Joseph Awetori Yaro
Biographic Data
| ID | 75903 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joseph Awetori Yaro |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joseph Awetori |
| FAMILY NAME | Yaro |
| SIGNATURE | YARO J A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Ghana |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2701-3253 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 274 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Female farmers’ struggles and responses to Covid-19 in Ghana
The COVID-19 lockdown measures exacerbated the struggles of societies with existing inequalities. Given that women are generally the most vulnerable in times of pandemics and associated economic downturns, the study seeks to understand the struggles that female farmers experienced during the COVID-19 crisis and their survival responses and livelihood enhancement. To do this, we organized six women’s focus group discussions and interviewed 145 wom…
Modernizing cocoa production in Ghana
This paper employs the political settlement framework, diffusion theory, and data generated through a mixed methods design to examine the adoption of innovations and technology in Ghana's cocoa sector, with particular reference to the Juaboso district, a major cocoa producing area.The findings indicate that while most farmers have adopted improved cocoa planting methods in rows, the use of hybrid varieties and application of chemicals because of …
Rural-Urban Migration and Translocal Livelihoods in West Africa
In this paper we review literature examining migration and translocal livelihoods across the West African subregion. Translocal livelihood is defined as the networks of interlinkages and interdependence that exist between mobile and non-mobile populations in the region. The paper focuses on translocal livelihoods between rural and urban populations. It adopted a non-systematic literature review approach. The literature indicates that rural-urban …
The Changing Role and Challenges of Women in Agriculture in the Era of Agricultural Transformation in Northern Ghana
Ghana is one of the few countries in Africa that is experiencing rapid agricultural transformation, in farm size expansion and commercialization, though it is unclear yet whether this transformation is proceeding in an inclusive manner. Using both quantitative and qualitative data collected in 2020 from Northern Ghana, which is predominantly made up of patrilineal communities, this study analyses how social norms interplay with agricultural trans…
Compounding the peasant struggles
In recent times, the effects of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and other natural disasters have undermined global efforts to reduce poverty and inequality among rural farmers. While efforts at mitigating the impacts of climate change, particularly in developing countries, have not yielded significant improvements, the global health crises of the COVID-19 pandemic have, in many ways, undermined the positive adaptations to climate change. Ba…
Simmering Tensions and Emerging Conflicts Among Key Group Actors Amid Capitalist Transformation in Northern Ghana
A capitalist agrarian transformation is unfolding in northern Ghana, marked by shifts in crop types, rapid increases in farm sizes and deepening rural social differentiation. This paper investigates these dynamics through a mixed-methods approach across six farming communities in two districts, focusing on how social differentiation, accumulation, dispossession and exploitation reshape the region. Urban male capitalists, in collusion with local c…
Shea butter livelihoods and challenges faced by women in the Kassena Nankana districts, Ghana
Changing land and labour relations on cocoa farms in Sefwi, Ghana
Ever since the late 1880s when cocoa began to be grown commercially in Ghana, land and labour has been mobilized to expand the area under cocoa trees and cultivate the crop. The first cocoa farmers ingeniously used and adapted existing social norms for land acquisition and recruitment of labour from both the extended family and from migrants. The resulting development of cocoa was a remarkable story of African innovation and enterprise that made …
Traditional and Western knowledge systems used by smallholders
The discourse on knowledge integration persists in research and development practice. The need for traditional and Western knowledge systems to work together to achieve sustainable agricultural development in Ghana’s rural areas has become evermore relevant to achieve household food security in the context of changing climate, declining soil fertility, and labour challenges. The authors examined the role of knowledge integration in shaping the fo…
Knowledge, Attitudes, and Perception as Predictors of Covid-19 Safety Practices of Ride-Hailing Operators in Ghana
Since its outbreak, health authorities have launched vigorous COVID-19 health promotion campaigns. This study assesses ride-hailing operators' COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes, and practices in Ghana, with the aim of engendering precautionary behaviour among the populace. A complementary mixed methods approach was adopted. This involved a cross-sectional survey of 1014 participants who were also allowed to share their COVID-19-related lived experien…
Returns from the South
The sedentary bias that characterizes discourses on migrations from and within the Global South has failed to inform a consistent exploration of international migration from and among global southern countries as normal, desirable and impactful to migrants and their social networks at different spatial levels. Migration‐development nexus analyses are predominantly framed around Global South‐Global North migration episodes whereby cash and social …
