School of Social and Political Science

Description

The Centre of African Studies is delighted to invite you to the following seminar part of their Seminar Series 2023/2024:

Speaker: Dr Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey, Research Fellow at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana.

Chair and Discussant: Dr Nelson Oppong, Lecturer in African Studies and International Development, CAS, University of Edinburgh

Since the late 1970s, many countries including Ghana have shifted from a statist path of development to a market oriented one under the direction of the Bretton Wood Institutions.  Its early and rigorous implementation of the structural adjustment polices, and associated reforms earned the country the accolade of a “star pupil” of the IMF. The advent of structural adjustment effectively marked the abandonment of the developmental state across Africa. Before then, state intervention in development was prominent and the characteristics of the state can be described as developmental. While the developmental State as an ideology or scholarly concept is complex, it has some common characteristics like policy autonomy and state driven economic development. Forty years after Ghana’s various experiments with neoliberal economic development, the results have been mixed. In this lecture, I will use the trend in agricultural production, a sector that has dropped in its contribution to GDP and employment creation to demonstrate the trajectory of the extractive nature and forms of Ghana’s development, its fallouts, and the turns it will take in the future.  I will also reflect on the ways in which citizen-state relations are weakening in response to national policy alignment to global market demands and forces. The paradox I wish to draw in this lecture, is the ways in which the state is playing the double role of mediating extractivism in agriculture and enabling it at the same time.

When: Wednesday 22nd November 2023 (3.30pm-5pm GMT)

To attend this event: This event is delivered in a hybrid format (In-person and online). 

• Attendance in-person: Please join us at Hugh Robson Building, Lecture  Theatre G.04
• Attendance online: Please register in advance on Eventbrite, and a link to join the seminar will be sent yo all registered guests on the day of the event.

Speaker Biography:

Dr Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey holds PhD in Development Studies from the University of Ghana.  She is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) at the same university. Her research interests are in critical agrarian studies, political economy of agrarian change, rural livelihoods, and migration. Her research over the years has focused on gender, class, land, and labour relations. In recent times, she has taken specific interest in class struggles in rural areas in Ghana. She is working on the following research projects in collaboration with others: EMPLOYAE, Data Repository and Policy Advocacy Project (DARAP), MECAWATT, 21st Century Feminist Struggles and Movements in Africa, the Transregional Research on the Changing Nature of Precarious Work in Africa, and the Arab region.   

She worked on several research projects including DEMETER (Droits et Égalité pour une Meilleure Économie de la Terre)- Commercialisation, Gendered Agrarian Transformation, and the Right to Food, Land and Agricultural Commercialization in Africa (LACA), Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) and COVID-19 and Africa’s Food Systems, among many others.  

She has published in the Journal of Peasant Studies, Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Feminist Africa, Journal of Asian and African Studies, UDS International Journal of Development and in the IDS Bulletin.