). This is be line with the perceptions of the large majority of interviewees towards Ghanaian politicians to be in positions of monetary opportunity, with some believing what a journalist summarized as “everybody in Ghana is going into politics because they are looking for income” (No.190).

266 Amoah-Nai (2014) adds that these allocations seem odd since parliamentarians are already part of the assemblies as ex-officio members, while the RCC has no place in the local government structure and should never be allocated funds that are allocated to the MMDAs. 302 Part III: Results and Discussion

At the same time the politicians in Accra are of great importance, also for the district level officials that revere the big men in the capita. An USAID assessment on decentralization in 2010 states: [A]ccountability is complicated by certain structural dilemmas; we note that much of the accountability in place at local levels is ‘upward’ (to national-level actors) rather than ‘downward’ (to local populations and civil society) (Ayee and Dickovick 2010, p.V.). The attitude of an ‘upward accountability’, especially from the bottom level of the government hierarchy, the district level, was echoed by many Civil Servants in 2016. This relationship is, however, a Two-way Street, with national level politicians actively trying to influence what is happening in the District Assemblies also. One Senior Civil Servant (SCS) at LGS adds that directives still come from the national level, leaving “no autonomy for the assemblies” because the “national tell you to do it differently” (No.37). At the same time civil servants of line ministries with large field administrations, such as education, health, and agriculture were hesitant to accept and follow policy indicatives that were initiated by the local government units in 2010 (Ayee and Dickovick 2010). The issue of decentralizing power is evidently a complex and still complicated matter, with further nuances that need to be understood and addressed much better. In the case of agriculture for example, the structure and supervision changed only a couple years ago. Change is always difficult for people, but in the case of Ghana the organization cultural can play an additional role. A SCS points out that with this change senior district directors of agricultural departments (at times) report to civil servants (e.g. planning officers) who are junior in age, thus creating conflict because Ghana operates under a system of seniority (No. 37). A MP and former District Assembly member also voices concerns about the “caliber of people in DAs,” because they have “to read policy and extract the parts from them [national policies] they can apply in their district […] there might be a funding line in the policy, but they don’t even read it” (No.112). Of particular importance in this regard is the sub-committee of agriculture within the District Assemblies (DAs), which are similar to the Parliament Select Committee Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs but have more influence over budget and policy decisions. A Senior Civil Servant with LGS says that the sub-committees of the DAs “seek to understand and influence the assembly for approval” of the agriculture budget (No.106). He emphasizes that “here [in the sub-committee] the funds can be expanded” to support agriculture (No.106). Another SCS explains that at the same time, the Director of the Agriculture department, supported by his or her staff, holds a key role because he can break down agric departments projects and “go to the Ministry of Finance to argue for it” (No.30). Before decentralization was fiscally implemented, the head of the Policy, Planning and Budget (PP&B) Directorate within the National MoFA Directorate was responsible for this task. Now it is the District Assembly members that must read and comply with the NPDC Medium Term Development Plan to create their own District Development Plans’ The PP&B Directorate confirms that the “burden has reduced to one-half” (No.48). Districts are now being asked “to do something they don’t know how to do” (No.30). One issue might be, as one Senior Civil Servant points out, that the National Directorate Part III: Results and Discussion 303 of MoFA still has a “number of workers in the Headquarters that is too big – the head is too big” and he adds that just PP&B still has “70 plus workers’ sitting in Accra” (No. 48). Notwithstanding the capacity issues of planning and pitching of agricultural projects to the DAs or the MoF, budget pillar issues play an important role in the district too.

Budget cut(s) hindering Implementation - district level realities Funding issues for policies, projects, and programs are mentioned by all MMD level civil servants. In particular budget problems surrounding late releases, no releases, or empty warrant267 releases were lamented. One SCS in the Northern Region states that “the amount is ok big, but it does not come. The account is in arrears. The government owes the assembly” (No. 106). Others see the source of the funding issue elsewhere, however. The majority of other SCS in district offices caution that the District Assemblies rarely include agriculture items on their DACF budget draft sent to the national directorate of the Ministry of Finance. As the specialist on decentralization in the national Directorate of the Ministry of Finance confirms: “the budget for agriculture does not come from the center anymore” and there have been challenges as the “plans of the DAs do not really include agriculture” (No.26). Beyond the aforementioned Farmers Day celebrations, district level decision makers to not see agriculture as their priority. A Civil Servant at the MoF explains that once the final budget is approved by the District Assembly it is the District Chief Executive that implements the budget, but he/she has “many departments under him”/her. A Senior Civil Servant in the District adds that “normally the common fund and the IGF are decided by the assemblies, but with the department money [out of the MoFA budget] they are just supposed to pass them through” (No. 106). Similar to their colleagues in Accra, the political leader (the DCE) of the DA, as well as its members, are described by many civil servants to have a preoccupation with projects that can support their re-election campaign. A Mid-Level Civil Servant at the National Directorate of the Ministry of Finance explains that the DACF is coming [to the DAs] but not to agriculture, because you can’t point to AEA services [on re-election campaign posters] (No.99). A Senior Civil Servant in a District adds “instead the focus is on hospitals, schools and roads, while there is nothing in the farmers” pocket’ (No. 153). Many Civil Servants highlight that the situation wasn’t too good when the MoFA still distributed the budget, but in the past three years they have not received funds, or for example, in 2015 they only received a release of funds in December (No.153). The issue of late releases is particular pernicious for the agricultural sector, that will have no or little activities to be funded at the end of the year, yet the monies must be spend, as budget are not rolled-over to the next fiscal years. “So what do they want us to do? a SCS in the Northern Region asks about the budget release in December 2015 and honestly adds: ”It was a complete waste” (No.153).

267 Empty warrants are when the MoF & Bank of Ghana sends a note to the Agricultural Department in the District to inform them of a budget release/other payment, but no money will be deposited/arrive in the District level account 304 Part III: Results and Discussion

The situation has intensified since the budget has been shrinking over the last years due to unforeseen reduction in revenues (e.g. with the low oil prices) combined with the discussed increase of debt. Only some of the Civil Servants in the MMDAs acknowledge and linked budget issues the broader economic and political context Ghana operates in. A Civil Servant at the Ministry of Finance states that naturally the “MoF has to prioritize funds” and asses how crucial the nature of the request is (No.99). In the capital SCS add that the budget constraints are not only limited to the agricultural sector, as decline in revenues (due to the decline oil price and donor support) affected many ministries. A Senior Civil Servant in the Ministry of Finance explains that “we [MoF] are often forced to cut the budget […], it effects everybody, but not everybody at the same rate,” depending on the ministries funding structures (No.100). He explains that the education sector will not be affected much because its budget is comprised mostly of salaries to be paid, but “goods and services in all sectors will be affected, so you have late releases, and [empty warrants in Districts where] you have a release but no money in the bank” (No.100). Other MoF Senior Civil Servants questions the agricultural orientation and cheekily asked me to find out the extent different MoF divisions responsible for agriculture are engaged with each other and if any of them have agricultural economists. While a more extensive investigation of the role of the Ministry of Finance is necessary, interviewees – even from the Agriculture and Agribusiness Unit of MoF– confirm that there is “no agricultural economist at the MoF”. Yet is also underlined that the MoF is “the most important ministry” in the Government of Ghana (No.49, 50, and 51). With lacking concrete perspective of agriculture economics within the most important ministry, the sector – which employees around half of the population – suffers more than others because the farmer cannot wait to prepare the fields, sow seeds and so on, in a rain-fed and nature-dependent production system. Increased understanding towards the time-sensitivity of the agriculture sector (e.g. by prioritizing budgets released in the planting season) might increase production and monitoring potential across the sector. Monies from the Government of Ghana have become of secondary importance due to the long- standing and continuous involvement, as well as high-reliance on Development Partner in Districts in the Northern Region of Ghana. Similarly, as in the capital, many civil servants in the districts feel that the financial support of Developing Partners is essential, with one senior staff saying that agriculture departments “would not run anymore, if it would not be for the NGOs” (No.134). The senior staff is referring to NGOs selected and financing the implementation of Obama administration Feed the Future Initiative. As many MoFA civil servants point out, at the northern regional directorate in Tamale, many DPs are active in the area with a concentration of projects around the metropolitan area and along well paved streets leaving the city. This was confirmed by visits of agricultural district departments in the Northern Region, including the Savalugu-Nanton District, which is located along the paved (yet porous) Bolgatanga Road that leads to Burkina Faso. Particularly popular for its easy accessibility as Part III: Results and Discussion 305 well as for its experienced leadership of a Senior Civil Servant who was able to manage the high number of DP projects, it has been able to attract a number of projects over the years. In 2016 (which co-incidentally was the year the director retired) a total of 12 DP projects and programs were still ongoing, including: 1. Rice Sector Support Project (RSSP by AdF) 2. Northern Rural Growth Project (NRGP by IFAD/AfDB) 3. Ghana Commercial Agricultural Project (G-CAP by World Bank) 4. Resiliency in Northern Ghana (RING by USAID) 5. TRIAS Ghana 6. Ghana Agricultural Sector Investment Programme (GASIP by IFAD/AfDB) 7. International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) 8. West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP by the Bank) 9. International Crop Research Institute For Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) 10. Urban Agricultural Network (URBANET) 11. Innovation For Poverty Action (IPA) 12. Ghana Trade and Livelihood Coalition (GTLC) While Districts that are further away from Tamale or main roads will have less projects, the selection of Civil Servants in the District all praise the support from the DPs, with special mention of RING, which is the only USAID project that funnels money directly through the District Assemblies (similar to the Canadian government that has extended and plans on extending again their budget support into the decentralized agricultural offices). The officers at the agricultural departments were often supplied with new equipment such as motorbikes by RING and fuel allowances were paid again, allowing the Extension Agents to visit farmers more regularly. The supply of equipment to the MoFA offices has a long history. One Senior Civil Servant with the agriculture department recounts that his first VW pick-up truck was given to him through the German-Ghanaian project in the early 1980s, replaced by the Nissan pick-up financed through an IFAD project in the later 1980s. Meanwhile, the AEAs received motorbikes, soon to be replaced with new ones by the World Bank for the National Extension Agents, while he received a Toyota Hilux, supported with fuel and a maintenance allowance (No.151). He adds that Hilux “stands for high luxury” and that the AgSIPP under the World Bank also supplied a new car, plus fuel allowance, training, uniforms, and equipment through the project (No.151). During these previous projects of the past decades, district officers were often burdened with excessive bureaucracy and accountability towards the national directorate of the MoFA that despite serious and prolonged efforts of decentralization still approved activities in Accra (Chhokar et al. 2015). Still, in 2016 the calculation and release of funds for the MoFA budget continued to be difficult due to the high reliance of Development Partner funds. A Civil Servant at the Ministry of Finance explains that for a budget release the MoFA has to submit an application for funds with proof of 306 Part III: Results and Discussion fulfillment of certain tasks/triggers/milestones (e.g. the submission of documents on engineering work done on a project) (No.99). As a project coordinator with a DP (USA) program who also collected data for a DP coordination survey points out, the milestones that MoFA has to reach to receive the next tranche of funding are often times the challenges, because it’s hard to meet the next targets or triggers (No.56). The reasons behind these difficulties, ranging from poorly designed projects/triggers to issues of capacity within existing structures, are another area of concern that can benefit from further investigation. While funding issues are omnipresent within the MoFA hierarchy, a Senior Civil Servant in a region perceives that the challenge is that [despite decentralization] the majority of funds (65%) are still captured on the national level, instead of sending money to the districts (No.78). The major aspect and relevance for the continuation of a strong national directorate of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture is policy making. An experienced Senior Manager at a DP Program (GER) in the Northern Region also observes that ‘the budget on the national level is fine, but what is coming down is sometimes nothing or only a fraction of the budget of what is presented by the Minister of Finance” (No. 23) He adds: “The salaries are secure but the money for implementation is nearly zero” (No. 23). Sympathetic to the situation “donors and NGOs, those who implement activities’ support the district offices [financially] even if officially we are not allowed to do it” the German Senior DP frankly shares, and adds that in many cases the “organization[headquarter] is friendly in a way about it” (No. 23). To avoid too cozy of relationships, however, MoFA rules demand a rotation of district director of the agricultural departments, every four years, while DPs rotate every three years. Not all are as sympathetic, however, and a USAID Feed the Future project working with the District Assemblies reported some non-compliance with brisk and total forwarding of funds to the agriculture department. A Mid-Level Civil Servant in the Northern Region sees the bureaucratic hold- up of fund releases by the DA as “the albatross on the neck of people,” particularly since “agriculture is very time-bound” (No.148). The bureaucratic hold-ups are often due to the travel plans of the responsible people of the DA (including the DCE). Though, it was also mentioned that some DA expect/hope for a contribution to the DA’s budget from the DPs funds technically solely dedicated to the agricultural department. Some of this financial misunderstanding or mismanagement has been exposed by the Auditor General Report in 2015. However, in 2016, a Civil Servant bemoans that “nothing happens” (No.149). Another SCS in the district explains that “the District Assembly is supposed to be non-partisan. The members are supposed to be standing as individuals, but it is known that each candidate is affiliated to a party. So [the DA] is partisan. It could be interpreted that the structure is such that the government still has control over the assemblies” (No. 106). Despite decentralization, Ayee and Taylor observe and confirm: The stated aim is to ensure consensus-building and promote development, but evidence suggests presidential administrations routinely appoint co-partisans (2010, p.4). Part III: Results and Discussion 307

In a hierarchical environment, with a highly competitive democratic system, many politicians often seem to be under the misguided pressure to focus on financing projects that can corroborate their success in material terms. Development Partners’ money is then accepted without restrictions, even “if the project has come late,” and is unrelated to the needs of the farmers, the leader of the District Assembly wants an integration of it (e.g. into the agriculture department). In case you dare to stand up against the DCE about a DP project, a Senior Civil Servant in the District underlines the continued threat of transfer’ over the heads of civil servants as: “if you refuse [to take the project], they will find a place for you” (No.134). A Senior Academic Researcher adds: The extension officer knows that what probably the regional director is directing him to do is not right, but who is he to tell that director that what you are saying, I don’t agree with it. There is no forum for that, so he just agrees with it and goes up the line […] So I mean and as for knowing that there is something wrong, virtually every level knows that there is something wrong. Right from people in Accra, to researchers, to people at the region, people at the district, people in the community, everybody knows that there is something wrong with the whole system. But where to tackle it, and how to go round it, is the problem (No. 72). As the quote above illuminates, the Ghanaian culture and social norm to pay respect to age as well as status, as alluded to in Chapter 3, makes criticizing or going against your supervisor even more difficult than elsewhere in the world. In addition, the aforementioned case of Ghanaian civil servants the fear over transfers to the rural, often underdeveloped areas known as ‘the bush’, is a managerial method also used by the highest ranking posts of the hierarchy to mute challenging, critical staff voices. Good leadership and management skills are difficult to find in general, but seems particularly amiss in the agricultural sector in Ghana. Across the globe it is a curious situation in which democracy has been chosen by most nations as their model of national management, however, large part of the private sector continues to enforce rules top-down, similar to dictatorships, with a reliance on hierarchical structures, ruling or managing with status and fear based models. In the Western world, enlightened leaders started to pay more attention to the quality of management after the Second World War, including psychological facets (e.g. the Myers-Briggs personality test) and cultural facets in the late 1960s (e.g. Hofstede’s theory on culture, applied to IBM). However, good management and leadership arose during a time of prosperity and historically low unemployment (less than 5%) the competition over ‘good staff’ was much more fierce. Ghana is of course in a very different situation, where employment opportunities, particularly for younger Ghanaians, are missing and the nascent industrial private sector has the opportunity to pick from a wide array of scholarly and technically competent workers. Indeed, youth unemployment continues to be a grave concern, especially with many children of farmers turning their backs on rural Ghana and migrating to the cities in hope of a better life. Constructive criticism toward the older and more powerful leadership ranks has, hence, been very limited. 308 Part III: Results and Discussion

Nevertheless, some of the younger and motivated staff within the civil service seem to be growing impatient, expressing dismay on the limited responsibilities and opportunities they have to fulfill their potential. An Agriculture Extension Agent (AEA) in the Northern Region openly contemplates that if he would get another job he would take it “just to exercise my brain”, as he says and adds, “Here we can’t do anything, because we have no resources, unless there is a project” (No.152). Extension Agents are of particular importance for the implementation of any policy, for example the FASDEP. AGRA (2015, p.1) highlights and summarizes in their analysis: FASDEP II envisions modernizing agriculture and promoting large-scale commercialization of agriculture through generation, dissemination and adoption of improved agricultural technologies to our farmers. This requires an effective and efficient agricultural extension and advisory service within the agricultural supply-chain system. To analyze the agricultural sector and actually understand the effectiveness and efficiency of policies on the implementation level, it is than essential to also have a look at the first, last and ultimate link between the farmers and the institutions: The Agriculture Extension Services.

11.2. Agriculture Extension Services Agriculture Extension Agents (AEAs) are part of the “Agriculture Department and are supervised by the District Agriculture Officer (DAO), who reports to the Director of the Agriculture Department, who reports to the Chief Executive Officer” in the DA, as a Senior Civil Servant in the Northern Region describes (No.106). In many ways the AEAs represent the bottom of the agriculture institutional framework, yet a Senior Manager at a DP Program (USA) in the Northern Region underlines “MoFA really is extension services” (No.158). AEA remain closer to the farmers than any other stakeholders for the agricultural sector, yet have been struggling to fulfil their important role. Until the late 1980s all MoFA directorates had their own extension units. But with the first national agriculture extension program (supported by the World Bank), a “unified extension approach” started, forcing AEAs to become generalists even though they used to be specialist before the program, a SCS within the Extension directorate recalls (No.183). The Neoliberal turn introduced by the program of the Bank in the 1980s also forced the MoFA to discontinue the distribution of (free/subsidized) input supplies to farmers. Form Minister Quashigah explains the impact on extension by observing that: Above all, the removal of subsidies on agricultural inputs took away some of the incentives the traditional extension services depended upon to attract farmers to adopt available technology (MoFA 2003, p.iv.). A Senior Civil Servant with LGS explains that The next critical Agricultural Extension Policy, taking a further step away from state support and one towards a reliance on the private sector for the agricultural sector “was developed in 2002 with the help of a local as well as an consultant from the Part III: Results and Discussion 309

UK” as a SCS from the Metropolitan District level (No.157). The 2002 project’s financial support was granted by the German Development Agency, GTZ, and the UK office for Department for International Development, DfID. The Civil Servant recounts that while European agencies did not influence the content of the draft extension policy that resulted out of the project, “the World Bank tried, and did influence aspects of private sector participation,” and adds that “harsh words were exchanged, because we felt threatened” (No.157). The 2002 extension policy attempted to make extension services more ‘participatory and demand-driven’ with the need to encourage the private sector to fund and deliver services to farmers and fishermen (MoFA 2003). With dwindling pubic funds for extension services in particular and the agricultural sector in general, the policy also introduced and focused on Farmer Based Organizations (FBOs) as private sector operators that were meant to encourage and contribute to information and experience exchange structures for farmers by farmers. Since then, agricultural stakeholders, particularly DPs, have seen FBOs as a good alternative to extension services and have funded a multitude of projects in this regard. While further research would be beneficial as to assess the full status and degree of functioning of all FBOs, all interviewed to the subject agreed that there seems to be much room for improvement as there have been signs alluding to a serious lack of trust, accountability, and functionality of the Farmers Based Organization in most of Ghana. While the involvement of the state continued to be scaled back from the 1980s onwards in regards to crop and livestock sector, it is interesting and important to point out that the cocoa sector was always exempt from these Neoliberal ideas. While MoFA civil servants were informed that by 2002 “the private sector should also provide extension services” a retired Officer of the COCOBOD recalls on his three decades of extending services to cocoa famers underlining that: [a]lmost every time, some of the staff who would invite the farmers and then myself - I had somebody who is also in charge of extension - so both of us will go together. We gather the farmers and then we educate them, then we asked them to ask all the questions that they want to ask us, and then we find solutions for them (No.204). While extension was well alive and working for the cocoa sector, it was cancelled for crop and livestock farmers. The COCOBOD Officer further recalls that “most of the time they will be asking of chemicals: how to use it during the spraying against capsids.” Agro-chemicals are, indeed, also of great concerns for all other stakeholders of the agricultural sector. Across Ghana is had become increasingly easy to buy is a plethora of pesticides, herbicides and insecticides from across the globe, being sold by a wide array of merchants also in the most remote areas of Ghana. Weedicides have become particularly popular because they are cheaper than hiring outside labor. This predicament must also be understood in light of the praiseworthy effort by the Ghanaian government to increase access to education since many of the former farmhands/children are no longer available for these laborious activities (this is intensified by the boarding school system that often leads high school students to live away from home during the school year). 310 Part III: Results and Discussion

A SCS working in a district adds: “everybody uses Glyphosate268 because they heard that they should use it and it’s on billboards and even TV advertisements” (No.139). During the focus group discussions the group of (22) young men also confirms that all in the village use agro-chemicals because “if you don’t, weed is everywhere.” At the same time all four focus group members comment on health concerns, stating that they “think there is a problem” as many have experienced pains in the joints, body itches, and red eyes and runny noses after using the agro-chemicals. That the illiteracy, which is widespread about small scale farmers, does not infringe on understanding the danger of the toxic chemicals was also made clear when the commercial farmer took me along to the field for mass spraying against the armyworm attack on maize fields close to Tamale in 2016, but made clear that villagers that saw me going along with the men expressed their concern and made clear that women are never meant to be in or close to the field during the spraying. So while most farmers are aware of the dangers of agro-chemicals, many of them feel they have no choice (with the high labor cost) and are left to trust the salesperson to advise them on its use. As the young men in the focus groups explain: “where you buy [the weedicide] they [should] tell you how to measure it, e.g. with an empty milk can.” A women’s leader of an agricultural NGO (operating mostly in Brong Ahafo) underlines the seriousness of the harmful side effects of agro-chemicals in the absence of formal education and proper instructions, especially on women, as she explains: How can a farmer control pest on their vegetables? These things need technical advice, but we don't see anybody [i.e. Agricultural Extension Agents]. So we go and buy the pesticide and we go to apply the way we think. Most of them are not educated, so they can't read the instructions on the things. And a 23-year-old woman went to spray her farm, to farm. I don't know if it was the direction of the wind, in the evening she was not coming home. They went to the farm. She was dead with the machine on her back (No.226). The aging farmers, especially women, are still at a grave disadvantage for reading, speaking, and understanding English. While younger generations have greatly benefited from the spread of free basic education, many adults seemingly have been left behind, and partly relying on children for translation during field visits in 2016. English literacy, however, will not guarantee survival from the toxicity of agro-chemicals. For one, because a great array of products that are produced in non-English speaking countries, e.g. China, France and Middle Eastern countries, print instructions in their languages only or often in very small letters, with obscure translations, even literate people cannot understand. Agro-chemicals are under the shared responsibility of the MoFA as well as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA is supposed to inspect all agro-chemical imports that arrive in the port of Accra, as well as through any other boarders. As one EPA officer confesses, agro-chemicals

268 Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum weed-killer/herbicide, also known as Roundup by Monsanto. Additional information available: https://monsanto.com/company/media/statements/glyphosate-herbicide/ [ accessed: 10.03.2017]

Part III: Results and Discussion 311 coming through the borders, e.g. from Lomé, are “very difficult to screen” and adds: “I don’t remember the last time our customer [officers] said they seized a chemical” (No. 16). Within MoFA it is the Plant, Protection & Regulatory Services - PPRSD269 - that has a 1. Plant Quarantine, 2. Seed Certification, 3. Plant, pest and diseases, as well as 4. Pesticides and Fertilizer Division. In collaboration with the EPA the division is also meant to “teach and train Extension Agents, Input Dealers, and commercial pest control agents” (No.175). Another Civil Servant of the Division observes that “we know the effects the chemicals have on the environment and health, but farmers don’t get it’ because ‘if it doesn’t kill you instantly so it won’t be [that] bad’ (No.31). Indeed, the Extension Agent that worked as my translator during the focus group discussions with the young man in the village, also by pointed out that the side-effects that they were complaining about were due to the fact that they don’t protect themselves, even though they have been instructed to do so. While the number of AEA is one part of the problem, the omnipresent sellers of agro-chemical are another. Within the EPA, who is responsible to train the seller of agro-chemicals together with the PPRSD, a Mid-level Civil Servant admits that monitoring of the chemical within Ghana ‘”is a problem, because we are under-staffed” (No.16). This issue is exacerbated by that fact that the personnel trained by the EPA – the shop-owners – “will often hire a SHS [Senior High School] student to sit behind the counter, who is not trained (ibid). Lack of resources for the regional and district level, particularly for the EPA and PPRSD, can have serious unintended consequences, while often only lethal over the long-term. Investigation into the pollution of Ghana’s waterways and regular inspections of chemical-residue on agricultural products are of upmost importance to protect farmers and consumers alike. A Senior Manager for a DP Program (GER) says the quality of food available within Ghana can be shameful, and should cause grave concerns, e.g. around cancer-causing chemicals applied by remain uninvestigated and hence undetected. 270 Under-resourced and under-equipped, Civil Servants of the MoFA agro-chemical testing unit assert that “detecting adulterated products is difficult because there is only a laboratory here [in Accra] but not in the field’ (No.175 and No.176).However, not even in the capital can the laboratories function properly, which lead to a grave ban by the European Union on four products/vegetables that has gone into its third year by 2017. Another Senior Manager at a DP Program (GER) laments that officers don’t even have the most rudimentary equipment (e.g. magnifying glasses) available while required to conform to highly restrictive sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) requirements of the EU (No.3).271 The situation would be much less grave if

269 PPRSD is NOT part of the decentralization effort. The second is the Veterinary Directorate. 270 The original quote: “Ich will jetzt nicht sagen es ist Ihnen egal, aber sie haben kein Bewusstsein dafür und zudem sind auch die Ghanaer auch nicht bereit für mehr Qualität zu zahlen, und dass ist auch einer der Knackpunkte. Also da gabs auch ein Gespräch mit der Kollegin X. von der DBX, sie meinte die Krebsraten in Ghana sind gestiegen, man kann das statistisch Nachverfolgen, Mais wäre krebserregend, würde mir empfehlen keine Erdnüsse mehr zu essen, also Sie hat da die schlimmsten Zahlen und das find ich schon, also ja, da ist es skandalös das die Ghanaische Regierung Ihre Bürger besser schützt.[…]” (No.6) 271 The actual words in German -verbatime -were: „Also die haben gerade ein EU Ban. Vier Produkte dürfen nicht mehr in die EU exportiert werden, weil da Quarantäne Insekten drin sind. Quarantäne Insekten sind, sind 312 Part III: Results and Discussion enough Extension agents would be in field educating, supporting and advising famers on the appropriate use of agro-chemicals. A Member of Parliament who previously spent 20 years with the MoFA, laments that the AEA ratio could be “the worst in the world’ where you have 50,000 farmers and you have five AEA officers and they can’t even afford a call to the farmers they are expected to consult” (No.115). While the MP’s estimate is on the high end of public estimates, which usually circle around 1:1,500 to 1: 2,5000 to 1:3,000 (see: Sarpong 2008; GoG 200; AGRA 2015; IPA forthcoming). At the same time it must be understood that much trust has been lost over the past years between AEA and farmers. A Senior Extension Agent in the Northern Region cautions “less farmers want the [extension] service because there is a difference between who wants to farm and those who want extension services, depending on the aspiration of farmers and if they see agriculture as a business and are happy with what they have’”. He adds that when “you go to a settlement, you think everybody is a farmer, but there are children and old people” too (No.98). Also, there is a preference of most Civil Servants to live in urban areas over the bush, which has led to a concentration of agricultural staff in Metropolitan areas that need to be released (e.g. by the Minister who should step in), as a SCS in the capital explains (No.30). She adds that AEAs don’t always live in the operational areas (which depend on the size of the district), and some of the districts don’t have an agriculture office while other districts hold too much staff (No. 30). The issues around extensions are much more complex as this thesis allows elaborating on. Of particular importance would be further investigations into the education system of agricultural workers (the ag colleges and Universities), and how the focus on foreign, high-external input, commercial agricultural focus has exposed farmers and their soil to undue risks due to a carelessness in policy planning and implementation. Here it is important to underline the inter-related nature of policy, budget and implementation, and of course the power of developmental ideas, e.g. seeing the privates sector as the panacea for development. Analyses and debates around extension reforms continue to be along neoliberal lines, focusing on the further privatization of the services. Simultaneously there have been efforts to also improve the quality of inputs via an adjustment to the Plant and Fertilizer Act.