When agricultural commercialization fails
Commercialization via value-chain agriculture, under which small farmers often collaborate with big companies, has become a prominent development strategy across Africa. Often framed in win-win terms, the dark sides of such projects (e.g. project failure, related losses) are often sidelined in both academic and practitioner discourses on agricultural commercialization. Informed by a collaborative ethnography of a failed value-chain agriculture pr…
Political Ecology and Contours of Vulnerability to Water Insecurity in Semiarid North-Eastern Ghana
Vulnerability to water insecurity in Ghana has often been characterised as a biophysical phenomenon that can be objectively solved using technical and rational approaches to manage water resources use and allocation - thus, making vulnerability to water security discourse politically neutral. Contesting this orthodoxy, this article shows the multiple mechanisms and structures that undergird vulnerability of households to water insecurity in semia…
Historical Context of Agricultural Commercialisation in Ghana
This paper provides a broad review of agrarian change in Ghana by highlighting the major developments in the agrarian political economy and their implications for agricultural commercialisation and its modifying influence on land tenure systems, livelihoods, production systems, social relations, and labour relations. While current land tenure arrangements and labour relations in Africa are often explained in terms of globalisation, we argue that …
City profile
Social Networks, Migration Trajectories and Livelihood Strategies of Migrant Domestic and Construction Workers in Accra, Ghana
Recent studies indicate that poor migrants are more likely to depend on social capital among other resources for livelihoods in host communities. Relying on insights from the social networks theory and using qualitative data from two migrant sending regions and one migrant destination area in Ghana, this paper examines the role and effects of networks of social capital on migration processes and livelihood strategies of migrants in the constructi…
Agricultural commercialisation models, agrarian dynamics and local development in Ghana
The renewed commitment of African states to modernising agriculture has reignited longstanding debates about different models of agricultural commercialisation. Which forms of commercialisation models will reduce land dispossession and the impoverishment of smallholders, and transform smallholder agriculture and the wider economy? Of the three broad models of agriculture commercialisation in this debate - plantation, contract farming and medium-s…
Of silent maids, skilled gardeners and careful madams
Farm to Factory Gendered Employment
Since the 1980s, a neoliberal paradigm has guided agricultural policy formulation in Africa with an unflinching preference for the commercialization of agriculture through the incorporation of smallholder farmers into global circuits of accumulation via outgrower arrangements. The paradigm has claimed that the promotion of integrated value chains will create jobs and enhance incomes in agrarian areas. This article assesses the manner in which men…
Africa's Land Rush
Selected Themes in African Development Studies
When a Good Business Model is Not Enough
Recent large-scale commercial agriculture projects in developing countries have raised concerns about the effects on natural resource-based livelihood activities of local people. A significant weakness in the emerging literature is the lack of a gender perspective on implications for agrarian livelihoods. This article explores the gendered aspects of land transactions on livelihood prospects in the Northern Region of Ghana. Drawing on qualitative…
Neoliberal globalisation and evolving local traditional institutions
The world has become interconnected and interdependent well beyond the economic domains of life and this has consequences for the role of major institutions governing access to resources in rural Africa. Neoliberal globalisation is eroding the moral foundation of rural societies in ways that create unequal access to the resources needed for involvement and inclusion in the market relations of production and social reproduction. Using the case of …
Reclaiming Stewardship in Ghana
The hydra-headed nature of climate change-affecting not just climate but all other domains of human life-requires not just technological fixes but cultural innovation. It is impossible to ignore a devoutly religious majority in Ghana, a nation where diverse religious communities' perspectives on climate change and their views on the way forward are crucial. This article aims to empirically explore how Christian, Islamic, and indigenous African re…
Re‐inventing traditional land tenure in the era of land commoditization
In northern Ghana periurban areas are encroaching on rural areas and agricultural land ends up being sold for residential purposes mainly by chiefs and “earth” priests. The changing customary land tenure systems have generated a state of uncertainty and tension as the title and responsibilities of titleholders are subject to the interpretation by those who administer custom. Increasing commodification is taking place that benefits an emerging pol…
When a Good Business Model is Not Enough
Recent large-scale commercial agriculture projects in developing countries have raised concerns about the effects on natural resource-based livelihood activities of local people. A significant weakness in the emerging literature is the lack of a gender perspective on implications for agrarian livelihoods. This article explores the gendered aspects of land transactions on livelihood prospects in the Northern Region of Ghana. Drawing on qualitative…
