Social capital in sub-Saharan Africa Exploring the value of bridging structural social capital for Farmer Groups in Kenya and Ethiopia
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2018-03-01
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en
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Kenya and Ethiopia are sub-Saharan countries struggling to get by. A big part of the population endures extreme poverty, including farmers, most of whom live on less than 2$ a day. This group is known to economists and social scientists as the Base of the Pyramid (BoP). While agriculture – more specifically the (seed) potato sector – has a high potential in these countries, for both commercial investment as well as combating malnourishment, value chain initiatives have failed to achieve the improvements that were hoped for. Previous research (Gildemacher et al., 2009b) consisting of stakeholder workshops unveiled that the interaction between actors in the seed potato value chain was inadequate and that actors faced dysfunctional information networks, thereby hindering potato production in both Kenya and Ethiopia. Evidence from other sub-Saharan countries (Minten & Fafchamps, 1999) indicated that agricultural traders use ‘social capital’ to overcome information issues in networks. Social capital is generally understood to be goodwill and resources that are embedded within social relations. A literature review was carried out with a focus on bridging structural social capital: the raw social structure of out-group connections a specific actor possesses. Specifically, this study focused on network size and diversity. The focal actor in this research were members of a Farmer Group; a cooperation between farmers with the purpose of benefiting its members.
This study presents a comparison between the amounts of bridging structural social capital possessed by respondents and its influence on their performance in terms of annual yield per hectare. The applied qualitative social network analysis revealed the influence of network size and diversity on performance, whilst accounting for variables such as potato generation (i.e. input quality of seed potatoes) and Farmer Group size. The analysis did not provide enough evidence to draw unequivocal conclusions, mostly due to a small sample size. However, it did show the relevance of bridging structural social capital dynamics, resulting in the provision of recommendations for upcoming agricultural value chain research at the sub-Saharan BoP.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen