PART II CASE-STUDY: GUINEA-BISSAU
6. Migration and development in Guinea-Bissau: a macro-level overview
6.2.1 Economic structure and insertion in the world economy
The structure of the Bissau-Guinean economy is heavily dominated by the primary sector and, within the latter, by small and largely independent production in agriculture.
According to the national accounts, primary sector value-added amounted to 40%-50% of GDP in 2003-2008, with agriculture by itself accounting for around one third (Figure 7.2;
MEDR 2009)52. Agriculture constitutes the primary occupation for around 80% of the
52 In a context like Guinea-Bissau, national account statistics are of course particularly fallible, and in this case probably understate the significance of the primary sector and of agriculture for the following reasons: i) a large share of market transactions are not subject to any sort of official record and therefore fail to be captured by official statistics; and ii) to a much greater extent than in more
142 population (PNUD 2006:4; MEPIR 2010:9), in addition to accounting for more than 85% of total exports (in 2009: BCEAO 2009). Despite accelerated urbanisation in the late colonial and post-independence eras, Guinea-Bissau remains a country where about 70% of the population live in areas considered rural53 and where more than four fifths of the population engage directly in primary-sector activity (MEPIR 2010:9). By contrast, the modern private sector is small and at a very incipient stage of development: a 2006 World Bank study (cit. in MEPIR 2010b:4) indicated the total number of formally-constituted private firms in Guinea-Bissau to be a paltry 296, 159 of which were small and medium entreprises54.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Tertiary sector Secondary sector Primary sector
Figure 6.2 Guinea-Bissau: Sectoral structure of GDP, 2003-200855
Agricultural production is dominated by a small number of key crops (Figure 6.3).
Rice, which constitutes the basic staple of most of the population56, takes centre stage as far as food crops are concerned. In a number of paddy and upland varieties, it is grown and consumed throughout Guinea-Bissau, including in the islands. Depending on the region,
fully commodified contexts, a significant share of total social labour goes into the production of use values that never acquire an exchange value, insofar as they are consumed by the immediate producers themselves or otherwise distributed according to non-mercantile logics. Arguably, these two filters in between the reality of production and its statistical depiction affect agricultural output, and rural economic activity more generally, disproportionately, with the likely statistical under- representation of this sector as a result.
53 Source: WBDI (http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators).
54 Due to widespread informality (in the sense of lack of formal registration), this of course constitutes an underrepresentation of the actual size of the business fabric. However, this shows very clearly the diminutive size of the formal, modern sector of the Bissau-Guinean economy.
55 Source: author’s calculations based on data from MEDR (2009).
56 An estimated 130 Kg of rice are consumed on average per person per year and these, on average, account for 65% of the total calorie intake (MEPIR 2010:9).
143 however, it is complemented to a varying extent by the production of other food crops:
other cereals such as millet, maize and sorghum; cassava and other tubers; and garden vegetables (MEPIR 2010; PNUD 2006). Guinea-Bissau was once a net exporter of rice, but population growth, the destruction and deterioration of rice paddies and the increasing commodification of subsistence reversed that situation57. In recent years, rice production has once again picked up, stimulated by the declining terms of trade of cashew nuts for rice and by localised efforts by the government and development agencies to stimulate domestic production. Between 2006 and 2008, for example, officially recorded rice production experienced a massive increase, from 106,000 to around 150,000 tonnes58. However, this has not yet proven enough to ensure self-sufficiency at the national level: in the 2009/2010 season, the country is estimated to have imported around 20% (or 40,000 tonnes) of its total rice consumption (about 200,000 tonnes) (MEPIR 2010:9).
Agricultural production (Metric Tonnes)
0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000 140000 160000
Rice, paddy Roots and Tubers Cashew nuts, with shell Cassava Coconuts Plantains Vegetables, fresh Millet Groundnuts, with shell Sorghum Maize
Figure 6.3 Guinea-Bissau: Agricultural production, main crops, 2008 (metric tones)59
57 As cashew nut production swept the country from the 1980s onwards, many farmers withdrew from direct cultivation of rice, and instead started to rely more heavily on the barter of cashew nuts for rice, or the market sale of the former followed by the purchase of the latter. The flipside of the coin of this increase in the degree of market mediation of food provision was an absolute decrease in local rice production that only recently, and partly as a consequence of the drop in the terms of trade of cashew nuts for rice, began to be reversed (PNUD 2006; Interviews no.13 and 19).