11.3. The private sector and DP promoted policies Since independence the agricultural sector in Ghana has been pushed towards commercialization and modernization, understood as the use of a wide variety of external inputs and machinery, which are to a very large extent produced by the private sector of foreign countries and then imported. Eternal inputs, such as inorganic fertilizers, where first heavily imported, subsidized and distributed in

was absolut vermieden wird, das sie sich nicht diese Insekten, nicht in der EU verbreiten sollen. Deswegen, das die nicht, und da sind diese Produkte verboten worden. Und diejenigen die das kontrollieren sollen, also hier am Flughafen oder am Hafen, habe noch nicht mal die Lupen um zu sehen ob da die Insekten drin sind. Das sind 14,50 EUR. Ja. Und dann soll man sich nicht wundern, dass das dann. Und dann kommt diese riesige Maschine EU Kontrolle in Deutschland und in, in Frankreich und was-weiss-ich, und die haben noch nicht mal die Lupen“ Part III: Results and Discussion 313 the 1970s with Gen. Acheampong’s Operations Feed Yourself (OFY). With the onset of liberalization in the early 1980s the government of Ghana was started taking a hiatus from active support of the agricultural sector that was only reversed with the national fertilizer subsidy program started in 2008. This move was also in line with the African Fertilizer Summit held in 2006 in Abuja, Nigeria were Ghana committed to an increase of fertilizer application from a current estimate of 8-12kg/ha to 50 kg/ha. Shortly after the subsidies re-started an act to “prove for plant protection, seeds and fertilizer control’ was conceptualized and presented in Parliament in 2010. A retired Senior Civil Servant who was involved in the process as a seed specialist for the MoFA explains that the Plant and Fertilizer Act of 2010 was set into motion and supported by “DPs who came to see the problem starting in 2007/2008” (No.121). A Ghanaian Senior Researcher (denoted as S, while Q is the interviewer) who had worked as a consultant for USAID during the same time, adds: The process [of the Plant and Fertilizer Act] has been long. In fact, I work with a project called (TIPSY). It’s a USAID project. And we talked to the ministry at that time and they said they had a Plant and a Seed Law from 1961 and it has lived its usefulness, so they need to review it. And so the process started at that time (No.71). The Act was set to regulate the seed and fertilizer markets as well as protect Ghana from the introduction and spread of plants and pests (Asuming-Brempong 2014). The three DPs most often commended for their support in the agricultural policy arena over the past decade were USAID, AGRA and up until 2012, the World Bank. A Senior Officer, who had been in a key position for two of its recent policy operation programs supported by the World Bank, explains that by sitting with the GoG the Bank extracts policy objectives, which were then recorded in a policy matrix that lists expected outcomes for each year (emphasis added)(No.107). These expected outcomes are usually phrased in a manner such as “50 million [US$] for the budget given, if …”, and as the Senior Officer further explains “so 50 million and in return they [the GoG] do ‘this’, e.g. the Plan and Fertilizer Act, which was done because of ‘this’ agreement on expected outcomes” (No.107). “There are policy triggers, [but] people call them conditionalities”, he remarks, and underlines that “the bank gives money if policy action is taken, and if you implement the policy” (No.107). The Bank’s policy program ended in 2012, however, and it has been USADI and AGRA that have most actively supported the formation and implementation of agricultural policies since then. AGRA worked on improving the policy environment so as to increase private sector investment in agribusiness linked to smallholder’s agriculture value chains through the MIRA (Micro-Reforms for African Agribusiness) project. A Senior Officer working on MIRA reports that the USAID project is known to have a large budget but they have “never been in contact with them to cooperate or coordinate efforts” (No. 203). This lack of coordination is as USAID and AGRA are almost cousins, in the sense that they are both US-DP programs receiving funds from the US Government. 314 Part III: Results and Discussion

In 2015/2016 the US had a total of 30 ongoing projects272 in the agriculture sector of Ghana, mostly financially enabled under the Presidential Feed the Future (FTF) Initiative and managed by USAID. The Agriculture Policy Support Project- APSP - was a well-endowed FTF project focused on policy and headquartered in Accra. A Senior Manager at this USAID program summarizes APSP’s goal as “basically aimed at strengthening the agricultural policy process [and providing an] enabling environment for the private sector to invest more in agriculture” (No.70). they had worked closely with the Ministries and the government of Ghana, even hiring retired Senior Civil Servants, but also voiced a ‘lone wolf approach’ so common in the aid industry. When asked about the cooperation with other policy projects the Senior Manager responds: I’ve heard of this World Bank initiative but not been able to get a whole lot of information, and in any case, as you mentioned, they must have finished before I came here. Okay but the worst thing of all is with AGRA […] Okay, we will work with these guys straight, because we are almost cousins.[But] We never met. Who knows about MIRA? Nobody knows MIRA, not even MOFA. It is a total disaster. What we have done, is coordinate among the Feed the Future programs (No.70). USAID Feed the Future projects in particular were well-coordinated in 2015/2016 with the manager of the projects known as Chief of Parties (COP) forming a CCC (Collaborative Circle of COPs), meeting on a quarterly basis to coordinate, undertake, and even finance activities in a collaborative fashion. However, the vision and initiative brought to coordinate projects within USAID “is difficult to do with the other DPs, because they have their own structure [and] they have their own political motivations” (No.70). On the difficulties of Donor Coordination in Ghana he aptly adds: It is quite difficult to coordinate with all the agents, because they have their own vision. They have their own ways too, all around the problems and most of them remember they are eager to show their own resources, are their own…, well of course, I mean you have the Agricultural Sector Working Group where we meet with MOFA, we share activities, we share information. We try to do things together but the lack of coordination and the lack, the

272 Projects included: ATT – Agriculture Technology Transfer Project; METSS II – Monitoring Evaluation and Technical Support Services; Program for Biosafety Systems; Soybean Innovation Lab; Strengthening Partnerships, Results and Innovation in Nutrition Globally; Sustainable Fisheries Management Project; US Borlaug Fellows Program in Global Food Security: USAID Technical and Financial Support to SARI; USAID/FTF – Agriculture Policy Support Project; USAID/UCC Fisheries and Coastal Management Capacity Building Support Project; West Africa Trade and Investment Hub; African Leadership Development; African Research in sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation; AWARD - African Women in Agricultural Research and Development; Africa Rice – Technical Assistance to Rice Seed Sector Development in Ghana; ADVANCE – Agricultural Development & Value Chain Enhancement; ARP – Postharvest for AVRDC; BHEARD – Borlaug Higher Education for Agricultural Research and Development; Borlaug Leadership Enhancement in Agriculture Project; Costal Sustainable Landscapes Project; FTF – Innovation Lab for Climate Resilient Cowpea; FTF Innovation Lab for Genomics to Improve Poultry; FTF Innovation Lab for Soybean Value Chain Research; FinGAP – Financing Ghanaian Agriculture Project; FTF Innovation lab for the reduction of post-harvest loss; Ghana Sustainable Fisheries Management Project; Increasing the productivity of smallholder groundnut farmers in Ghana, Mali and Nigeria; Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation; and Legume Innovation Lab for: Project Code and Title: SO1.A5 Genetic improvement of cowpea to overcome biotic stress and drought constraints to grain productivity (Data provided by METSS/USAID). Part III: Results and Discussion 315

capacity of MOFA to control the projects is very weak. And not just because many of the programs are off budgets but because they don’t have the resources to kind of make an impression on the international community (No.70). While coordination within policy projects of Development Partners has been weak, legislation was moved forward. In 2013 a Plant Breeders’ Bill was introduced to further ensure the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), to protect the rights of breeders of new varieties, which is usual for a member of the World Trade Organization, such as Ghana. Local NGOs have often interpreted this Plant Breeders Bill (PBB) of 2013 as the legal grounds for the introduction of Genetically Modified Seeds (GMOs) (See: Rock, forthcoming/ 2018). However, many interviewees familiar with the claim of the groups that organized the resistance against the Plant Breeders Bill pointed to the misinterpretation, since the Biosafety Act of 2011 (Act 831) had already been passed. In 2016 a Member of Parliament laments that due to this misunderstanding ‘from different organizations’ it was “difficult to do anything because they think it [PBB] is about GMOs” (No.118). The USAID project, which worked on the Plant Breeders Bill and regulations for the Biosafety Act, helped to guide the process from MoFA to Parliament and finished their end of the barging. As a Senior Manager at an involved DP (USA) Program describes: We have readjusted, reviewed the seeds regulations. We finished with that work about a year ago. We went through the process of assisting the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to validate it with stakeholders to draft the law, the regulation to examine it, to compare it with the international legislation on the subject. We went through the process of getting the regulations adjusted and finally submitted to parliament. From MOFA to Parliament, okay? That’s where we stop, because we have no control over, whatsoever, over the actual passage process. So according to our mandate that is our deal done. We finish the seeds regulations and now we are sitting there for approval, okay?(No. 70). Within Parliament the PBB, which ultimately is about patent rights, was referred to two sub- committees in Parliament (the agriculture and the constitutional & legal sub-committee). A Senior Civil Servant in Parliament explains that these sub-committees undertook a series of consultations that make them “feel it [PBB] should be passed, as it was the Biosafety Act of 2011 that gave GM the rights to trials” (No.29). As a Senior Officer at an agricultural NGO points out, the National Biosafety Authority had been established with the passing of the Act in 2011, and was “mandated to look at biotechnology and biosafety”, which initiated research via “the Genetic Resource Center” as part of the CSIR platform (No.195). In the Agricultural Sector Progress Report of 2015 the Ministry of Food and Agriculture confirms that “field trials on rice, soybeans, etc. using modern agricultural biotechnology methods are being carried out by research institutes and universities in the country” (2016, p. 55; also see Rock, J.; 2018). The public uproar on biosafety led to a sensitization campaign that included elaborate workshops to “selected leaders all over the country that met in the middle of Ghana” one participating 316 Part III: Results and Discussion

Senior Officer of an agricultural NGO describes ,and adds that is was “a whole seminar on it, when they taught us from A to Z on biotechnology and biosafety” (No.226). [T]hey thought it’s wiser that we needed to finance you people, your leaders, you go and come to learn. So there were traditional leaders, church leaders, Farmer Based Organization leaders and so many groups of people. So they told us, when we go back, we should disseminate the information to everybody to know that the biotechnology and biosafety is safe. When you produce and eat it it’s safe. So that is all. And the Plant Breeders Bill it was all discussed there” (No. 226). In the end, and despite the belated public debate that certain NGOs had engendered around GMOs and Ghana’s regulations around it, Parliament passed the PBB in 2016. While the public had been assuaged in regards to the Plant Breeders Bill, the private sector was enraged by the details of the Plant and Fertilizer Act of 2010 that was passed and was supposed to include “seed laws that was a prerequisite for the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition” as a Senior Officer at a DP (USA) Program alludes (No.225). He emphasizes that the “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition is all about bringing in the private sector to bring in innovations, but the biggest problem is, however, something we discovered just in June (2015) – a clause in the Plant and Fertilizer Act’ (ibid). Indeed under Section 39 (1) (a) of the Act, seed import is restricted to “experimental and research proposes, or (b) the direct and commercial distribution to farmers for production”, but must otherwise be produced locally (Asuming-Brempong 2014, p.20). This caveat had apparently remained unclear for international private sector seed exporters such as DuPont-Pioneer that contacted the Government of Ghana in mid-2015. USAID, who aimed at ensuring the import of seed was surprised rather late to read and understand in June 2015 that the seed that they have used from DuPont-Pioneer in their FTF projects cannot continue to be imported as ”even if the variety is approved, the law states that the seeds have to be produced inside of Ghana” as a Senior Officer at DP Program (USA) Officer recounts, and highlights that “you can only import seed otherwise for testing purposes with farmers” (No. 225).The GoG in turn asked seed producers, such as DuPont-Pioneer to submit a plan on how they will produce seeds within Ghana, as the Senior Officer and liaison/partner to Pioneer explains (No.225). While DuPont-Pioneer was hard pressed to find alternative solutions, while Wienco’s FBO – Masara N’Arziki – allowed them to continue with the importation of seed, using a loophole within the system, as the import could be for testing purposes for their FBO-members/ farmers (No.225). DuPont, who has only very few testing and seed production sites in the world, asked the government for a three-year grace period, asking the Government to sign a letter of exception for the import of seeds, but ran out of patience with the GoG the very morning of the interview in November 2015 and communicated to their USAID partner that they would ‘pull out’ (ibid). While the “2 million program, with matching funds with USAID on the development of the seed market in Ghana” seemed to have failed, the Senior manager announced that “now we will contact our embedded advisor in the ministry to get an import bill for seeds, even if the program with DuPont is dead for now” (No.225). While the Part III: Results and Discussion 317 internal USAID list of “Implementing Partners” included a list of 44 different high-level decision makers, ranging from senior Ghanaian researchers to credit analysts at banks, it most importantly contained a total of six embedded advisors in various ministries. Four were with the most important ministry in Ghana, the MoF, listed as USDA/PASA embedded Advisors, ostensibly describing the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) with Participating Agency Service Agreements (PASA) for Staff that is funded by USAID. One other was positioned in the MoFA and one in the MoTI. The embedded advisor USAID’s MoFA embedded advisor’s office in 2015/2016 was on the fourth floor, two doors down from the office of the Minister and right next to one of the Deputy Ministers. It is a common occurrence for DPs to seek/provide advice to the most powerful person within the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, by positioning an advisor within the building. The German Development Agency (GIZ, formerly known as GTZ) used to have an entire part of their team sitting inside the MoFA. They voluntarily left in 2012 to move to more spacious offices, but attempted in 2015/2016 to get into a large office on the fourth floor again. A Senior Officer working with the African Development Bank (AfDB) highlights that all DPs want to “get attention, to get our interest heard,” to the point that “the Minister is confused with all the different goals of the DPs. His colleague at the Agence Francaise de Developpement (AfD) elaborates: For example AfD, we work with MoFA of course, but we often talk to the Deputy Minister or the chief director. And those are political figures. After we also work, for example, with the director, with the director of agencies, director of crop services which is part of the MoFA. And in that case this position is not political. Still it’s a high position and we can expect the people to change if the party changes or these kind of things (No.232). While collaboration between DPs and the GoG makes sense, the extent and essence of influence, e.g. with embedded USDA advisors next to Minister’s offices, should be questionable, also in light of international power structures that have not radically changed since the end of colonialism and overshadow these interaction. Furthermore, the deep distrust towards African states and their institutions, the private sector has become the panacea for development, to a degree that policies are promoted to open up new markets or expand existing ones for large private sector actors. The Plant and Fertilizer Act was meant to be such a policy, yet had surprising caveats for the private sector, due to highly-aware Ghana contributors. USAID is currently working on remedying this slip-up and it remains to be seen if they can re-establish their good relations with the see producing private sector (e.g. DuPont Pioneer). On the other hand, the Biosafety Act has been passed swiftly and almost unrecognized, opening a pathway towards GMO that cannot be completely assessed at this point. What is evident is the multitude of DPs working in Ghana yet taking different paths almost blindly.

11.4. Donor Disarray and USAID With the large variety of government supported development projects operating within the agricultural sector of Ghana, responsibilities and interests naturally deviate. As a Senior Officer of DP Program 318 Part III: Results and Discussion

(UK), metaphorically phrased it: “USAID and DFID are like two ships selling in two different directions” (No.215). A Ghanaian who has been working for DP program over the past decade adds: There are a couple of issues there. Every DP comes here with his own interest and we have to be mindful of that. So sometimes, the interest might be conflicting in country… but there is little they can do […]It is conflicting where there are too many donors in a limited economic space […]And then depending on the people you bring, if you bring outsiders, 2 years, they are only floating. They hardly understand anything. So we waste resources and we waste time (No. 69).273 As the centers of power continue to be in capitals across an ocean, DPs themselves have little room or leverage to drastically change programs or programs that were envisioned by their countries elite of politicians, lobbyists and civil servants. A Senior Officer with a German DP program feels that with all the constraints donor “coordination is simply not possible” (No.3) under the current structure. While the majority of DP projects have been drafted in oversea offices, their implementation has been focused what has been referred to as a “limited economic space” of Northern Ghana. USAID defines their areas of intervention as the area “above the 8th Parallel”, which includes the Northern Region, Upper East, Upper West, and parts of Brong Ahafo. Since the global food price crisis of 2007- 2008, a plethora of projects have been administered in Ghana by USAID, making it “a big beast with around 800 employees in all of Ghana and 70 at HQ [in Accra]”, ass a Mid-Level Officer phrased it (No.56). Of the 97 ongoing projects, 30 are supported by USAID affiliated projects (excluding World Bank partner project, GCAP), as reported by the Project Coordination Unit at the MoFA likewise supported by USAID’s Monitoring Evaluation and Technical Support Services project (METSS). At the same time (in 2016) a Mid-Level Civil Servant at the MoFA unit states that “the only government program currently running is the fertilizer subsidy” program (No.179). The lack of funding for routing project monitoring and evaluation activities has created a monopoly as “DPs have the funds available to collect data from where they have their interventions, but MoFA staff is unable to do even routine projects due to the limited resources” as a project coordination staff at the MoFA underlines. The natural lead to coordinate this multitude of donors, MoFA, is hence incapacitated due to the lack of funds available. As mentioned before, USAID is particularly wary of funds flowing through Ghanaian ministries. That is why they open a bidding process and award contracts to international NGOs, such as ACDI/VOCA, to implement Feed the Future projects. As commonly done by DPS, projects are usually led by international experts (called Chief of Parties in the USAID structure), but will hire local staff for the lower/larger part of the organizational hierarchy. While other DPs, such as IFAD, the Bank, or AfD will partner with and operate within the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, USAID prefers to keep their offices and operations separate (with the exception of the aforementioned RING project) due to the fear of the misappropriation of funds as echoed by several Senior Staff. USAID still relies on and

273 More of this part of the interview can be found in the Appendix. Part III: Results and Discussion 319 supports AEA in the district to guide the famers, which in turn is appreciated by the AEA as ”they can do their work better thanks to us”, as a Senior Officer working for a USAID program points out (No.158). Indeed many AEA and other civil servants are thankful for the support of DPs, such as USAID projects (RING in particular), that finally provide equipment and allowances to undertake projects. However, do a lack of leadership as well as funds from the GoG, MoFA has a hard time to keep track of and evaluating the plethora of project. The task is made furthermore difficult/ impossible because as a Mid-Level Officer at a DP (HOL) program describes (No.193): There are different projects who are doing the same thing. Just behind closed doors. Just by each other. You go to the farm it’s about 5 donors. You go, the next farm, it’s another. The strategy for the donors has been centered on the promotion of the private sector, many have been using approaches such as the Nucleus Outgrower scheme (especially US DPs), while others have focused on a value-chain approach (especially European DPs). The Nucleus Outgrower scheme is focused on a large-scale farmer/investor, called Nucleus farmer, who is selected (e.g. by the Bank for its GCAP) and supported in his work with a number of small-scale farmers, called Outgrower. These Outgrowers are guided to produce commercial crops using an array of external inputs, including seed, fertilizer and pesticides, while using their own land (often rented from the Chief or other traditional authority) and sell their to the nucleus farmer at harvest time. The scheme was first praised in the World Bank’s Agricultural Sector Review in 1985, and brought up again in Parliament where the Select Committee in 1999 urged MoFA to speed up their processes of Nucleus Outgrower scheme as “the program has not taken off in many parts of the country” in 1999 (GoG 1999). Over the past two decades the Nucleus Outgrower Scheme has spread more or less successfully to many of the DP programs. Before the DPs caught on to it, it was the private sector company Wienco, which has been active within Ghana since the 1970s, and who was also one of the first to pioneer the Nucleus Outgrower scheme. In their approach Wienco provides the inputs, credit, and extension and “guaranteed prices for what Wienco will buy the product back, with the farmer usually repaying with 20 bags of maize” at the end of the harvest as a Senior Manager at Wienco explains (No.141). A technical Manager adds that contract farmers produce for export but also for the local market, with inputs sourced from all over, including: Bayer, DuPont-Pioneer, Yara and also from Wienco, but generally from all kinds of Multi-National Companies (No.154). While Wienco started out in the Cocoa sector they have actively expanded into cotton, rice, vegetables (onion), and maize in particular. In 2016 Wienco’s maize and cotton farmer groups included 11,500 famers, with roughly 30,000 acres (i.e. 23,000 acres of maize and 5,500 acres of cotton) (No.141). For maize, Wienco founded and started working with the aforementioned Famer Based Organization (FBO) named Masara N’Arziki around 2010 (No.154). When asked about the DP projects active in the same operational area as Wienco, a Senior Manager comments that they try not to worry too much about other organizations, but that all the donors are frustrating since its unfair competition that drives up prices. He goes on to explain “for one, I rent a 320 Part III: Results and Discussion house for 600 GHC, but USAID come and rent for US$ 600, and secondly the price for loading maize used to be 5 pesewas, but today its 30 pesewas, because that is what WFP [World Food Program] pays (No. 141). He underlines that this price inflation caused by the many donor projects in Northern Ghana actually is a disruption of markets rather than help. While USAID & Co. ostensibly support the private sector the reality on the ground is again more complex as expected at first sight. The Feed the Future Initiatives, financed by the US government, have the benefit of great coordination among the various FTF-projects that turn work closely with a variety of private companies of their choosing. For example, when projects use ‘demonstration plots’, such as ADVANCE, they can rely on their FTF-‘sister’-organization ATT (Agriculture Technology Transfer) that develops guidelines for Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), including a list of appropriate inputs, such as fertilizer and seed. A Senior Officer on the project points out that technically, “any certified seed can be used – hybrid or the open pollinating varieties and it is up to the private sector, what they bring” (No.158). However, USAID has worked particular close with DuPont Pioneer for seeds, while other inputs are often by other multinational companies (e.g. Yara and Chemico for fertilizer, RnG and Rainbow for pesticides, Antica or MnB, while equipment is often supplied by John Deere. The professed benefit is that the farmers receive the selected products initially at a highly subsidized rate (or even for free), to introduce them and tie them to, e.g. certain seeds. And with the late discovered issues of the Plant and Fertilizer Act for DuPont Pioneer/USAID, it might be less surprising that FTF project managers lamented that “the biggest issue is the availability of certified seed” as one of the ADVANCE officers in the capital phrased it (No. 182). The officer adds that for the ADVANCE (USAID) program, for example, the Pannar Hybrid Maize Seed 274 is preferred, because in “the first year you will harvest 20 bags,” but, as she underlines, “if you don’t replace it the next season yield will drop and you get 50 to 60% lower yield” (ibid). While many farmers have refused or have been financially prevented to give up their traditional selection and preservation of seed, crops such as maize that pollinate with the wind, have been deluded and heirloom varieties destroyed. The issue of seed is yet another area that deserves increased attention and in-depth research. In contrast, the intention of the private sector is well understood: to sell. A Senior Officer (No.158) adds frankly and importantly that the involvement of the multinational companies in USAID’s agricultural projects that “They do it for free, but it’s not. It’s marketing”. Not all Development Partner see this particular kind of involvement of the private sector that USAID is practicing, as innocent. A Senior Officer from another DP program (IFAD) comments on aid programs cooperating with MNC and spending budgets to subsidies private goods by saying: In the past there has also been a lot of spending for private goods, like fertilizer, seed, you know, program where tractors [were given], you know all these things. Which I believe should not be under the public bill. Because […] basically, these things have a tendency to

274 Pannar Seed (Pty) Ltd. is a South African company, but operates as a subsidiary of DuPont Pioneer, formerly Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc; see Bloomberg; Company Overview of Pannar Seed (Pty) Ltd.[accessed: 26.06.2018]; available: https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=47610656 Part III: Results and Discussion 321

crowd out private sector, and you know, close up rather than open the opportunities for all these services in the sectors to develop (No.231). While the ‘free’ private goods might have had the tendency to crowd out the private sector, the at times extravagant gifts (such as machinery, warehouses, irrigation installations etc.) which have been given in particular to Nucleus farmers have had further spillover effects. In the case of some larger contributions and support to farmers, the perception is that “some farmers have gotten spoiled by aid, because, for example, in Northern Ghana, tractors are ruined within 5 years turning the region into a graveyard of tractors” (No.158). Another Mid-Level Officer at a (US) DP program adds that “FBOs are often provided with free inputs, technical assistance, or access to credit, which can lead to an artificial construction and dependence on donors or the government” (No.146). A national Mid-Level Officer at another DP program (WB) adds that aid mentality re-produces structures in which “Europeans are like the patron. We have become dependent” (No. 83). This aid mentality, he feels, has also affected the Ghanaian leaders, politicians and civil servants, who will ask for more (ibid Indeed many DPs continue to entice Ghanaian agricultural stakeholders with additional incentives to participate in workshops and trainings by bringing drinks and snacks. In case of the Extension training that is provided by a USAID program they “pay for everything: food, hotel, transport…but we don’t pay per diems [for AEAs], because MoFA pays, so we can’t pay public servants” (No. 158). While some restrictions apply, it has become clear to Ghanaian stakeholders that the DPs operated with large budgets, as meetings are usual help in extravagant locations and services offered. Undeniably the budget divergences between Ghanaian and Western agricultural initiatives are true, as has been discussed in detail under the Budget Chapter (10). While some Ghanaians might be effected by ‘Donor-Dependency’ or the ‘Robin-Hood’ syndrome, the upright, motivated and hard-working majority will be hard-pressed to follow and continue to implement the techniques taught by the DP programs, as the all rely on high-external inputs that the small-scale farmers in the Northern Regions, which are the poorest class in Ghanaian society, can simple not afford without credit. DPs are aware of the issue, and USAISD for example, has a FTF project named FinGAP (Financing Ghanaian Agriculture) to help solve this issue. In 2015 FinGAP made available an estimated US$42 million for agricultural finance in Ghana, with an average interest rate of 35 percent p.a. (No. 182). This is in line with other DP-enabled lending programs, such as AdF commercial loans that carried an interest between 35-40 percent p.a. (No.232). While for these rates must sound outrageous, it must be recalled that Ghana has had inflation in the double digits over the past years and the Bank of Ghana has had a prime rate, or monetary policy rate above 20% since 2014.275Beyond the interest rates, there are further hurdles to agricultural lending. The Bank of Ghana (2016) ascribes some of them to the lack of technical capacity when it comes to credit appraisals in the sector, resulting in high amounts of non-performing loans. This feeds into the already high-risk

275 See Bank of Ghana- Monetary Policy- Policy Rate Trends available: https://www.bog.gov.gh/monetary- policy/policy-rate-trends [accessed: 10.10.2017] 322 Part III: Results and Discussion perception of the sector that is often only mitigated by mandatory counterpart funding requirements from the Government or Donors. This increased bureaucracy in turn can lead to slow disbursement or delays in funding, which are backbreaking obstacles for a time-reliant activity such as rain-fed agriculture. The lack of reach of the banks and high service delivery costs are in reality only symptoms of the underlying cause: agriculture is of no strategic importance to banks (BoG 2016). This is reflected by only 3.4 percent of loans in the banking sector went to agriculture in 2015, with an average interest rate of 33.2 percent.276As one Senior Officer at a USAID program jokingly comments, “What agricultural crop can you grow to service a 30% debt? Cocaine? Opium?” (No.15). He explains that usually “smallholder farmers on major crops can handle servicing 15% debt on production credit” shown in studies across the globe, and he adds: So, one of the keys to developing agriculture in any country is production credit […] You have to have it, [but] USAID doesn’t include it […] I’ve been on it since 2009, 7 years under their Feed the Future Program. It’s a clear weakness in their model. They say they are about smallholder farmers. I told X, one day, I said to him: You are going to see. You are aggregating wealth to the richest. […]You don't really focus on smallholder farmers. How are you going to service half-a-million smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana? You don’t. You focus on nucleus farmers that have Outgrower schemes (No.15).277 The USAID officer underlines the issue of cost and access to credit, but at the same time highlights an additional, potentially more pernicious issue of increasing inequality among farmers by using the Nucleus-Outgrower scheme that supports Nucleus farmers to a much higher degree and small-scale farmers. This concern is echoed and elaborated on by an unusual participants of the GCAP,278 who feels that the selection of Nucleus farmers already is an issue, as “they know exactly who they give it to: commercial farmers, close to the government” (No.92). Most GCAP grantees [Nucleus farmers] “just know how to look for money, but they don’t need the support for farming. They [DPs/GoG] should rather look at people that have farmed and have an impact because they are young and will continue to farm, instead of benefiting the elite that use [farming] it as a hobby or retirement investment while living in Accra” the second-round GCAP grantee feels (No.92). He furthermore laments the bureaucracy of the Bank as the GCAP has a “very laborious, long and difficult [application] progress which took almost one year,” and is impossible to complete for an average farmer in Ghana, also because “ultimately you need assets and financial expertise to become a GCAP beneficiary”, which is leading many of the GCAP nucleus farmer to be retired ‘big men’ and investors (ibid). In addition, a Mid-Level GCAP-Officer confirms that most of the nucleus farmers are highly educated, e.g. Professors from the US, or others that hold PhDs (No.83).

