Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the gendered aspects of household debt in Kenya, focusing on its relationship with social reproduction and financial care value extraction. I proposes a feminist materialist theoretical framework for understanding this conflict in the capitalist accumulation system.

Paper long abstract:

With regard to the changing debt architecture on the African continent, both the financialization of debt, its feminization, and its links to gender inequality and social reproduction have been under-researched. This includes in particular the gendered aspects of intra-household debt. This paper proposes to understand household debt through the feminist IPE lens of social reproduction in the capitalist accumulation regime in order to unravel its gendered dimension: What is the gendered component of household debt in Kenya and how is this relevant to the social reproduction of the household since Covid-19? I argue that private debt brings Kenyan women into the financial system for the profit of the financial institution. Debt related to social reproduction, care-related debt, thus functions as a form of financial care value extraction. I link this to a general crisis tendency of the capitalist accumulation system and summarize that financial care value extraction feeds the ongoing need for value accumulation via dispossession. To fill the above mentioned research gap on the gendered aspects of household debt for social reproduction in a Kenyan context, I propose to operationalize a feminist historical materialist theoretical framework on a qualitative case study in the rural Taita-Taveta region. The concept of social reproduction is used as an interpretive framework to consider the complex relationship between the state and the private household in the age of neoliberal austerity.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will critically analyse different kinds of visual media from the time of the German colonialism in Cameroon showing cocoa plantations. The space of the colonial plantation was characterised by an inequality in wealth accumulation and by the extraction of land and labour.

Paper long abstract:

For the German colonial project in Cameroon, plantations were a critical resource for accumulating wealth by cultivating plants which could be processed into colonial commodities. One of these plants that was cultivated for colonial wealth was cocoa. This paper will critically analyse historical material from the time of the German colonialism in Cameroon showing the places of cocoa cultivation, the cocoa plantations. One kind of material that will be analysed is a published collection of images including images of German plantations in Cameroon by the agriculturalist Ferdinand Wohltmann, another kind of material is a series of postcards by the German company Reichhardt Kakaowerk including images of the Victoria plantation in Cameroon and the Reichhardt factory in Wandsbek. The different kinds of visual media promote the German colonial project and its inequal accumulation dynamics. In the case of cocoa / chocolate production, the accumulation of wealth was (and still is until today) distributed unequally between the places of cocoa cultivation and chocolate processing which was (and still is) mostly done in countries of the Global North. The space of the colonial plantation was characterised by the inequality in wealth accumulation, by the extraction of land and labour and by monocultures which are a significant part of today’s climate crisis. This paper argues that for an understanding of the (German colonial) plantation as a space – partly – responsible for today’s climatological crisis, it is interesting to take a close look at the representation of plantations in the time they were established.

Paper short abstract:

This study focuses on the linkage between financial inclusion and climate change adaptation in Nigeria. Given the poor financial inclusion of women in the country, they find it difficult to recover from loss and damage and adapt the effects of climate change.

Paper long abstract:

Employed largely in the informal sector, women, the largest participants in indigenous economies are arguably shut out of financial systems across Nigeria. The situation resonates in the context of climate change which affects women disproportionately in comparison to their male counterparts. The dynamics of climate change adaptation on the continent are dominantly patriarchal, stifling the ability of women to live with new realities wrought by the menace. This paper argues that the absence of financial inclusion for women typifies climate change response. In the instances of environmental hazards that have become more regular across the continent, women lack funds to put their livelihoods back on track. Their high unbanked status means that they cannot draw credit to restart their businesses most of which are fledgling before climate disasters. This study dwells on the theory of feminist political ecology, qualitatively analyzing data drawn from existing works, government publications, CSO/NGO bulletins, etc.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the oil economy in Nigeria as situated in the Niger Delta region. It examines the impact of capital accumulation on the region's population, particularly the youths. This provides the context for understanding the prevalent crisis in the region.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on Nigeria’s oil economy as situated in the Niger Delta region. Based on the Marxian strand of political economy, the context of the exploration of crude oil in Nigeria’s Niger Delta is examined, including the role of capital and the consequent accumulation by the owners of capital in the economy. The resultant crisis of capital accumulation particularly as it concerns the youths in the Niger Delta region who constitute a significant demography of the region’s population is interrogated. A variety of violent and non-violent actions by the youths in the Niger Delta have over the years been the consequences of the circumstances of accumulation in the Niger Delta. These responses by the youth population include militancy, oil bunkering, kidnapping, forming pressure groups, among others. The questions that arise from the contradictions of the crisis of accumulation include the following? What is the nature of capitalist accumulation in the Niger Delta? How has this mode of accumulation affected the nature of the state in terms of their relations with the youth of the Niger Delta? How can a new state-society relation be constructed to include and empower the youths, rather marginalize them? The paper argues that the lack of embeddedness of the state in the society in a postcolonial state like Nigeria, its location within the global capitalist economy and the prebendal nature of its elites create conditions that continue to disempower rather than empower the youths of the Niger Delta.