Customary tenure systems under siege
Agricultural commercialisation models, agrarian dynamics and local development in Ghana
The renewed commitment of African states to modernising agriculture has reignited longstanding debates about different models of agricultural commercialisation. Which forms of commercialisation models will reduce land dispossession and the impoverishment of smallholders, and transform smallholder agriculture and the wider economy? Of the three broad models of agriculture commercialisation in this debate - plantation, contract farming and medium-s…
Social Networks, Migration Trajectories and Livelihood Strategies of Migrant Domestic and Construction Workers in Accra, Ghana
Recent studies indicate that poor migrants are more likely to depend on social capital among other resources for livelihoods in host communities. Relying on insights from the social networks theory and using qualitative data from two migrant sending regions and one migrant destination area in Ghana, this paper examines the role and effects of networks of social capital on migration processes and livelihood strategies of migrants in the constructi…
Re‐inventing traditional land tenure in the era of land commoditization
In northern Ghana periurban areas are encroaching on rural areas and agricultural land ends up being sold for residential purposes mainly by chiefs and “earth” priests. The changing customary land tenure systems have generated a state of uncertainty and tension as the title and responsibilities of titleholders are subject to the interpretation by those who administer custom. Increasing commodification is taking place that benefits an emerging pol…
Is deagrarianisation real? A study of livelihood activities in rural northern Ghana
This article examines the livelihoods, portfolios and degree of deagrarianisation of the peasantry in three villages in northern Ghana. It argues that deagrarianisation should be seen as a process embedded in social change, bearing in mind the reversibility between farm and non-farm livelihood strategies used by households (reagrarianisation?). A livelihoods research approach involving qualitative household interviews and quantitative surveys in …
An assessment of the extent and causes of food insecurity in northern Ghana using a livelihood vulnerability framework
Reclaiming Stewardship in Ghana
The hydra-headed nature of climate change-affecting not just climate but all other domains of human life-requires not just technological fixes but cultural innovation. It is impossible to ignore a devoutly religious majority in Ghana, a nation where diverse religious communities' perspectives on climate change and their views on the way forward are crucial. This article aims to empirically explore how Christian, Islamic, and indigenous African re…
Historical Context of Agricultural Commercialisation in Ghana
This paper provides a broad review of agrarian change in Ghana by highlighting the major developments in the agrarian political economy and their implications for agricultural commercialisation and its modifying influence on land tenure systems, livelihoods, production systems, social relations, and labour relations. While current land tenure arrangements and labour relations in Africa are often explained in terms of globalisation, we argue that …
City profile
Political Ecology and Contours of Vulnerability to Water Insecurity in Semiarid North-Eastern Ghana
Vulnerability to water insecurity in Ghana has often been characterised as a biophysical phenomenon that can be objectively solved using technical and rational approaches to manage water resources use and allocation - thus, making vulnerability to water security discourse politically neutral. Contesting this orthodoxy, this article shows the multiple mechanisms and structures that undergird vulnerability of households to water insecurity in semia…
Neoliberal globalisation and evolving local traditional institutions
The world has become interconnected and interdependent well beyond the economic domains of life and this has consequences for the role of major institutions governing access to resources in rural Africa. Neoliberal globalisation is eroding the moral foundation of rural societies in ways that create unequal access to the resources needed for involvement and inclusion in the market relations of production and social reproduction. Using the case of …
When agricultural commercialization fails
Commercialization via value-chain agriculture, under which small farmers often collaborate with big companies, has become a prominent development strategy across Africa. Often framed in win-win terms, the dark sides of such projects (e.g. project failure, related losses) are often sidelined in both academic and practitioner discourses on agricultural commercialization. Informed by a collaborative ethnography of a failed value-chain agriculture pr…
Of silent maids, skilled gardeners and careful madams
Farm to Factory Gendered Employment
Since the 1980s, a neoliberal paradigm has guided agricultural policy formulation in Africa with an unflinching preference for the commercialization of agriculture through the incorporation of smallholder farmers into global circuits of accumulation via outgrower arrangements. The paradigm has claimed that the promotion of integrated value chains will create jobs and enhance incomes in agrarian areas. This article assesses the manner in which men…
Simmering Tensions and Emerging Conflicts Among Key Group Actors Amid Capitalist Transformation in Northern Ghana
