The Government of The Gambia is committed to reducing poverty and improving the well-being of its population. This commitment is driven by the Government’s long-term strategy, Vision 2020, which is being executed through a series of medium-term development plans since 1994. The Programme for Accelerated Growth and Employment (PAGE) is The Gambia’s development strategy and investment programme for 2012 to 2015. PAGE 2012-2015 is based on Vision 2020 and various sector strategies, and is consistent with the Paris Declaration’s resolutions on aid effectiveness and the ownership of development. PAGE is the main interface between the Government and The Gambia’s development partners and is fully aligned with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and is a medium term strategic plan leading to a developed and prosperous Gambia. The focus of PAGE is to accelerate pro-poor growth and generate employment. The implementation of PAGE 2012-15 will be done through the Priority Action Plan (PAP) that will require private sector participation and heavy financial support from development partners. This support will help consolidate the gains of recent years, boost employment, and sustain development in The Gambia. The preparation of PAGE was highly participatory at all levels of society ensuring national ownership. It was coordinated by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs.

Ghana has managed to become one of the fastest growing economies in the world with a vibrant agricultural market. The country could be a prime example of successful, pro-poor development following economic liberalisation. Though first change is visible even in traditionally impoverished areas of the north, namely the Upper East Region, hunger and chronic poverty are still prevalent. Yet, after decades of restricted public expenditure, ‘pro-poor’ agricultural policies could now be put in place, to actively improve smallholder lives in the area by various forms of government support. Similarly, foreign development agencies have recently become more engaged in supporting the local agricultural sector. All actors of current relevance have thereby pursued a value chain approach to developing the markets and livelihoods of northern Ghanaian agriculturalists. The contribution to pro-poor, ‘sustainable’ development, however, remains unclear as at now. This study is therefore concerned with how market dynamics and interventions have influenced ‘sustainable development’ of the vulnerable and poor in an emerging economy like Ghana. To do so, the study takes a look at smallholder livelihood systems in the Upper East Region of the country. Here, local peasant society is confronted with environmental changes, economic globalisation processes and interventions in agricultural value chains by the local Ministry of Food and Agriculture and foreign donors like USAID. To grasp the impact of market dynamics and interventions within this multidimensional context, this study argues for a combination of a holistic livelihood and a more specific value chain and production network approach as a useful conceptual background. Given this theoretic backdrop, data was collected for over 10 months in two villages of the Upper East, namely in Biu and Mirigu, with a focus on tomato, chili and rice, products of major significance to locals. The main methods applied in the field included qualitative as much as quantitative approaches. Farmer focus group discussions (n=37), in-depth farmer interviews and farm budgets (n=47) were the primary source of data gathered. Expert/key-informant interviews (n=70) and expert group discussions (n=2) were held. A household head survey (n=177) and an expert survey (n=25) were used to check hypotheses previously generated by qualitative methods. Primary and secondary data for tomato, chili, rice and partly also shea value chains was collected. Secondary data, such as confidential government and NGO documents, allow an insider view into farmers’ access to subsidies and support. An archive survey of church diaries dating back to 1905, enable a view on local developments in a long-term, historic perspective. This study thereby yields a number of insights with concern for conceptual approaches to the issue of understanding the pro-poor impact of markets, their dynamics and interventions within these. Livelihood analysis proved to be an indispensable approach to understanding important aspects of people-centred, human development potentials and constraints in a local environmental and institutional context. Value chain and production network analysis provided further fruitful insights on market dynamics, their structural outlines, their basic rationales and market terms for the successful participation of locals. It can therefore be concluded that both of these basic notions, either people- or market-centred approaches, should be conceptually merged to advance future research on the pro-poor effect of markets and interventions within them, to specifically address questions of what is here understood as ‘livelihood upgrading’. This study further contributes to an understanding of central aspects of local development and possible future avenues to achieving greater livelihood sustainability through government or donor development interventions. Most significantly, it became clear that ‘positive’, pro-poor market dynamics are also encountered at a local level, but cannot be made use of by spatially and socially marginalised, vulnerable and poor smallholders. That is mainly due to elite capture and corrupt practices, ultimately a question of mal-governance, a lack of grass-roots participation and a disregard for societal dimensions within which interventions are interwoven. Furthermore, neither environmental degradation nor present or future environmental changes, especially climatic ones and those with regard to soils, are accounted for. Interventions thereby remain far below their possible impact and even contribute to a loss of the natural resource base, aside the fact that they further increase an already high level socio-economic inequality. In the face of recent economic awakening, despite globalisation tendencies, future efforts in enabling sustainable development at local level must thus increasingly embrace environmental and, mostly, societal concerns in their concepts and daily practice.