58 Source: FAOSTAT (http://faostat.fao.org/site/339/default.aspx)
59 Source: FAOSTAT (http://faostat.fao.org/site/339/default.aspx)
144 0
20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
1990 1992
1994 1996
1998 2000
2002 2004
2006
Rice (paddy)
Cashew nuts, with shell
Figure 6.4 Guinea-Bissau: Paddy rice and cashew nut production, 1990-2006 (x1,000 metric tones)60
Among the cash crops, the key role is played by cashew nuts – basically the country’s export monocrop and an extraordinary case-study in its own right (Lynn and Jaeger 2004; Barry et al 2007). Cashew trees are well adapted to the natural conditions in Guinea-Bissau and were already common in the colonial era (Mendes 1969), but it was not until the late 1980s that they began systematically to take over an increasing share of the country’s land area, and that their planting and harvesting took on a central role among the livelihood strategies of rural Bissau-Guineans (Barry et al 2007). From then onwards, the output of this crop has consistently kept on the increase, driven both by the expansion of the area taken up by cashew groves and by the growth and maturation of the trees over time. This astonishing expansion – to the point of the country as a whole having been described as “effectively a cashew farm” (Lynn and Jaeger 2004:1) – was triggered by explicit government and donor support to the exploitation of what was perceived to be the country’s ‘comparative advantage’ given the high international price of cashew nuts in the 1980s. It also benefited from the relative abundance of land amenable to clearing and planting of cashew groves, from the limited labour intensity of cashew nut production and from the fact that the seasonality of cashew harvesting is quite compatible with that of paddy rice cultivation61.
60 Source: Ministry of Agriculture, Government of Guinea-Bissau.
61 The cashew harvesting season takes place roughly between March and May, whereas the annual cycle of work in the rice paddies begins during the rain season (June-October) and ends around January, by which time all the rice will typically have grown and been harvested. The conservation
145 The total area currently taken up by cashew groves adds up to around 200,000 hectares (Said and Abreu 2011) – about four fifths of the total area taken up by permanent crops, and more than one third of the country’s sum of arable area and permanent crops62. Even more tellingly, cashew nuts accounted in 2009 for about 80% of the country’s total export earnings (BCEAO 2009), and the tax on cashew exports constitutes an important source of public finance. Additionally, there is a remarkably low degree of concentration of tenure as far as cashew plantations are concerned – with an average size of a mere 1.6 hectares enabling a significant share of rural Bissau-Guinean households to earn a part of their monetary income directly from the sale of this product (Said and Abreu 2011:14).
Not everything has been good news as far as cashew nuts are concerned, however.
First, as already mentioned, the high price of cashew nuts at the outset of the ‘cashew cycle’ encouraged monospecialisation and the shift from food-cropping to cash-cropping, leading to a decline in domestic food crop production – especially rice. Additionally, the greater seasonal ‘redundancy’ of rural labour that arose as a consequence of the dissemination and characteristics of this crop definitely contributed to increasing rural- urban migration. In its turn, this fed back upon rice production, particularly as the ‘rural exodus’ of many young and able members of many communities made it more difficult to undertake large-scale community works like the construction and maintenance of the main dykes that protect the paddies from the sea water.
These changes in strategies hinged to a significant extent on the income derived from cashew, however, and the latter has experienced a downward trend in the international market ever since the beginning of the ‘cashew cycle’ in Guinea-Bissau (Barry et al 2007:81). Although this has so far been largely offset by the increase in the volume of cashew nut production, this price decline, alongside an arguably overvalued currency63, has been eroding the terms of trade faced by individual households, as well as, at the macro level, the country’s ability to pay for imports (including rice) through the export of cashew nuts. Indeed, Guinea-Bissau’s overall terms of trade have deteriorated substantially over the last three decades, to a large extent reflecting the declining international price of cashew nuts (Figure 7.5). As a consequence of all of this, it has by now become clear that
and reparation of the rice-paddy dykes takes place thoughout the year, but is largely compatible with cashew harvesting.