A capitalist agrarian transformation is unfolding in northern Ghana, marked by shifts in crop types, rapid increases in farm sizes and deepening rural social differentiation. This paper investigates these dynamics through a mixed-methods approach across six farming communities in two districts, focusing on how social differentiation, accumulation, dispossession and exploitation reshape the region. Urban male capitalists, in collusion with local c…
Changing land and labour relations on cocoa farms in Sefwi, Ghana
Ever since the late 1880s when cocoa began to be grown commercially in Ghana, land and labour has been mobilized to expand the area under cocoa trees and cultivate the crop. The first cocoa farmers ingeniously used and adapted existing social norms for land acquisition and recruitment of labour from both the extended family and from migrants. The resulting development of cocoa was a remarkable story of African innovation and enterprise that made …
Returns from the South
The sedentary bias that characterizes discourses on migrations from and within the Global South has failed to inform a consistent exploration of international migration from and among global southern countries as normal, desirable and impactful to migrants and their social networks at different spatial levels. Migration‐development nexus analyses are predominantly framed around Global South‐Global North migration episodes whereby cash and social …
An assessment of the extent and causes of food insecurity in northern Ghana using a livelihood vulnerability framework
Is deagrarianisation real? A study of livelihood activities in rural northern Ghana
This article examines the livelihoods, portfolios and degree of deagrarianisation of the peasantry in three villages in northern Ghana. It argues that deagrarianisation should be seen as a process embedded in social change, bearing in mind the reversibility between farm and non-farm livelihood strategies used by households (reagrarianisation?). A livelihoods research approach involving qualitative household interviews and quantitative surveys in …
Customary tenure systems under siege
Re‐inventing traditional land tenure in the era of land commoditization
In northern Ghana periurban areas are encroaching on rural areas and agricultural land ends up being sold for residential purposes mainly by chiefs and “earth” priests. The changing customary land tenure systems have generated a state of uncertainty and tension as the title and responsibilities of titleholders are subject to the interpretation by those who administer custom. Increasing commodification is taking place that benefits an emerging pol…
When a Good Business Model is Not Enough
Recent large-scale commercial agriculture projects in developing countries have raised concerns about the effects on natural resource-based livelihood activities of local people. A significant weakness in the emerging literature is the lack of a gender perspective on implications for agrarian livelihoods. This article explores the gendered aspects of land transactions on livelihood prospects in the Northern Region of Ghana. Drawing on qualitative…
Neoliberal globalisation and evolving local traditional institutions
The world has become interconnected and interdependent well beyond the economic domains of life and this has consequences for the role of major institutions governing access to resources in rural Africa. Neoliberal globalisation is eroding the moral foundation of rural societies in ways that create unequal access to the resources needed for involvement and inclusion in the market relations of production and social reproduction. Using the case of …
Reclaiming Stewardship in Ghana
The hydra-headed nature of climate change-affecting not just climate but all other domains of human life-requires not just technological fixes but cultural innovation. It is impossible to ignore a devoutly religious majority in Ghana, a nation where diverse religious communities' perspectives on climate change and their views on the way forward are crucial. This article aims to empirically explore how Christian, Islamic, and indigenous African re…
Selected Themes in African Development Studies
Africa's Land Rush
Of silent maids, skilled gardeners and careful madams
Farm to Factory Gendered Employment
Since the 1980s, a neoliberal paradigm has guided agricultural policy formulation in Africa with an unflinching preference for the commercialization of agriculture through the incorporation of smallholder farmers into global circuits of accumulation via outgrower arrangements. The paradigm has claimed that the promotion of integrated value chains will create jobs and enhance incomes in agrarian areas. This article assesses the manner in which men…
City profile
Social Networks, Migration Trajectories and Livelihood Strategies of Migrant Domestic and Construction Workers in Accra, Ghana
Recent studies indicate that poor migrants are more likely to depend on social capital among other resources for livelihoods in host communities. Relying on insights from the social networks theory and using qualitative data from two migrant sending regions and one migrant destination area in Ghana, this paper examines the role and effects of networks of social capital on migration processes and livelihood strategies of migrants in the constructi…
Agricultural commercialisation models, agrarian dynamics and local development in Ghana
The renewed commitment of African states to modernising agriculture has reignited longstanding debates about different models of agricultural commercialisation. Which forms of commercialisation models will reduce land dispossession and the impoverishment of smallholders, and transform smallholder agriculture and the wider economy? Of the three broad models of agriculture commercialisation in this debate - plantation, contract farming and medium-s…