276 The highest interest rate in 2016 was offered by First Atlantic Bank at 41.2 percent, most banks in the 30 percent range, while the lowest was 24 percent by Standard Chartered Bank. For more details also see Pius Amihere’s report available at citiFM: http://citifmonline.com/2017/03/17/average-interest-on-agric-loans-is-33- 2-percent-bog-report/ [accessed 17.03.2017] 277 A fuller version of the quote is available in the Appendix. 278 GCAP also uses the Nucleus Outgrower scheme. Part III: Results and Discussion 323

GCPA, which has US$ 145 million funding (US$ 100 million loan from the Bank and US$ 45 million grant from USAID) is managed by the World Bank but collaborates with USAID programs such as AVANCE (for training), FinGAP (for finance), and ATT (for technology transfer) (No. 83). The Outgrower scheme is meant to promote commercial- Nucleus - farmers as mentors for smallholders and support commercial farmers/investors to acquire land in communities where, for example, out of 100 ha, 60 ha must be under cultivation of smallholders (ibid). He rationalizes that “GCAP is just a grant for land development” which was used to support nine commercial farmers in the Northern region, that provides matching grants to Nucleus farmers depending on their constraints/need, such as monies for warehouses, roads, extension or electricity (ibid). One of the GCAP Nucleus farmers, which indeed holds a PhD and just recently returned from the US, only started working in agriculture the past three to four years because “they sold me on it”, as he recounts (No.19). He adds that “it was a good deal, especially the land preparation [grant] sounded good,” but he also laments that the application process was ‘very cumbersome’ with the proposal having to be changed multiple times: first under a World Bank format, then under an IMF format (which is totally different), before asking him to use yet another format (ibid). As part of the land preparation grant, equipment was promised as well as support to implement an ‘improved-rain-fed agriculture system’ with the construction of canals to apply water during dry spells in the rainy season. While promises were grant, so were the disappointments. Issues of land preparation were said to be due to “incompetence of the contractor,” but almost more importantly the Nucleus farmer (who did his PhD on irrigation issues) underlines that the field, which was selected by the GCAP group, also does not lend itself to rain harvesting, as it is in the middle of a valley and must use “suspect run-off water from other fields where other famers might apply chemicals to kill weeds that cannot be monitored” (No.19). When two water-logged areas needed fixing so the combine harvester could pass through, it was taken care of by “doing the whole thing [road] by the same contractor that they told me that he was fired” (ibid). The Nucleus farmer explains “all contractors were employed from Kumasi or Accra” [rather than locally/from the Northern Region] and adds that “we as the investors had no influence over the contract” as decisions are made on top, by the big guys (No. 19). These caveats illustrate the difficulties that naturally arise when programs are conceptualized and managed from afar, but also underline issues of steep-hierarchical decision making, potential politicization [with certain, un-qualified contractors receiving the bid] and lack of consequences/learning from previous mistakes [hiring the same contractor back, after he already had failed at the previous task]. Other priorities seemed to have been at play during these decisions that would important to better understand. More stunning, however, was the lack of a combine harvester for the rice which was ready and presented to the public during a celebratory event in November 2016 on the fields north of Tamale and was attended by a row of important men and women from Accra, including national and regional leaders of the MoFA. As previous projects by DPs and the GoG aimed at providing machinery, including combine harvester to the Northern part of Ghana, it was only natural for the MoFA Chief 324 Part III: Results and Discussion

Director to raise the question during the walk along the rice field and addressed to the Regional Director of the Northern Region what happened to the MoFA equipment that was purchased over the years for exactly this purpose. To which the regional Director answered: ‘It was privatized!’ With 15 different DPs active in the agricultural sector of Ghana, implementing almost 100 different project and programs in 2016, it is a pity that a World Bank/USAID showcase project cannot seem to find a combine harvest available during the event. This links us back to the issue first presented in this section that ever DP comes to Ghana with their own interest, and often there is little they can do about it too. While DPs do have vastly different approaches, they do all depend on overseas politicians and decision makers/tax-payers, which usual want the aid project to aim to support the private sector in one way of another. At times, different projects stemming from the same organization (e.g. the Bank) will have different structures and limitations. While the World Bank’s West Africa Agricultural Productivity Program (WAAPP) was praised by the majority of interviewees, the Bank’s Ghana Commercial Agricultural Program (GCAP) was criticized by most. The deciding factor seems to be the participation of knowledgeable field level staff and beneficiaries during the conceptualization phase, as well as flexibility during the implementation phase. A decade after the Paris Declaration asking to hand over decision-making power and ownership to local government participants, power over aid projects is seemingly still clenched in the first of Westerners far away from implementation realities, causing great frustrations on the ground as well as within Donor Coordination Groups. This Donor Disarray is most aptly summed up by Senior Officer of DP Program (GER) who tells: Everybody has his own agenda, his own attitude, and others, how should I say this, his own approach how something should be done. At times we [the DPs] overwhelm the Ghanaians, who barely have capacities to wield or somehow manage it, but who are also commonly polite and say: Well, go ahead. And then one can wonder, if the bird-eye view is taken, to consider how many donors are active, and then the agricultural sector only grew 0.04% [2015], what actually happens with all this money (No.6)?279 Considering that FTF alone invested US$ 400 million over 5 years in Ghana, what actually happened with all this money seems to be a very important and valid question. The next section digs deeper yet to get a better understanding of the agricultural sector and the role of aid within it.

279 The original, German quote is: “Jeder hat seine eigene Agenda, seine eigene Einstellung, und andere, wie soll man sagen, seine eigenen Ansatzpunkte oder wie was gemacht werden. Wir überrollen die Ghanaen teilweise damit, die kaum Kapazitäten haben das zu steuern oder irgendwie zu managen, die aber auch generell höflich sind und sagen, ja dann macht mal. Und so kann man sich eigentlich, wenn man von oben herab schaut wie viel Geber hier aktiv sind, und das der Landwirtschaftsektor in den letzten Jahren um nur 0.04% gewachsen ist, schon wundern, was hier den eigentlich mit den ganzen vielen Geld geschieht”(No.6).

Part III: Results and Discussion 325

12. Perception about Farmer and other hurdles to agricultural growth

While a disconnection between white, conservative, Western politicians, e.g. in the United States or Germany, to small-scale African farmers seems understandable, even natural, the disconnection within Ghanaian civil servants and politicians to their constituency/public they are supposed to serve, less predictable. Yet more surprising is the disconnection between the civil servants in the regional office in the Northern Region, in Tamale, to the farmers surrounding the city. However, as a Mid-Level Civil Servant at the regional office of the MoFA points out that “there is a disconnect between Tamale and the field” (No.147). Working for a program supporting the rice sector (mostly financed through the French government) the Civil Servant laments that “farmers use their [saved] rice seed, even though it [improved/hybrid variety] sits here in Tamale” (No. 147). Several other Civil Servants and researchers also lament that despite the large quantities of improved varieties that have been made available by the CSIR and other agricultural researchers, farmers rarely know about them. Other farmers, who are aware of the ‘improved’ seed, refuse to use or cannot afford the improved varieties. Even within USAID a Senior Staffer comments that notwithstanding the ongoing (in 2016), intense struggle over seed importation they are aware that 80-90% of smallholder farmers use saved seeds and would continue to do so anyways (No. 225). Outside of USAID, many other DPs (including AGRA, AfDB, AfD, the Bank etc.) have worked on supplying improved seeds, often in collaboration with Ghanaian researcher institutes within CSIR. However, within the Ghanaian academic and research institution there has been a reliance on Wester funding as well as ideas, mixed in with an existing bias against small-scale farming methods that reaches the schools educating Civil Servants that are meant to help farmers afterwards. A Senior Academic Researcher at an agricultural faculty at UDS warns about the “serious disconnect between curricula of universities and farming realities”, and adds that the “agricultural colleges do not produce farmers” either, but that both institutions (Universities and Agricultural) will produce graduates that “will be looking for white collar jobs” (No.77). “The nature of the educational system is very theoretical, leaving university students speaking perfectly about agriculture, but have they ever grown corn?” he asks (ibid). Another Senior Academic Researcher at UG points out that in Ghana “nobody respects farmers [in Ghana]. Children never want to be farmers and so we dress up farming with agribusiness to make it look more professional” she adds (No. 217). As in many other parts of the World, farmers continue to be perceived as the least important and successful in society, only attracting uneducated, illiterate men and women that have no other choice, rather than the providers of the cornucopia of foods available in Ghana. All the efforts to Governments to modernize and mechanize the sector have not led agricultural students to change their perceptions either. As a SCS at the national MoFA directorate asserts “the average educated man does not want to go to the land, even the students with university degrees in agriculture, less than 5% are in the field. [And] that is the challenge” (No.48).

326 Part III: Results and Discussion

Of particular importance to understand the agricultural sector in Ghana, is the relationship between the MoFA Extension Agents – the closest, only and crucial link to the farmers, as they are meant to serve, support and share their acquired knowledge with them. If this link is fluid, empathetic and efficient the sector could be easily changed and improved. However, as one retired Senior Civil servant with many decades of experience in the Northern Region recounts, MoFA Extension Agents “have picked what we have learned from school, tell the farmer and expect him to apply it” (No.122). He adds, when farmers disagree “we say that he is not serious and label him as a lazy person, but we are not prepared to go down and see why” (ibid). This observation underlines the immense hurdle the farming sector faces that “we don’t involve the opinion and suggestion from the beneficiaries” as a Senior AEA in the Northern Region puts it, and adds that instead “we should go and listen” to the farmers (No.149). Yet, it must be understood that that AEA are also part of a bigger (under-funded), donor-depended and hierarchical agricultural sector, with the majority of decision making power in the capital(s). As the retired SCS points out “in Accra they are happy to read reports about demonstrations with X amount of attendees, but you don’t want to write that the farmers don’t agree with what we are teaching, so we classify them into first adopter, second adopter, or later adopter instead” (No.122). A commercial farmer of the Northern Region comments that he feels that “there should be a link between the extension agents, researchers, and farmers, but extension and research are the big people. They just say take this!” (No.148). “Right now they doubt farmers. Everybody”, he adds (ibid). An International Senior Officer with a DP (FRA) program embedded in the Northern Region observes: [On] the power of farmers of course you read a lot of the empowerment and blah, blah, blah, but it is just blah, blah. Actually the farmers have very little power here, they are not organized. They are no farmer unions […] We have a project here, we do a steering committee and farmers are not invited. And when I tell them we should invite farmers, [they ask], Why? The idea even to invite farmers to the projects that is supposed to work with farmers is [unimaginable in Ghana]. You cannot imagine any agriculture project in Francophone countries we have I mean the farmers, even the chairman of the steering committee. Here, absolutely impossible” (No.68). The Peasant Farmer Association (PFA) was originally created with the support of Oxfam for farmers to have a lobbying group on agricultural trade issues within Ghana (Kwadzo and Srofenyoh 2012). However, in the case of the PFA, a Senior AEA in the Northern Region highlights that “they don’t know their members” (No. 98). A former Senior member of the organization observes that the PFA, often invited to policy discussions and media events to represent the voice of the small-scale farmer in the capital, are said to “sit only on the national level, far from the grass roots level” (No.88). And he adds that the PFA neither “knows what is happening in the field, nor do they have the time to care as they are busy looking for donor support all the time to pay the staff in Accra” and confirms that the farmers in the rural area will tell you that they have never heard of them [PFA] (No. 88). The former Senior members asserts that the communication gap from the field to the capital must be closed, and Part III: Results and Discussion 327 farmers must “come together and face the government’ together, something like the teachers union”, if they want to be successful (No.88). The large number and spaced-out nature of the smallholder farmers in Ghana make coordination difficult and open the door for the ‘free rider’ issue endemic to collective action. Also the immense language barriers and lack of trust between farmers present further hurdles of organizing them, despite them being so numerous and productive. As a Senior Officer in a Political Post at MoFA points out, “there are millions of small holder farmers, which all represent private enterprises, but they are not well-organized and so they don’t have a voice to take up their cases” (No. 13). Just like many other Senior Ghanaian Staff and Civil Servants highlight, he adds that small holder farmers are “taken for granted, as agriculture is a victim of its own success” as Ghana has become food secure so that “now, with democracy, even when the Government wants to prioritize agriculture, the people don’t want it as a priority” (No.13). “Only when there is a shortage or a disease outbreak then people see [and recognize the importance of farmers]”, as a Senior Civil Servant of the MoFA states (No.48). In an effort to catch a glimpse of what small-scare famers were thinking and wanting, four focus group discussion where undertaken in Chahiyilli, Savalugu District in the Northern Region, uncovering the challenges to a ‘go and listen’ approach, that needs further explanation and caution, especially when conducted by white, western researcher which do not speak the local languages fluently. Because the 85 farmers within the four focus group discussions, re-iterated exactly the list of things usually targeted by the Government, MoFA and the DPs to modernize and mechanize, specifically: “tractors and fertilizers”. In this regard researchers have to reflect upon their positionality, and consider the long line of Westerners (and other people of power) that have visited these villages, asking question and promising improvement. A Senior Researcher at UDS, with ample field experience, explains further what researchers (and other stakeholders) must keep in mind about farmers: Things that they [farmers] think you want; they think it will please you. Yeah that’s what they normally do. You have two groups of farmers: those who know what is good for them, but think that they get something else, therefore, why not? They know what is good, but if somebody is bringing something, why do I say something that will drive the person away? And there are those who don’t really know exactly what is best but whatever comes from outside definitely must be better. So you tend to find out that experienced farmers are those, [...] they’ve been using all, they’ve been interacting with extension officers, they know all that. For them, they know what is best for them. But most of the time, if people are bringing other things, why do I say something that would make them not bring it? .... But others who genuinely are not really sure, after all, if these white people, these educated people are saying something, that must be the correct one. (No.72) Similarly, an international Senior Staff working in the field for a DP (FRA) program observes that “if the donors say that they are for this approach, and if you agree with this approach, we will bring 328 Part III: Results and Discussion money, [then farmers] say okay: we agree with you, even if they don’t” (No.68). A Senior Officer in a local NGO in the Northern Region adds that “when they [the farmers] see visitors, they see them as bringing the solution to all problems, as they have been told that all they do is outmoded, so they will not open up when DPs come” (No.87). He underlines that “even when we come to a new community, they will not tell us things – we have to build trust first” (ibid). The lack of trust between famers and foreign researcher/consultants and DPs has been building up over a long time. And “we are all to blame” a retired Senior Civil Servant says. “The farmers know how we think, so they give us the answers we want” the retired SCS adds (No.122). He explains that mutual distrust and dishonesty extends from rural farmers and people coming from Metropolitan areas in Ghana, including local politicians and civil servants. He adds: “farmers trust MoFA people better than the government, because the farmer sympathizes with the AEA (as) he doesn’t get money from the big men; but they know he has things to do too” (No.122). “Some AEA have learned that farmers are not stupid or lazy. Farmers are very rational and he know very well what to do” (ibid). Yet, similar to all other sectors, not all people working in agricultural are perfectly competent, with the added hurdle that over the past centuries African farmers have been told that what they do is worse than what Western farmers have been practicing. In addition to an uneven trading system, in which Western farmers have received much more support than African farmers, agriculture has become an unattractive occupation. A commercial farmer (and former member of the Peasant Farmer Association - PFA) explains: “farmers are not interested in farming because it’s not paying. After you produce you don’t know whether you can sell. And young farmers have seen their parents being lost in poverty because they have taken up farming” (No.88). This has multiple consequences. On one hand, famers left in the rural areas are not as motivated to undertake the work that is hard and precarious (in the sense that they do know if it will pay off). On the other hand it’s leading the young generations to have dreams of bigger and better lives. During the focus group discussions in a farming community north of Tamale, especially the group of ‘younger’ (18-39) women, express dreams much greater than ‘just being a farmer’. When asked what they would be, if they could be anything, these women answered: President (1), Doctor (7), Head of all Doctors (1), Members of Parliament (3), Teachers (3), Secretary (1), Nurse (7), Midwife (2), Bank Manager (1), and Commercial Farmer (1).280 A Senior Academic Researcher explains that in a struggle for a better life, many children of farmers in northern Ghana will migrate to cities in the South because there are no opportunities in the North (No.234). A SCS adds that rather than “go back and use hoes and cutlers,” people will stand at traffic lights “to sell scratch cards [for phone credit] and dog chains” (No.36). The issue of

280 The community Chahiyili by Tonpong in Savalugu District had a female Member of Parliament at the time of the focus groups in 2016. This might have contributed to the high, as well as political, aspirations of the women.

Part III: Results and Discussion 329 urbanization will be taken up again later in this Chapter, but it can also be underlined that this trend and lack of opportunity has left the aging farmers struggling to retain motivated and talented offspring on the fields. In combination with the lack of time, unawareness and at times hubris of researchers, understanding farmers, is further complicated by the aforementioned local conditions. As a Mid-Level Officer working for a local NGO in northern Ghana underlines that “We get them [the farmers] confused by pretending that they have zero knowledge” (No.89). He adds that most development workers simply sing the praise of what they heard [e.g. from DPs], “but we barely ask them to discover the gaps in thinking. Instead, we push technology, like mono cropping down the throat of farmers” (ibid). So even local researcher and development practitioners run danger to be deaf to famers needs, as the local experts continues to explain: “You haven’t taken the time to understand their [the farmers] system, yet you recommend something else” (No.89). Utilizing researcher that speak the language and understand the cultural context would a first step towards better quality data in the agricultural sector, but building up trust and appreciation towards local knowledge might take much longer. The involvement of the Western research seems to be a particular issue in this regard. An international soil expert working for a DP (USA) program in the Northern Ghana echoes the sentiment by saying, “we come and go unaware of the farmers’ time and not even aware of their strategies. We come in without knowing anything” (No.145). She adds “we might think the farmer does not care about rice, but in reality he might have to plant the maize, when we ask him to transplant the rice” (ibid). Farmers have found other ways to show their disagreement, as a Senior Staff at Wienco points out. Repayment of inputs provided up-front in Wienco’s Outgrower scheme, is a constant struggle, with other buyers trying to reap the benefits spread by the company by buying the farmers harvest (ahead of repayment). Farmers will also misapply the two or three bags of fertilizer provided by using “one on our [Wienco] seed and other two or three on other crops, or sell them” altogether (No.141). The short and stringent timeline in DP programs, ranging from an average of three to five years, pose another hurdle. Many SCS recount that since most DP projects are set within a three-year time frame, in the first year they try a new technology, the second year the farmers might use it, but the third year they go back to their old ways and the DP leaves anyways. A Senior Researcher points out that “the adoption curve is an S – you have to get to the top to be stable’ and adds that to think that “you can change things within two years – in agriculture– is nonsense” (No.72). Instead a retired Senior Civil Servant (No.122) of MoFA emphasizes that agricultural projects should be around 15 years to have an impact, and an AEA adds that “projects should focus on sensitization, on changing the mindset of farmers, because if you come and just put [the technology] on and leave, the farmer will go back to his old ways” (No.152). While the focus on mechanization and modernization has cut across nationalities and party lines over the past century, and many politicians vowed to take the backbreaking drudgery out of farming by mechanizing agriculture the scattered and interrupted projects have seemingly largely left nothing 330 Part III: Results and Discussion more a farmer doubting and discrediting himself and his techniques. “We don't want to see hoes and cutlers - we want mechanization and modernization” a commercial farmer in the Northern Region underlines (No.148). Concerns about environmental sustainability and soil fertility have been pushed to the sidelines in this quest for commercial agriculture, often focused on an increase in production. In line with this vision the large amount of machinery (tractors, plows, combine harvesters etc.) and inorganic fertilizer had been introduced under Operation Feed Yourself in the mid-1970 already. In 2016 “farming is synonymous with plowing” in the Northern Region, as an agricultural specialist with a DP (USA) program points out. Heavy tractors and disc-plows have been imported from the Unites States, Italy, Japan have been widely used while they still run, but too often to the detriment of the fragile tropical soils, often further stained by heavy rains, Harmattan winds and bush fires. With the increased import of said machinery, small-scale farmers have had the opportunity to increased acreage/ practice extensive agriculture. As the Senior Researcher (No.101) points out, this development opened the door towards inefficiencies and other external inputs: You can use the tractor just to plow - You plant. So if you do 10 hectares – you need the hoe again. You can't weed 10 hectares! So you can't harvest it. You end up being so inefficient because you can't use [a] hoe on 10 hectare – even if you use herbicide you still need to weed [because] the herbicide is so weak here people think they are getting the wrong thing A SCS highlights that the issue with mechanizations is the “deep plowing and that the tractor operators go along the same lines each years”, thereby increasing erosion (No. 139). Another SCS brings both points together by explaining: “If you have five acres, there is no need for a tractor, but farmers rely on the services that use disc plows that can bring out the gravel when the plows depth is not set correctly”, and adds that “people don’t know how to use it, but they want tractors and the plow” (No.86). Similarly a Senior Staff at Wienco warns that “80-90% of the time plowing destroys the soils” in the Northern Regions (No.141).Yet during the focus group discussions in Chahiyilli, farmers underlined “everybody uses tractors” in the beginning of the rainy season to prepare the field, which leaves good tractor operators busy. In fear of not receiving any service at all during the busy part/onset of the season they “will be a quiet” [not complain], as it is “the rich that buy the tractors and charge 50 cedi per acre” to rent it out, as the young male farmers explain. The older women’s group (18) note that depending on the tractor operator the farmer is able to avoid bad plowing that can leave pot holes and grass left standing, while other times sub-soil gets exposed by the deep-plowing, but the farmers have no option, they have to use what is available, as the translator explains. A Member of Parliament aware of the issue believes that “tractor operators need to be educated that they are bringing up construction soil, while the top soil has all the nutrients”; but these problems can be addressed and not shift the aim of commercial agriculture (No.115). With the push for mechanization and commercialization, however, as of 2016 Ghanaian soils are being mined, as the majority of interviews underline. Part III: Results and Discussion 331

12.1. Soil and sustainability While all interviewees showed awareness over the precarious situation the soil in Ghana, especially in the Northern Region were the fragile tropical soil has been tormented with heavy tractors, deep disc- plows and one-sided application of inorganic fertilizer only, nobody knows the exact situation as research for soil sciences has been gravely underfunded, and hence extremely limited. DPs have promoted soil testing for their implementation areas, and USAID-IFDC/ATT must be lauded for their support to extent this service to broader audience, but for the great majority of smallholder farmer soil testing is far outside of their means. In 2016, however, no reliable data for Ghana was uncovered and a Technical Officer for Wienco confirms “there are no reliable soil testing centers, while there is a huge difference in soil throughout the region” He adds that “in Europe the farmer knows every patch on his field, but here the small-scale farmers don’t know their soil, so they will just blame the seed when it does not germinate” (No.154). The soil scientist, know the extent Ghanaian soils have been mined, as Senior Researcher at the Soil Research Institute in Kumasi confirms that the soils in Ghana “are highly weathered and degraded”, but very little action is taken (No.12). “There is no policy on soil management and there are no serious provisions to farmers to help them manage their soil fertility”, as a soil specialist with a DP (USA) program notes (No.146). She adds that “we have government [soil] research intuitions [in Ghana, but], no central place to get the information” (ibid). Instead various Ghanaian governments have ostensibly fought the issue of declining soil fertility by funding the fertilizer subsidy program. Between 2008 and 2016 the focus has been on increasing applications of inorganic fertilizer only, also because Ghana had signed the Abuja Declaration of 2006 (pledging to increase the rate of application from 8 kg/ha to 50kg/ha by 2015). The Plant and Fertilizer Act was also pushed [by the African Union] to bring Ghana in line with ECOWAS regulations that enforce quality requirements of [international] respected standards, as a fertilizer expert working for a DP Program (USA) in Accra underlines (No.177). What that means to local fertilizer producers must be further investigated, but as the international fertilizer specialist also points out that in “the US, EU, India and so on, the markets are flat and saturated. So all are focused on Africa now” (ibid). While the application of unadulterated, good-quality inorganic fertilizer is an essential part to commercial agricultural, the soil can only absorb and retain the artificial nutrients if an equal amount of organic matter is available. As livestock production has been greatly neglected by DP programs and the sector further contracted by the cheap import of, e.g. subsidized chicken from Western countries, manure has been very hard to come by, and if available, close to impossible to transport to the fields. Furthermore, cultural practices, such as the Fulani herdsman tending the cattle, e.g. of the Chiefs of the Norther Region, will roam the livestock freely during the dry season, potentially grassing up any cover crops or left-overs from the harvest time. An additional enormous hurdle to increased soil fertility is the regular setting of bush fires, which are seemingly impossible to regulate even though they have been made illegally under Rawlings already. In this regard the Environmental Protection Agency, who has been leading the fight against 332 Part III: Results and Discussion this destructive cultural tradition, needs additional support from national, as well as local levels, e.g. making Chiefs responsible for burnings in their communities. Stripped bare by the fires, the soils in the Northern Region are then exposed to Harmattan winds and intense- tropical rains, often taken away the view nutrients left in the top soil. With the fields required to produce harvest every rainy season, without fallow and only minimal application of inorganic fertilizers, a retired soil scientist warns that soil health has been declining and adds “NPK, calcium, magnesium and the PH of the soils have all decreased” over the past decades (No.17). Yet, in 2016 the great majority of agricultural programs and projects’ focus continued to be on industrial farming methods, with environmental issues only an afterthought. While many DPs fulfilled environmental regulations and included a small percentage of their budget to support sustainable methods in a sub-program, their focus was on fulfilling the production paradigm, fueled by the Malthusian fear of high population growth in Ghana in particular, and Africa in general. The Feed-the- Future initiative proved exceptional as it launched The Agriculture Natural Resource Management Project – AgNRM – in October 2016 in the Mole National Park (Northern Region) with a budget of US$ 25 million over five years.281 “AgNRM is a late-comer in FTF,” an afterthought, that seems to have come out of a debate in Congress over wildlife and elephant poaching, as a Senior Officer for the project explains (No.21). 282 AgNRM focuses on communities with high biodiversity based inside or close to of national parks (e.g. the Hippo Sanctuary), also known as Community Resource Management Areas (CRMAs), and aims to help the community members to find alternative livelihoods, in this care through the development of premium products produced sustainably for international niche/boutique markets, e.g. organic Shea, Moringa, or Dawadawa, as a Senior Officer at the DP project explains (No.21). While this niche project is laudable, it has a very restricted audience and intention. Other DP sub- programs on sustainable agricultural have recently focused on ‘conservation agriculture’. Conservation agriculture usually centers on no-tillage and the use of cover crops, but would need a roller crimper to flatten the biomass (if it was irrigated sufficiently and survived bushfires and roaming cattle of the dry season). An Officer at a FTF project explains, “The roller crimper would be really good for conservation agriculture projects, but we (at USAID) don’t have one for now and so we spray Glyphosate to kill the Makuna” (No.45). While efforts to spread cover crop, like Makuna, and promoting no-tillage agricultural are laudable, the usage of a broad-band, highly-toxic weed-killer like Glyphosate seems highly questionable.

281 AgNRM is the last of the Ghanaian USAID Feed the Future project, but implemented by old acquaintances of the FTF project: Winrock International and its sub-grantee –TechnoServe Other sub-grantees include the Nature Conservation Research Centre and Center for Conflict Transformation and Peace Studies. 282 Debate Congress over the recent years has led to the U.S Government’s passage of a Global Food Security Strategy (2017-2021) that would allow for additional 5-year aid projects and more regular budget funding for such projects For details on the U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy (2017-2021) see: https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/agriculture-and-food-security/us-government-global-food-security-strategy [accessed: 10.10.2017] Part III: Results and Discussion 333

The antagonism present in agricultural project in Ghana labeled as sustainable agricultural of sorts seems ever-present, and prompted a Lead-officer for project data among the DPs (with METSS/USAID) to explain “It’s a bit confusing because the word shows up in all the material, for example climate-smart and conservation agriculture, but there is no sustainable agriculture here”, and he adds facetiously “you might want to re-think the title” of this thesis (No.56). Indeed, DP and government agricultural material is rife with promises of sustainable production, yet evidence of actual conviction, implementation and follow through is scant. The all Ghanaian interviewed defined sustainability along the lines of financial sustainability (as in who will finance the project once the DPs move on) and when asked about environmental concerns many of them felt that in Ghana land is plenty and suitable for commercial agriculture, also citing the Malthusian fear of not producing enough in the future. Yet equally many mention the need for more sustainable methods, using organic material/fertilizer, compost or cover crops and are aware of the declining soil fertility. Despite critics and naysayers, environmental concerns have been understood and championed by civil servants in Ghanaian institutions for many decades. Since 1999 already, agricultural project above 40 hectares have been asked to undertake an Environmental Impact Assessment, done by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In the 2000 Select Committee report, even Members of Parliament raised the issue environmental degradation through agricultural and referred to the Agroforestry/Land and Water Management Division of the MoFA, which had introduced sustainable methods into farming communities throughout Ghana (GoG 2000). A Senior Civil Servant that had been involved and built up the Agroforestry/Land and Water Management Division within MoFA explains “we have been promoting these technologies for a long time, but it’s been very difficult to sustain and upscale” (No.24). He adds that issues include the additional amount of labor that is required, as well as the land tenure system does not encourage sustainable land development, which will take 3-4 years before you see improvement and are very difficult to get the farmer to do without external support (ibid). However, he also points out that densely populated regions, such as the Upper East, have a “fragile environment, so they have to use sustainable methods” (No.24). There are great regional differences within Ghana, where communities are very environmentally conscience when there are land limitations or harsh and degraded environments (e.g. in Upper East or parts of Upper West), but “in the Northern Region there are huge expanses of land so farmers are not motivated” the Senior Civil Servant and environmental specialist underlines(No.21). Another Senior Civil Servant asserts that, “with the vastness of land, farmers can easily move, they just go to East Gonja where there are original lands, but if this is sustainable in 20-30 year, that is the question” (No. 153). These finding then refute the Malthusian myth and point towards the accuracy of Boserup’s theory discussed in previous chapters. While further investigation towards “the conditions of agricultural growth”, as Boserup called her book, are necessary, it has become clear that sustainable methods should be promoted as well as resurrect promptly. 334 Part III: Results and Discussion

As Asuming-Brempong (2014) highlighted, traditional conservation practices are being lost while inappropriate technologies, land-use practices, and overgrazing are responsible for the land degradation in Ghana The Ministry of Food and Agriculture claims the aim of ‘sustainable agriculture’ in its mission statement as far back as 2001(GoG 2001). Words must follow action, with the great majority of interviews focusing on the need of manure to improve the organic matter in the soil as well as control bush fires that ravage the Savannah Zone multiple-times per dry-season with little protection or consequences. Despite the looming and proven threat of climate-change, the short-term thinking of international and local politicians has led a multitude of agricultural projects to be undertaken over the past decades that has in turn led to a decline to the sector whose natural comparative advantage remains unutilized with oscillating and tenuous support to smallholder farmers (outside of cocoa). A retired Senior Researcher warns, “if you don’t develop the rural area, people will migrate to the urban centers and create holes in agriculture in terms of labor” (No.1).

