Support for farmers and the promotion of livelihood among the poor in society is very significant for the donor community in Ghana. Three decades of political turbulence, which characterised the country between 1966 and 1992, plunged the Ghanaian economy into stale economic growth and development. The worsening economic outlook of the country attracted significant donor resources into the country to bridge these development gaps (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] 2013). Support for the production of non-traditional crops has gained much attention in Ghana. Consequently, donor assistance is sometimes directed to support farmers’ livelihoods for higher incomes through encouraging production of new export crops that can also boost foreign exchange earnings for the state. To this end, some donor assistance has sought to support smallholder pineapple farmers in Ghana. Production of pineapple in the Nsawam area has declined over the last decade because of high production cost and a lack of market and capital for farmers. Farmers’ livelihoods are crumbling as a result. Indeed, smallholder farmers, private sector industries and the state are all suffering reduced revenues and income. To help boost pineapple production and alleviate this challenge, aid providers provided financial aid to smallholder farmers to improve farming activities and also promote livelihoods. This article focuses on reviewing the experiences of these farmers in three villages around Nsawam to understand how the aid programme fits to farmers’ livelihoods experiences. Insights of the article are to contribute to informed policy and programme on sustainable rural livelihoods to better meet the expectations of target people.

Foreign development aid is the transfer of resources from donor nations to needy countries. These donor resources can also be considered as international transfer of capital, goods and services to needy nations (Ekiring 2000). Since independence, Ghana has received foreign development aid, though minimal, from the 1950s to mid-1960s because of the country’s relative high economic growth and development then (Kim and Lee, 2013), and the scepticism of Nkrumah’s government for Western leadership at the time. Aid gradually became a major form of development assistance for Ghana from the 1970s when political instability and economic mismanagement ensured steep economic decay, loss of jobs and a rise in poverty (Aryeetey & Kanbur 2008). Indeed, between the mid-1960s to early 1980s, Ghana’s economic history is referred to as the Dark Days (Killick 2010). To this end, foreign aid became an integral component of the economy for promoting growth and development (Adom 2015; Jomo & Fine 2006). Even the more dire economic decline from the early 1980s following harsh climatic conditions, corruption and worse global markets for Ghana’s foreign exchange earning products led the government then in 1983 to embrace the neoliberal Economic Recovery Program (ERP) (Rimmer 1992). The ERP saw the donor community assisting in open (liberal) economic-based reform of major sectors of the Ghanaian economy, through a massive injection of funds into supporting, for instance, agricultural productivity, rural livelihoods and increased natural resource exploitation (Thompson & Casely-Hayford 2008).

Ghana’s touted era of hope, however, witnessed average national economic performance and increased decentralised democracy, where local governments led the process of rural development and support for rural livelihoods. In this context, under the conviction of the international donor community that aid can work for Ghana, the country witnessed an unprecedented level of more than US$1306.93 million in aid inflows (OECD 2013). The avalanche of donor resources into the shores of Ghana did not improve the economic outlook of the country over the period, neither was it found to improve the livelihood of the citizens. Farmers became the worse affected because the country had to extensively rely on imported food from abroad as part of the conditions attached to most of the aid received. The poor correlation between the quantity of aid received and the dismal economic performance of the country generated strong debate among scholars and policy-makers in relation to the significance of the donor resources in promoting livelihood. While some scholars and policy-makers, such as Sachs (2005) and Easterly (2006), support the debate that aid resources can be employed to bridge the development gap among the poor, Moyo (2009) and Hansson (2007) called for the abolishing of the aid scheme because it has negative consequences for the recipient nation.

The concept of livelihood pervades a number of disciplines, theoretical works and development practice targeting poverty reduction (Krantz 2001; Scoones 2009). Drawing on Chambers and Conway (1991) and Scoones (1998, 2009), livelihood in this work refers to ‘the means and processes to live’ (Narh 2015). It entails resources, processes, relationships, capacities and abilities of farmers to access and use resources to live. Conceptualising livelihood this way in this article may be narrow; livelihood sustainability is influenced predominantly by the ability to overcome ‘stress and shocks, maintains or enhances its capabilities and assets, and provides sustainable livelihood opportunities for the next generation’ (Dartey-Baah & Ampofo 2015). Scoones (1998) also indicated that livelihood is sustainable also when it does not ‘undermine the natural resource base’ (p. 4). Nonetheless, with its precise focus on the utility of development aid for livelihood, it is beyond the scope of this article to determine and analyse intergenerational opportunities, multiscale, or natural resource conservation dimensions of livelihood, as Chambers and Conway and Scoones propose. Livelihood analysis has, over the years, been carried out as a process for empowering the poor. The sustainable livelihoods approach is a multidimensional and integrated analytical tool for poverty reduction or guideline for project implementation targeting poor people. It addresses the previous narrow definition of livelihood that informed a focus on isolated and disjointed individual sectoral support (Krantz 2001).

