An innovation platform for institutional change in Ghana's cocoa sector (original) (raw)
Related papers
Ghana Cocoa Industry—An Analysis from the Innovation System Perspective
Technology and Investment, 2012
This paper discusses Ghana's cocoa industry from the innovation systems perspective. Cocoa is the major cash crop of Ghana. Its importance is not only in the contribution of about 25% annually of the total foreign exchange earnings but also on account of being the source of livelihoods for many rural farmers and the related actors in the value chain. The critical actors in the innovation system are the farmers, the researchers, the buyers, the transporters, public officers, consumers and the policy makers. By the roles and functions they perform, they impact on the dynamics of the cocoa industry. The paper describes the trends in cocoa production and processing and highlights the key characteristics and implications. It discusses the policy reforms in the cocoa industry and the major drivers of the reforms. The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) is one of the biggest public institutions in Ghana and its subsidiaries are major actors in the production process of cocoa for export. The key reforms in the policies governing the industry were the dissolution of the monopoly of Produce Buying Company and the deregulation of cocoa purchasing to allow Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs) to enter the business in 1992/93 crop season. There was also the dismantling and re-organization of the Cocoa Services Division into two separate units-the Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease Control Unit (CSSVDCU) and the Seed Production Unit (SPU). The processing of cocoa into cocoa butter, cocoa paste and confectioneries is an important component of the value chain especially with the national goal of processing 50% of cocoa before export. The paper discusses policy implementation in the cocoa industry underscoring the successes and failures. It highlights lessons for other primary commodity producing countries especially those whose development contexts are similar to Ghana's.
Towards an innovation system in the traditional sector: the case of the Nigerian cocoa industry
Science and Public Policy, 2009
In recent years the revitalization of the Nigerian cocoa industry through a cocoa rebirth initiative has been a major focus of the Nigerian government. By applying the analytical framework of the agricultural system of innovation this paper traces the process of valueaddition in the cocoa agro-industrial system, examines the impact of the Nigerian cocoa rebirth initiative and makes suggestions that are critical for strengthening the innovation system in a traditional sector. The study demonstrated that though an innovation system in the cocoa industry is far from being realized, the policy intervention of the cocoa rebirth initiative can be potent as an instrument of innovation. Towards this end, the findings suggest that policy emphasis should aim at organizing the cocoa rebirth initiative as an innovation focused programme that enables interactive learning among actors in cocoa research, production and industrial processing.
– Oil palm is an important industrial, livelihood and food crop in Ghana. Smallholders produce the bulk of the palm fruits and small-scale processors, mainly women, produce most of the crude palm oil. Poor practices lead to a high proportion of free fatty acids in the crude palm oil and the processors thus cannot access remunerative national and international markets. Exploratory and diagnostic studies identified the absence of rules and regulations governing processing as a major factor. An innovation platform was convened and facilitated to remove the identified institutional constraints. Based on event tracing, this paper reports a study of the effects of the innovation platform's interventions and how these were achieved. Institutional entrepreneurs are shown to play important roles: they mobilised resources such as expertise, knowledge, access to information and high-level political power to influence small-scale processors to adopt alternative practices. The institutional changes observed are shown to arise in cooperation between traditional authorities (chiefs), the district legislature and authorities at the national level, who together institutionalised the experimental actions and processes taken in the study area. The institutional elements they most affected were: rules and regulations, the legitimacy of new practices and organisational arrangements, co-generation of knowledge, material resources, and the strategic and communication skills of key actors. Keywords: oil palm / free fatty acids / smallholders / innovation platforms Résumé – Plateformes d'Innovation et changement institutionnel : le cas des petits producteurs d'huile de palme au Ghana. Au Ghana, l'huile de palme est un produit alimentaire et industriel important ainsi qu'une ressource monétaire indispensable aux petits producteurs, qui fournissent l'essentiel des régimes de fruits. Les petits transformateurs, des femmes pour la plupart, produisent la plus grande part de la production d'huile de palme brute. Du fait de techniques inappropriées, ces huiles contiennent une grande proportion d'acides gras libres et les transformateurs ne peuvent donc pas avoir accès aux grands marchés, nationaux et internationaux, les plus rentables. Des diagnostics préliminaires ont identifié l'absence de règles et de réglementation sur la transformation comme une contrainte majeure. Une plateforme d'innovation a été établie pour réfléchir à ces contraintes institutionnelles et agir sur elles. En se basant sur le suivi de ses travaux, cet article rapporte les effets de cette plateforme d'innovation et discute de la façon dont ils ont été obtenus. Les entrepreneurs institutionnels jouent un rôle important, par exemple ils mobilisent l'expertise, les connaissances, l'accès à l'information ainsi qu'au réseau politique de haut niveau et ont motivé les petites transformatrices à adopter des pratiques alternatives. Les changements institutionnels observés émergent de la coopération entre les autorités traditionnelles (chefs), les représentants locaux de l'État et les autorités nationales, qui, ensemble, ont institutionnalisé les actions expérimentales dans les régions étudiées. Les éléments institutionnels les plus significatifs sont : les réglementations et les règles, la légitimité des nouvelles pratiques et les arrangements organisationnels, la co-production des connaissances, les ressources matérielles, et les compétences stratégiques et de communication des acteurs clefs. Mots clés : palmier à huile / acides gras libres / petits exploitants / plateformes d'innovation
The Political Economy of the Cocoa Value Chain in Ghana
2021
The cocoa sector has, historically, been the backbone of the Ghanaian economy. Many households depend directly on the cocoa sector for livelihoods, and aspects of the cocoa industry, such as input supplies to farmers and cocoa pricing, have historically featured prominently in national and local politics. This paper examines the basic underlying political economy dynamics of the cocoa value chain, with particular focus on how the interests, powers and interactions of various actors along the value chain have contributed to agricultural commercialisation in Ghana. The paper also explores the challenges affecting the cocoa value chain, social difference within the chain, and how various segments of the cocoa value chain have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana since March 2020.