62 http://faostat.fao.org/site/405/default.aspx
63 Since 1997, Guinea-Bissau has adopted the CFA franc, which is issued by the Banque Centrale des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, backed by the French Treasury and circulates in eight West African countries. The CFA franc has been pegged to the Euro at the fixed rate of 1 Eur = 655.957 CFA since 1994, which, for example, has implied an appreciation by 20% vis-à-vis the US dollar since 1999.
146 excessive dependence upon cashew (and upon market mediation for the purpose of food provision) is a dangerous strategy, especially for poorer Bissau-Guinean households, and it is partly as a result of the acknowledgement of this that rice cultivation has recently become the focus of renewed attention.
Terms of trade index (2000=100)
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Figure 6.5 Guinea-Bissau: Terms of trade, 1989-2007 (index: 2000=100)64
Another fundamental problem with Guinea-Bissau’s participation in the cashew value chain resides in the failure so far to move up the chain by engaging in the processing of cashew nuts to a more significant extent. As of 2009, around thirty small cashew- processing units were either operating in Guinea-Bissau or in the process of being set up, but in spite of that only 2.5% of that year’s harvest was actually processed in Guinea-Bissau (George et al 2010). Additionally, the expansion of cashew groves in the last three decades was not, generally speaking, accompanied by any sort of agronomic rationalisation or scientific improvement: as a consequence, in many areas cashew trees were planted too close together, resulting in lower yields over time and greater vulnerability to plagues and diseases (Barry et al 2007:81).
Cashew nuts are, by far, the country’s leading cash crop. Depending on the region, however, other crops are produced for the supra-local market – destined both for Bissau and the rest of the territory. These include sweet potatoes in the area around Bambadinca;
groundnuts in the Eastern hinterland; sugar cane in a number of commercial farms/distilleries around the country; and palm kernels, palm oil, coconuts, bananas and other fruits in most coastal and island areas (see Figure 7.3). However, the key differences
64 Source: WBDI (http://databank.worldbank.org)
147 consist in the fact that the production of these latter crops is more localised than that of cashew nuts, and that they are not exported to any significant degree (MEDR 2009).
In terms of the organisation of production, the agricultural sector has been usefully described by Dias (1996:333) as comprising “four main types of agrarian systems:
commercial farmers (ponteiros); producer cooperatives and associations; traditional farmers; and traditional agropastoralists”65. Commercial farmers consist of those who hold land concessions granted by the government, produce primarily for the market and rely primarily on wage labour – that is to say, theoretically the foremost candidates to constituting Guinea-Bissau’s version of modern, capitalist farming. Pereira et al (1992:15) and Barry et al (2007:79) both indicate the existence of some 2,200 such concessions, covering approximately 27% of the country’s arable land. However, these are misleading figures, for this is partly a fictional class. Pereira et al’s survey of the ponteiros in 1992 showed that about half of the parcels under concessions actually laid fallow (corresponding to 96% of the total area under concession), for many of these supposed commercial farmers did not farm at all. Rather, many seemingly constituted themselves as such in order to acquire land through clientelistic means for future real estate investments, and so as to access agricultural grants and credits from donors with the connivance of the government (Galli 1990:62-64). There is a need for more recent quantitative evidence on the current situation in this respect, but the general view is – and several of my informants66 concur – that this has not changed significantly in the meantime: the actual size and importance of commercial agriculture is in reality much less than suggested by the total area formally assigned to supposed commercial farmers.
Producer cooperatives are an important but still limited arrangement in Guinea- Bissau. In many cases, they have been created within the context of rural development projects undertaken by local NGOs, often with external funding and/or support. For the most part, their activities consist of agricultural extension services, provision of inputs, and assistance with, or the coordination of, the commercialisation of specific farm products.
Systematic studies are lacking on the total number of cooperatives, the total number of producer members and the scale of farming operations undertaken within these
65 This classification is based on a twin criterion: the first two “systems” are distinguished by their property and social-productive relations as well as their relatively higher degree of formality, whereas the latter two are variants of small independent production at the local level, set apart by agroecological and technical criteria (large-scale animal husbandry being integrated with agriculture in the “agropastoralist” case).
