Farmer and Herder Conflict Dynamics in Ghana: The Role of Environmental Scarcity

• In Event: Territory, Politics, and Power in Africa

Abstract

In West Africa, sedentary crop farmers (farmers) and pastoral herders (herders) have coexisted for many centuries. However, in the past two decades, conflicts between these two groups keep rising steadily across the subregion, in sharp contrast to the symbiotic relationship that farmers and herders had historically enjoyed. For instance, in March 2020, at a farming community in eastern Ghana, a herder killed a farmer when the latter and his two brothers tried to arrest the fleeing suspect after his cattle destroyed their crops. In October 2017, nine herders and an unspecified number of farmers were killed following altercations in the farm fields. In February 2016, in central Ghana, a herdsman shot a 25- year-old farmer dead following brief interactions on his farm. The next day, farmers launched a reprisal attack that killed over 500 cattle. In a separate incident in the southeastern part of the country, farmers poisoned the only dam, intending to kill animals belonging to herdsmen in February 2016. From 2015 to 2020, more than 300 conflict events, with about 100 people, were allegedly killed in two districts close to the capital.

What factors explain the upsurge and intensity of farmer-herder conflicts? First, I theorize the conflict surge and intensity as emergent from climate change; arguing that climate extreme diminishes resources both groups depend on, making it difficult for them to sustain their operations, a situation that leads to conflict. Second, I evaluate how common-pool resource (CPR) governance in the hotspots affect the conflict processes. The CPR part considers the social embeddedness of shared-use resources (such as land and water points) and the implications of different resource user stratifications to explain the confrontations. Using geospatial and detailed interview data, I focus the analysis on how extreme climate and land rights norms intensify the conflict undercurrents. The preliminary findings show that climate change increased farmer-herder conflict events. However, the conflict intensity is explained by land and landed property right.

Author

• Daniel K Banini, University of Central Florida