ABSTRACT
In a number of French-speaking African countries, cotton plays
a key role in the economy and development efforts by standing for the major
source of export earnings. At the local level, the crop provides the rural
population with a cash insurance against food crop failure. Its importance made
it had been entirely under control of public sector for several years.
At the beginning of 1 990's, in the context of liberalisation
and privatisation policy, the sector has been open to private actors. Those
reforms were to reinforce the sector and to reduce the public interventions
costs. However, the new system set up functioning illustrates some problems to
which all the cotton system might face.
The objective is to understand the actors' linkage in the post
liberalisation system of cotton production and they impact on the innovation
process by:
- identify, and categorise different actors;
- analyse actors' perception of the new system set up;
- analyse the impact of the new system on innovation process
generation and farming practices.
The methods used were open and semi-structured interviews with
groups and individuals, as well as participatory diagramming (dialogic tool)
with different actors.
The cotton industry has been seen as the well-organized crop
network involving many stakeholders. The government's involvement, in its
conventional role of organizing cotton production, is rapidly decreasing. This
role, except for research, for which the government is still responsible, has
been taken over by various new farmers' consultative bodies (CAGIA, CSPR, AIC,
FUPRO). Although the proponents of the new cotton industry systems in Benin
claim that it works and could be better in a more liberalisation context, the
cotton sector face important organisational difficulties as well as technical
that hampered the normal functioning of the mechanism set up. The new system
structure is more complex as well as heavy and it is too early to know whether
the new system will lead to savings
At farmer's level non-conformist - of new system set up-
groups namely FENAPRA and AGROP were created. The main reason of this
dislocation is the delay in the payment of cotton income to peasant in GV
group. Those non-conformist groups broke up mechanism fixed by new reforms and
operate outside conventional system.
Ginners whose interest was not taken in account through the
new system left their professional group (APEB) and created another dissident
class. They collaborated with nonconformist groups, outside the formal
system.
Input distributors who didn't meet conditions established by
CAGIA-cooperative found out that they were out of the mechanism fixed by new
reforms. Then, they formed another group (ADIAB) and they made a parallel
supply of input to peasant in non-conformist group. These actors furnished
input, which were not always controlled by researchers. This situation
compromise the cotton yields.
The reforms taken to improve the cotton sector encouraged this
emergence of a partnership among dissident peasants representatives, ginners
and input distributors. Peasants are the loser in this partnership. They have
been manipulated in profit of their representatives, of ginners and input
distributors. The cotton network is a sector where actors' stakes are
competing.
This conflicting environment affected the production system
because not all producers have acces s to performing inputs. We may not have
this situation if the government was more implied in the management of cotton
sector by making respected the principle fixed by the reforms.
| 