66 Interviews no.13 and 16.
148 arrangements. However, an assessment conducted in 2010 for the World Food Programme identified an average of 8-12 such cooperative arrangements in each of Guinea-Bissau’s seven rural and mostly continental regions (i.e. excluding Bolama-Bijagós and Bissau)67. Most are limited in their operations, encompassing only one or a few villages in each case, but seven larger-scale cooperatives, or local NGOs with cooperative farming arrangements in place, were identified in the context of this study whose members numbered in the hundreds or thousands68. Producer cooperatives constitute an important and promising avenue for the intensification of production and the attainment of economies of scale in Guinea-Bissau, not least given the lack of government extension services and the general failure of capitalist agriculture to take hold. However, they still encompass only a minority of rural producers and, crucially, their effect largely consists in the alleviation of specific constraints, or the introduction of specific improvements, in the context of specific farming activities undertaken by what remain largely independent smallholder farmers.
The remaining two types of agrarian systems according to Dias’ (1996) classification are those that account for the bulk of Bissau-Guinean agriculture: “traditional farmers” and
“traditional agropastoralists”. These can in fact be subsumed under a larger, common category: relatively independent smallholders cultivating parcels allocated through customary tenurial rights and practices. Dias’ classification seeks to stress the productivity advantage enjoyed by the agropastoralists in the eastern part of the country, not least by virtue of their recourse to animal traction in agriculture. However, a much more detailed and probably unsurpassed (if by now perhaps somewhat outdated) taxonomy of Bissau- Guinean agronomic patterns in that respect is that put forth by Hochet (1983), who identified as many as 19 distinct types of “agricultural family units” in the country – based on differences in terms of technical relations of production and social-productive arrangements. This variability of social-productive arrangements within small independent production has crucial implications for productivity, inequality and the pace of social differentiation, as shall be seen in the village-level case-study chapters (Chapters 7 and 8, below). For our current purposes, however, it is more important to stress their common features: small, relatively independent production, based on customary tenure and right of use, relying on labour-intensive techniques, with most labour allocation taking place outside the labour market.
67 Personal communication with Mr. Israel Krug, consultant to the WFP, on 4 April 2010.
68 See previous footnote.
149 Taken together, small farmers were recently estimated to comprise around 90,000 households, with an average farm size per household of less than 3 hectares (Barry et al 2007:79). This reflects the very scattered character of land tenure in Guinea-Bissau, which is itself a consequence of the relative abundance of the land and of the lack of any process of expropriation ‘from above’. Relative land abundance is illustrated by the fact that of the 2.8 million hectares that make up the country’s land area, only 250,000 are taken up by permanent crops, and another 300,000 by temporary crops, meadows and pastures, kitchen gardens or temporarily fallow. A full 2 million hectares (or 70% of the total land area) are classified by FAO as forest area, and in many cases are to be found at a relatively short distance from villages, susceptible to clearing and subsequent conversion to permanent or temporary crops69. That does not mean that all forest land is without a customary owner, whether at the individual or community level, and that it is up for grabs.
Rather, the allocation of land is usually administered at the community level, through inheritance and other modes of allocation or transmission. However, the way in which this has taken place in the past has effectively ensured a wide dispersion of tenure and access – though not necessarily for some subordinate groups in society (female and migrant households being a case in point), whose access to the land (especially good-quality irrigated land) is usually more difficult and precarious (World Bank 2006:18-19).
Besides agriculture, Guinea-Bissau’s primary sector comprises several important sub-sectors, but these have a significantly less central role in the structures of both output and exports. Forestry is undertaken in a predominantly artisan way, involving the gathering and transformation of a variety of palm products (palm kernels, palm oil, palm wine, soap, etc.), as well as of multiple other forest products used for traditional pharmaceutical and ceremonial purposes. Commercial logging takes place, but has residual importance: timber accounted for less than 2% of the total value of exports in 2006-2009 (BCEAO 2009) and the share of GDP accounted for by forestry in 2003-2008 never exceeded 2% either (MEDR 2009). Fisheries have great potential and major macroeconomic significance, but their impact is made manifest mainly upon the government budget, through the concession of fishing licenses to foreign fishing fleets (George et al 2010b), rather than through domestic production and exports: fisheries did not account for more than an estimated 5% of GDP in 2008, the vast majority of which corresponded to artisan (as opposed to industrial) fishing (MEDR 2009). At the artisan level, fishing is typically a complementary activity, rather than
69 http://faostat.fao.org/site/405/default.aspx