Agricultural crime in Africa

African agricultural development: How are we contributing?

“…(2021) argue that the success of this process depends on (positive) integration into the global economy via intra‐African and international trade (e.g., Alagidede et al., 2020; Sunge & Ngepah, 2020), as well as on overcoming weaknesses such as poor land quality (Traub et al., 2014; Lipper and Benton, 2020); water scarcity (Chitonge, 2020); weak human capital (Asongu & Odhiambo, 2019; Swanepoel et al., 2020); weak physical infrastructure (Edeme et al., 2020; Omotoso et al., 2020); and weak institutional infrastructure, weak governance and political capture (e.g., McKay & Thorbecke, 2019; Noubissi & Njangang, 2020; Rockmore, 2020; Wanjiku et al., 2020). There are also social pathologies such as high levels of crime against person and property (Bunei & Barasa, 2017 Seiyefa, 2019; Bunei et al., 2016), gender discrimination (e.g., Hollis & Hankhouse, 2019; Muluneh et al., 2020; Alesina et al., 2021; Arisukwu et al., 2021), etc. that has to be accounted for.…”

Crime Prevention and Safety Interventions

“…The difficulty of policing and preventing farm crime has been emphasized repeatedly in the research, and it is partly due to the lack of available and detailed data from official sources which fail to distinguish between farm crime and other types of crime (Ceccato and Dolmen 2013;Mears et al 2007a). This is further perpetuated by the poor crime reporting practices of farmers to the police (Barclay et al 2004;Ceccato 2015e;Mears et al 2007b), which may be due to low levels of trust in the police and/or public authorities (considering reporting as a "waste of time"); fear of being excluded by the community; but also traditionally having a higher tolerance for, or even expectation of certain crimes, such as crop theft for subsistence (Bunei et al 2016;Ceccato 2015e;Donnermeyer 2017). Farmers also tend to be lax with farm security, perhaps due to perceptions of low crime risk (Barclay and Donnermeyer 2002;Smith 2019).…”