The focus on poor and rural people’s livelihoods dominates the programmes and projects of most aid providers. These agencies are not the focus in this article, but it is necessary to mention them here to create a quick mental image of the importance that development aid programmes between Ghana and donor communities attach to the livelihoods of rural people. Although methodological weaknesses of how to identify poverty and the poor remain (Krantz 2001), development aid agencies have, since the 1990s, widely adopted the sustainable livelihoods approach with its exclusive focus on poor people for their programmes and projects. Thus, sustainable livelihood analysis and consequent development policy focus on poor farmers mostly in rural areas.

Livelihood analysis and development practice highlight assets or capital resources as a major component of livelihoods for the poor. Assets for livelihood may take different forms of tangible capital stock or endowments such as land, equipment, technology, cash and other materials, or intangible resources (Ellis 2000; Leach, Mearns & Scoones 1999). In this respect, one of the most important assets of farmers is arable land. Putting this in the context of this article, particular attention will be focused on access and security of rights of farmers to their land assets as a crucial factor affecting their livelihoods. Drawing on the access theory (Ribot & Peluso 2003), it is a contention in this article that rights alone do not define claims over and access to land as assets for farmers. Indeed, assets are negotiated within social, economic and political power contexts.

In view of the power dynamics that affect assets of farmers, in this article farmers’ access to and security over their assets, and their livelihood strategies will be analysed under the presumption that to make a living or to develop a livelihood may not necessarily mean permanent contentment with a particular kind of livelihood. Farmers’ strategies may be aimed at changing their livelihoods over time. The dominant analysis of livelihood in the literature, however, is that sustainable livelihood approaches commonly construct target people as ‘poor’. Such a construction obscures attention on strategies that poor people adopt to find alternative livelihoods, or even progression away to find completely different forms of livelihood. The point of departure in this article, therefore, is that it is true that people strategise on their livelihoods, but most often they do not intend to only sustain them. Rather, poor people by their strategies also constantly attempt to move out of their current livelihoods to alternative ones, if circumstances provide opportunities for them to do so, and/or if their assets are threatened. Thus, the notion of livelihood in this article is that current livelihood strategies may actually be aimed at finding alternative livelihoods that people perceive to serve their needs better.

The results and analysis in the next section will show that in the Nsawam area where land values are rising as the area gradually urbanises and Accra extends its frontiers, farmers’ rights to land are being subverted by people with economic and political power. In view of this subversion, people constantly strategise to confront the maze of powers that come to bear on their major assets, land (Ellis 2000; Marchetta 2011). In this article, farmers’ livelihood strategies are engendered by threats to their assets (King 2011). It will be seen below that farmers try to use their current assets to shift to alternative livelihoods other than farming. Thus, livelihood is dynamic, changing from time to time according to how circumstances and strategies evolve in attempts to derive utility from existing and new assets.

Modernisation is one of the first theories that emerged in the development discussion in Europe and gained the world’s attention when developing countries started gaining independence in the 1950s (Adom 2015; Giddens 1991). According to the modernist, emerging economies must be prepared to ‘walk’ the path of development to be able to actualise development in their respective young nations. This, according to the modernist, was what nations like the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France have done to graduate from poor and underdeveloped societies into ‘modern industrial giants’. The modernisation theory advocates for the ‘right’ mobilisation of both internal and external resources in the march towards appreciable development (Passe-Smith 2003; Todaro & Smith 2009).

The analysis and discussions in this article are guided by the access theory (Ribot & Peluso 2003). In this framework, the article interrogated the utility of development aid for pineapple farmers’ livelihood, and how this utility is affected by ‘access to and security of rights’ to land as the major livelihood asset for the farmers. Ribot and Peluso (2003:153) further argue that ‘access to resources refers not only to property rights but also to the ability to benefit from things’. This implies that ‘property is not only about rights, but also about all different forms of obtaining and maintaining access to resources’. In the context of this article, access theory relates to instances where powerful individuals are able to assert their authority, based on varied circumstances, to dispose farmers of their rights so that these farmers, though they are entitled to their lands, find their ability to derive benefits from their lands curtailed altogether.

Understanding farmers’ experiences of their livelihoods and the financial assistance from the MCA was the major goal in collecting primary data for this study. For this reason, a case-study design was adopted. This approach draws from Yin (2012), Baxter (2010), and Gibbert, Ruigrok and Wicki (2008) that the case study enables holistic in-depth understanding of the issue under investigation. Thus, the Nsawam-Adoagyiri Municipality was chosen as the case for this work because of the area’s proximity to Accra, the national capital of Ghana, which the authors thought could likely shape unique experiences of maintaining rural livelihoods. The Municipality is approximately 23 km from Accra, and it is situated in the southeastern part of the Eastern Region of Ghana. It is bordered to the south by the Ga and Tema Municipalities of the Greater Accra Region, to the north by Akuapem North Municipality, to the west by Suhum Municipality and Upper West Akyem District, all in the Eastern region (Ghana Statistical Service [GSS] 2014).