Did the price-related reforms in Ghana's cocoa sector favour farmers?
International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, 2014
It is generally hypothesized in the innovation systems literature that institutions can create production incentives for farmers. This paper examines whether the introduction in 1984 of the Producer Price Review Committee (PPRC) in Ghana's cocoa sector has improved the transmission of world prices to farmers. We test how fast and to what extent world prices have been transmitted, and also address the stability of the prices received by cocoa farmers. For the period 1960-2011, the results were as follows: (1) the production of cocoa beans depended positively on the prices farmers received and negatively on price variance; (2) the establishment of the PPRC provided higher prices for farmers; and (3) the PPRC's use of the flexible freight on board (FOB) price-setting rule resulted in a better price transmission than the employed cost-plus-margin approach. However, under the FOB pricesetting rule, producer price variance rose sharply. We conclude that, although FOB pricing mechanisms are often recommended for markets where prices are institutionally determined, stabilization policies should be factored in to protect farmers against international price fluctuations.
An Integrated Socioeconomic Analysis of Innovation Adoption:: The Case of Hybrid Cocoa in Ghana
Journal of Policy Modeling, 1999
This study employs a multidisciplinary model to explain the adoption of agricultural innovations in developing economies with reference to hybrid cocoa in Ghana. The empirical evidence shows that, in the adoption of hybrid cocoa, the support that small-scale farmers obtain via their social networks is more relevant than the advantage of farm size enjoyed by large-scale farmers. However, for large-scale farmers, access to a bank loan strongly increases their chance of adoption compared with small-scale farmers. Contacts with extension agents, education, and availability of hired labor also have positive effects on adoption. The social status of the farmers has only an indirect effect on adoption: farmers with higher social status are more likely to obtain a bank loan, and a bank loan has a positive impact on adoption.
2020
There is a gap today in funding for investment in developing countries. A recent assessment of financing in the agriculture sector in Ghana based on existing financial sector laws showed that, there is currently no distinct policy to enable lending to the agricultural sector. However, with an ever increasing need to address the challenges of climate change, the need for such policies and resulting finance opportunities for smallholder farmers and other supply chain actor will only increase and become more urgent. Unchanged, most needed investments to address the growing challenges will be made by the private sector or by the farmers themselves. Therefore, public actors, including COCOBOD, need to play a key role in building an enabling environment, including the development of supportive policies, institutions and making matching-funds available. Reducing supply chain risk and improving resilience through such efforts that signal a more secure and favourable framework is key to enab...
Sustainable Agriculture Research
Although Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) promotes technical change in cocoa farming with innovative technologies and input support, crop productivity is better advanced by improving on the efficiency of input use by farmers. This study thereby investigates the technical efficiency of cocoa farmers in Ghana. The study uses cross sectional field data covering Western North, Ashanti, Eastern, Volta and Brong-Ahafo regions of Ghana on a sample of 899 cocoa farmers and adopts Meta frontier stochastic frontier analysis to derive production efficiencies for each region. The findings are that supply-side interventions such as hand pollination, hybrid seedlings, farm pruning and extension services can improve on technical efficiency of cocoa farmers, more especially in Ashanti, Eastern and Western region. Notably, the CODAPEC input support programme which encapsulates insecticides and fungicides spraying has failed to improve on production efficiency as compared to the Hi-Tech (fertilizer applic...
Cahiers Agricultures, 2017
This paper discusses external influences on innovation platforms (IPs) and the options for effective responses. The platforms examined in this paper were conceived as vehicles for facilitating institutional change in support of innovation that benefits smallholders, in selected agro-enterprise domains in Benin, Ghana and Mali. They were designed and implemented in a manner that enabled experimentation with processes of change in the selected domains. A Research Associate in each case facilitated the work of the IPs and applied Theory-Guided Process Tracing (TGPT) methodology to document the innovation processes pursued by platform members. The recorded data allow analysis of the external influences on the IPs. This paper first presents a typology as derived from literature of the main external influences on the domains of interest, and then uses the typology to analyse the influences on and responses of the IPs. The main influences were found to emanate from global, sub-regional and...
Journal of Policy Modeling
This study employs a multidisciplinary model to explain the adoption of agricultural innovations in developing economies with reference to hybrid cocoa in Ghana. The empirical evidence shows that, in the adoption of hybrid cocoa, the support that small-scale farmers obtain via their social networks is more relevant than the advantage of farm size enjoyed by large-scale farmers. However, for large-scale farmers, access to a bank loan strongly increases their chance of adoption compared with small-scale farmers. Contacts with extension agents, education, and availability of hired labor also have positive effects on adoption. The social status of the farmers has only an indirect effect on adoption: farmers with higher social status are more likely to obtain a bank loan, and a bank loan has a positive impact on adoption.