Suchergebnisse

Agroecology has become an ideological foundation for social and environmental transformation in sub-Saharan Africa. In Senegal, agroecological advocacy coalitions, made up of farmers' organizations, scientists, NGOs, and IOs, are using agroecology as an umbrella concept for proposing policy changes at multiple scales. We describe the history of the agroecological movement in Senegal in the context of the constitution of a national advocacy coalition. We then examine the "repertoires of collective action" mobilized by the coalition. Four repertoires are identified: technical support and knowledge co-production, territorial governance, alternative food networks, and national policy dialogue. Our analysis highlights the potential that these multi-level approaches have to sustainably transform the current food systems in sub-Saharan Africa. However, our research also reveals the limited agency of farmer organizations and the limitations of a movement that is strongly dependent on NGOs and international donors, leading to a "projectorate" situation in which contradictory policy actions can overlap. We further argue that, although the central government has formally welcomed some of the principles of agroecology into their policy discourse, financial and political interests in pursuing a Green Revolution and co-opting agroecology are pending. This leads to a lack of political and financial autonomy for grassroots farmers' organizations, limiting the development of counter-hegemonic agroecology. We discuss the conditions under which territorial approaches, and the three other repertoires of collective action, can have significant potential to transform Sub-Saharan Africa in the coming years.

Senegal is among the few African countries that counts with an important agroecological movement. This movement is strongly backed up by a network of transnational partnerships and has recently matured into an advocacy coalition that promotes an agroecological transition at national scale. In this article, we investigate the role of transnational links on the empowerment potential of agroecology. Combining the multi-level perspective of socio-technical transitions and Bourdieu's theory of practices, we conceptualize the agroecological network as a niche shaped by the circulation of different types of capital. Using social network analysis, we investigate the existing flows of resources and knowledge, as well as membership and advocacy links to critically address within-niche empowerment processes. We show that transnational ties play a key role in building the niche protective space, showing a financial dependency of the agroecological niche on NGOs and international cooperation programmes based in Europe and North America. This configuration tends to favor the empowerment of NGOs instead of farmer unions, which only play a peripheral role in the network. However, the multiple innovations focus of agroecology may open up prospects for more gradual but potentially radical change. Based on our findings, we suggest to include more explicitly core-periphery dynamics in transition studies involving North–South relations, including circulation of capital, ideas and norms.

Agroecological farming has long been described as more fulfilling than conventional agriculture, in terms of farmers' labour and sense of autonomy. These assumptions must be reconsidered with adequate theoretical perspectives and with the empirical experience of recent studies. This paper introduces the concept of channels of labour control in agriculture based on four initiatives in Senegalese agroecological horticulture. We build on Bourdieu's theory of social fields to elaborate a framework that articulates multiple channels of labour control with the type of capital or surplus values structuring power relations during labour processes. Although each of the four agroecological initiatives place a clear emphasis on improving farmers' well-being, various top-down channels of labour control exist, maintaining most farmworkers as technical demonstrators rather than agents of transformation. These constraints stem from dependence on foreign funding, enforcement of uncoordinated organic standards, and farmers' incorporation of cultural values through interplays of knowledge and symbolic power with initiative promotors. Pressure on agricultural workers is exacerbated by the context of the neo-liberalisation of Senegalese agriculture and increasingly difficult climatic conditions. A more holistic approach of agroecological initiatives is needed, including the institutionalisation of protected markets for their products, farmers' inclusion in agroecosystem governance and inclusiveness in the co-production of agroecological knowledge, taking cultural patterns of local communities into account. Recent attempts to scale-up and politicise agroecology through farmers' organisations, advocacy NGOs, and municipalities may offer new perspectives for a just agroecological transition in sub-Saharan Africa.