12.2. Urban Agriculture As discussed in Chapter 5, Ghanaians have indeed migrated to urban centers, and some have taken their traditional occupations along, creating so-called urban agricultural areas. While particularly promoted under General Acheampong, the concept of urban agriculture recently has found renewed interested within international arena. Over the years there have been a variety of reactions and divides in the policy debate on whether to permit or prohibit urban agriculture in Ghana (see Mensah- Ayerakwa 2017/forthcoming). Much of the contention has been over the source of irrigation water, which has been untreated wastewater from open drains, or polluted water from streams and rivers as well as shallow wells, representing a serious health risk particularly to consumers of lettuce and other leafy vegetables (MoFA 2010). On the other hand, urban sprawl and real estate development have taken over fertile lands that could be used by urban farmers to help feed growing cities. The situation has been even worse in peri-urban areas, as urban sprawl swallows large tracks of fertile land in favor of residential housing in Ghana (Asomani-Boateng 2002). While the production aspect of urban agriculture is debatable, its contribution towards poverty alleviation is weak, because urban farming is not necessarily practiced by lower-income farmers since they generally lack access to the resource land (Mensah-Ayerakwa 2017/forthcoming). Nevertheless, as a Ghanaian parliament points out in 2007, when UA was most heavily debated, his quote about La, a neighborhood in the south of Accra: Urban farming has been something which has helped us all over the years and it is something that we have been talking about all the time. La used to be noted for the production of okro. They produced so much okro that people produced okro to buy their trotro Bedford trucks. Today, they have taken all the lands (GoG 2007, p.2579). The farming population of cities has always helped support the food requirements of Ghanaian urban centers. In the decades after independence this endeavor became so profitable that urban farmers were able to buy Bedford trucks as Mr. Mensah (NPP) also noted in Parliament in December, 2007 (GoG). Part III: Results and Discussion 335

And Dr. Alhassan informed Parliament the prior year that urban centers cumulatively generated as much as 45 thousand hectares of irrigable land (GoG 2006). However, issues of land and water have been prevalent and the apprehension of consumers then and now has been around the use of wastewater, used to irrigate urban farms. The explosive expansion of Accra has left the capital struggling to guide and keep up with population demands as well as the refuse they produce. Rapid urbanization has burdened Metropolitan Assemblies, often leading to management challenges that can only be overcome by proper urban planning, as well as budgeting, adherence, and implementation of these plans (Cobbinah et al. 2016). The institutional and legal set up for urban planning has been in existence since before independence. However, issues such as slum proliferation, urban sprawl, unregulated informal activities, haphazard development, and inadequate budget provision have caused great difficulty in the process (Cobbinah et al. 2016). Osu farmers are afraid to be driven away by further urban development, while already struggling to sell their leafy vegetables to the increasing-critical market women who demand higher standers for their consumers. DP projects have seldom included urban agricultural projects and as a Senior Officer a Metropolitan Assembly in Accra frankly states, “We have too many other serious issues to deal with than to put agriculture on the agenda” (No.37). A Senior Officer at the Metropolitan Assembly in Tamale also laments the uncontrolled real- estate development that ‘has taken up so much land that now farmers have to go deep inside” the bush to do farming (No.155). He adds, however, that “urban agriculture is also reducing and you see passes of land with very fertile land which are not used, as many people don’t appreciate the value of urban agriculture. And in some cases big men, with large parcels of land, will not allow others to farm on it too” either (ibid). This is in line with the findings of Nchanji et al. (2017) that show a reduction of 8.7 percent of vegetable farming between 2008 and 2014 around Tamale. Karg et at. (2016) show that it is almost exclusively leafy vegetables that are produced in urban and peri-urban areas of the Northern Region’s capital, while it is the rural areas around the metropolis, within a distance of 100km, which are responsible for providing the majority of crops (e.g. cereals, roots, and tubers) to city dwellers. This is unsurprising, considering the scant support for urban agriculture, even on the policy level.

Urban agricultural in Policy documents In regards to policy on Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture (UPA), Ghana published multiple policy documents through the MoFA and other agencies of the government of Ghana, including: GSGDA I, GSGDA II, METASIP I, METASIP II, FASEP I, FASDEP II, National Irrigation Policy, ECOWAP and MMDA by-Laws. There was a target for a 20% increase of peri-urban agriculture in METSIP I (2011-2015), hoping to liaison with MMDA for proper zoning of areas, training farmers on GAPs, and organizing mass vaccination campaigns against endemic diseases in peri-urban areas. In the National Irrigation Policy the MoFA also has one sentence about the encouragement of research on safe 336 Part III: Results and Discussion irrigation practices for irrigated urban and peri-urban agriculture (MoFA 2011). Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agendas I (2010-2013) and II (2014-2017), as well as the ECOWAP (2009) mention the support for UPA in terms of land use and sustainable practices, each in one or two sentences at most (NDPC September 2010; NDPC 2014; MoFA 2009). In FASDEP II (2007), the hope was to support urban migrants with livelihoods strategies through UPA programs (MoFA 2007). Furthermore, based on the health risk that irrigation with untreated wastewater poses, local government acts (e.g. Act 462, Section 51, subsection 3; 1993) and city by-laws (e.g. AMA ‘Growing and Sale of Crops; 1995) have been passed to restrict urban agriculture to holders of a permit from the District or Metropolitan Planning Authority and require Public Health Units to monitor and ensure good sanitary conditions (MoFA September/2010). A second health issue is the contamination of produce through the improper application of pesticides and insecticides. In reality these policies and by-laws are mostly paper tigers without proper coordination of implementation or financial resources dedicated, similar to policies of the agricultural sector as a whole. Hence, urban agriculture policy guidelines remain fragmented, uncoordinated, and often unimplemented. However, in June 2017, the US$ 2.8 million grant for peri-urban commercial vegetables value chains for poverty reduction and food security was accounted to be supported by the Japanese Social Development Fund, disbursed by the World Bank. 283 It also hopes to establish warehousing and irrigation systems for better post-harvest handling. It remains to be seen what impact this project might have. In general, however, Urban agricultural will most likely remain on the side-lines as Ghana has space and a continued vision to push for large-scale, commercial agriculture, and small-scale farmer continue to be perceived as backward, outmoded food producers who must have their hoes and cutlers replaced with tractors and plows.

283 See Japan provides $2.8m grant to develop Ghana’s agriculture sector: June 15, 2017, available: http://citifmonline.com/2017/06/15/japan-provides-2-8m-grant-to-develop-ghanas-agric-sector [access 10.10.2017] Part III: Results and Discussion 337

13. Legal frameworks, power and the production paradigm – reflection on results

The Results and Discussion Part (III) aimed at providing deeper insight into the realities affecting the agricultural sector and detailing the role of aid within it. It is important to keep the national and international power relations in mind, which provide an important frame around development and aid in general, and the agricultural sector in particular. As Western nations are still economically, militarily and politically more powerful, their ideas carry equally more weight, and are reflected in the strong focus on high-external input agricultural methods focused on crop production in particular. In the budget pillar it has become most evident, as the ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’. However, that is not to say that Ghanaians independently have come to favor this capital intensive approach that aims at modernizing agriculture, making the back-breaking food-production commonly done with hoes and cutlers easier for the rural communities in Ghana by aiming at mechanizing the work with tractors and plows. In the end, national and international leaders equally have focused on a production centered paradigm that was supposed to yield quick results, rather than most sustainable methods that would take additional time. As a Senior Researcher (No. 227).points out: Development partners, [and] we, want quick results. Climate smart is conservation agriculture and you don’t get the results very quickly. It takes time even though they may be more sustainable. When you have dire situations of insecurity, you are tempted to go for the quick fixes and that is what your fertilizer and what-nots promise you in the short run. Most times agricultural program and project have suffered from a top-down approach has led to the implementation of ideas that were far from understanding the realities and needs of the smallholder farmers all over Ghana. A Civil Servant at the regional level cautions “if you haven’t asked what I want, but you bring me something, will I not take it? Of course I will take it! But it is not what I want” (No.90). While DPs and Governments of Ghana have suffered equally from not listening to the beneficiaries of the programs they implemented, they mostly thought that the production must be increased, in line with the old but persistent Malthusian myth. Instead some interviewees pointed to a more important issue than production: post-harvest loss. Similarly even more interviewees mention the lack of or access to markets after the production was successful, highlighting the misuse of the monopolistic powers of market women in different rural areas across Ghana. With scant data available, especially on production changes of crops and livestock over the past decades, it is not possible to say what is the impact of projects and programs focused on production has been. However, in and on the fields, the center of discussion is on concerns of post- harvest losses, which a Senior AEA in the Northern Region describes as “the greatest enemy” for agriculture in Ghana (No.135). The only credible attempt undertaken to analyze the situation in all of Ghana was in 2008 by MoFA (by the Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate- PPMED) and prepared by the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at the University of Ghana (Egyir, Sarpong and Obeng-Ofori). The Final Report was only made available to me via the invaluable support of PPMED and the Statistics, Research and Information Directorate 338 Part III: Results and Discussion

(SRID). The study’s great variance of post-harvest losses among different crops and livestock product, further influenced by the season, is summarized in the table below: Table 22: Estimated Post-harvest losses (Source: Own complication based on data made available by unpublished (MoFA) 2008)

Post-harvest losses that vary from 60 to 6 percent, as depicted in the table above are closely linked to other hurdles smallholder farmers are facing. For example, the majority of farmers and researchers alike lament being held captive to infrastructure with a lock of roads linking farmers to market, as well as a fragile relationship between buyer and seller. A retired Senior Researcher explains, “the farmers produce, but there are no trucks, the roads are bad, and the buyers dictate the price they will give them in a ‘take it or leave it’ manner, with no bargaining” (No.1). He explains further: Today is Friday... today is the last market day for the week. The next market day is Tuesday. What will you do with your tomatoes? Let it go. So sometimes they [farmers] are forced to do certain things, and after that they just leave. [They] come to the urban centers in search of greener pastures. And they never find any greener pastures. Some turn to some things you cannot talk of (No.1). The fragile relationship between buyers and sellers is additionally weakened by ineffective and at times corrupt justice system in Ghana. It has been observed that agreements remain malleable, as buyers will coerce farmers to re-negotiate the contract terms if the market price has changed considerably in an unfavorable direction (Kwadzo and Srofenyoh 2012). If farmers do not agree, buyers might go as far as reject all products, suggesting, for example, the possibility of leaving tomatoes to rot in the field. Furthermore it is often impossible or at the very least costly for farmers to verify traders’ claims and hence judge if they received appropriate remuneration (ibid).Even if farmers would be able and willing to hire the services of a lawyer to handle their grievance, courts in Ghana are continuously overwhelmed and behind schedule, leading to greatly protracted proceedings; moreover, alternative dispute resolutions are limited (Kwadzo and Srofenyoh 2012). On legal enforcement of contacts amongst traders, Kwadzo and Srofenyoh add the following insight: Part III: Results and Discussion 339

Most of the traders we spoke to at Accra, Wenchi, Techiman and Kumasi all indicated that they would normally not use the formal legal and enforcement system. This is because they are likely to be seen as wicked and lose customers and/or get frustrated by the formal system and lose more money in the process (2012, p.120). In case of defaults – non-payments of agreed monies – most victims would rather wait for the perpetrator to pay his/her debt than resort to legal procedures (Kwadzo and Srofenyoh 2012). A Junior Civil Servant at a RCC points out that they “have legal aids [at the RCC], but people don’t use them because they think they have to pay, or most people are not informed and don’t know their rights” (No.83). Indeed the Senior Officer at a DP (GER) program felt that the most important thing to be done in all Sub-Saharan African countries is to work on providing access of citizenry to laws pertaining to their situation (No.3). the lack of knowledge, coupled with the weak enforcement mechanisms in place for agreements and other legal frameworks also pave the way for rent seeking behavior by “politicians, bureaucrats, criminals and the private sector” (Kwadzo and Srofenyoh 2012, p.85). A well-functioning legal system that is able to settle disputes and ensure the enforcement of contracts in case of a default would benefit everyone and most likely lead to changes in peoples’ behavior. The overstrained and fragile judiciary has been overshadowed with further doubt since the aforementioned exposure of judges’ corrupt practices caught on camera in 2015 by Anas Aremeyaw Anas (Chapter 5). While the week national judicial system presents a serious issue for Ghana and her farmers, international legal agreements pose a second, less-easily detected hurdle for many farmers. Ghanaian smallholders have consistently produced, despite fragmented and inconsistent support by the Government and donors, but often under precarious conditions, as local market (which would be served most easily) is not enabled to develop. As a Senior Academic Researcher underlines: Production is not a problem. I will even add that yield is not a problem. This would frighten many people because that is what Ministry of Agriculture has been hammering. That is what all the projects are hammering. […] Yes post-harvest loss is only a problem when there is no market so market is the real problem but not so much of post-harvest losses. They cannot sell it on a continuous basis. If they sell it this year, next year they try to produce a little more because they sold last year and you are sitting with it. And then the agricultural officer says, please use fertilizer, use it so that you get a higher yield. Yes, you would get a higher yield but your price comes down and you are sitting with it and don’t know what to do with it. The market thing is a big problem. And why is it such a big problem? Because there are no industries to take the agricultural produce (No.72). The comment above links what some believe to be the need to build industries through protection of infant industries, as has been done in the United States and the European nations in the previous centuries (as discussed in Chapter 4). As previously discussed, Ghana was made to ratified a free-trade agreement with the European Union in October. 2016. These Economic Partnership Agreements 340 Part III: Results and Discussion further endanger the development of local industries in Ghana and elsewhere on the continent. A retired Senior Researcher describes the perceived competition between African and Europe in these EPAs: “it is very difficult to ask a baby to go into 100-m race with Usain Bolt” (No.1). As a Senior Civil Servant in the Ministry of Trade and Industries, who has been part of EPA negotiations describes, Ghana does “not have liked it, but we couldn’t do anything, so we are not content, but it’s better than not signing the EPA” (No.35). He adds that Ghanaians hope to “take advantage of the review of the EPA in five years. The EU helped balance our budget, so it’s a complicated matter” (ibid). As has been discussed in Section 2 of this chapter, the dependence on donor funding continues to be an issue, particularly for the Ministry of Food and Agriculture budget, as DP contribution averaged 61% between 1999 and 2015. Ghana’s new status as Lower Middle Income Country (LMIC) since 2010 has led to a decline of total donor support, as well as a turn to extent loans rather than grants. The transition is not final or as sharp as would be suspected from the scrupulous administrators of tax- payer monies since Ghana is a priority country for many donors, but most importantly the United States. The Feed the Future (Obama) Presidential Initiative funneled additional millions of US$ through USAID to international NGOs and farmers, particularly above the 8th parallel (in northern Ghana), with 30 out of 97 ongoing projects under the US. USAID’s influence over the agricultural is hence of particular importance, as they had US$400 million available over four years. Hence it is even more important to reflect on a comment of a Senior Officer at USAID, describing their approach: USAID does it and they don't realize it. They think they are smallholder; they are called Feed the Future - is smallholder farming model, but it isn’t. I know the McKinsey Company brought it out when Raj Shah came over to USAID from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation […] There is no two ways about it. The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. No way around it. Eventually it came out, guess what? The top 20% has dramatic increases of income, and the bottom 20% actually lost income after two and a half years of FTF investing, that was over 5 years a US$ 400 million investment in Ghana (No. 15). 284 While the internal data that this Senior Officer is importantly highlighting has not been made available for review for this study, it is a reasonable consequence out of the extraordinary support towards the Nucleus farmers, which are usually better of men in society anyways. A related issue that is seldom discussed but of high importance, is the freeing of labor, which naturally occurred machinery is a focus as part of the industrial and large scale agriculture approach pushed for by DP and the GoGs alike. The contradiction that arises out of the lack of industry to absorb this freed labor from the field of rural Ghana is described by a Mid-level Officer with another DP (EU) program: The idea will be to find a compromise between [...] industrial or large scale agricultural that still allows a high number of employment. Which it’s a bit of contradiction (No. 191).

284 More of this part of the interview can be found in the Appendix. Part III: Results and Discussion 341

To solve this contradiction the state can play an important, supporting role, through investments or the extension of other benefits to create employment, as had been done in many now-developed countries. With 35 percent of the budget serving as interest on debt, and another 30 percent going to salary and wages as well as 10-15 percent going to mandatory spendings, the fiscal space of Ghana has been constrained, exacerbated by inefficient spending, particularly during election years over the past decade. Dedication to a market-driven logic and the staunch-support for the private sector to fuel Ghana’s development in general, and its agricultural sector in particular, has disabled many of the functions of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, including the core function of extension services. Senior Officer at a DP Program (IFAD) points out: I think the public spending is important for infrastructure or for any key public goods. The government can play a facilitation role, for example, for value chain development and so on, which may be necessary. The government can have a capacity building role. To some extent that’s what extension services are supposed to do (No.231). While some DPs and the majority of Ghanaian respondents criticize the reliance on and reverence for the private sector as the panacea for development, alternatives seems scant. To make available more funding through government channels seems impossible, as the majority of Development Partners mistrust the effectiveness and reach of monies transferred to Ministry accounts in Accra. As a retired Senior Civil Servant at the MoFA recalls, “Donors and NGOs used to trust MoFA and the government, but not anymore” (No.122). He adds, “They think resources don’t go to the farmers, that we don’t do our work and that the reports are cooked. Which are all partly true” (ibid). The perceptions and trust between all stakeholders within the agricultural sector in Ghana seems indeed the largest hurdle. Senior Ghanaian experts (within the MoFA and research institutions) mention a lack of trust between farmers and the MoFA, to the point that “generally there is a mutual distrust and dishonesty. “Some AEA that have learned that farmers are very rational and know very well what to do” a SCS adds (No.122). The Senior Academic Researcher with extensive field experience adds, “Our problem in Ghana is that we forget about what farmers think and want and cause confusion” with the project and programs developed in the capital(s)(No.101). Similarly, a Senior Officer of a local NGO perceives that “when they [farmers] see a visitor, they see them as bringing solution to all problems, because they have been told that all they do is outmoded, so they will not open up when DPs come” (No.87). At the same time DPs are conflicted, as the serve the masters in the capitals of their countries. An Officer working for a USAID project points out that for the US, “security [concerns] trumps all” and ‘fraud doesn’t really matter’ (No.56). Security concerns, while prominent in international analyses on aid, are not mentioned often during interviews. However, this is another area of influence on the political economy of agriculture in Ghana that demands further investigation by other researchers.

Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook 343

Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook

14. Conclusion

Focused on an applied research question, this study aimed at adding to the understanding of the agricultural sector in Ghana, with special attention on the role of aid within it. With its strong empirical emphasis, coupled with an inter-disciplinary approach the work speaks primarily to development studies while using international relations constructivism for its theoretical framing and anthropology for its methodological inspirations. The data, derived out of 260 semi-structured interviews, four focus-group discussion (with 85 farmers), participatory observations during three months on soy, rice and maize fields in northern Ghana and over a dozen official meetings (mostly in the capital of Accra), during 16-months of uninterrupted field research, hopes to illuminate issues of aid and agricultural development inefficiencies, highlight the importance of shared ideas within the process and push for a more holistic approach to research in Sub-Saharan Africa. Expanding the traditional political economy analysis by adding a constructivist lens, the significance of a historical and socially constructed world is underlined. Of particular importance are the shared ideas that stakeholders of the agricultural sector, including aid agencies in Ghana, operate under, often without proper refection or transparency. This ideational approach can be separated into a global and a local layer of shared believes that are of particular importance to understand the caveats to agricultural and developmental progress, especially with the looming threat of climate change. On the global level interpretations of certain economic theories have shaped and guided the neoliberal turn in a capitalistic system, which has infiltrated Ghana materially and ideationally since the early 1980s when The Economic Recovery Program was the first Structural Adjustment Program on the continent administered by the World Bank and the IMF. Since then powerful and well-funded governmental aid agencies (such as USAID, GIZ, DFID etc.) have adopted this approach and have declared the private sector as the panacea of development, particularly in Sub-Saharan African but reaching the peripheral states of Europe (such as Greece, Spain and Ireland) since the financial crisis in 2007/2008. Furthermore the racist body of thought that has emerged during the time of the Atlantic slave trade to justify this inhuman business, climaxed around the time of World War I, but has survived into the 21st century with recent election of right-wing conservatives of western leaders in the United States and across the Atlantic. While not all citizens agree with the latest fearmongering against people of colour, the general sentiment on the global level is that ‘the-West-knows-best’, which has also spread to agricultural development theory. In the meantime Ghanaian leaders – from Nkrumah to Akufo-Addo – have declared and aimed towards modernization and mechanization of agriculture since independence in 1957. Over the past decades smallholders have been told to leave their cutler and hoes behind, use tractors, plows, 344 Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook

‘improved’ (hybrid) seeds, inorganic fertilizer and agro-chemicals in a quest to subordinate nature to man and commercialize the sector, as has been done in the West half a century earlier. In this pursuit, local knowledge and methods of food production have been neglected at best and completely replaced at worst, leading to a situation that “when they [the farmers] see visitors, they see them as bringing the solution to all problems, since hey have been told that all they do is outmoded”, as a Senior Officer at a local NGO describes (No. 87). The hierarchical, top-down approaches in the aid industry reflects the global power structures, in which the West, and the United States in particular have reinforced their place as the world leader with the end of the Cold War, underlining the dominance of capitalism over socialism, and going as far as declaring T.I.N.A – there is no alternative – as the slogan for the neoliberal agenda pushed by Thatcher and Reagan. With the ‘West-is-the-best’ attitude prevailing long after the doing-away with colonialism, Thomas Sankara’s words from the 1980s still seem to hold true three decades later when he underlines: Of course, we encourage aid that aids us in doing away with aid. But in general, welfare and aid policies have only ended up disorganizing us, subjugating us, and robbing us of a sense of responsibility for our own economic, political, and cultural affairs (p.65). Ghana has always played a pioneering role within Sub-Saharan Africa, being the first country to gain independence, having visionary, democratic systems turned into dictatorships and back, causing Chazan to declare Ghana as the “microcosm of political analysis in Africa” in 1983, which coincidently was the year the World Bank implemented the first Structural Adjustment Program, bringing the neoliberal ideas from onto the African continent. With the end of the cold war Ghana returned to democracy, becoming the beacon of democracy with seven peaceful elections and three handing-over of powers between the two dominating parties – NDC and NPP. While this democratic development has brought tremendous benefits for the common man in Ghana, it has not been as equitable and unequivocal as one would hope. The de facto two-party democracy has lead to highly competitive (and expensive) election, leading politicians to emphasis and splitting Ghanaians along ethnic lines, reversing attempts to build a national or even an African identity once imagined by the Pan-African leaders half a century earlier. At the same time Ghanaian leaders have started to be perceived as “going into politics because they are looking for income”, as a local journalist describes (No.190). Similarly the trust towards the civil servants has vanished, as a retired Senior Civil Servant of the MoFA describes: Donors and NGOs used to trust MoFA and the government, but not anymore. They think resources don’t go to the farmers, that we don’t do our work and that the reports are cooked. Which are all partly true (No.122). The frank admittance present in this quote above of issues within the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (and elsewhere) was no rarity. My positionality as an outsider, from a Western society with a sincere interest in the condition of the agricultural sector and the role within it, coupled with patience and Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook 345 persistence to have long waiting time and multiple interviews with the relevant stakeholders over the 16-months in Ghana, created the conditions that led to this confession-like collection of data. Of particular important for Ghanaian interviewees was the obvious fact of non-membership to a local party or ethnicity, as the civil service has been politicized mostly along ethnic lines, which can make people wary particularly during election years. While Ghanaian society is moving rapidly towards embracing capitalistic values, including individualism, the extended family, as well as the belonging to an ethnic group, continues to be of high importance, shaping people’s identities and actions. The societal expectations and obligations to take care of extended family members, coupled with a lack of national identify, have created certain pressures on men and women in leadership and securely-paid positions (e.g. civil servants) that have led to mismanagement of funds. However, what has been often disregarded in the discussion around corruption is the evidently unequal (pay-scale) system omnipresent within the aid system, that makes it possible for an intern at the GIZ to received more pay than a Director at the MoFA, and lead an UoG Academic summing up the situation with: “We still see that the master has everything” (No. 168), and another adding: “White people chopped. Now us.” (Academic, UDS, No. 128). The perceptions of inequality was widely acknowledge and of particular importance for Ghanaians that felt that it was their turn to benefit, and take from the rich to give to their poor families, along the line of a ‘Robin-Hood’ syndrome. In addition, the situation in 2018 in Ghana is surprisingly well described in Achebe’s 1966 A man of the People, where he points out that a sensible man would not spit out the juicy morsel that good fortune placed in his mouth and underlines: A man who has just come in from the rain and dried his body and put on dry clothes is more reluctant to go out again than another who has been indoors all the time. The trouble with our new nation- as I saw it then lying on the bed- was that none of us had been indoors long enough to be able to say 'To hell with it’ (p. 37). What this study set out to find and finally emphasize, is that despite high hopes around the time of independence, stakeholders’ mindsets in Ghana and the West have changed rather slowly, with old inequalities still evident and new ones on the horizon. While Development Partners, such as the World Bank, have long been aware of the hurdles they are facing, it was surprising to read their diligent analysis of decades ago, describing the same issues for the agricultural sector as today. The seeming unwillingness for man to learn from history and adjust accordingly, is a re-occurring quagmire the aid industry in particular has been slow to overcome. Criticism over ownership and transparency, among other things, are old news in the aid debate, as was depicted in the beginning of this thesis. Chapter 2 also pointed out that aid has often been used as a political tool, subjugating the staff of governmental aid organization to the decisions of politicians abroad rather than being able to genuinely engage with and support the government of developing countries. Furthermore, the rarely disputed attitude of ‘the-West-is-the-best’ thinking seems to have 346 Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook added an additional hurdle to developmental undertakings as it has often replaced rather than aimed to understand and improve the local situations. As an Academic at UDS highlights in regards to aid: Outsiders can only help, if their help is to make what you have already better, and not replace it (No. 72). An added issue is the constant shuffle of employees of Development Partners that stay on average just three years in any given country and have to navigate projects and programs with similarly short time horizons. This substantial time pressure makes it particularly hard for agricultural undertakings to have any impact. However, as a Senior Civil Servant at the MoFA points out about improving agricultural aid projects: “Ask the clever ones. There is always some better ones, what are their main problems and what would they like us to try to solve for them. Listen to them”(No. 101). As the current World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, noted himself in 2012: Through decades of development work I’ve learned that the best solutions to economic and social problems often lie with the individuals and communities coping with these challenges in their daily life. They have been my greatest teachers. We must listen to and act on their insights (Kim 2012). The issue over the past decade has been that despite the importance of agriculture to the economy, agriculture data systems have often been neglected and funding constrained, as the World Bank pointed out in 2013. Qualitative research only exist on the margins, while quantitative data on the agricultural sector in Ghana is highly questionable with the last Census of Agriculture undertaken in 1984/1985 and a budget that has been lacking on district level, not just but also for data collection activities. One Senior Civil Servant quotes Kufuor with: “We pretend to pay the worker and the worker pretends to be working” (No.153), to describe the quality of data currently available. And another Senior Civil Servant admits that currently “We don’t involve the opinions and suggestions of the beneficiaries” (No. 149). The number one recommendation for this thesis is than to improve the agricultural data system, also and especially with the help of aid. As Dollar and Pritchett have highlighted: Foreign aid is as much about knowledge as it is about money. Helping countries and communities generate the knowledge that they need for development is a prime role of assistance (1998, p. xi). Historical evidence, however, seems to be greatly disregarded by the aid industry, making the old saying that ‘those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it’, come true the world over. Of particular importance in this regard is the role of economic ideas that have been regarded as guiding posts within the development discussion in the past 50 years. The neoliberal turn has been particular pernicious in this regard, as economic history that has involved substantial amounts of protectionism and governmental support (especially for agriculture) in Western nation, has been largely ignored and even prohibited through free trade agreements for Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook 347 developing countries. Chapter 4 described the bases and occurrence of the neoliberal thinking that burgeoned four decades ago and influenced the newly created World Trade Organization in the 1990s. With the Doha Development round of trade negotiations getting stuck early on (mostly over disagreement in regards to Western subsidies of agriculture) the European Union turned to bilateral trade negotiations with African-Pacific-and Caribbean (ACP) countries, to implement their ideas of free trade with their Economics Partnership Agreement (EPA) that Ghana had to ratify to have continued preferential access to the European markets in 2016. While the ideas have been claimed to be from economists, such as von Hayek, it was often the politicians and other ‘madmen in authority’ that used economists’ ideas to their own means. The importance of ideas was already highlighted in 1936, by one of the most important economist of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes, who underscored that: Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interested is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas [...] Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil (p.241). The importance of ideas is also highlighted by the constructivists, which have become prominent with the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the Cold War in the realm of international relations. The most prominent harbinger of this theory has been Alexander Wendt, who has underlined that the world is historically and socially constructed, and that people act towards each other based on the meaning that they ascribe to them (1992). Identities of actors play an important role and are largely constituted by shared ideas present in the environment of the actors. These shared ideas include norms, values, beliefs, expectations, local narratives and even economic theories, as present and dominant in the social fabric the individual is embedded in (Wendt 1992; Legro 2005; Reus-Smit 1996). While most economists try their best to ignore cultural difference, constructivist underline that meaning of anything (including economic activities) is socially constructed. In line with the later thinking, and in light of the failure of the aid projects over the past decades, this thesis suggests that development theory and practice must shift towards understanding historic and socially constructed elements within societies, e.g. the ‘Robin Hood’ syndrome, to make aid more effective and efficient. While much still needs to be done, the last election in Ghana has shown that it has developed into a mature democracy, in which the leaders will be punished when mishandling public funds. It is time to trust the people of Ghana to hold their leader accountable on their own accord by trying once more to direct aid monies directly towards the government of Ghana?

