Agricultural Investments and Farmer-Fulani Pastoralist Conflict in West African Drylands: A Northern Ghanaian Case Study

Abstract

Abstract:In the Global South, there is a push to drive agricultural modernisation processes through private sector investments. In West African drylands, land concessions are required for such agri-businesses are often negotiated through customary authorities, and inject large amounts of money into localised rural systems with low cash bases. The article argues that such transactions serve to increase area under crop cultivation on an inter-seasonal basis, as financial spill-overs allow for farmers to purchase larger quantities of agricultural inputs and prepare larger tracts of land. Simultaneously, such direct and indirect cash flows also result in larger local herd sizes and an increase in the number of locally-owned cattle, as cash is exchanged for cattle, largely regarded as an interest-accruing, savings buffer. Larger herd sizes, in turn, attract Fulani pastoralists in search of employment as contracted herders for local cattle owners. Taking Integrated Water and Agricultural Development (IWAD), a private sector, large-scale irrigation initiative in northern Ghana as a case study, the article argues that there is an inevitability of the pathway, which leads from large-scale land acquisitions in West-African drylands, to an increase in conflict (and/or the risk thereof) between sedentary and Fulani pastoralists.

Citizenship, Indigeneity, and the Experiences of 1.5- and Second-Generation Fulani Herders in Ghana

“…Other scholars (e.g. Olaniyan et al, 2015; Soeters et al, 2017; Yembilah and Grant, 2014) have also highlighted the fact that there is the involvement of some Ghanaian elites in the cattle business, and a sizeable proportion of livestock under Fulani herders’ care belong to Ghanaians, including chiefs, who continue to employ Fulani to manage their animals. This also gives the Fulani herders some type of political connections to both local and national politicians who help them to penetrate farming communities.…”

“…During these expulsions, the military and police have been ordered not only to expel Fulani pastoralists from Ghana, particularly from the Northern, Brong-Ahafo, and Ashanti regions, but also to seize their cattle. In most cases, the perceived lack of interest by the state in protecting the rights of pastoralists has forced them to resist government authority by acquiring weapons to defend themselves (Soeters et al, 2017). These struggles have led to the destruction of crops, killing of cattle, and harassment or social vices in the communities of residence.…”

Territorial Conflicts, Agency and the Strategic Appropriation of Interventions in Kenya’s Southern Drylands

“…By including them into the project, the IUCN forest project employed, in effect, a 'social landscape approach', i.e., an approach that recognizes the multiplicity of user groups even if the relations between them are conflictive. This is the approach advanced by Soeters and Zoomers [1] (see also see [2]) as a way of mitigating the risk of conflict, but what the case of the IUCN forest project shows is that, on the one hand, this came too late: the conflictual relation between the Loita and the Purko had already been aggravated by the intervention's initial approach, leading eventually to deadly violence. On the other hand, no matter what approach the IUCN project would take, its very existence was entangled with the Loita-Purko territorial hostility from the start through the strategic actions of the Loita leaders.…”

“…Soeters and Zoomers [1] (see also [2]) primarily advance this wider, social landscape view as a tool to improve adaptation programming. This article will use it as an analytical tool and a point of departure to explore linkages between intervention and conflict, but (a) reverses the direction of analysis; and (b) proposes a more historical take of it.…”

Development at the Crossroads of Capital Flows and Migration: Leaving No One Behind?

“…The starting point for the first article-'Agricultural Investments and Farmer-Fulani Pastoralist Conflict in West African Drylands: A Northern Ghanaian Case Study' (Soeters, Weesie and Zoomers [14])-is the fact that in many countries in the global South, there is a push to drive agricultural modernisation processes through private sector investments. In West African drylands, the land concessions required for such agri-businesses are often negotiated through customary authorities and inject large amounts of money into localised rural systems with low cash bases.…”