Agriculture, forestry and fishing closely follow the wholesale and retail sector as the major economic activity for the majority of people in the Municipality. Agriculture is dominant in rural areas, with 71.7% of households in agriculture as their major livelihood (GSS 2014). Crops produced most are cassava, plantain, fruits and vegetables. The Municipality is best known for its production of pineapples for the local and international markets. There are fruit juice companies such as Blue Skies and the Nsawam Cannery that use pineapples in their production.

Empirical primary data were collected between October and December 2015 from a total of 16 pineapple farmers who had accessed the MCA loan facility, and five family heads in three villages. The villages are Sekyikrom, Fotobi and Ankwa Dobro. Visits were also made to the twice-weekly Nsawam open market to meet and discuss the issues, especially with women farmers. Consultations were also held with three officials of the Nsawam-Adoagyiri Municipal Assembly. The primary data were transcribed, and analysis was facilitated by the use of the Atlas.ti qualitative analysis computer software, where codes and themes were drawn inductively from the interview transcripts. Subsequently, the analysis in the article draws on the access theory (Ribot & Peluso 2003). The theory allows for addressing the outcomes of development aid as affected by various factors shaping security of access to and ownership of land, which is the major livelihood asset for pineapple farmers in the Nsawam area.

Primary data were collected on the perceptions and strategies of farmers on their livelihoods and how the MCA loan supports such livelihoods. The data reveal several issues that connect from different angles and piece together to produce deep insights. Access theory and the concept of livelihood, as discussed above, come in handy to explain the primary data to show that circumstances affecting livelihood assets, which are land in the case of Nsawam pineapple farmers, mediate the actual effect of development aid on farmers’ livelihood. To this end, the primary data show that property rights alone do not secure land for farming as a sustainable form of livelihood. Farmers’ rights to their lands are affected by economic and political power of actors with stakes in farmers’ lands – this, in turn, affects how development aid works for farmers’ livelihoods. Because of the spatial spread of Accra and the gradual urbanisation of Nsawam, economic power of urban developers couples with political power of family heads to buy off farmers’ rights to their lands. Consequently, the data show that development aid, which is oblivious to these challenges, does not align with the expectations of farmers about their livelihoods. Thus, power, be it economic or political, and how it affects livelihood assets, is a crucial element that should be addressed in any support for farmers. Next, these issues from the primary data are analysed before they are pieced together in a discussion in the ‘Results and analysis’ section.

In this section, development aid is placed in farmers’ experiences. The insight from the data analysis is that even though the MCA support had good intentions for pineapple farmers in the Nsawam area, in the context of the challenges to land rights it failed in two respects: firstly, it took for granted that farmers possess assets that remain theirs, that is, they have secure rights to land; and secondly, the fact that its conception of farmers’ livelihood did not see livelihood as a dynamic phenomenon. These two points are discussed next.

In this study, the relationship between development aid and livelihood of smallholder pineapple farmers in three villages in the Nsawam-Adoagyiri Municipality was investigated. The work solicited the experiences of these farmers to explore the utility of development aid for their livelihoods. It is informed by the quite low impact on poverty reduction and improved livelihoods that the massive inflows of donor assistance into the Ghanaian economy have achieved so far. While external assistance seeks to support farmers to maintain and improve their farming, empirical data reveal that particular local circumstances stimulate farmers’ strategies to find alternative forms of livelihoods as a way of confronting or overcoming challenges to their assets. Thus, donor assistance for rural livelihoods does not yield the desired results on livelihoods because donor managers are either oblivion of or fail to address the challenges that confront assets of farmers, such as how powerful actors weaken farmers’ rights to land. In other words, development aid often fails to achieve its goals because it does not align with the expectations that farmers have of their livelihoods. In the context of pineapple farming in the Nsawam area, to make aid relevant to beneficiary farmers, donors can direct some focus on supporting measures to secure the major assets of farmers, that is, land.

It is concluded that livelihood is dynamic and transient. Livelihood transience focuses on how people identify alternative livelihoods from current opportunities and resources. Support programmes on livelihoods should be mindful of the fact that target people possibly see such support not as a resource to maintain current forms of livelihood, but as a window to escape current entrapments to find alternatively better livelihoods. To this end, governors and donors should see beyond current livelihood situations and include in their programmes future livelihood prospects that people see. In effect, this study advocates ‘livelihood transience’ as an expanded and integral form of livelihood analysis. This expanded notion should not replace the current focus on ‘sustainable livelihood’, but rather complement it.