348 Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook

15. Outlook and Reconciliation

With the change of leadership in January 2017, new bright spots have appeared that would make a transfer of ownership in aid (for example through a second round of a MDBS - Multi-Donor-Budget- Support) to the people of the Black Star of Africa, reasonable. This next section is aiming at providing an outlook as well as a reconciliation of initial influences, which are part of a reflexive research approach. In this façon it is equally important to recall the positionality of the researcher and the context of data collection, which took place during an uninterrupted field research stay from September 2015 to December 2016. Being superficially perceived as rather innocuous and fragile in stature, the image of a female, German researcher seemed to have been beneficial for gaining the trust and benevolence by most interviewees in the agricultural sector in Ghana. Further supported by rigorous preparations in regards to historic developments and terminology, coupled with decorum, sensitivity and self- discipline to allow stakeholder’s to express themselves freely during the 260 semi-structured interviews. However, clearly operating within a racist and sexist world has had benefits as my position within the global society opened many doors that would have been otherwise closed. Furthermore, the extended period of time (with over thirty interviewees being visited multiple times) and placing a high priority on a comfortable interview environment, as well as the courage, eagerness and commitment of agricultural stakeholders to share their perceptions with me with great patience and critical reflection. Sharing some of my data as well as experience with Ghanaian academics, the term confession-like interviews arose, which I believe to be a accurate description of my research experience analyzing the agricultural sector in Ghana and the role of aid within it. While my gratitude towards the revealing, honest and at times self-incriminating answers of interviewees should be re-emphasized, it is equally important to recall the biases and influences that were initially held. This next section is then also a reconciliation of the five main influences listed in the beginning of this thesis and of how they changed over the course of the study. 1. Critical view on Western ideational influences on Ghana: The material influence of Western government through so-called development projects has been made clear with the analysis of the budget items between the years of 1999 and 2015. As described above, with the first Structural Adjustment Program, started in the 1980s, donors (such as the Bank, USAID, DfiD, EU etc.) have increasingly and ceaselessly advocated to re-organize the agricultural sector (among many others) in Ghana in a neoliberal fashion. While the Ghanaian governments since independence have all expressed their desire to mechanize, modernize and industrialize the dominantly smallholder agricultural sector independently, the focus on the private sector as the engine for such a development came in recent decades only. Where these neoliberal ideas originated from is still uncertain, as some Ghanaian stakeholders defend neoliberal approaches to capitalism just as vigorously as the Chicago Boys themselves would have done. With the drudgery that agriculture represents to many Ghanaians, in combination with the issues of accountability and sincerity of Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook 349 national leader in the past, some Ghanaians might have other motivational factors at arriving at the conclusion that the international private sector is the panacea for development than the aid staff, and other might have followed the Ashanti saying that you “don’t take a person on his head when your hand is in their mouth”, but the strong capitalist-neoliberal vision for the sector is evident. While the ideational origins and formation of this vision need to be further examined, also considering the influence of Western images that are projecting the idealized American-way of life onto the screen of millions of eager and interested digital media users in Ghana and beyond, Dahl asked in 1989 (p.60) already: [H]aven’t Americans made the consumption of a never ending and forever increasing stream or material good as principal objective of our lives and organized our society toward that end? And doesn’t most of the rest of the world nowadays, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian or Marxist, rush headlong toward the same goal? Understanding in how far the American way of life has been accepted as the best way by Ghanaian society is one worthwhile additional research endeavor. Other and related research areas that deserve further consideration could be investigating the role of the intellectual and political elite in Ghana for spreading these ideas about neoliberal and consumer capitalism. Additionally, research must also investigate the links and relations between Multinational Corporation (MNCs), donors, and the GoG. The highly competitive and expensive two-party democratic system, in combinations with the high food import bill (US$ 1.5 billion in 2015), suggest that there must be further attention paid to Ghana- based stakeholders active in the food import sector.

2. Critical view that certain economic ideas justify ‘the neoliberal agenda’ My original bias against von Hayek has shifted substantially, as this study reveals and explains better the context and intentions of his writings in particular and points towards the political actors that have (mis)used his ideas starting in the 1980s in other ways. As the above-mentioned quote of Keynes already underlined, it has been rather the ‘madman in positions of authority’ that have uses ideas of economists in ways that were only partially in line with its originally intent, and often motivated and guided by additional powers, such as the powerful private sector, which has pushed for deregulations and a frameworks of support by intensive lobbyist activities in the West. The related dislike for or inclination against neoliberalism influence and proclamation on ‘free trade’ regimes most plainly represented and pushed for by the WTO, but recently replaced by the EU in their relentless pursuit of the EPAs over the past decade. While I still strongly prefer a ‘Fair Trade’ system as described by Stiglitz and continue to believe in the importance of protectionism of infant industries, as historically explained most impressively in the writing of Ha-Joon Chang, I also had to concede that the undertakings of many Ghanaian government in the agricultural sector were often half- hearted and hence stakeholders asked frequently: “Why is it that when the private sector is involved it has an impact, but when the government does things it has not?” The disappointing performance of 350 Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook

GoGs weakened my bias against all neoliberal ideas. In conjunction with this disappointment the third critical view has somewhat changed as well. 3. Critical view on ODA as benevolent assistance towards developing countries My critical view on government aid agencies’ interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa has been confirmed or even intensified, as the research shows an undue dominance of Development Partners in all three pillars of the analysis (policy, budget, and implementation). However, I was also surprised by the honesty, critical reflection and willingness for things to change expressed by many of the Senior DPs. A Senior Officer at USAID sums up the situation perfectly in his outlook with the appeal that: We should do whatever the host government wants us to do, period! […] So if the Feed the Future were to have more impact, one of the things I consider essential is that we need to have more coordination, we need to have more control from the sectorial ministry [MoFA], we need to be more responsive to their agenda, we need to be more responsive to their priorities even if those priorities might not conform to your program, and that means that the programs should be flexible to adjust to the local conditions (No. 70) The quote above underlines the understanding and willingness of some of the Senior DPs to truly support the Ghanaian government, but transferring the responsibility to the local ministries. These thoughtful and benevolent DPs are however themselves only a small gear in a big system of political and bureaucratic aid machinery, that leaves very little room for adjustment to local conditions, as decisions are still made in headquarters and capitals abroad. The constant forced rotation schedule (every 3-5 years DPs must change countries), in combination with substantially higher pay than local elites, make it hard for DPs to understand local histories, values and believes essential to make projects work that expect people to change their behavior. Unsurprisingly, these top-down, quick and often superficial interventions in the agricultural sector have left many Ghanaian farmers doubting their craft, while agitated many Civil Servants and researchers, with one Academic describing aid in Ghana as “Colonialism 3.0” (No.77). At the same time a kind of donor dependence led many other Ghanaians express their thankfulness of the DPs project and program monies, as they are afraid that MoFA and the agricultural sector would collapse without this help. Yet a Senior Officer at the World Bank underlines that this is a misconceptions about who should drive development when stating: [...] I have come to the conclusion that I am wondering if its guys like us [DPs] who have to do it. I think the government itself has to do that. […] We may as well close up shop and go home. Let them do it. They have all the resources they need. They say they don’t, because a lot of it is going where it shouldn’t be going (No. 180) Further research should be done to understand the attitudes, self-believe and issues of learned helplessness that interviewees have alluded to as major hurdles to the transfer of management and ownership over aid monies. Culture, especially institutional culture within ministries, must be much better understood, and all leaders within stakeholder groups would benefit from leadership training that encourages innovation and creativity among staff, independent of age, gender or color. Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook 351

Furthermore the infiltration of racist thought that has been omnipresent and persistent in Western societies in particular, most aggressively displayed in the continued police brutality against African- Americans in the United States. The link between attitudes towards people of color worldwide in general and attitudes towards aid projects aimed at supporting people of color must be better understood. While equality, participation and transparency are included as proclaimed goals in LogFrames and other aid project management tools, realities continue to reflect a divided, unequal, distrustful and unconvinced relationship between Westerners and the rest.

4. Inclination toward smallholder farmers to spread sustainable agriculture and to address climate change concerns My inclination towards the need to address climate change through an adjustment our food production methods towards environmental sustainability remains strong. However, with the dearth of role models worldwide in regards to sustainable agricultural production and hence the lack of appropriate technology that could help Ghanaian farmers to strike a balance between smallholder, labor-intensive and drudgerous, unsupported agriculture and destructive, commercial methods, the vision of sustainable agricultural in Ghana seems impossible at this time. Similarly to previous biases, I continue to believe in self-determination, and hence, developing countries should be allowed to raise their standard of living to a minimum level, even if this includes some environment damaging methods (e.g. industrial farming techniques). Of course there should be a balance between mechanized commercial and sustainable smallholder ways of agriculture. The role of the Ghanaian government is of upmost importance in this regard, as the drudgery of current practices of Northern Ghanaian farmers can be elevated by various means, which should include applicable and smaller machinery, of which some still need to be developed. Moreover, the center of any agricultural vision must be soil. A first step should be the implementation of affordable and widespread testing of soils, a second step must focus on proper treatments. In this regard, the over-reliance of inorganic fertilizer needs to be re-evaluated and supplemented by additional organic materials. Noteworthy ongoing initiatives including Ghana-made compost and fecal sludge fertilizer. Cultural practices, such as perennial bush burning/fires in the Northern region, must be addressed urgently, for instance through better enforcement of existing laws by holding local chiefs responsible while simultaneously provide adequate equipment and staff in order to fight resulting calamities. Again, cultural hurdles demand further investigation. Most importantly, Boserup’s Conditions of Agricultural Change (1965), which points to the natural adjustment in production and agricultural practices with the increase of population along the saying: “necessity is the mother of invention” must be recalled, reexamined and reconsidered as a guiding star for the Ghanaian context. Instead of fearfully following the Malthusian Myth, governments should be encouraged to trust their farmers, while at the same time providing reasonable protection and support for them to carry out their craft. 352 Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook

5. Inclination towards ideational research, including the investigation into histories and identities to make development more efficient, effective and sustainable The impetus for this study came out of the disappointment with perceived previous, Eurocentric, often paternalistic and (economic) constricted approaches to aid that aimed at remaking the world in a Western image and along capitalistic and hence individualistic lines. Homo economicus and the private sector started taking center stage in development agendas over the past decades, disregarding and almost fearfully avoiding the fact that humans are socially embedded, communicatively constituted and culturally empowered. Instead of focusing on the shared ideas that have been shaped and re-shaped by history and transmitted via local narratives, beliefs, and values reflected in a cornucopia of cultures scattered across Ghana and the world, and essential in guiding individual’s actions, aid beneficiaries were rather drawn as robot-like utility maximizers that must think and act like Westerners to succeed. The ideational campaigns that have depicted the West as ‘the best’, despite material evidence, such as statistics on drug dependency and depression, suggesting otherwise, has been equally supported by African leaders, who have pushed for, requested and participated in this endeavor to spread the Western lifestyles through consumer capitalism. This lack of resistance and dearth of alternatives elsewhere on the globe has led to mono-cultures of societal ideas that slowly but persistently extinguish the diversity that will be helpful and necessary to adequately react to the climatically changes we will be facing in the decades to come. Surprisingly and importantly the famous economist and grandfather of neoliberalism, von Hayek, pointed out on the subject that: A large part of the people of the world borrowed from Western civilization and adopted Western ideals at a time when the West had become unsure of itself and had largely lost faith in the traditions that made it what it is [...] In consequence, those men from the less advanced nations who became purveyors of ideas to their own people learned, during their Western training, not how the West had built up its civilization, but mostly those dreams of alternatives which its very success had engendered. ö This development is especially tragic because, though the beliefs on which these disciples of the West are acting may enable their countries to copy more quickly a few of the achievements of the West, they will also prevent them from making their own distinct contribution (1960, p.48-49). Uncovering and understanding the ideas that are embedded not just in human brains but also in the ‘collective memories,’ government procedures, educational systems etc. and how they have shaped identities of stakeholders in developing countries is of great importance if we want to make development more effective, efficient and sustainable. Through this research the inclination towards the importance of ideational, qualitative research has then been further strengthened, as it became evident that local narrative and actors’ understanding of the world around them have tremendous Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook 353 influences on action, for instance misappropriating funds with the excuse of a ‘Robin-Hood’ role (i.e. taking from the rich aid organizations and giving to poorer family members). Material explanations are important too, but what we really need to understand are the local narratives and myths that have guided the development of nations and accompanied the rise and fall of civilization. Campbell points out that the distinguishing feature of man, compared to other species, is not unique through his physical but his psychological characteristics, as man, first and foremost, is motivated by and organizes his life according to myth. When talking about myth, Campbell includes the currently dominant religions of our time that stemming from myths around heroes such as Buddha, Jesus or Mohammed. Campbell explains: Food and drink, reproduction and nest-building, it is true, play formidable roles in the lives no less of men than of chimpanzees. But what of the economics of the Pyramids, the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, Hindus starving to death with edible cattle strolling all around them, or the history of Israel, from the time of Saul to right now? If a differentiating feature is to be named, separating human from animal psychology, it is surely this of the subordination in the human sphere of even economics to mythology (1972, p. 20). Myths, local narratives and believe systems must be investigated through inter-disciplinary research, with potential collaborations of anthropologists, ethnographers, behavioral economists, and psychologists to enhance our understanding on and around development. Of particular important are the role, involvement and support of African researchers, to expand current scientific understanding and add more perspectives from the continent. No matter if local researcher, international leaders or common people everywhere, we should continue to stay curious and courageous, striving to further our understanding of the world, embrace diversity and take inspiration from history, as very little under the sun is new. A positive outlook after the rather disquieting initial analysis of the agricultural sector and the role of aid within it, is the vision of Nkrumah already expressed in 1961 that can be a great guiding post to inspire us about what is needed: A new type of citizen, a dedicated, modest, honest and informed man A man who submerges self in service to the nation and mankind. A man who abhors greed and detests vanity. A new type of man whose humility is his strength and whose integrity is his greatness (p.130). This vision of man and woman citizen that Nkrumah describes, could be summed up as: courageous & content. What ideas man and woman of our time might need so as to be courageous and content leaders of their own, once more revolutionize the now global societal system of intra and inter-species collaboration is yet unknown. In 2017 the NPP Government has boldly proclaimed a Ghana beyond aid, and started an agricultural strategy that is aiming at Planting for Food and Jobs among other things. In how far these strategies are a deviation from the previously donor-dependent paths of development, remains to be seen. As world powers eventually and inevitably will shift again, new ways of development collaborations free of historic colonial biases, for example with China, might 354 Part IV: Conclusion and Outlook present further opportunities. Yet it is uncertain if the East will engage with African countries without the sense of superiority of their race, as the West has done to establish their rule. Similarly it is uncertain if we will be able to overcome the pernicious effects of capitalistic ideas, to embrace a more just world with higher virtues in place of the presently dominant and obnoxious human qualities around the obsessive accumulation of capital as an end in itself. John Maynard Keynes pronounced a vision on the Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren already in 1930, stating: When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo- moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues [...] All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard (p.360).

Cartoon 355

Cartoon

A Member of Parliament most vividly sums up the relationship between the Development Partners (DPs) and the government of Ghana (GoG) as of 2016, when he asked: ‘if your car is being towed you can be in the drivers’ seat, but what can you do?’ (No.115). Based on this comment a cartoon summary cartoon was drawn (by Jasmin Marston) and digitalized (by Victoria Klass), as can be seen in Figure 38 below.

356 Cartoon

Figure 38: Cartoon conclusion "Towing Aid"

Appendix 1: Transcript of Interview samples 357

Appendix 1: Transcript of Interview samples

Three samples of taped and verbatim-transcribed interviews were selected to give an insight into the process and the interaction between the interviewer and interviewee. The three gentlemen were particularly selected for their perspectives that can be shared by taking different viewpoints. All three are paid by donor money. The first is a local national, working for a donor program located in the capital, while the second one is a US American working as an implementer, paid by USAID and located in the Northern Region. The first two are senior staff, while the third, a Frenchman, paid by the European Union, is a mid-level staffer. Names have been replaced by the letters: G, U, and F respectively,

1. Verbatim-transcript of unedited-interview with local senior staff named G (pages 7-8 out of 20). The interviewer is denoted as J:

J: If you could change anything about the collaboration, what would that be? G: Change, in terms of? J: If there is something that you feel… I don’t know if there is Agriculture Sector working group, I’m not sure if …? G: … that is a different platform. J: Yeah it’s a different platform but you know there is collaboration, efforts to coordinate to make sure that you know: ‘I’m working in this area… you know these kind of things’. Do you feel that the collaboration works fine, the way it is or do you see things were you wish that they could be managed differently? G: No there are… Let me step by… there are couple of issues there. Every DP comes here with his own interest and we have to be mindful of that. So sometimes, the interest might be conflicting in country… but there is little they can do. I will give example: USAID, DANIDA, EU for instance, politically, they want to be in the 3 northern regions in the country because the poverty figure is so that those are the three poorest areas. But then when it comes to Agriculture investments and Agriculture value chain, in terms of population, it doesn’t add up to 30% of the population of the country. So the market is down south, so if you take a political decision to limit all your investments up north within a value chain concept, it doesn’t work. You get the point... J: Because the… there is more… G: Yes! So you need to follow the production and the consumption and see… So what you do is that, you get locked up for political reasons in the area where there is only production but Value Chain. We don’t focus on production. We focus on consumption paths in order to trigger production. So in such instances, you’ll decide to collaborate but then, the collaboration 358 Appendix 1: Transcript of Interview samples might have its own limits. So it’s good where we work in the same area, in the same topic… It is conflicting where there are too many donors in a limited economic space… J: And the north seems to be… G: It is! The third aspect is, whatever you do has to be country-led in order for you to make successful progress. Now, when for instance Ghana government changes its orientation, it might not immediately trigger into how donors are packaged, their support; because there might be a support package for maybe 3-4years, so in between, if something changes in country, it is not so easy for the donors or the DP to also do… to also change J: …right. Because I mean the projects are normally over multi years… G: Yeah. And then depending on the people you bring, if you bring outsiders, 2 years, they are only floating, they hardly understand anything so we waste resources and we waste time. J: So when somebody like me, when I come, it will take me at least 3 years… G: Minimum 2 years. J: … to get an understanding what’s actually happening. G: Yes and by the 3rd year, you are going out. So actually, by the time that most DP understand the country politics and the dynamics and do things right, they are already moving out. J: OK … I guess that’s not my subject but that’s very interesting. Do you see, with the structure that is setup, a way where you think things could make… somehow it could be changed so the work could be easier, that the work can be better? G: Yes, so it’s better when you have a strong government. J: Strong government. G: Yeah! To tell everybody in the faces, this is what I want, if you can’t respond, please get out. J: Yes. Do you see that in Ghana? G: It is not easy, because it has… you see there are several levels of engagement, one engagement is at the highest political level, which feeds into foreign service;, diplomatic relationship. And in diplomacy, you don’t hurt your brother or your sister. So… and Ghana has a long history of colonial partners so even with the… certain things are not being done right. Politically, you have to know how to use the right language. So that is one area… So it is a bit more complex than technical details [...]

2. Verbatim-transcript of unedited-interview with senior staff implementing USAID projects (pages 11-12 out of 27). In the proceeding second interview, U had explained a loan program that USAID was helping with, in which case I followed up here:

Appendix 1: Transcript of Interview samples 359

J: So what are the rates normally? U: That’s the problem here. Their prime, ehm, the government thinks it is trying to ehm, ehm, put, eh, a lid on inflation. They believe the Ghana Cedis is inflationary. Why? Because the price of oil dropped and they have, you know, we have, they are just printing in money without, but they’ve got vast resources here - you know, gold, the agricultural sector in the south in the pineapples and all that you know. It’s ridiculously rich. But when the oil price dropped and the Ghanaian Cedi started inflating so they clamped down on it by putting real high prime rate - what is central bank loan to their bank. The private bank is 26%. J: Ehm. U: So that means the private bank has to loan at least 27 to get the 2% margin and more often I’d say 30%. What agricultural crop can you grow to service a 30% debt? Cocaine? Opium? You know, but you go to process it, because I know poppy growers in Afghanistan because I have been there, they don’t make any of the money. It is the processors. Same with the cocaine growers. J: So what is the rate for the farmers that…? U: …That participate in our program? We are trying to get it down to 15%. We are negotiating now and it is probably going to get down to closer to 18. But 18 is a magical mean for smallholder farmers and I worked with a professor at Warlock Institute that wrote two of the books on ag econ: Roger Norton, Dr. Norton Roger that you don’t go through ag econ and get a degree in America without reading one of his two books. And he believes at 15% (golden rate?) smallholder farmers on major crops can handle servicing 15% debt on production credit. So, one of the keys to developing agriculture in any country is production credit: PCA, production Credit. You have to have it. USAID doesn’t include it. I’ve been drilling USAID for 5 years. I mean, …. Ehm, no, longer. I’ve been on it since 2009, 7 years under their Feed the Future Program. It’s clear weakness in their model. They say they are about smallholder farmers. I told A, one day, he said to him: You are going to see. You are aggregating wealth to the richest. And he goes: ‘It’s not possible because we are focusing on the smallholders’. And I said no we give lip service to that everywhere we go. Every country I worked with: Nepal, Haiti, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, all the Feed the Future countries I have worked in. It’s lip- service. You don't really focus on smallholder farmers. How are you going to service half a million smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana? You don’t. You focus on nucleus farmers that have outgrower schemes. That’s what B does. That’s his strategy right? That’s how he drills down new technologies, seed, fertilizer… Same thing ‘Wienco’ does with ‘Masara N'ziki’. They have 1500 outgrowers. USAID does it and they don't realize it. They think they are smallholder; they are called Feed the Future - is smallholder farming model, but it isn’t. I know the Mackenzie Company brought it out when Raj Shah came over to USAID from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He didn’t know anything about agriculture. 360 Appendix 1: Transcript of Interview samples

He is a doctor. He is a health specialist - public health specialist - which is why he had all these health indicators in, in Feed the Future. So he hires Mackenzie and these 30 years old PhDs used to come out and interview me, you know? And what the heck? And I’d say ja, ey… The first model was we are going to create service centers that would be one stop shops for smallholder farmers and we are going to do them all over South Sudan with these service centers and we are going to be able to get fertilizer and seeds and tractor services and extension services - the four major elements in the success story. They all gonna be able to get them at these little community village service centers. And I said, ‘Wonderful idea. And how are they going to pay for those? They are growing one hectare of land now you know that the PBS - Population Based Survey-. USAID had to conduct a mandate to conduct one. It is a baseline survey you have to do before you do any FTF programming… J: Okay. I talked to C at ABC and he had very generously given me copy of… it was your baseline survey and then I think two years later you had a follow up, so… M: Yeah, that is the original. The 2012 right? 2015 which half way through the midterm right? I said to A one day - we were sitting down over dinner with guinea fowl and over a beer. In this place in Tamale that he knew about. Ex- Peace Corps guy, walks around everywhere chatting people up. Man, I love the guy. Anyway, we are sitting there with guinea fowl and I said, ‘It’s an aggregationist model. There is no two ways about it. The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. No way around it.’ Eventually it came out, guess what? The top 20 % has dramatic increased of income, and the, the bottom 20% actually lost income after 2 and half years of FTF investing that was over 5 years. It is a 400million$ investment in Ghana. And so after 2 and half years, maybe not all the FTF program, but 120 million that got dumped up here. And the rich got richer and the poor got poorer” [...].

3. Verbatim-transcript of unedited-interview with mid-level EU staff (pages 14-15 out of 20). The interviewer is marked as J: Towards the end of the interview:

J: What kind of agriculture do you think will be most helpful for Ghana? F: You mean between small scale, big scale? J: Yes. Absolutely and maybe also more industrial schemes verses more sustainable… F: I think a bit of both but… I think the idea will be to find a compromise between, basically to find the industrial or large scale agricultural that still allows a high number of employment, which it’s a bit of contradiction. J: Mh. Appendix 1: Transcript of Interview samples 361

F: You also think so? But for example, the model that work pretty well in Ghana is you know, the model of the nucleus farm. So you have for example a scheme of 5000 hectares with 50% will be occupied by private, like a large-scale commercial farmer that will also take care of the maintenance of the whole irrigation scheme and then the rest, second 2000 hectares will be farm by small-scale farmer that will eventually could sell to the, or not to the commercial scale player. J: The out growers’ scheme. F: Exactly. J: Mh. F: So I mean that could be … that is an interesting model. I think that is especially important for the question of maintenance of the irrigation facility. J: Mh. F: The thing is we try to lead them out of poverty. Can you still say that if you just only provide enough for them to have 3 potatoes and 2 salads in the field? You know what I mean? Yes, they will eat from it, probably, which they do now. Although, I think extreme, extreme poverty has been reduced in Ghana and hunger as well is not as bad as it used to be. But…yes…I don’t know. I think it should be the ideal, this kind of compromise. But we still manage to have significant crops, for example, that we cash in the country. For example, cocoa obviously, pineapple. But maybe also like maize, for example, that is quite produced in the north and also sugarcane or something like that. And at the same time try to have something that generate a bit of employment. Yeah. J: Mh. And do you see any particular problems with…I guess the large-scale agriculture that you describing? F: Are you trying to bring in the environmental or ….? J: Yeah well, one of the questions would have been…may be substituted…did climate change play a role…? M: ….I love the way you bring it to the topic without saying it. Yes it is a lot. Actually in our programming, well…, You see how I actually forgot to talk about it. It’s actually very important to me so it’s shameful that I forgot to talk about it. But its 2 pillar; there is agriculture and sustainable infrastructure and inter-sectors (or infrastructure) that are resilient. Basically resiliency to climate change, so adaptation and mitigation of the agricultural sector. So yes, it is important for us. And yes, obviously it’s a major issue. The use of water, the use of waste of… so I mean Ghana still has a lot of water resources. I am talking about surface, not even talking about ground water. [...]

362 Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees

Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees

Position and Institution Anonymized Title Notes285 Head of MOAP/ GIZ Senior Officer at DP Program (GER) III Senior Coastal Resources Manager Senior Officer at DP Program (USA) Deputy Head of Cooperation Senior Officer at DP (GER) Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany Program/Embassy Staff Chief of Party - USAID – Feed the Future Senior Officer at DP Program Agriculture Technology Transfer Project IFDC – Ghana Chief of Party (COP ) -Feed the Future Senior Officer at DP Program (USAID) (USA)

AgNRM - Agriculture Natural Resources Management Head of Climate Change Adaptation Program - Senior Officer at DP Program GIZ (GER) II Livelihoods and Climate Advisor Mid-Level Officer - DP Program UK AID/ Department for International (GB) Development Communication Team Leader Mid-Level Officer - DP Program METSS/USAID (USA) II Team Leader Infrastructure and Sustainable Senior Officer - DP Program (EU) Development European Union Delegation to Ghana Peace Corp volunteer and USAID/RING Junior Officer - DP Program (USA) Head of Food Security Program Senior Officer - DP Program Global Affairs Canada (former CIDA) (CAN) Programme Officer/ JPO, Purchase for Progress Mid-Level Officer - DP Program (P4P) - JICA (JPN) Senior Technical Advisor Senior Officer - DP Program, AdF/MoFA Tamale embedded in MoFA (FRA) II Chief of Party - USAID/Ghana Feed the Future Senior Manager at DP Program Agriculture Policy Support Project (USA) Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist – GCAP Junior Officer - DP Program (WB) World Bank Chief of Party Senior Manager at DP Program RING – USAID (USA) Consultant for Conservation Agriculture Junior Officer - DP Program (USA) RING – USAID Consultant on Climate Smart Agriculture Junior Officer - DP Program (USA) Feed the Future/USAID / IFDC / ATT

285 The light blue in the notes section indicates that the interview was taped. The number stand for the frequency of interviews, and additional notes indicated if the interview was conducted via Skype, phone or WhatsApp. Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees 363

ISFM Advisor (Integrated Soil Fertility Junior Officer - DP Program (USA) Management) Feed the Future/USAID / IFDC / ATT Technical Director Senior Manager at DP Program ADVANCE – USAID (USA) Team Leader - Trade Related Assistance and Senior Officer - DP Program, Quality Enabling Programme (TRAQUE)- embedded in MoTI - (EU) MoTI/EU Consultant, GIZ/AFC Mid-Level Officer - DP Program (GER) Head of Fertilizer Program Mid-Level Officer - DP Program IFDC - International Fertilizer Development (USA) Centre Head Economic Advisor for Agric, World Bank Senior Officer - DP Program (WB) Programme Officer/ JPO, Purchase for Progress Senior Officer - DP Program (P4P) (USA) WFP (World Food Program) Deputy Chief of Party Mid-Level Officer - DP Program ADVANCE – USAID (USA) EU - Programme Officer – Infrastructure and Mid-Level Officer - DP Program Sustainable Development (EU) Regional Agriculture Policy Adviser - AGRA Senior Officer - DP Program West Africa (Alliance for a Green Revolution in (USA) Africa) Livelihood advisor, UK AID Senior Officer - DP Program (UK) Department for International Development (DfID) Deputy Office Director Senior Officer - DP Program Agriculture Team Leader (USA) Office of Economic Growth U.S. Agency for International Development

Deputy Team Leader and Marketing Adviser, Senior Officer - DP Program II GIZ (GER) Head, Green Innovation Center Ghana Mid-Level Officer - DP Program

(GER) Senior Officer - DP Program Head of Program, IFAD (IFAD ) Project Officer, Agriculture and Rural Mid-Level Officer - DP Program Development (FRA) Agence Française de Développement (AfD)- ACCRA Director of Crop for Norther Region and lead Senior Civil Servant at MoFA II for JICA projects JiCA liaison officer and part of Regional Crop Mid-level Civil Servant at MoFA II Directorate (NR) Regional Officer at EPA Norther Region Mid-level Civil Servant at EPA EPA Director - Tamale Office Senior Civil Servant at EPA

Head of RADU - AMA Senior Civil Servant at MoFA II Regional Coordinating Director Senior-Level Officer - Civil Regional Coordinating Council Servant 364 Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees

Mid-Level Officer in Regional Office of Mid-level Civil Servant at NBSSI 79 and 80 National Board of Small Scale Industries were (NBSSI) - MoTI interviewed together Mid-Level Officer in Regional Office of Mid-level Civil Servant at NBSSI National Board of Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) - MoTI Junior Level Officer Junior Civil Servant at RCC Norther Region Coordinating Council Regional Director Northern Region Senior Civil Servant at MoFA MoFA