Historical Context of Agricultural Commercialisation in Ghana
This paper provides a broad review of agrarian change in Ghana by highlighting the major developments in the agrarian political economy and their implications for agricultural commercialisation and its modifying influence on land tenure systems, livelihoods, production systems, social relations, and labour relations. While current land tenure arrangements and labour relations in Africa are often explained in terms of globalisation, we argue that …
Political Ecology and Contours of Vulnerability to Water Insecurity in Semiarid North-Eastern Ghana
Vulnerability to water insecurity in Ghana has often been characterised as a biophysical phenomenon that can be objectively solved using technical and rational approaches to manage water resources use and allocation - thus, making vulnerability to water security discourse politically neutral. Contesting this orthodoxy, this article shows the multiple mechanisms and structures that undergird vulnerability of households to water insecurity in semia…
When agricultural commercialization fails
Commercialization via value-chain agriculture, under which small farmers often collaborate with big companies, has become a prominent development strategy across Africa. Often framed in win-win terms, the dark sides of such projects (e.g. project failure, related losses) are often sidelined in both academic and practitioner discourses on agricultural commercialization. Informed by a collaborative ethnography of a failed value-chain agriculture pr…
Traditional and Western knowledge systems used by smallholders
The discourse on knowledge integration persists in research and development practice. The need for traditional and Western knowledge systems to work together to achieve sustainable agricultural development in Ghana’s rural areas has become evermore relevant to achieve household food security in the context of changing climate, declining soil fertility, and labour challenges. The authors examined the role of knowledge integration in shaping the fo…
Knowledge, Attitudes, and Perception as Predictors of Covid-19 Safety Practices of Ride-Hailing Operators in Ghana
Since its outbreak, health authorities have launched vigorous COVID-19 health promotion campaigns. This study assesses ride-hailing operators' COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes, and practices in Ghana, with the aim of engendering precautionary behaviour among the populace. A complementary mixed methods approach was adopted. This involved a cross-sectional survey of 1014 participants who were also allowed to share their COVID-19-related lived experien…
Returns from the South
The sedentary bias that characterizes discourses on migrations from and within the Global South has failed to inform a consistent exploration of international migration from and among global southern countries as normal, desirable and impactful to migrants and their social networks at different spatial levels. Migration‐development nexus analyses are predominantly framed around Global South‐Global North migration episodes whereby cash and social …
Shea butter livelihoods and challenges faced by women in the Kassena Nankana districts, Ghana
Changing land and labour relations on cocoa farms in Sefwi, Ghana
Ever since the late 1880s when cocoa began to be grown commercially in Ghana, land and labour has been mobilized to expand the area under cocoa trees and cultivate the crop. The first cocoa farmers ingeniously used and adapted existing social norms for land acquisition and recruitment of labour from both the extended family and from migrants. The resulting development of cocoa was a remarkable story of African innovation and enterprise that made …
Female farmers’ struggles and responses to Covid-19 in Ghana
The COVID-19 lockdown measures exacerbated the struggles of societies with existing inequalities. Given that women are generally the most vulnerable in times of pandemics and associated economic downturns, the study seeks to understand the struggles that female farmers experienced during the COVID-19 crisis and their survival responses and livelihood enhancement. To do this, we organized six women’s focus group discussions and interviewed 145 wom…
Modernizing cocoa production in Ghana
This paper employs the political settlement framework, diffusion theory, and data generated through a mixed methods design to examine the adoption of innovations and technology in Ghana's cocoa sector, with particular reference to the Juaboso district, a major cocoa producing area.The findings indicate that while most farmers have adopted improved cocoa planting methods in rows, the use of hybrid varieties and application of chemicals because of …
Rural-Urban Migration and Translocal Livelihoods in West Africa
In this paper we review literature examining migration and translocal livelihoods across the West African subregion. Translocal livelihood is defined as the networks of interlinkages and interdependence that exist between mobile and non-mobile populations in the region. The paper focuses on translocal livelihoods between rural and urban populations. It adopted a non-systematic literature review approach. The literature indicates that rural-urban …
Economics (23 works) · Geography (18 works) · Agriculture (15 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (13 works) · Economic growth (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Business (11 works) · Livelihood (11 works) · Land Rights and Reforms (10 works) · Sociology (8 works)