Poverty Alleviation as a Platform for Elite Configuration? The case of the cotton sector in Benin

project summary

It is commonly assumed that African elites are not oriented towards change and propoor economic growth. Rather, African political relationships and development are often seen to be embedded within political, bureaucratic and economic networks, characterized by patron-client relations and practices of rent-seeking. At the same time, poverty alleviation initiatives increasingly emphasize the importance of productive sector development and pro-poor economical growth through the creation of employment and enhanced livelihood opportunities. In Benin, a liberalization reform of the economically all-important cotton sector has been under way for more than 10 years, through which the profitable and state-owned sector ideally was to be accessed by new actors. Yet, it is still incomplete and milestones of the reform are regularly postponed. The main objective of the study is to understand how elite configuration in Benin is related to the prolonged reform of the cotton sector. Concretely, the project will, by mapping existing and emerging cotton sector elites and examining their relationships to political, bureaucratic and other economic elites, explore the extent to which constantly delayed reform initiatives within the cotton sector have influenced the configuration of cotton elite groups, by either consolidating existing elites, or actually engendering structural changes within the cotton sector, thus giving rise to new elite groups. The different ways in which reforms have been sought implemented, opposed and hindered will be of central interest. In order to explore these issues, the project will focus on: 1) the ways in which the legitimacy and authority of the various elites involved in the cotton sector reform is constituted; 2) how the different local and regional types of elites within the cotton sector are related to each other as well as to national elites, and: 3) the wider structural changes, if any, related to the cotton sector reforms in terms of elite configuration.