Monitoring and Evaluation Officer/ Northern Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA Region II MoFA/ Norther Region Regional Office Regional Crops Officer, Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA 95, 96, and MoFA/ Regional Office, Upper West 97 were in the same room Regional Deputy Crops Officer, Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA MoFA/ Regional Office, Upper West Regional Director Senior Civil Servant at MoFA MoFA/ Regional, Upper West AEA Extension Officer/FBOs – Senior Senior AEA in Northern Region MoFA/Regional Office, Northern Region AEA – Agric Extension Agent AEA in AMA Agric Department- Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) AEA Supervisor – Agric Extension Agent AEA in AMA Agric Department- Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) Metropolitan Director of the Ministry of Food Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA and Agriculture at AMA II NRGP – IFAD/AfDB MoFA Mid-Level Civil Servant at

MoFA/DP Unit Project Lead - NRGP – IFAD/AfDB MoFA Mid-Level Civil Servant at

MoFA/DP Unit Former Director for Regional MoFA – Upper Senior (ret.) Civil Servant at joined East and Seed specialist at MoFA (ret.), now at MoFA, now at DP program meeting w/ ATT/IFDC PhD S. Former Director of Norther Region for MoFA Senior (ret.) Civil Servant at MoFA joined meeting w/ PhD S. Extension Agent Senior AEA in Northern Region Project Coordinator Junior Officer - MoFA/DP SADA/MoFA Project Coordination Unit Program Agric Specialist Mid-level Civil Servant at SADA SADA – Savannah Accelerated Development Authority Head of PCU at MoFA (regional) for RSSP Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA

MoFA / AdF PCU Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees 365

Tamale Metropolitan Assembly – Planning Senior Civil Servant at MoFA officer Director for Ag Department for Tamale Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA

Metropolitan District Administrative Officer, RADU, Norther Region Junior Civil Servant at MoFA Regional Director Northern Region Senior Civil Servant at MoFA RADU, MoFA Seed Farmer - Medium Size in Northern Region Medium Size Farmer II GCAP farmer Large Scale Farmer (with GCAP)

Organic Pineapple farmer 1- part of FBO FBO - business leader - Medium Size Farmer (with MOAP) Organic Pineapple farmer 2- part of FBO FBO - Secretary - Medium Size Farmer (with MOAP) Organic Pineapple farmer 3 - part of FBO FBO - Small Scale Farmer (with

MOAP) Organic Pineapple farmer 4- part of FBO FBO - Small Scale Farmer (with

MOAP) Organic Pineapple farmer 5 - part of FBO FBO -Medium Scale Farmer (with

MOAP) Organic Pineapple farmer 6- part of FBO FBO - Small Scale Farmer (with

MOAP) Nucleus farmer and Ex-president of PFA Senior Officer - NGO and Peasant Farmer Association Large Scale Farmer in NR (with FTF) GCAP Farmer Large Scale Farmer (with GCAP) Chief Director of Operations Mid-Level Officer at Private Sector Masara N Arzik – Wienco Wienco Commercial Farmer – Savalugu in Pong Tamale Medium Size Farmer Agronomist at Wienco Technical Officer at Private Sector Wienco Farmerline Junior Officer - Private Sector Head of agric department Senior Officer - Private Sector Nestle Senior Member of Agric Department Mid-Level Officer - Private Sector Nestle General Manager at Prairie Volta Limited Large Scale Farmer

(PVL) Poultry farmer from Kumasi Medium Size Farmer Extension Agent AEA in Northern Region AEA – Agric Extension Agent AEA in Northern Region Agric Department- Savalugu (NR) Deputy Director for Ag Department Mid-Level Civil Servant at LGS Chereponi AEA - Ag Department for Chereponi AEA in Northern Region National Service Person AEA in Northern Region District Director - Chereponi – Ag Department Senior Civil Servant at LGS AEA - Ag Department for Yendi AEA in Northern Region 366 Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees

Acting Director of Ag Department - Yendi Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA Incoming New Director Ag Department - Yendi Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA AEA - Information Manager and supervisor on Senior Civil Servant at LGS AEA area - Savalugu

AEA - Supervisor and municipal crop officer AEA in Northern Region Director of Ag Department in Savalugu Senior Civil Servant at LGS AEA at Tamale Metro Ag department AEA in Northern Region

AEA Supervisor - Tamale AEA in Northern Region ret. Pest officer at COCOBOD ret. Mid-Level Civil Servant -

Cocobod Retired MoFA officer ret. Mid-Level Civil Servant - MoFA Associate in NGO linking private sector Mid-Level Management NGO with Investment to agriculture Private Sector Link PhD Student on gender and agriculture in Junior Researcher (CAN)

Ghana Senior Lecturer - UDS Mid-Level Researcher (UDS) Project Manager Junior-Level Research (IPA) IPA Head of West African region, IWMI Senior Researcher - IWMI Researcher at SOAS Food Studies Centre, Mid-Level Researcher (LSE) London School of Economics via Skype Senior Research Fellow at IFPRI (Ghana) Senior Researcher - IFPRI Head of Ghana Office, IWMI Senior Researcher - IWMI Deputy Minister (Crops) - MoFA Senior Officer - Political Post Minority Leader and MP in Senior Officer - Political Post Parliament of Ghana for NPP District Chief Executive Mid-Level Officer - Political Post Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development Member of Parliament and the Select Member of Parliament and the Committee for Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Select Committee for Food,

Affairs - NPP Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs - (now Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture) NPP Member of Parliament and the Select Member of Parliament and the Committee for Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Select Committee for Food,

Affairs (Ranking) - NPP Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs - (now Minister of Food and Agriculture) NPP Member of Parliament and the Select Member of Parliament and the Committee for Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Select Committee for Food,

Affairs (Ranking) - NPP Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs - (now Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture) NPP MP and Member of the Select Committee for Member of Parliament and the Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs (Chair)- Select Committee for Food,

NDC; Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs - NDC Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees 367

MP and Member of the Select Committee for Member of Parliament and the Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs - Jirapa Select Committee for Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs - MP and Member of the Select Committee for Member of Parliament and the Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs (Ranking)- Select Committee for Food,

NDC; Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs - NDC Member of Parliament and the Select Member of Parliament and the Committee for Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Select Committee for Food,

Affairs (Ranking) - NPP Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs - (now Minister of Food and Agriculture) NDC Dean for the Faculty of Agriculture, UDS Senior Researcher (UDS) Junior Researcher at SARI Junior Researcher (SARI) II USAID - FTF - Researcher, Senior Researcher at DP Agribusiness Economics and Management, via Skype Kansas State University Systems Agronomist (and Rice Specialist) Senior Researcher (SARI) SARI – Savanna Agricultural Research Institute Senior Lecturer Senior Researcher (UDS) UDS – Faculty of Agribusiness and Communication Sciences Consultant (Ex) Junior Officer - DP Program Researcher for GIZ Senior Research - FARA - Forum for Senior Researcher (FARA)

Agricultural Research in Africa Senior Researcher - CSIR and Technical Senior Researcher (CSIR) Specialist for WAAPP Dean, School of Agriculture Senior Researcher (UoG, Legon) University of Ghana, Legon Head of department - Business School Senior Researcher (UoG, Legon) University of Ghana, Legon Lecture at Department of Psychology, Junior Researcher (UoG, Legon) University of Ghana, Legon Senior Researcher Mid-Level Researcher (IWMI) IWMI Junior Researcher at IMWI / AGRA and Ex- Junior Researcher (IWMI) MoFA Civil Servant Senior Lecturer – Department of Agric Senior Researcher (UoG, Legon) Economics and Agribusiness, University of Ghana, Legon Associate professor - Department of Agric Senior Researcher (UoG, Legon) Economics and Agribusiness, University of Ghana, Legon Head of Department - Institute of Statistical, Senior Researcher (UoG, Legon) social and Economic research (ISSER), University of Ghana, Legon Professor at the Institute of African Studies, Senior Researcher (UoG, Legon) University of Ghana, Legon Senior lecturer – Political Science Department, Senior Researcher (UoG, Legon) University of Ghana, Legon 368 Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees

Associate Professor, Agricultural Economics,, Senior Researcher (UoG, Legon) Department of Agricultural Economics & Agribusiness University of Ghana, Legon

MoAP Manager, GIZ Junior Officer - DP Program (GER) Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist Mid-Level Officer - DP Program WAAPP/World Bank (WB) Food Security and Agriculture Senior Advisor Mid-Level Officer - DP Program Global Affairs Canada (former CIDA) (CAN) Adaptation to Climate Change leader Mid-Level Officer - DP Program IFAD/AfDB – GASIP (MNI) Embedded Advisor at MoFA for Senior Officer - DP Program, 63 and 64 Canada Program Support Unit embedded in MoFA - (CAN) were Global Affairs Canada (former CIDA) interviewed together Program Lead- (agriculture)- JICA Mid-Level Officer - DP Program (JPN) Senior Local Expert, Senior Officer - DP Program KfW Development Bank, Accra Office (GER) Embedded policy advisor/consultant at MoFA Senior Researcher in position of for USAID (APSP) Senior Civil Servant at MoFA (USA) Zonal Coordinator/Senior Rural Infrastructure Mid-Level Officer - DP Program Engineer (WB) II GCAP - World Bank/USAID/MoFA Senior Officer - Tamale - Climate Change Mid-Level Officer - DP Program Adaptation Project - GIZ (GER) II

Senior Agricultural Economist at World Bank Mid-Level Officer - DP Program also Lead for WAAPP (WB) and Policy Unit (which was discontinued in 2012) Chief Technical Advisor to the Minister (F&A) Senior Officer - DP Program, MoFA embedded in MoFA - (USA) III Environmental Specialist for GCAP Junior Officer - DP Program (WB) Project coordinator Mid-Level Officer - DP Program GASIP – IFAD/AfDB (MNI) Deputy Chief of Party Mid-Level Officer - DP Program RING – USAID (USA) Local Expert, GIZ Mid-Level Officer - DP Program (GER) Specialist, SNV Junior-Level Officer - DP Program (HOL) Food Security Specialist/Local Expert Mid-Level Officer - DP Program USAID (USA) Agricultural expert, African Development Bank Senior Officer - DP Program (ADB) (AfDB)

Director of NGO in Upper East Senior Manager at NGO Via Phone Head of NGO for Sustainable ag in Upper East Senior Staff of NGO via Phone Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees 369

Deputy General Director Senior Officer - Agric Union GAWU – General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) Director of programs - livelihoods and food Mid-level Officer - NGO security SEND - CSO Senior Manager Senior Officer - NGO CARD - Centre for Agric and Rural Development Executive Director Senior Officer - NGO

Urbanet - NGO in Tamale on Urban Agriculture Program Manager for Food Security and Senior Officer - NGO Livelihoods

Association of Church-Based Development NGOS – ACDEP Programmes' Manager Senior Officer - NGO Association of Church-Based Development NGOS – ACDEP Executive Director - ECASARD- Economical Senior Officer - NGO Association for Sustainable Agric and Rural

Developments and president of the Ghana Farmers Platform Worker at DAA (Development Action Mid-level Officer - NGO

Association) Worker at DAA (Development Action Junior Officer - NGO

Association) Worker at DAA (Development Action Mid-level Officer - NGO

Association) Senior Analyst and Trade Expert at TWN – Mid-Level Research at NGO Third World Network National Women's leader for ECASARD - Senior Officer - NGO Community Association for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development Retired head of CSIR Senior Researcher - CSIR Senior Scientist at the Soil Research Institute – Senior Researcher - Soil (SRI) via Phone Kumasi SARI /ACDEP ret. Senior Researcher - Soil

(SARI) Lecturer and Head of School, as well as Senior Researcher and Member of chairman of Agriculture and Natural Resource NDPC Management Committee in NDPC

Lecturer and accountant at UDS Mid-Level Researcher Rural/Agricultural Development Economist Senior Researcher - UDS Department for Climate Change and Food

Security UDS - Development Studies Dean for the Faculty of Agribusiness and Senior Researcher - UDS II Communication Sciences (UDS) Lecturer – Interdisciplinary studies Mid-Level Researcher UDS - Development Studies Senior Soil Scientist Senior Researcher -( SARI) SARI – Savanna Agricultural Research Institute 370 Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees

Rural/Agricultural Development Economist Senior Researcher (UDS) UDS - Development Studies Professor of Geography at UoG, Legon Senior Researcher (UoG, Legon) joined meeting w/ PhD S. Journalist Journalist Journalist - Citi FM Journalist Gender Research Officer, IWMI Mid-Level Researcher (IWMI) Lecturer at Department of Psychology Mid-Level Researcher (UoG, University of Ghana, Legon Legon) Senior Lecturer, Department of Public Mid-Level Researcher (UoG, Administration & Health Services Management Legon) at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) Director – Debt Management Division – MoF Senior Civil Servant at MoF Head of budget development(MoF) Senior Civil Servant at MoF Environment, Land and Water Management Civil Servant at MoFA Unit

Under Crop Directorate MoFA National level Fiscal Decentralization Desk Manager Senior Civil Servant at MoF Director Senior Civil Servant at MoF Chief Economics Officer MoF Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoF Donor relations Parliamentary Clerk to the Select Committee on Mid-Level Civil Servant at Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs Parliament II Local Government Services Senior Civil Servant at LGS Head for decentralization agric Plant Protection and Regulatory Services Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA Directorate PPRSD - Officer with the Pesticide and Fertilizer Division - MoFA PPRS Directorate - Plant Quarantine Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA PPRS Directorate - Plant Quarantine Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA Director of Project Coordination Unit at MoFA Senior Civil Servant at MoFA III Director – Multilateral, Regional and Bilateral Senior Civil Servant at MoTI Trade Ministry of Trade and Industry Deputy Director- Human Resource Senior Civil Servant at MoFA Development and Management Director Development Planning (Planning Senior Civil Servant at LGS Officer) Accra Metropolitan Assembly Chief Executive Senior Civil Servant at MoFA GIDA – Ghana Irrigation Development Authority Deputy Chief Executive Senior Civil Servant at MoFA GIDA – Ghana Irrigation Development Authority Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees 371

Assistant Agricultural Economist Junior Civil Servant at MoFA MoFA – Agribusiness Support Division Director of PP&B for MoFA Senior Civil Servant at MoFA IIII Assistant Economics Officer and Sector Analyst Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoF Agriculture and Agribusiness Unit – MoF Technical Advisor/Senior Lecturer at UoG, Senior Researcher in position of Legon Senior Civil Servant at MoF Agriculture and Agribusiness Unit – MoF Assistant Economics Officer and Assistant Junior Civil Servant at MoF Sector Analyst Agriculture and Agribusiness Unit – MoF Director – Logistics and Value Chain Division Senior Civil Servant at MoTI Ministry of Trade and Industry Chief Director Senior Civil Servant at MoFA Ministry of Food and Agriculture – MoFA Deputy Director Senior Civil Servant at MoF MoFA – Veterinary Directorate

Agric desk – principal officer Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoF MoF Junior Level Officer, MoFA Junior Civil Servant at MoFA II Head of Budget Unit Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoF Principal revenue Officer Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoF MoF Deputy Director – Animal Production Senior Civil Servant at MoFA Senior Budget Unit officer Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA MoFA - Budget Unit of PP&B Directorate Officer at Fertilizer Division, PPRSD, MoFA Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA Officer at Fertilizer Division, PPRSD, MoFA Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA SAKKS, MoFA Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA Officer at Project Coordination Unit, MoFA Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA II Deputy Director – Agric Extension Services Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA MoFA Director – Monitoring and Evaluation Senior Civil Servant at MoFA Directorate MoFA Deputy Director for Crop Services Senior Civil Servant at MoFA MoFA Director – Youth in Agriculture Directorate – Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA MoFA Director SDRI Senior Civil Servant at MoFA MoFA Director of Women in Agricultural Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA Development (WIAD), MoFA Deputy Director – WIAD Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA MoFA 372 Appendix 2: Positions and anonymized titles of interviewees

Donor Coordination Unit – Senior staff Senior Civil Servant at MoF MoF Donor Coordination Unit – Senior staff Senior Civil Servant at MoF MoF Head of Agric Unit - GSS – Ghana Statistical Senior Civil Servant at GSS Service Deputy director – SRID Senior Civil Servant at MoFA MoFA Officer at WIAD (Women for Agricultural Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA Development), MoFA Officer at WIAD (Women for Agricultural Junior Civil Servant at MoFA Development), MoFA Officer at WIAD (Women for Agricultural Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoFA Development), MoFA Officer at Directorate for Multilateral External Mid-Level Civil Servant at MoF Fund Mobilization Born-again Christian Born-again Christian WhatsApp Born-again Christian Born-again Christian Skype Born-again Christian Born-again Christian Skype References 373

References

200th Congress, United States of America (May/2000): African Growth and Opportunity Act, enacted Public Law 106. AGOA. Fundstelle: https://agoa.info/images/documents/2/AGOA_legal_text.pdf. Available online: https://agoa.info/about-agoa.html, last accessed: last accessed: 07:09:2017. Abdelal, Rawi; Blyth, Mark; Parsons, Craig A. (Hg.) (2010): Constructing the international economy. Ithaca, N.Y., London: Cornell University Press (Cornell studies in political economy). Achebe, Chinua (1966): A man of the people. Reprint, 1988. Oxford: Heinemann. African Development Bank Group: AfDB explores investment strategies to tilt markets in favour of African farmers. Patterson, Jennifer. Online verfügbar unter https://www.afdb.org/en/news-and- events/afdb-explores-investment-strategies-to-tilt-markets-in-favour-of-african-farmers-17029/, last accessed: 21.08.2017. African Union (2006): Brief on Economic Partnership Agreements - Date 26 October 2006; Jointly prepared by the Commission of the African Union, and the Economic Commission for Africa. Hg. v. AU. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, P.O. Box 3243. AGRA (2015): Agricultural Extension: Guideline for Service Providers in Ghana. Ghana Environment and Climate Change Policy Action Node - Policies that work for the environment. Jointly prepared by Nelson Obirih-Opareh. Hg. v. Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Accra, Ghana. Ajzen, Icek; Fishbein, Martin (2002): Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Akoto, Owusu A. (1987): Agricultural development policy in Ghana. In: Food Policy 12 (3), S. 243– 254. DOI: 10.1016/0306-9192(77)90024-0. Al Jazeera (17.03.2017): South Sudan keeps buying weapons amid famine: UN. South Sudan's government rejects UN report accusing it of buying weapons despite country descending into famine. Available online: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/south-sudan-buying- weapons-famine-170317200215330.html, zuletzt geprüft am 21.08.2017. Alesina, A.; Perotti, P. (1994): The Political Economy of Growth. A Critical Survey of the Recent Literature. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ The World Bank, last accessed: 31.05.2017. Alesina, Alberto; Dollar, David (2000): Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why? In: Journal of Economic Growth (Vol. 5, No. 1), S. 33–63, last accessed: 24.03.2017. Al-Hassan, Ramatu M. (2014): A review of empirical applications of technical efficiency analysis to smallholder farming in Ghana: What evidence for policy? In: Wayo Seini, Irene S. Egyir and John K. M. Kuwornu (Hg.): Developments in agricultural economics and contemporary issues in Ghana. Tema, Ghana: For the University of Ghana by Digibooks Ghana Ltd (University of Ghana readers, vol. 2), S. 19–32. Alipui, Frederick Yao (2013): Ghana's National Efforts at the Domestication of the African Union's Economic Agenda within the Framework of the African Charter on Democracy, Election and Governance. In: Adwinsa Publications (Gh.) Ltd for Institute for Democratic Governance (Hg.): Ghana's Democratization Process so far: The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance in Focus. Papers Presented at a State of the Union (SoTU) Project Roundtable. ISBN: 978-9964-6-3410-2. Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG). East Legon, Accra, Ghana, S. 41–82. Alvesson, Mats; Sköldberg, Kaj (2013): Reflexive methodology. New vistas for qualitative research. 2nd ed. London [etc.]: Sage. Amadeo, Kimberly (2017): Fed Funds Rate History: Highs, Lows and Chart with Major Events. What makes the Fed Change Rates? Hg. v. The Balance. Available online: https://www.thebalance.com/fed-funds-rate-history-highs-lows-3306135, zuletzt aktualisiert am 02.08.2017, last accessed: 23.10.2017. 374 References

Amoah Nai, Augustine Nii (2014): DACF and Decentralization Objective. 1st Vice President, NALAG. In: Republic of Ghana (Hg.): District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) December 2014. Accra, Ghana (http://www.commonfund.gov.gh/Final%20DACF.pdf, 2). Anriquez, Gustavo; Stamoulis, Kostas (2007): Rural Development and Poverty Reduction: Is Agriculture Still the Key? Hg. v. The Food and Agriculture Organization. FAO. Rome, Italy (ESA Working Paper, No. 07-02). Ansolabehere, Stephen (2006): Voters, Candidates, and Parties. In: Barry R. Weingast and Donald A. Wittman (Hg.): The Oxford handbook of political economy. Jointly prepared by Weingast, Barry R., Wittman, Donald A., Ansolabhere, S., Lohmann, S., Huber, John D., Shipan, Charles R. 1. publ. in paperback. Oxford [u.a.]: Oxford Univ. Press (The Oxford handbooks of political science), S. 29–49. Antwi-Danso, Vladimir (2013): Africa is Search of Democracy and Good Governance: Ghana's Case. In: Adwinsa Publications (Gh.) Ltd for Institute for Democratic Governance (Hg.): Ghana's Democratization Process so far: The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance in Focus. Papers Presented at a State of the Union (SoTU) Project Roundtable. ISBN: 978- 9964-6-3410-2. Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG). East Legon, Accra, Ghana, S. 19– 40. Aryeetey, Ernest; Harrigan, Jane; Nissanke, Machiko (Hg.) (2000): Economic reforms in Ghana. The miracle and the mirage. Oxford, Accra, New Town, Ghana, Trenton, NJ: James Curry; Woeli Pub. Services; Africa World Press. Asomani-Boateng, Raymond (2002): Urban cultivation in Accra. An examination of the nature, practices, problems, potentials and urban planning implications. In: Habitat International 26 (4), S. 591–607. DOI: 10.1016/S0197-3975(02)00027-9. Asuming-Brempong, Samuel (2014): Do land management practices have effect on food crop yields? A case study of selected crops in Ghana. In: Wayo Seini, Irene S. Egyir and John K. M. Kuwornu (Hg.): Developments in agricultural economics and contemporary issues in Ghana. Tema, Ghana: For the University of Ghana by Digibooks Ghana Ltd (University of Ghana readers, vol. 2), S. 33–49. Ayee, Joseph; Dickovick, Tyler (2010): Comparative Assessment of Decentralization in Africa: Ghana desk study in June 2010.Jointly prepared by Inc ARD. Hg. v. USAID. Washington, D.C. Azikiwe, Abayomi (2017): US foreign policy towards Africa since World War II. A trail of imperialist militarism and super-exploitation. Jun 08, 2017. Hg. v. Pambazuka News. Available online: https://www.pambazuka.org/pan-africanism/us-foreign-policy-towards-africa-world-war-ii. Baldwin, James (1964): The fire next time. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books. Banfield, Edward C. (1958): The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. New York, London: Free Press Glencoe. Bates, Robert H. (1981): Markets and states in tropical Africa. The polit. basis of agricultural policies. Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Press (California series on social choice and political economy), last accessed: 21.03.2017. Bates, Thomas R. (1975): Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony. In: Journal of the History of Ideas Vol.36 (No.2 (Apr.-Jun.)), pp.351-366. Beland, Daniel (2007): The social exclusion discourse: ideas and policy change. In: Policy & Politics 35 (1), S. 123–139, last accessed: 02.08.2017. Béland, Daniel; Cox, Robert Henry (Hg.) (2011): Ideas and politics in social science research. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berman, Sheri (2011): Ideology, History, and Politics. In: Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox (Hg.): Ideas and politics in social science research. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, S. 105–126. Berry, Sara (1993): No Condition is Permanent. The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub- Saharan Africa. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Besant, Annie (1897): Four Great Religions. Four Lectures. Delivered on the Twenty-first Anniversary of the Theosophical Society, at Adyar, Madras. London, New York: Theosophical Publishing Society. References 375

Best, Jacqueline (2010): Bringing Power Back In. The IMF's Constructivist Strategy in Critical Perspective. In: Rawi Abdelal, Mark Blyth and Craig A. Parsons (Hg.): Constructing the international economy. Ithaca, N.Y., London: Cornell University Press (Cornell studies in political economy). Blyth, Mark (2011): Ideas, Uncertainty, and Evolution. In: Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox (Hg.): Ideas and politics in social science research. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, S. 83–104. Boahen, Adu (1975): Ghana. Evolution and change in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. London: Longman Group Limited. Boahen, Adu A. (1987): African Perspectives on Colonialism. 5th pr., pbk. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press (The Johns Hopkins symposia in comparative history, 15). BoG: Bank of Ghana's experience in supporting agricultural Finance in Ghana 2016, last accessed: 17.03.2017. Booth, David; Cammack, Diana (2013): Governance for development in Africa. Solving collective action problems. London: Zed Books. Booth, David; Crook, Richard; Gyimah-Boadi, E.; Killick, Tony; Luckham, Robin; Boateng, Nana (November/2005): What are the drivers of change in Ghana? CDD/ODI Policy Brief No. 1. Hg. v. CDD/ODI, last accessed: 02.08.2017. Boserup, Ester (1965): The Conditions of Agricultural Growth. Printed in Great Britain: Unwin Brothers Limited Working and London. Boyce, J. K.; Ndikumana, Leonce (2001): Is Africa a Net Creditor? New Estimates of Capital Flight from Severely Indebted Sub-Saharan African Countries, 1970-96. In: Journal of Development Studies 38 (2), S. 27–56. Boyce, J. K.; Ndikumana, Leonce (2012): Capital Flight from Sub-Sharan African Countries. Updated Estimates, 1970-2010. Hg. v. Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, last accessed: 02.06.2017. BRD (2016): Pressestatements von Bundeskanzlerin Merkel und Bundesfinanzminister Schäuble zum Gipfeltreffen der G20-Staaten am 5. September 2016. Inhalt Mitschrift Pressekonferenz; Im Wortlaut. Hg. v. Die Bundesregierung. Brender, Valerie (2010): Economic Transformations in Chile: The Formation of the Chicago Boys. In: The American Economist (Vol. 55, No. 1), S. 111–122, last accessed: 07.03.2017. Brierley, Sarah Anne (2017): Politicians and Bureaucrats: The Politics of Development and Corruption in Ghana. UCLA online theses and dissertations. Hg. v. University of California and Los Angeles. Los Angeles, last accessed: 14.08.2017. Bukovansky, Malada (2010): Institutionalized Hypocrisy and the Politics of Agricultural Trade. In: Rawi Abdelal, Mark Blyth and Craig A. Parsons (Hg.): Constructing the international economy. Ithaca, N.Y., London: Cornell University Press (Cornell studies in political economy), S. 68–90. Busia, Kofi A. (1941/1968): The position of the chief in the modern political system of Ashanti. a study of the influence of contemporary social changes on Ashanti political institutions. London: Oxford University Press (Cass library of African studies. General studies). Campbell, Joseph. (1972): Myth to Live by. Printed in the United States of America. Bantam Books. Toronto. New York. London. Sydney. Auckland. Carstensen, Martin B. (2010): Ideas are Not as Stable as Political Scientists Want Them to Be. A Theory of Incremental Ideational Change. In: Political Studies 59 (3), S. 596–615. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00868.x. CDD (2004): ABUSE OF INCUMBENCY, STATE ADMINISTRATIVE RESOURCES, AND POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN ELECTION 2004 - Part IIl. In: Ghana Center for Democratic Development Briefing Paper 6 (6), S. 1–2, last accessed: 24.05.2017. CDD (2006): The Millennium Challenge Account: A New Chance for Ghana. In: Ghana Center for Democratic Development Briefing Paper 8 (1), S. 1–8, last accessed: 24.05.2017. CDD (2014): GHANA’S 1992 CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW PROCESS: AVOIDING ERRORS AND OMISSIONS IN THE PROPOSED AMENDMENTS. A CDD-Ghana Position Paper. In: Ghana Center for Democratic Development Briefing Paper 13 (1), last accessed: 24.05.2017. 376 References

CDD (2017): CDD-Ghana Statement on 100 Days of the Nana-Afufo -Addo/NPP Government. Hg. v. Ghana Center for Democratic Development. CEPA (2005): Multi-Donor direct budget Support in Ghana: The Implications for Aid Delivery and Aid Effectiveness. Hg. v. Centre for Policy Analysis. Accra, Ghana (Selected Economic Issues, 11), last accessed: 22.09.2017. Chamberlin, Jordan (2008): It's a Small World After All: Defining Smallholder Agriculture in Ghana. Development Strategy and Governance Division. In: IFPRI Discussion Paper 00823 November, last accessed: 30.05.2017. Chang, Ha-Joon (2002): Kicking away the ladder. Development strategy in historical perspective. London: Anthem. Chang, Ha-Joon (Hg.) (2012a): Public policy and agricultural development. London, New York: Routledge. Chang, Ha-Joon (Hg.) (2012b): Public policy and agricultural development. London, New York, NY: Routledge (8). Chang, Ha-Joon (2014): Economics: The user's guide. London, England: Penguin Group. Chazan, Naomi (1983): An anatomy of Ghanaian politics. Managing political recession, 1969-1982. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press (Westview special studies on Africa). Chhokar, Jagdeep S.; Babu, Suresh Chandra; Kolavalli, Shashidhara (2015): Understanding food policy change in Ghana. In: Development in Practice 25 (8), S. 1077–1090. DOI: 10.1080/09614524.2015.1082977. Chomsky, Noam (2002): Understanding power. The indispensable Chomsky. Jointly prepare by: Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel. London: Vintage. Chutel, Lynsey (2017): The road to Germany’s global leadership is passing through Africa. Wenn zwei sich streiten. In: Quartz Africa, 08.05.2017. Available online: https://qz.com/977149/the- road-to-germanys-global-domination-is-passing-through-africa/, last accessed: 21.08.2017. Chwieroth, Jeffrey M. (2010): Shrinking the State. Neoliberal Economists and Social Spending in Latin America. In: Rawi Abdelal, Mark Blyth and Craig A. Parsons (Hg.): Constructing the international economy. Ithaca, N.Y., London: Cornell University Press (Cornell studies in political economy). CIA (2017): The World Factbook. Africa: Ghana. Available online: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/print_gh.html, zuletzt aktualisiert am 19.01.2017, last accessed: 05.04.2017. Cobbinah, Patrick Brandful; Poku-Boansi, Michael; Asomani-Boateng, Raymond (2016): Urbanisation of Hope or Despair? Urban Planning Dilemma in Ghana. In: Urban Forum 27 (4), S. 415–432. DOI: 10.1007/s12132-016-9293-9. Conteh-Morgan, Earl (2017): The danger of supplementing aid to Africa with weapons. In: The Conversation - Academic rigour, journalistic flair, 14.08.2017. Available online: http://reliefweb.int/report/world/danger-supplementing-aid-africa-weapons, last accessed: 21.08.2017. Cooper, Helene (2017): White House Pushes Military Might Over Humanitarian Aid in Africa. In: New York Times, 25.06.2017. Available online: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/world/africa/white-house-pushes-military-might-over- humanitarian-aid-in-africa.html?smid=tw-share), last accessed: 21.08.2017. Cotonou Partnership Agreement (2000): Partnership Agreement between the members of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States of the one part, and the European Community and its Member States, of the other part, signed in Cotonou on 23 June 2000. In: Official Journal of the European Communities 15.12.2000 (L 317/3), last accessed: 30.03.2017. Covic, Namukolo; Hendriks, S. L. (Hg.) (2016): Achieving a nutrition revolution for Africa: The road to healthier diets and optimal nutrition. ReSAKSS Annual Trends and Outook Report 2015. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), last accessed: 11.05.2017. Custers, Peter (2010): Military Keynesianism today. An innovative discourse. In: Race & Class 51 (4), S. 79–94. DOI: 10.1177/0306396810363049. References 377

