The paper highlights the mechanisms through which outgrower contract farming creates dependencies at the local level. Using sugarcane case study in Malawi, we show that dependencies are created through redefinition of use rights to customary land and through the redefinition of cash flows into outgrower communities. Through this two-dimensional process, corporations can secure access to land, exert control over local communities and transform the local social relations of reciprocity serving as the pillars of resistance. Our results indicate that contract farming changes rural agrarian relations, transforms local family institutions by carefully selecting a few household members with influence into the scheme and selectively dispossessing the poor community members.

In Sub-Saharan African countries, governments are increasingly devolving natural resource management from central administration to the local government level as a trend toward subsidiarity. In parallel, efforts to implement formalization processes have resulted in a puzzling institutional arena, wherein mixed actors are struggling to influence the paths of institutional change and the associated distribution of land and land-related resources. Relying on political ecology and new institutionalism in social anthropology, we investigate how the decentralization of formalization of rights in artisanal and small-scale gold mining can lead to paradoxical outcomes, often negatively impacting social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Two comparative case studies are performed in Ghana. Our results show that the negative effects of formalization efforts for resource end users are to be understood in the broad context of actors’ repositioning strategies following the selective implementation of decentralization. The authors conclude that increasing the power of the central government and line ministries to control local resources can influence the disenfranchisement of local people’s participation and control of natural resources, resulting in a relentless environmental crisis.

For several years, women demand more decision-making power from their husbands and the society. Studies indicate that egalitarian decision-making power can be beneficial in many important ways to the household and society, and the pathway to this desire policy objective is through women empowerment. Yet, this is not as obvious as it seems. On the one hand, women empowerment is a game changer. On the other hand, the problem of women empowerment is complex. Thus, our goal is to evaluate the gendered intersectional power dynamics operating in informal artisanal and small-scale mining and the impact on women’s empowerment to balance decision-making power in the household. Theoretically, we ask: How does women empowerment enable women to demand more decision-making power from their husbands following their participation in informal mining? And how do men react to women empowerment? Empirically, 38 biographic interviews, 6 key informant interviews and 8 focus group discussions were conducted. Results show that informal mining improves the financial power of women and increases their bargaining power to demand more decision-making power from their husbands. Moreover, increase in women’s financial leverage can have a nuanced effect on their empowerment since men can intervene there by playing on the patriarchal rules. In conclusion, women empowerment is complex, and the major challenge is societal. Consequently, policy actions are required to vigorously address societal norms through formal education and awareness creation to bring about transformations.

Decentralization policy forms part of a broader global ideology and effort of the international donor community in favor of subsidiarity and local participation, and represents a paradigm shift from top-down command-and-control systems. Since 2003, the formalization of property rights through titling became an integral component of decentralized land administration efforts in Ghana. The creation of new forms of local government structures and the related changes in the distribution of responsibilities between different levels of government have an impact on natural resource management, the allocation of rights, and the unequal distribution of powers. This paper aims to understand how decentralization reforms modify the balance of power between public administration, customary authorities, and resource end-users in Ghana. Decentralization’s impact is analyzed based on two case studies. Relying on purposive and snowball sampling techniques, and mixed methods, we conducted 8 key informant interviews with local government bureaucrats in land administration, 16 semi-structured interviews with allodial landholders, 20 biographic interviews and 8 focus group discussions with small-scale farmers. The interviews analyzed the institutions and the roles of actors in land administration. Our case studies show that decentralization has the tendency to increase local competition in land administration where there are no clear distribution of power and obligation to local actors. Local competition and elitism in land administration impact the ability of small-scale farmers to regularize or formalize land rights. Thus, the paper concludes that local competition and the elitism within the land administration domain in Ghana could be the main obstacles towards decentralization reforms.

Smallholder collectives and outgrower schemes are widely promoted as routes to market integration in rural Africa, yet their benefits are often unevenly distributed through elite capture. Existing studies focus on the appropriation of material resources and decision-making authority; less is known about how inequality is produced through the control of knowledge inside collective institutions. This paper introduces the concept of knowledge capture: the processes through which the capacity to access, interpret and use commercially consequential knowledge becomes concentrated, filtered or withheld within formally inclusive organisations. Drawing on 46 semi-structured interviews, four focus group discussions, documents and observation from fieldwork conducted in 2024-2025 in two sugarcane collectives in Malawi, the Phata Sugarcane Outgrowers Cooperative and the Dwangwa Cane Growers Trust scheme, the paper traces three mechanisms: gatekeeping at the interface between the collective and external actors, selective internal transmission, and unequal conversion of knowledge into action. In Phata, knowledge capture operates through management-partner gatekeeping that deepens members' dependence and weakens scrutiny. In Dwangwa, knowledge circulates through a broader architecture of trusteeship, management and representation, but remains stratified towards educated male representatives; where independent training widened growers' interpretive capacity, it fuelled demands for transparency and the formation of breakaway schemes. Formal membership therefore does not guarantee equal practical agency. The paper argues that knowledge is a distinct, though related, domain of elite capture, and that the circulation of knowledge is part of the institutional infrastructure of rural collectives.

Smallholder collectives and outgrower schemes are widely promoted as routes to market integration in rural Africa, yet their benefits are often unevenly distributed through elite capture. Existing studies focus on the appropriation of material resources and decision-making authority; less is known about how inequality is produced through the control of knowledge inside collective institutions. This paper introduces the concept of knowledge capture: the processes through which the capacity to access, interpret and use commercially consequential knowledge becomes concentrated, filtered or withheld within formally inclusive organisations. Drawing on 46 semi-structured interviews, four focus group discussions, documents and observation from fieldwork conducted in 2024-2025 in two sugarcane collectives in Malawi, the Phata Sugarcane Outgrowers Cooperative and the Dwangwa Cane Growers Trust scheme, the paper traces three mechanisms: gatekeeping at the interface between the collective and external actors, selective internal transmission, and unequal conversion of knowledge into action. In Phata, knowledge capture operates through management-partner gatekeeping that deepens members' dependence and weakens scrutiny. In Dwangwa, knowledge circulates through a broader architecture of trusteeship, management and representation, but remains stratified towards educated male representatives; where independent training widened growers' interpretive capacity, it fuelled demands for transparency and the formation of breakaway schemes. Formal membership therefore does not guarantee equal practical agency. The paper argues that knowledge is a distinct, though related, domain of elite capture, and that the circulation of knowledge is part of the institutional infrastructure of rural collectives.