Keywords: Niger Delta, Youths, Accumulation, Exploitation, Crisis

Paper short abstract:

This discussion looks at engagement in e-fraud as an ambivalent resistance to neoliberal inequality. While it is positioned as a recipe for reduced inequalities, e-fraud however encourages predatory pro-capitalist practices and behaviours that upset the attainment of a sustainable economic growth.

Paper long abstract:

Among the United Nations’ SDGs are inclusive and sustainable economic growth through decent work for all, and reduction of inequality within and among countries. During the roundtable, I will discuss e-fraud economy, not only as a contemporary iteration of the multiple crises of modernity that threaten the global economy, but also a category that complicates these SDGs. From Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief and Petina Gappah’s “Our Man in Geneva Wins a Millions Euros” to Nkem Owoh’s “I Go Chop Your Dollar,” I argue that every critical reading of e-fraud literature invites us to consider the costs of economic growth when modelled along Western capitalist prototypes which have shaped the well-meaning yet sometimes misguided agendas of the UN in the Global South. Rather than simply moralize away portrayals of e-fraud in African literature or ignore them as an uncomfortable wrinkle in African experience in a postmodern world, the phenomenon of e-fraud can be appreciated as an intimation of agency in the face of disenfranchisement exacerbated by inequalities that have resulted from neoliberal structural adjustment. I will therefore discuss engagement in e-fraud to show how individual subjects ambivalently resist the structures of exclusion and inequality by adjusting to the perverse ideas of work and self-advancement that constitute these structures. While it is positioned as a recipe for reduced inequalities, however, this ambivalent resistance encourages predatory pro-capitalist practices and behaviours that both upset the attainment of a sustainable economic growth and accentuate the enforced continuity of imperial hegemony.

Paper short abstract:

Studies on Traditional Orthopaedic Healthcare (TOH) have accorded scanty attention to the commodification of TOH, and its gendered context of practice in rural sub-saharan Africa. Guided by political economy, this study filled the gap by addressing the foregoing vis-à-vis sustainability imperatives.

Paper long abstract:

Traditional Orthopaedic Healthcare (TOH) is an altruistic, family-based and male-dominated practice that provides more than 70% of treatment for Musculo-skeletal conditions in rural sub-saharan Africa. Extant studies have focused on belief systems, cultural, social and political economy factors, in the persistent utilization of TOH - despite advances in biomedical sciences. There is paucity of knowledge on the commodification of TOH as a socio-economic activity – contrary to its traditionally altruistic orientation. Similarly, the gendered context of TOH, the role of women, and unequal reward systems have received little scholarly attention. Using the qualitative research approach, and guided by the political economy perspective, this study filled the observed gap by interrogating the commodification of TOH vis-à-vis the gendered nature of its reward system, focusing on the socio-cultural context of the Nupe of Nigeria. Data was collected in 12 communities, using Life Histories (4 women members of practitioner families, aged 60 and above), Key Informant Interviews (5 leaders of TOH practice communities), In-depth Interviews (5 male heads of TOH practice families), and Focus Group Discussions (4 groups of 7-9 women, aged 18-59, who are TOH practitioners). The study revealed that commodification conflicts with traditional tenets of TOH practice, while undermining quality service, widening existing reward gaps between rural men and women, and threatening environmental sustainability. Government and relevant stakeholders need to pay greater attention to TOH and traditional medicine generally – with proper recourse to gender and environment, as important components of the SDGs, and WHO’s “Health for All”.

Paper short abstract:

The social cadets’ work considered as the corner stone of rural dynamics through their livelihoods which reveal agency in the rice farming context. From socio-economical perspectives we focus on their “freedom” and capabilities despite various constraints of large scale farming project.

Paper long abstract:

In the post-structural adjustment context, characterized by crises (withdrawal of state subsidies, farming taxes increasing etc.), rice farmers are struggling to make a living solely from their main activity as well as developing livelihoods (Chambers & Conway1991). How do social cadets, despite socio-economic considerations, position themselves in the local dynamic to become “agents” of their own well-being through political and economic resistance?

In this study, we emphasize on the activities farmers are conducting to earn their living and contribute to their family needs. Moreover we question the way they are developing “capabilities” as “non passive agent” in reference to Amartya Sen approach, through “assets” like protestation, community work, local entrepreneurship, petty commodities, “tontines” etc in a context where large scale agro industrie own the major farming lands. However, these forms of agency are not without constraints, it often involves “capitalization” and “de-capitalization” in the social cadet trajectories.

To conduct this study, we are using ethnographic survey with households, intra-households and local associations by using the livelihoods perspective as ‘an integrated, holistic, bottom-up perspective centred on the understanding of what people do to make a living in diverse social contexts and circumstances’ (Scoones 2015: 1).

Bibliography

Chambers R., Conway G.R. (1991), Sustainable rural livelihoods: practical concepts for the 21st century, IDS Discussion. Paper 296, December.

Scoones I., (2015), Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development. UK: Practical Action and Winnipeg, CA: Fernwood Publishing.

Sen A., (1999), Development as freedom. Oxford University Press.