Drivers Of Organic Agriculture’S Institutionalization. A Comparison Between Uganda And Benin.

Summary

Since its first appearance in the late 1980s, organic agriculture on the African continent has become a dynamic sector. How did organic agriculture developed? Literature about organic institutionalization in Africa often emphases the important role played by development aid actors. In this paper, we compare Benin and Uganda and we use a conceptual framework inspired by the French school of public policy theory to explain organic agriculture pathways. We argue that a variety of drivers explain those trajectories. Three main explaining dimensions are studied: configuration of the national agricultural sector, aid development programs, and social movement mobilization. In Benin, the socialist regime that ensured widespread use of pesticides across the agriculture sector, scattered organic initiatives, compounded by the low level of development aid all contributed to a lesser institutionalization of organic agriculture than that seen in Uganda.