Dahl, Robert Alan (1961/2005): Who governs? Democracy and power in an American city. 2nd ed. New Haven, Conn., London: Press. Dahl, Robert Alan (1989): Democracy and its critics. New Haven: Yale University Press. De Schutter (2010): Agroecology and the Right to Food, General Assembly, Human Rights Council. Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter. Hg. v. United Nations. Available online: http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20110308_a-hrc-16- 49_agroecology_en.pdf. Dei-Anang, Michael (1975): The administration of Ghana's foreign relations, 1957-1965. A personal memoir. London (Commonwealth papers, 17). DeSchutter, Olivier (2014): Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food. Final report: The transformative potential of the right to food. Hg. v. United Nations, General Assembly (A/HRC/25/57). DFID (2005): Using Drivers of Change to Improve Aid Effectiveness. A DFID practice paper. Hg. v. Department for International Development. London, last accessed: 02.08.2017. Djurfeldt, G.; Holmen, H.; Jirstrom, M.; Larsson, R. (Hg.) (2005a): The African food crisis. Lessons from the Asian Green Revolution. Wallingford, Oxforshire, UK: CABI Publ. Djurfeldt, G.; Jirstrom, M. (2005): The Puzzle of the Policy shift – the Early Green Revolution in India, Indonesia and the Philippines. In: G. Djurfeldt, H. Holmen, M. Jirstrom and R. Larsson (Hg.): The African food crisis. Lessons from the Asian Green Revolution. Wallingford, Oxforshire, UK: CABI Publ. Djurfeldt, G.; Jirström, M.; Larsson, R. (2005b): African Food Crisis – the Relevance of Asian Experiences. Chapter 1. In: G. Djurfeldt, H. Holmen, M. Jirstrom and R. Larsson (Hg.): The African food crisis. Lessons from the Asian Green Revolution. Wallingford, Oxforshire, UK: CABI Publ. Dollar, David; Pritchett, Lant (1998): Assessing aid. What works, what doesn't, and why. 3. print. [af 1998]. New York: Published for the World Bank by Oxford University Press (A World Bank policy research report), last accessed: 08.06.2017. Dordunoo, Cletus, K (2000): Fiscal Trends 1970-95. Chapter 5 in Part II Fiscal, Savings & Investment Policies. In: Ernest Aryeetey, Jane Harrigan and Machiko Nissanke (Hg.): Economic reforms in Ghana. The miracle and the mirage. Oxford, Accra, New Town, Ghana, Trenton, NJ: James Curry; Woeli Pub. Services; Africa World Press, S. 88–114. Doucouliagos, H.; Paldam, Martin (2007): The aid effectiveness literature: the sad results of 40 years of research. In: Working Paper 15, Department of Economics, University of Aarhus, last accessed: 29.03.2017. Dreher, Axel; Nunnenkamp, Peter and Thiele, Rainer (2008): Does US Aid Buy UN General Assembly Votes? A Disaggregated Analysis. In: Public Choice Vol. 136 (No.1/2), S. 139–164, last accessed: 29.03.2017. Duffuor, Kwabena (2009): The Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the Government of Ghana for the 2010 financial Year. Wednesday, 18th November, 2009. Minister of Finance and Economic Planning. Hg. v. MoF/GoG. Accra, Ghana. Available online: http://www.mofep.gov.gh/sites/default/files/budget/Budget_2010.pdf, last accessed: 04.10.2017. Duodu, Cameron (2005): Malcolm X: when he came to Ghana. New African. Hg. v. The Free Library (May 1). Available online: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Malcolm+X%3a+when+he+came+to+Ghana.-a0132613990. Easterly, William (2002): The elusive quest for growth. Economists' adventures and misadventures in the tropics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Easterly, William (2013): Tyranny of Experts. New York: Basic Books. EC (2002): Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament. Trade and Development Assisting Developing countries to benefit from trade. Com(2002) 513 final. Hg. v. Commission of the European Communities. European Commission. Brussels. Ecker, Olivier; Fang, Peixun (2016): Technical Appendix: Economic Development and Nutrition Transition in Ghana. Taking Stock of Food Consumption Patterns and Trends. In: Namukolo 378 References

Covic and S. L. Hendriks (Hg.): Achieving a nutrition revolution for Africa: The road to healthier diets and optimal nutrition. ReSAKSS Annual Trends and Outook Report 2015. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Available online: http://www.resakss.org/sites/default/files/Ecker-Fang-2016-Technical-Appendix-ATOR-2015- Ch-4.pdf, last accessed: 11.05.2017. Egyir, Irene S.; Asare, Bossman; Asamoah, Kwame (2013): Drivers of Success Study for CAADP Implementation. Ghana Case Study - November 2013. Hg. v. Firetail. Available online: http://www.firetail.co.uk/reports/GhanaDOS.pdf, last accessed: 01.06.2017. EPCA (2015): Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). European Crop Protection Association. European Commission (2014): Agricultural trade in 2013. EU gains in commodity exports. Monitoring Agri-trade Policy. European Commission (Agriculture and Rural Development (MAP 2014-1) , 1). European Commission (2015): Financing the Common Agricultural Policy. European Commission. Available online: http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/cap-funding/index_en.htm. Fanon, Frantz (1952/2008): Black skin, white masks. New ed. London: Pluto (Get political). FAO (1996): Report of the World Food Summit. 13-17 November 1996. Hg. v. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Rome. FAO (2007): The State of Food and Agriculture. Paying farmers for environmental services. Hg. v. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Rome. Available online: ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a1200e/a1200e00.pdf, last accessed: 21.08.2017. FAO (2009a): 1.02 billion people hungry. Hg. v. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Available online: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/20568/icode/, last accessed: 21.08.2017. FAO (2009b): How to Feed the World in 2050. Hg. v. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Rome. Available online: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/expert_paper/How_to_Feed_the_World_in_2 050.pdf, last accessed: 21.08.2017. FAO (2011a): Organic Agriculture and Climate Change Mitigation. A Report of the round table on organic agriculture and climate change. Jointly prepared by Natural Resources Management and Environment Department. Hg. v. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Rome. FAO (2011b): State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture. Managing systems at risk,. Hg. v. Earthscan. FAO. New York. FAO (2011c): World hunger report 2011: High, volatile prices set to continue. Hg. v. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. FAO Media Center. Available online: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/92495/icode/, last accessed: 21.08.2017. FAO (2014): Impacts of Foreign Agricultural Investment on Developing Countries: Evidence from Case Studies. Jointly prepared by Pascal Lui. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Rome, last accessed: 21.08.2017. FAO (2015): Ghana - Country fact sheet on food and agriculture policy trends. FAPDA - Food and Agriculture Policy Decision Analysis, last accessed: 10.05.2017. FAO (July 2017): Famine response and prevention in Northeastern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. Rome. FAO Emergency and Rehabilitation Division, [email protected]. Available online: http://www.fao.org/emergencies/resources/documents/resources- detail/en/c/854239/, last accessed: 21.08.2017. FAO; University of Ghana (ISSER); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2013): Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Program. Impact Evaluation. Jointly prepared by Sudhanshu Handa, Michael Park, Isaac Osei-Akoto, Robert O. Darko, Benjamin Davis and Silvio Diadone. Hg. v. UNICEF. Carolina Population Center. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, last accessed: 31.05.2017. FAO, IFAD and WFP (2015): The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015. Meeting the 2015 international hunger targets: taking stock of uneven progress. Hg. v. FAO. Rome. References 379

Finnemore, Martha (1996): National interests in international society. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press (Cornell studies in political economy). Fishbein, Martin; Ajzen, Icek (1980): Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior. An introduction to theory and research. 4. print. Reading, Mass. [u.a.]: Addison-Wesley (Addison-Wesley series in social psychology). Fleischacker, Sam (2004): Economics and the Ordinary Person: Re-reading Adam Smith. Hg. v. Library of Economics and Liberty. Available online: http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2004/FleischackerSmith.html#footnote2, last accessed: 18.03.2017. Flick, Uwe (2006): An introduction to qualitative research. Chapter 8 Semi-Structured Interviews. Los Angeles: Sage. Friedman, Milton; Friedman, Rose D. (2012): Capitalism and freedom. 40th anniversary ed., 10th repr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Friedmann, Harriet (1982): The Political Economy of Food. The Rise and Fall of the Postwar International Food Order. In: American Journal of Sociology 88, S248-S286. DOI: 10.1086/649258. Frimpong-Ansah, J. H. (1991): The vampire state in Africa. The political economy of decline in Ghana. London: James Currey. Fynn, Kojo (2014): DACF – A message from the DACF. In: Republic of Ghana (Hg.): District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) December 2014. Accra, Ghana (http://www.commonfund.gov.gh/Final%20DACF.pdf, 2). G8 (2009): "L'Aquila Joint Statement on Global Food Security. L'Aquila Food Security Imitative (AFSI). L'Aquila, Italy. Available online: https://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/DE/_Anlagen/G7_G20/2009-Aquila-Statement-Food- Security.html, last accessed: 21.08.2017. G8 (20.05.2017): Statement from G8 world leaders. The full statement issued by leaders of the leading economies after their summit at Camp David in the US. Camp David, Maryland, United States. Camp David, USA. Al Jazeera. Available online: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/05/2012519222516600431.html, last accessed: 21.07.2017. GATT (Hg.) (1958): Trends in International Trade. Report by a Panel of Experts. often called Haberler Report. Jointly prepared by Haberler, G., de Oliveira Campos, R., Meade, J. and Timberger, J. The Contracting Parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Geneva. Gelles, David (2017): Rockefeller Foundation Picks Rajiv J. Shah, a Trustee, as President. In: New York Times 2017, 04.01.2017 (Business Day). Available online: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/business/rockefeller-foundation-rajiv- shah.html?mcubz=1, last accessed: 21.08.2017. George, Susan (1988): A fate worse than debt. Harmondsworth, England, New York, N.Y.: Penguin (Penguin politics). George, Susan (2007): Alternative finances - The World Trade Organization We Could Have Had. Jan, 2007. In: Le Monde diplomatique, 2007. Available online: https://www.tni.org/es/node/9542, last accessed: 25.08.2017. Girdner, Janet; Olorunsola, Victor; Froning, Myrna; Hansen, Emmanuel (1980): Ghana's agricultural food policy. In: Food Policy 5 (1), S. 14–25. DOI: 10.1016/0306-9192(80)90021-4. Gladwell, Malcolm (2006): Blink. the power of thinking without thinking. London: Penguin Books. Göbel, Jana (2016): The EPA in Ghana – A stakeholder specific assessment. Masterarbeit. Hg. v. Freie Universität Berlin, Fachbereich Geowissenschaften. Institut für Geographische Wissenschaften. Berlin. Gofas, Andreas; Hay, Colin (Hg.) (2010): The role of ideas in political analysis. A portrait of contemporary debates. First issued in paperback. London, New York, USA: Routledge (Routledge/Warwick studies in globalization, 19). GoG (1999): Report of the Select Committee on Food Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs on the annual budget estimates of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. 19th March, 1999. Jointly prepared 380 References

by Hon. Emil Brantuo (Vice Chairman) and Abena Joana Sakyi. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2000): Report of the Select Committee on Food Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs - On the 2000 annual budget estimates of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). In the Fourth Session of the second Parliament of the fourth Republic of Ghana. Jointly prepared by Hon. Emil Brantuo (Vice Chairman). Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2001): Report of the Select Committee on Food Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs On the 2001 annual budget estimates of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. In the First Session of the Third Parliament of the fourth Republic of Ghana - 23rd March, 2001. Jointly prepared by Hon. A.K. Korankye. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2003): Report of the Select Committee on Food Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs On the year 2003 draft annual budget estimates of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. In the Third Session of the third Parliament of the fourth Republic of Ghana - 25th March 2003. Jointly prepared by Hon. A.K. Korankye. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2006): Parliamentary Debates - Official Report - Tuesday, 12th December, 2006. Fourth Series; Vol. 54; No. 26. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2007): Parliamentary Debates - Official Report - Tuesday, 11th December 2007. Fourth Series; Vol. 57; No. 31. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2009a): Government White Paper on the Single Spine Pay Policy. November 2009- by the Government of Ghana. WR. No. 1/2009, last accessed: 12.05.2017. GoG (2009b): Parliamentary Debates - Official Report - Thursday, 17 December, 2009. Fourth Series, Vol. 66, No 32. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2010): Parliamentary Debates - Official Report - Thursday, 17 December, 2009. Fourth Series; Vol. 71; No. 37. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2011): Parliamentary Debates - Official Report - Friday, 16th December, 2011. Fourth Series, Vol. 75, No. 33. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2013a): Parliamentary Debates - Official Report, Friday 13th December, 2013. Fourth Series; Vol. 84; No. 29. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2013b): Report of the Select Committee on Food Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs On the 2013 annual budget estimates of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. In the First Session of the Sixth Parliament of the fourth Republic of Ghana - 21th March, 2013. Jointly prepared by Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2014a): Parliamentary Debates - Official Report Tuesday, 16th December, 2014. Fourth Series; Vol. 89; No. 28. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2014b): Report of the Select Committee on Food Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs On the budget estimates of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture for the year ending 31st December 2015. In the Second Session of the sixth Parliament of the Fourth Republic of Ghana. Jointly prepared by Gabriel Kodwo Essilfie. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2015): Report of the Select Committee on Food Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs On the annual budget estimates of the Ministry of Food and. In the third Session of the sixth Parliament of the fourth Republic of Ghana - 15th December, 2015. Jointly prepared by Gabriel Kodwo Essilfie. Hg. v. Parliament of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. GoG (2017): The Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the Government of Ghana for the 2017 Financial Year. Presented to Parliament on Thursday, 2nd March, 2017 by Ken Ofori-Atta - Minister for Finance. Theme: "Sowing the Seeds for Growth and Jobs", S. 1–218, last accessed: 30.03.2017. GoG - Government of Ghana (2013): List of Metropolitan, Municipal & District Assemblies (MMDAs). Available online: http://www.gra.gov.gh/docs/info/all_mmdas_in_ghana.pdf, last accessed: 05.04.2017. Government of Ghana (1964): GHANA - SEVEN-YEAR DEVELOPMENT PLAN. 1963/64 to 1969/70. National Reconstruction and Development, last accessed: 10.04.2017. Government of the United States (1954): PL 480 - agricultural trade and Development Act, July 8, 1954, last accessed: 18.08.2017. References 381

Gray, Richard (March 81): The Vatican and the Atlantic Slave Trade. In: History Today (Vol. 31, Issue 3), S. 37–39, last accessed: 08.05.2017. Grilli, Enzo and Riess, Markus (1992): EC Aid to Associated Countries: Distribution and Determinants. In: Wirtschaftliches Archiv Bd. 128 (H.2), S. 202–220, last accessed: 29.03.2017. GSS (2008): Ghana Living Standards Survey. Report of the Fifth Round (GLSS5). September 2005 to September 2006, last accessed: 11.05.2017. GSS (2012): Population and Housing Census. Summary Report of Final Results. Printed by Sakoa Press Limited. In: GHANA STATISTICAL SERVICE, Accra, last accessed: 05.04.2017. GSS (2014a): Ghana Living Standards Survey Round 6 (GLSS 6). Main Report, last accessed: 03.04.2017. GSS (2014b): Ghana Living Standards Survey Round 6 (GLSS6). Poverty Profile in Ghana (2005- 2013), last accessed: 03.04.2017. GSS; Ghana Health Service (GHS) and ICF International (2015): Ghana Demographic and Health Survey 2014 (Rockville, Maryland, USA), last accessed: 10.05.2017. Gupta, Akhil (1998): Postcolonial developments. Agriculture in the making of modern India. Durham: Duke University Press. Gyimah-Boadi, E. (2009): Another Step Forward for Ghana. In: Journal of Democracy 20 (2), S. 138– 152. DOI: 10.1353/jod.0.0065. Haan, Peter de (2016): From Keynes to Piketty. The century that shook up economics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Haider, Huma; Rao, Sumedh (September/ 2010): Political and Social Analysis for Development Policy and Practice: An Overview of Five Approaches. Hg. v. GSDRC - Governance and Social Development Resource Centre. International Development Department, University of . Birmingham, UK, last accessed: 02.08.2017. Hansen, Emmanuel (Hg.) (1987a): Africa. Perspectives on peace & development. , Japan, London, U.K, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., USA: United Nations University; Zed Books. Hansen, Emmanuel (1987b): Africa. Perspectives on peace and development. London: Atlantic Highlands, N.J.; Zed Books (United Nations University studies on peace and regional security). Harvey, David (2011): A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hay, Colin (2011): Ideas and the Construction of Interests. In: Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox (Hg.): Ideas and politics in social science research. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hayek, F. A. (1960): The Constitution of Liberty. The Definitive Edition. The Collected Works. 2011 Reprint. London/Chicago, United States of America: The University of Chicago Press, Ltd. Hayek, F. A. von (1949): The Road to Serfdom. with The Intellectuals and Socialism. The condensed version of The road to serfdom by F.A. Hayek as it appeared in the April 1945 edition of Reader's Digest. 2005 Reprint. London: Institute of Economic Affairs. Hegel, G. W. F. (1837/2001): The Philosophy of History. Translated from Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, given as lectures at the University of Berlin in 1822, 1828, and 1830, last accessed: 08.05.2017. Herman, Arthur (2001): How the Scots Invented the Modern World. The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It. New York, New York: Three River Press. Herman, Edward S.; Chomsky, Noam (1988): Manufacturing consent. The political economy of the mass media. London: Vintage Books. Holmén, H. (2006): Myths about Agriculture. Obstacles to Solving the African Food Crisis. In: The European Journal of Development Research 18 (3), S. 453–480. Holstein, James; Gubrium, Jaber (2004): 8 Active Interviewing. In: David Silverman (Hg.): Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. 2nd ed. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Holt-Gimenez, E.; Patel, R. (2009): Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice. Cape Town, Dakar, Nairobi and Oxford: Pambazuka Press. Hopkins, A. G. (1973): An Economic History of West Africa. England, Hong Kong: Longman. 382 References

Hout, Wil; Schakel, Lydeke (2015): SGACA: The Rise and Paradoxical Demise of a Political- Economy Instrument. In: Development Policy Review 33 (1), S. 27, last accessed: 02.08.2017. Huber, John D.; Shipan, Charles R. (2006): Politics, Delegation, and Bureaucracy. In: Barry R. Weingast and Donald A. Wittman (Hg.): The Oxford handbook of political economy. Jointly prepared by Weingast, Barry R., Wittman, Donald A., Ansolabhere, S., Lohmann, S., Huber, John D., Shipan, Charles R. 1. publ. in paperback. Oxford [u.a.]: Oxford Univ. Press (The Oxford handbooks of political science), S. 256–272. Hudson, David; Leftwich, Adrian (June/2014): From Political Economy to Political Analysis. Research Paper 25. Hg. v. Development Leadership Program (DLP). University of Birmingham. IAASTD (2009): Agriculture at a Crossroads. International Assessment of Agriculture Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. Jointly prepared by UNDP, FAO, UNEP, UNESCO, The World Bank, WHO, Global Environment Facility. IDEG (Hg.) (2012): Agriculture and social development in Ghana. Some policy issues. Jointly prepared by Abraham I. Zackaria, Charles Y. Okyere, Francis Srofenyoh, George T.-M. Kwadzo, Joseph A. Yaro, Seidu Al-hassan and Simon Bawakyillenuo. Accra: Institute for Democratic Governance. IFPRI (2017): 2016 IFPRI Annual Report. Hg. v. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Washington, DC. Available online: http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15738coll2/id/131159/rec/1, last accessed: 11.05.2017. Ingram, Helen; Schneider, Anne; DeLeon, Peter (2007): Social Construction and Policy Design. In: P. Sabatier (Hg.): Theories of the Policy Process. Boulder, CO, US: Westview Press, last accessed: 22.05.2017. ISSER (2012): An Impact Evaluation of the MIDA FBO Training. Final Report; February, 2012. Submitted to the Millennium Development Authority. Hg. v. Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research, University of Ghana, last accessed: 18.08.2017. Jefferson, Thomas: Declaration of Independence. In congress, July 4, 1776. Available online: http://www.constitution.org/us_doi.pdf, last accessed: 14.08.2017. Jerven, Morten (2012): Comparability of GDP estimates in Sub-Saharan Africa. The effect of Revisions in Sources and Methods Since Structural Adjustment. In: Review of Income and Wealth 59 (1), S16-S36. DOI: 10.1111/roiw.12006. Jirstrom, M. (2005): The state and Green Revolutions in East Asia. In: G. Djurfeldt, H. Holmen, M. Jirstrom and R. Larsson (Hg.): The African food crisis. Lessons from the Asian Green Revolution. Wallingford, Oxforshire, UK: CABI Publ. Jordan Chamberlin; Xinshen Diao; Shashi Kolavalli; Clemens Breisinger (2007): Smallholder Agriculture in Ghana. Ghana Strategy Support Program. In: IFPRI Discussion Brief 3, last accessed: 30.05.2017. Kahneman, Daniel (2011): Thinking, fast and slow. London, England: Penguin Books Ltd. Karg, Hanna; Drechsel, Pay; Akoto-Danso, Edmund; Glaser, Rüdiger; Nyarko, George; Buerkert, Andreas (2016): Foodsheds and City Region Food Systems in Two West African Cities. In: Sustainability 8 (12), S. 1175. DOI: 10.3390/su8121175. Karingi, Stephen N.; Deotti, Laura (2009): Interim Economic Partnership Agreements Point to the Classic Regional Trade Agreements after all: Should African countries really be worried? In: African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC) (April, 2009, Work in Progress No. 75), last accessed: 30.03.2017. Kay, G. B.; Hymer, Stephen (1972): The political economy of colonialism in Ghana. A collection of documents and statistics, 1900-1960. Cambridge [England]: University. Kea, Ray A. (1982): Settlements, trade, and polities in the seventeenth-century Gold Coast. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (Johns Hopkins studies in Atlantic history and culture). Keynes, John Maynard (1919): The Economic Consequences of the Peace. 2002 Reprint. online at: http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/keynes/pdf%26filename%3Dpeace3.pdf. Keynes, John Maynard (1930): Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. In: W. W. Norton & Company (Hg.): Essays in Persuasion. New York: Harcourt Brace, S. 358–373. Available References 383

online: https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/files/content/upload/Intro_and_Section_I.pdf, last accessed: 07.09.2017. Keynes, John Maynard (1933): An Open Letter to President Roosevelt. Hg. v. New Deal Network. Keynes, John Maynard (1936): The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. 1964 Reprint. San Diego/New York/London: MacMillan and Co. Khor, M. (2013): Global agriculture system favors rich countries. 26.09.2013. In: The Korea Herald, 2013. Available online: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20130926000957&mod=skb%E2%80%8B, last accessed: 28.05.2015. Kolavalli, A.; Robinson E.; Diao, X.; Alpuerto, R. V. (2012): Economic Transformation in Ghana: Where Will the Path Lead?”. In: Journal of African Development (12 (2)), S. 47–78, last accessed: 11.05.2017. Kolavalli, Shashi; Vigneri, Marcella (2011): Cocoa in Ghana: Shaping the Success of an Economy. In: Manka Angwafo and Punam Chuhan-Pole (Hg.): Yes, Africa can success stories from a dynamic continent. Success stories from a dynamic continent, World Bank. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, S. 201–217. Available online: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/AFRICAEXT/Resources/258643- 1271798012256/YAC_chpt_12.pdf, last accessed: 10.04.2017. Krugman, Paul R. (2009): Fighting Off Depression. In: New York Times, 04.01.2009. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/opinion/05krugman.html, last accessed: 25.08.2017. Krugman, Paul R. (2014): What the 1% Don't Want You to Know. Jointly prepared by Bill Moyer. Hg. v. Moyers & Company. YouTube. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzQYA9Qjsi0, zuletzt aktualisiert am 04.18.2014, last accessed: 07.09.2017. Krugman, Paul R.; Obstfeld, Maurice (Hg.) (2003): International economics. Theory and policy. 6th ed. Boston: Addison Wesley. Kwadzo, George T.-M.; Srofenyoh, Francis (2012): Understanding Institutional arrangements in the Maize Value Chain in Ghana. Chapter Three. In: IDEG (Hg.): Agriculture and social development in Ghana. Some policy issues. Jointly prepared by Abraham I. Zackaria, Charles Y. Okyere, Francis Srofenyoh, George T.-M. Kwadzo, Joseph A. Yaro, Seidu Al-hassan and Simon Bawakyillenuo. Accra: Institute for Democratic Governance, S. 80–136. Lang, T.; Heasman, M. (2004): Food Wars: the Global Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets. UK and USA: Earthscan. Lawson, M. (2016): Does Foreign Aid Work? Efforts to Evaluate U.S. Foreign Assistance. R42827; June 23, 2016. Hg. v. Congressional Research Service. Washington, D.C., last accessed: 18.08.2017. Lawson, M.; Schnepf, R.; Cook, N. (January/2016): The Obama Administration's Feed the Future Initiative. CRS Report, January 29, 2016. Hg. v. Congressional Research Service. Washington, D.C., last accessed: 18.08.2017. Le, Tuan Minh; Brumby, Jim; Rajaram, Anand; Biletska, Nataliya (2010): A Diagnostic Framework For Assessing Public Investment Management. Public Sector and Governance Unit; Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, last accessed: 12.05.2017. Lewis, W. Arthur (1955): The theory of economic growth. London, New York: Routledge. Lewis, W. Arthur (1970): Tropical development, 1880-1913. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Lewis, W. Arthur (1985): Racial conflict and economic development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (The W.E.B. Du Bois lectures, 1982). Lipton, Michael; Ravallion, Martin (1993): Poverty and Policy. In: Policy Research Working Paper, Poverty and Human Resources (WSP 1130), last accessed: 03.04.2017. 384 References

Lui, Pascal (2014): Impacts of Foreign Agricultural Investment on Developing Countries. Evidence from Case Studies. Hg. v. FAO. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Rome, Italy (FAO Commodity and Trade Policy, Research Working Paper No. 47). Machiavelli, Niccolò (1532): The Prince, with selections from the discourses. Jointly prepared by Daniel J. Donno. Bantam classic ed. New York: Bantam Classic. MacKechnie, Johan (2017): Justifying Slavery. The changing shape of the slave trade in the medieval Mediterranean. In: History Today (Vol. 67, Issue 5), S. 18–20, last accessed: 08.05.2017. Madeley, J. (2002): Food for all –the Need For a New Agriculture. London, UK: Zed Books. Mahama, John Dramani (21st 2016): Statement by his Excellency Mr. John Dramani Mahama President of the Republic of Ghana. on the Occasion of the 71th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. In: United Nations, New York, S. 1–15, last accessed: 09.05.2017. Mahama, John Dramani (2017): 'Cool Agriculture' will attract African youth - Mahama. In: MyJoyonline, 22.05.2017. Available online: http://www.myjoyonline.com/news/2017/May- 22nd/cool-agriculture-will-attract-african-youth-mahama.php, last accessed: 21.08.2017. Malcolm X (1964): Malcolm X at University of Ghana. May 13, 1964 speech. The most complete collection of Malcolm X speeches, debates and interviews ever assembled. Hg. v. Malcom X. Available online: http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.de/2013/07/university-of-ghana-may-13- 1964_1.html. Malthus, R. Thomas (1798): An Essay on the Principle of Population. An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affect the Future Improvement of Society with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers. 1998, Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project. London: J. Johnson in St. Paul's Church Yard, last accessed: 27.03.2017. Mandelkern, Ronen; Shalev, Michael (2010): Power and the Ascendance of New Economic Policy Ideas. Lessons from the 1980s Crisis in Israel. In: World Politics 62 (03), S. 459–495. DOI: 10.1017/S0043887110000109. Mannoni, Octave; Powesland, Pamela; Bloch, Maurice (1956/2008): Prospero and Caliban. The psychology of colonization. 1st ed. as an Ann Arbor pbk. (reprinted). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor paperbacks). Manzo, Kate (1991): Modernist discourse and the crisis of development theory. In: Studies In Comparative International Development 26 (2), S. 3–36. DOI: 10.1007/BF02717866. Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (1948): Manifesto of the Communist Party. Available online: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf, last accessed: 24.10.2017. McClelland, David (1961): The achieving society. New York, USA: Van Nostrand Company. McMahon, Joseph A. (2006): The WTO Agreement on Agriculture. A commentary. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. McMahon, Joseph A.; Geboye Desta, Melaku (Hg.) (2012): Research handbook on the WTO agriculture agreement. New and emerging issues in international agricultural trade law. Cheltenham, UK, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Mehta, Jal (2011): The Varied Roles of Ideas in Politics. From "Whether" to "How". In: Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox (Hg.): Ideas and politics in social science research. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, S. 23–46. Mensah-Ayerakwa, Hayford (2017 (forthcoming)): Planting to Feed the City? Agricultural Production, Food Security and Multi-Spatial Livelihoods among Urban Households in Ghana. Doctoral Dissertation at Lund University. In: Printed in Sweden by Media-Tryck, Lund University, last accessed: 16.05.2017. Meredith, Martin (2005): The state of Africa. A history of the continent since independence. London: Simon & Schuster. Meyer, O. W.; Thomas, G. M.; Ramirez, F.O (1997): World Society and the Nation-State. In: American Journal of Sociology 103 (1), S. 144–181, last accessed: 13.06.2017. Mill, John Stuart (1859): On liberty. And Utilitarianism. 1993 Reprint. New York, New York: Bantam Classic. References 385

