Agricultural Markets in West Africa: Frontiers, Agribusiness and Social Differentiation

By Kojo Sebastian Amanor

Neoliberal policies have in recent years focused on introducing institutional reform to facilitate and regulate the operation of free markets. It is still assumed that the freemarket is the best mechanism to achieve efficient and equitable growth, alongside technical prescriptions. A growing body of researchon the political economy of agribusiness and the ways in which agribusiness and geopolitical interests capture world commodity markets is largely ignored within mainstream agricultural development literature on Africa. After 20 years of neoliberal reform in Africa, the same old formulas are dogmatically asserted without critical reflection.

File: Amanor.pdf