Tomatoes, land, and hearsay: property and history in Asante in the time of structural adjustment
Date
1997-05-19
Authors
Berry, S
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Abstract
As debate over African economic problems and prospects has shifted from concern with the
continent's "agricultural crisis" in the 1980s, to a focus on environmental degradation and sustainable
development in the 1990s, the policy wheel has come full circle. In the 1980s, a number of donor
agencies and governments argued in the 1980s that African economies* rising foreign debts and chronic
budgetary deficits were fuelled in large part by stagnating or declining levels of agricultural production,
brought on by African governments' poor choice of policies and excessive intervention in domestic
markets and production.1 To reduce their debts and regenerate agricultural production for domestic
markets and for export, African governments were advised to adopt structural adjustment packages
designed to reduce or eliminate controls on prices, trade and output, cut government spending, and
transfer assets and productive activities from the public to the private sector.2 By the end of the decade,
as many economies began to show signs of agricultural recovery (arguably due as much to better weather
and long-term urban growth as to policy-induced shifts in relative prices)3 and greater macroeconomic
stability in the short-term, policymakers' attention shifted to the question of how to promote sustained and
equitable economic growth in the long run.4 Focussing particularly on the problem of environmental
degradation, some analysts have begun to call for increased regulation of Africans* economic activities,
from hunting, herding, and farming, to commercial logging, mining and manufacturing. One recent
study, sponsored by the World Bank, proposes "an action plan" of incentive schemes to "create demand"
for smaller families and improved agricultural technology-backed up by controls to "eliminat[e] openaccess
land tenure conditions" and induce "policy-created artificial scarcity of farmland,.." Others have
advocated fences, armed guards and/or closely monitored "buffer zones" to prevent exploitation of
protected areas and species.5 Having argued in the 1980s for getting the state out of many areas of
economic activity in Africa, donor agencies now apparently want to bring it back in.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 19 May, 1997
Keywords
Ghana. Economic conditions, Africa. Economic conditions. 20th century