Mitchel, Donald (2008): A Note On Rising Food Prices. Policy Research Working Paper 4682: The World Bank, last accessed: 18.08.2017. MoF (2007): 2008 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the Government of Ghana. A Brighter Future; 15th Nov. 2007. Hg. v. Government of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. Available online: http://www.mofep.gov.gh/sites/default/files/budget/2008_Budget.pdf, last accessed: 22.09.201. MoF (2014): Guidelines for Preparation of 2015-2017 Budget. Prepared and Issued by Ministry of Finance, 27th June, 2014. Hg. v. Government of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. Available online: http://www.mofep.gov.gh/?q=budget-statements/guidelines-for-preparation-2015-2017-budget, last accessed: 22.09.2017. MoF (2017): Ghana benefits from Germany's 'Compact with Africa' Programme. Hg. v. Ministry of Finance. Accra. Available online: http://www.mofep.gov.gh/?q=news/2017-06-15/ghana- benefits-from-germany%27s-compact-with-africa-programme, last accessed: 21.08.2017. MoFA (2002): Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy (FASDEP). September, 2002. (unpublished, but available upon request). Hg. v. Government of Ghana. Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Accra (I). MoFA (2003): Agricultural Extension Policy. Directorate of Agricultural Extension Services. Abridged Version - October 2003. Jointly prepared by Hon. Major courage Quashigah (RtD) - Minister for Food and Agriculture. Hg. v. Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Accra, Ghana. MoFA (2007): Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy (FASDEP II). Hg. v. Ministry of Food and Agriculture, last accessed: 19.06.2017. MoFA (Wednesday 28th October/2009): Ecowas Agricultural Policy (ECOWAP)/Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program. Compact. in support of FASDEP II. Hg. v. Republic of Ghana, last accessed: 19.06.2017. MoFA (September/2010): Medium term agriculture sector investment plan (METASIP), 2011-2015. Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Accra, Ghana, last accessed: 19.06.2017. MoFA (2011): National Irrigation Policy, Strategies and Regulatory Measures. Jointly prepared by Daniel Lamptey, Ben Nyamdi and Asare Minta. Hg. v. Ghana Irrigation Development Authority. Moncrieffe, Joy; Luttrell, Cecilia (2005): An analytical framework for understanding the political economy of sectors and policy arenas -. Hg. v. Overseas Development Institute, last accessed: 02.08.2017. Moyo, Dambisa (2010): Dead aid. Why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa. London: Penguin Books. Nathan, Major Matthew (1904): Historical Chart of the Gold Coast and Ashanti. In: Journal of the Royal African Society (Vol. 4, No. 13), S. 33–43. Nchanji, Eileen Bogweh; Bellwood-Howard, Imogen; Schareika, Nikolaus; Chagomoka, Takemore; Schlesinger, Johannes; Axel, Drescher; Rüdiger, Glaser (2017): Assessing the sustainability of vegetable production practices in northern Ghana. In: International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 15 (3), S. 321–337. DOI: 10.1080/14735903.2017.1312796. NDPC (September 2010): Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda (GSGDA), 2010-2013. Medium-Term National Development Policy Framework. Hg. v. Republic of Ghana. National Development Planning Commission. Accra, Ghana, last accessed: 19.06.2017. NDPC (2014): Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda (GSGDA) II, 2014-2017. MEDIUM- TERM NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY WORK. December 2014. National Development Planning Commission. Accra, Ghana, last accessed: 19.06.2017. NEPAD (2003): Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). Midrand, South Africa: New Partnership for Africa's Development. New York Times (JAN. 3, 1964): NKRUMAH ESCAPES ASSASSIN 5TH TIME. New York. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/03/nkrumah-escapes-assassin-5th- time.html. Nichols, Michelle (17.03.2017): South Sudan government to blame for famine, still buying arms: U.N. report. Reuters. Available online: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southsudan-security-un- idUSKBN16O0DB, last accessed: 21.08.2017. 386 References

Nkrumah, Kwame (1963): Africa must Unite. New York: International Publishing. Nkrumah, Kwame (1965): Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism. Jointly prepared by Dominic Tweedie. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd, last accessed: 09.06.2017. Norad (2010): Political economy analysis with a legitimacy twist: What is it and why does it matter? Hg. v. Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation. Oslo, last accessed: 02.08.2017. NPP (2016): CHANGE an Agenda for Jobs. Creating Property & Equal Opportunity for All. Manifesto for Election, last accessed: 23.05.2017. Nugent, Paul (1995): Big men, small boys and politics in Ghana. Power, Ideology and Burden of History, 1982-1994. London and New York: Pinter Publishing Limited. Nyanteng V.K.; Seini, Wayo A. (2000): Agricultural Policy & the Impact on Growth & Productivity. Chapter 14. In: Ernest Aryeetey, Jane Harrigan and Machiko Nissanke (Hg.): Economic reforms in Ghana. The miracle and the mirage. Oxford, Accra, New Town, Ghana, Trenton, NJ: James Curry; Woeli Pub. Services; Africa World Press. Ocansey, Ransford (2003): Ghana: No Reliable Statistical Data to Push Agricultural Revolution, Says Quashigah. 29 July 2003. Hg. v. Ghanaian Chronicle. Distributed by All Africa Global Media. Accra. Available online: http://allafrica.com/stories/200307290262.html. Odartey-Wellington, Felix; Anas, Anas Aremeyaw; Boamah, Percy (2017): ‘Ghana in the Eyes of God’: Media ecology and the Anas journalistic investigation of Ghana’s judiciary. In: Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies, 6 (2), S. 293–313. ODI (2011): Making the EU's Common Agricultural Policy coherent with development goals. The new global context requires a fresh look at the CAP. ODI - Overseas Development Institute (Briefing Paper, 69). OECD: Development Aid at a Glance. Statistics by Region; 2. Africa. 2016 edition, last accessed: 27.03.2017. OECD (2005): The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. Accra Agenda for Action (2008), last accessed: 17.05.2017. OECD (2010): The DAC. 50 years, 50 highlights, last accessed: 24.03.2017. Ofori-Atta, Ken (2017): 2016 Annual Report on the Petroleum Funds. prepared by Ken Ofori-Atta (Minister for Finance) as part of the presentation of the 2017 Budget Statement and Economic Policy. Hg. v. Government of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. Available online: http://www.mofep.gov.gh/sites/default/files/reports/petroleum/2016%20Annual%20report%20o n%20the%20Petroleum%20Funds.pdf, last accessed: 22.09.2017. Olson, Mancur (1971): The Logic of collective action. Public goods and the theory of groups. 2ed Edition, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Opoku-Asare, Nana Afia Amponsaa; Siaw, Abena Okyerewa (2015): Rural–Urban Disparity in Students’ Academic Performance in Visual Arts Education. In: SAGE Open 5 (4), 1-14. DOI: 10.1177/2158244015612523. Oppong-Anane, Kwame (2006): Ghana. Country Pasture/Forage Resource Profiles. In: FAO , last accessed: 05.04.2017. Osei-Asare, Yaw Bonsu; Eghan, Mark (2014): Food Price Inflation and Consumer Welfare in Rural and Urban agriculture. In: Wayo Seini, Irene S. Egyir and John K. M. Kuwornu (Hg.): Developments in agricultural economics and contemporary issues in Ghana. Tema, Ghana: For the University of Ghana by Digibooks Ghana Ltd (University of Ghana readers, vol. 2), S. 83– 100. Owusu, Francis (2003): Pragmatism and the Gradual Shift from Dependency to Neoliberalism. The World Bank, African Leaders and Development Policy in Africa. In: World Development 31 (10), S. 1655–1672, last accessed: 30.03.2017. Owusu-Baah, Kwaku (2012): Case Study: Ghana. In: Ha-Joon Chang (Hg.): Public policy and agricultural development. London, New York: Routledge. PBS (Aired February 23, 1998): American Experience - Reagan. Public Broadcasting Services. Aired February 23, 1998 (From the collection: The Presidents; Reagan). PBS, Aired February 23, 1998. Available online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/reagan/, last accessed: 07.09.2017. References 387

Pierson, Paul (2000): Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics. In: The American Political Science Review 94 (2), S. 251–267, last accessed: 02.08.2017. Piketty, Thomas (2013): Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Polanyi, Karl (2001): The great transformation. The political and economic origins of our time. 25 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Beacon Press. Pretty, J. (2009): Can Ecological Agriculture Feed Nine Billion People? In: Monthly Review 61 (06), last accessed: 21.08.2017. Provost, C.; Ford, L.; Tran, M. (18 February): G8 New Alliance condemned as new wave of colonialism in Africa, The Guardian. In: The Guardian 2014, 18 February. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/feb/18/g8-new-alliance-condemned- new-colonialism. Prunier, Gérard (2012): Africa's world war. Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and the making of a continental catastrophe. [Digital print.]. New York: Oxford University Press. Qian, Nancy (2015): Making Progress on Foreign Aid. In: Annual Review of Economics (7), S. 277– 308, last accessed: 24.03.2017. Rathbone, Richard (1973): Businessmen in politics. Party struggle in Ghana, 1949-57. In: The Journal of Development Studies (3), S. 391–401. Rathbone, Richard; John Alex Ruben (2000): Nkrumah & the chiefs. The politics of chieftaincy in Ghana 1951-60. Accra, Athens, Oxford: Reimmer; Ohio University Press; Currey (Western African studies). Rathbun, Brian Christopher (2008): Interviewing and Qualitative Field Methods. Pragmatism and Practicalities. Chapter 29. In: Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier and Henry E. Brady (Hg.): The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology. Oxford, Toronto: Oxford University Press (The Oxford handbooks of political science), S. 685–701. Reagan, Ronald (1987): Remarks on East-West Relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin. Reagan Library/Archives. Berlin, Germany, 12.06.1987. Available online: https://reaganlibrary.archives.gov/archives/speeches/1987/061287d.htm, last accessed: 23.10.2017. Reagan, Ronald (1989): Reagan's Farewell Address to American People. We the people. In: New York Times, 12.01.1989. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/12/news/transcript-of- reagan-s-farewell-address-to-american-people.html?pagewanted=all&mcubz=1. Republic of Ghana (8th day of May, 1992): 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana. Constitution. In: Gazette notification: 15th May, 1992. Resnick, Danielle; Babu, Suresh; Haggblade, Steven; Hendriks, Sheryl; Mather, David (2015): Conceptualizing Drivers of Policy Change in Agriculture, Nutrition, and Food Security: The Kaleidoscope Model. Feed the Future sponsored IFPRI Discussion Paper: 01414 January, last accessed: 16.05.2017. Reuters (12.06.2017): Merkel urges greater security role in Africa development policy. Berlin, Germany. Available online: http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-g20-germany-africa- idUKKBN1931SG, last accessed: 21.08.2017. Rhebergen, Tiemen; Fairhurst, Thomas; Zingore, Shamie; Fisher, Myles; Oberth, Thomas; Whitbread, Anthony (2016): Climate, soil and land-use based land suitability evaluation for oil palm production in Ghana. In: European Journal of Agronomy 81, S. 1–14. DOI: 10.1016/j.eja.2016.08.004. Rifkin, Jeremy (2009): The empathic civilization. The race to global consciousness in a world in crisis. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Rodney, Walter (1973): How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Jointly prepared by Joaquin Arriola. London, Dar-Es-Salaam: Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, last accessed: 09.05.2017. Rothschild, Emma (1976): Food Politics. In: Foreign Affaris (54), S. 285–307, last accessed: 23.03.2017. Sabatier, Paul (1988): An Advocacy Coalition Framework of Policy Change and the Role of Policy- Oriented Learning. In: Policy Sciences 21 (2/3), S. 129–168, last accessed: 02.08.2017. 388 References

Sankara, Thomas (2007): We are heirs of the world's revolutions. Speeches from the Burkina Faso revolution, 1983-87. 2nd ed. New York: Pathfinder. Sarpong, Daniel Bruce (2008): Ghana's Post-1983 Agricultural Policy. Development Partners and Local Policy Ownership. East Legon, Accra, Ghana: IDEG (Policy Research Series, No.2 2008). Sarpong, Daniel Bruce; Al-Hassan, Ramatu M. (2014): The Political Economy of Agricultural Policy Making in Ghana. Chapter 9. In: Wayo Seini, Irene S. Egyir and John K. M. Kuwornu (Hg.): Developments in agricultural economics and contemporary issues in Ghana. Tema, Ghana: For the University of Ghana by Digibooks Ghana Ltd (University of Ghana readers, vol. 2), S. 131– 150. Sarwat, Jahan; Ahmed Saber Mahmud; Chris Papageorgiou (2014): What Is Keynesian Economics? Back to Basics. In: FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT Vol. 51 (No. 3), last accessed: 14.03.2017. Schmidt, Vivien A. (2011): Reconciling Ideas and Institutions through Discursive Institutionalism. In: Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox (Hg.): Ideas and politics in social science research. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schroeder, Ralph (1992): Max Weber and the sociology of culture. London: Sage (Theory, culture & society). Schumacher, Ernst Friedrich (1973/2011): Small is beautiful. A study of economics as if people mattered. Jointly prepared by Jonathon Porritt. London: Vintage (Vintage Classics). Secret aid worker (2017): Secret aid worker: we've lost our humanity to jargon and statistics. Hg. v. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals- network/2017/apr/18/secret-aid-worker-weve-lost-our-humanity-to-jargon-and- statistics?CMP=share_btn_tw. Seini, Wayo; Egyir, Irene S.; Kuwornu, John K. M. (Hg.) (2014): Developments in agricultural economics and contemporary issues in Ghana. Tema, Ghana: For the University of Ghana by Digibooks Ghana Ltd (University of Ghana readers, vol. 2). Seini, W., Al-hassan; Al-Hassan, Ramatu (2014): Dynamics of the Subject "Agricultural Economics". In: Wayo Seini, Irene S. Egyir and John K. M. Kuwornu (Hg.): Developments in agricultural economics and contemporary issues in Ghana. Tema, Ghana: For the University of Ghana by Digibooks Ghana Ltd (University of Ghana readers, vol. 2), S. 1–18. Sen, Amartya (1999): Development as freedom. 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Shackle, George, L. S.; Ford, James (1990): Time, expectations and uncertainty in economics: selected essays. Aldershop: Elgar, ISBN: 1-85278-362-1 Shah, Rajiv (2015): USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah. Hg. v. Nicholas Kralev. youtube. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhUNvuYQXLk, zuletzt aktualisiert am 15.03.2015, last accessed: 21.08.2017. Sida (May/2005): Methods of Analysing Power. A Workshop Report. Jointly prepared by Mick Moore, Lise Rakner, Jeremy Gould and Sue Unsworth. Hg. v. Division for Democratic Governance. Stockholm, last accessed: 02.08.2017. Silverman, David (Hg.) (2004): Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. 2nd ed. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Smith, Adam (1759): The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Jointly prepared by Jonathan Bennett (Early Modern Texts). Available online: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/smith1759.pdf, last accessed: 20.03.2017. Smith, Adam (1776): An Inquiry into the Nature ands Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 2007 Reprint. Amsterdam, New York, Sao Paulo: MetaLibri, last accessed: 20.03.2017. Smith, Fiona (2009): Agriculture and the WTO. Towards a new theory of international agricultural trade regulation. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Smith, Raymond F. (2011): The Craft of Political Analysis for Diplomats. Virginia, USA: Potomac Books Inc (ADST-DACOR diplomats and diplomacy series, v. 48). Stevens, Mike; Teggemann, Stefanie (2003): Comparative Experience with Administrative Reform in Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia. Public Sector Reform and Capacity Building Unit, Africa Region. References 389

Hg. v. The World Bank. Available online: http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/cc72.pdf, last accessed: 04.10.2017. Stiglitz, Joseph E. (1996): Some Lessons from the East Asian Miracle. In: The World Bank Research Observer 11 (2), S. 151–177, last accessed: 08.06.2017. Stiglitz, Joseph E.; Charlton, Andrew (2007): Fair Trade for All. How Trade Can Promote Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press USA. Summer, D. (2008): Aricultural Subsidy Programs (Library of Economics and Liberty). Available online: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AgriculturalSubsidyPrograms.html, last accessed: 28.05.2014. Szelényi, Ivan (2009): Foundations of Modern Social Theory. Open Yale Courses. SOCY 151. University of Yale. Yale College, 2009. Available online: http://oyc.yale.edu/sociology/socy- 151. Tandon, Yashpal (2016): Trade is war. The West's war against the world. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota. Terkper, Seth E. (2013): 2014 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the Government of Ghana. Tuesday, 19th November 2013 by Seth E. Terkper – Minister of Finance. Hg. v. Government of Ghana. Accra, Ghana. Available online: http://www.mofep.gov.gh/?q=news/191113/2014- budget-statement-and-economic-policy, last accessed: 22.09.2017. The Economist (1999): The bumpy ride of Joe Stiglitz. Much of Washington is celebrating the “resignation” of the World Bank’s turbulent chief economist. Presumably, therefore, he was a good thing? Hg. v. The Economist. Available online: http://www.economist.com/node/269669, zuletzt aktualisiert am Dec 16th 1999, last accessed: 23.10.2017. The World Bank (12.10.2012): Remarks As Prepared for Delivery: World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim at the Annual Meeting Plenary Session. Speeches & Transcripts. Tokyo, Japan. Available online: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2012/10/12/remarks-world-bank- group-president-jim-yong-kim-annual-meeting-plenary-session, last accessed: 07.08.2017. Tracy, Michael (1989): Government and agriculture in Western Europe, 1880-1988. 3rd ed. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Truman, Harry (1949): Inaugural Address. Thursday, January 20, 1949. Hg. v. Bartleby.com. Washington, D.C. (Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States). Available online: http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres53.html. UN (1996): Report of the World Summit for Social Development. Copenhagen, 6 - 12 March 1995. New York: United Nations, last accessed: 31.05.2017. UN Security Council (23.12.2017): Security Council Decides against Imposing Arms Embargo on South Sudan, Designating Key Figures for Targeted Sanctions. Outrage after UN blocks South Sudan arms embargo. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/12/outrage-blocks-south-sudan- arms-embargo-161223153844996.html. New York. Available online: https://www.un.org/press/en/2016/sc12653.doc.htm, last accessed: 21.08.2017. UNCTAD (2013): Wake up Before it is too late, Make Agriculture truly sustainable for food security in a Changing Climate. Trade and Environment Review 2013. UNCTAD/DITC/TED/2012/3. Hg. v. United Nations. Geneva, Switzerland. Available online: http://unctad.org/en/pages/PublicationWebflyer.aspx?publicationid=666, last accessed: 21.08.2017. UNECA (2015): MDG Report 2015 - Lessons learned in implementing the MDGs. Assessing Progress in Africa Toward the Millennium Development Goals. Addis Ababa: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, last accessed: 10.05.2017. UNEP-UNCTAD (2008): Organic Agriculture and Food Security in Africa,. Jointly prepared by Capacity-building Task Force on Trade, Environment and Development. Hg. v. United Nations. New York and Geneva. United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (2007): Developmentes in International Trade and WTO/EPA Negotiations. Fifth Session on the Committee on Trade, Regional Cooperation and Integration. 8-10 October, 2007, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In: UN Distr.: GENERAL (01 August 2007; E/ECA/CTRCI/5/2), last accessed: 30.03.2017. 390 References unpublished (MoFA) (2008): Harvest and Post-Harvest Baseline Study - Final Report. Policy Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Ghana - April, 2008. Jointly prepared by Irene Egyir, D. B. Sarpong and D. Oben-Ofori. Hg. v. Ministry of Food an Agriculture. Accra. USAID (1997): Food Aid in Ghana. An Elusive Road to Self-Reliance. In: American Journal of Sociology (3), last accessed: 23.03.2017. USAID (2003): Food For Peace: 1954-2004 - Bringing Hope To The Hungry. February 2003. Hg. v. U.S. Agency for International Development. Washington, D.C., last accessed: 18.08.2017. USDA (2014): GAIN Report. Global Agricultural Information Network (GH14001), last accessed: 10.05.2017. Utsey, Shawn O.; Abrams, Jasmine A.; Opare-Henaku, Annabella; Bolden, Mark A.; Williams, Otis (2014): Assessing the Psychological Consequences of Internalized Colonialism on the Psychological Well-Being of Young Adults in Ghana. In: Journal of Black Psychology, S. 1–26. DOI: 10.1177/0095798414537935. van Evera, Stephen (1997): Guide to methods for students of political science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press (Cornell paperbacks). van Reybrouck, David Grégoire (2012): Kongo. Eine Geschichte. 1., neue Ausg. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Vellianitis-Fidas, Amalia; Manfredi, Eileen: P.L. 480 Concessional Sales: History, Procedures, Negotiating and Implementing Agreements. In: Foreign Agricultural Economic Report 142, last accessed: 18.08.2017. Verhelst, Thierry G. (1987): No life without roots. Culture and development. London, UK: Zed Books. Walfin, James (2008): Slavery, the Slave Trade and the Churches. In: Quaker Studies 12 (2), S. 189– 195, last accessed: 08.05.2017. Wallace, Walter L. (1994): A Weberian theory of human society. Structure and evolution. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press (The Arnold and Caroline Rose monograph series of the American Sociological Association). Walsham, G. (1995): Interpretive case studies in IS research: nature and method. In: European Journal of Information systems (4), S. 74–81. Watts, Alan (1951/2011): The wisdom of insecurity. A message for an age of anxiety. 2nd Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books. Weber, Max (1946): Essays in sociology. Trasl., ed. and with an introd. by H.H. Gerth and Charles Wright Mills. Jointly prepared by Gerth, H.H., Mills, C.W. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. Weber, Max (1958): The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. translated by Talcott Parsons with a new introduction by Anthony Giddens. New York, N.Y. Webster (1996): Webster's encyclopedic unabridged dictionary of the English language. New rev. ed. New York: Gramercy Books; Portland House. Weingast, Barry R.; Wittman, Donald A. (Hg.) (2006): The Oxford handbook of political economy. Jointly prepared by Weingast, Barry R., Wittman, Donald A., Ansolabhere, S., Lohmann, S., Huber, John D., Shipan, Charles R. 1. publ. in paperback. Oxford [u.a.]: Oxford Univ. Press (The Oxford handbooks of political science). Weiss, Martin A. (2011): Iraq's Debt Relief: Procedure and Potential Implications for International Debt Relief. In: Congressional Research Service, last accessed: 28.03.2017. Wendt, Alexander (1992): Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics,. In: International Organization 42 (2), S. 391–425. Wendt, Alexander (1999): Social theory of International Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge studies in international relations, 67). Wetzel, Deborah (2000): Promises & Pitfalls in Public Expenditure. Chapter 6. In: Ernest Aryeetey, Jane Harrigan and Machiko Nissanke (Hg.): Economic reforms in Ghana. The miracle and the mirage. Oxford, Accra, New Town, Ghana, Trenton, NJ: James Curry; Woeli Pub. Services; Africa World Press, S. 115–131. White House Office of Communications (1961): Eisenhower's farewell address. Press copy. Washington, D.C. Wikisource. Available online: References 391

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address_(press_copy), last accessed: 07.09.2017. Whittal, Joseph (2013): Ghana's Effort at Promoting Human Rights and the Right to Development. In: Adwinsa Publications (Gh.) Ltd for Institute for Democratic Governance (Hg.): Ghana's Democratization Process so far: The African Charter on Demorcacy, Elections and Governance in Focus. Papers Presented at a State of the Union (SoTU) Project Roundtable. ISBN: 978- 9964-6-3410-2. Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG). East Legon, Accra, Ghana, S. 7– 18. Widmaier, Wesley W. (2010): Trade-offs and Trinities. Social Forces and Monetary Cooperation. In: Rawi Abdelal, Mark Blyth and Craig A. Parsons (Hg.): Constructing the international economy. Ithaca, N.Y., London: Cornell University Press (Cornell studies in political economy), S. 155– 172. Williams, Eric (1944): Capitalism & Slavery. Chapel Hill: Universtiy of North Carolina Press, last accessed: 11.04.2017. World Bank (1961): Report and Recommendations of the President to the Executive Directors on a proposed Loan to the Volta River Authority of the Republic of Ghana. August 31, 1961 (Report No: P-263), S. 1–9, last accessed: 12.05.2017. World Bank (1980): Volta Region Agricultural Development Project- Staff Appraisal Report. Report No.2527-GH. Washington, D.C., last accessed: 18.08.2017. World Bank (1981): Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. An Agend for Action. The Berg Report. In: Washington, D.C., USA, last accessed: 21.03.2017. World Bank (1985): Ghana - Agricultural Sector Review. Report No. 5366-GH. August 6, 1985. Hg. v. World Bank. Washington. Available online: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/109681468035970144/Ghana-Agricultural-sector- review, last accessed: 27.08.2017. World Bank (1986): Poverty and Hunger. Issues adn Options for Food Securtiy in Developing Countries. Washington: World Bank, last accessed: 31.05.2017. World Bank (1989a): IBRD Articles of Agreement. (As amended effective Februaruy 16, 1989). Hg. v. World Bank (01), last accessed: 17.08.2017. World Bank (1989b): Sub-Saharan Africa from crisis to sustainable growth. A long-term perspective study. Washington: World Bank. World Bank (2002): Ghana-Public Sector Management Reform. Report No. PID11261; Date PID: May 28, 2002. Hg. v. The World Bank. Available online: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/313281468771357844/pdf/multi0page.pdf, last accessed: 04.10.2017. World Bank (2007a): Implementation completion and Results Report (IDA-34050 IDA-3405A). on an Adaptable Program Credit in the amount of US$67 million equivalent to the Republic of Ghana for an Agricultural Service Subsector Investment Project. November 30, 2007. In: World Bank Report No.: ICR 0000589, last accessed: 18.05.2017. World Bank (2007b): World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development. Hg. v. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The World Bank. Washington, DC (World Development Report 2008). World Bank (2011): Political Economy of the Mining Sector in Ghana. Policy Research Working Paper 5730. Jointly prepared by Joseph Ayee, Tina Søreide, G. P. Shukla and Tuan Minh Le: The World Bank, last accessed: 24.05.2017. World Bank (2013): International Development Association International Finance Corporation Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency Country Partnership Strategy for the Republic of Ghana for the Period FY13-FY16. For Offical Use Only FY13-FY16 (Report No. 76369-GH), S. 1–179, last accessed: 09.05.2017. World Bank (2014): Problem-Driven Political Economy Analysis. The World Bank's Experience. Jointly prepared by Verena Fritz, Brian Levy and Rachel Ort. Hg. v. The World Bank. Washington, DC, last accessed: 02.08.2017. 392 References

World Bank (2016a): Ghana commercial Agriculture (P114264) Implementation Status & Results Report. Public Discloser Copy - ISR224121. Archived on 11-Jan-2016. Hg. v. The World Bank (Implementation Status & Results Report, ISR 16055). World Bank (2016b): International Development Association Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed Credit of the Amount of SDR10.8 Million (US$15 Million Equivalent) to the Republic of Ghana for an Economic Managment Strengthening Project. Report No: PAD1619. August 9. In: Document of the World Bank, S. 1–97, last accessed: 12.05.2017. World Bank (2017a): Country Historical Climate - Ghana. Climate Change Knowledge Portal. Averate Monthly Temerature and Rainfall from Ghana from 1960-1990. Available online: http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal/index.cfm?page=country_historical_climate&ThisC Code=GHA, last accessed: 05.04.2017. World Bank (2017b): Ghana. Hg. v. The World Bank (IBRD and IDA). Available online: http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/ghana, zuletzt aktualisiert am 05.04.2017, last accessed: 05.04.2017. World Bank (2017c): World Development Indicators. Agricultural Inputs. Available online: http://wdi.worldbank.org/table/3.2, last accessed: 05.04.2017. World Trade Organization (2015): The Uruguay Round. Understanding the WTO: Basics. WTO. Available online: https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact5_e.htm. WTO (1995): Agreement on Agriculture of the World Trade Organization. Hg. v. WTO. Geneva, Switzerland (Uruguay Round Agreement, p. 43-71). Yaro, Joseph A.; Bawakyillenuo, Simon; Zackaria, Abraham I. (2012): Irrigated agriculture and poverty reduction in Northern Ghana. The case of Bontanga Irrigation Project. Chapter Two. In: IDEG (Hg.): Agriculture and social development in Ghana. Some policy issues. Jointly prepared by Abraham I. Zackaria, Charles Y. Okyere, Francis Srofenyoh, George T.-M. Kwadzo, Joseph A. Yaro, Seidu Al-hassan and Simon Bawakyillenuo. Accra: Institute for Democratic Governance, S. 23–79. Yaro, Joseph Awetori (2013): Rural development in northern Ghana. New York, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers (African Political, Economic, and Security Issues).