Dr Emmanuel Sulle and his team at AKU’s Arusha Climate and Environmental Research Centre (AKU-ACER) have been awarded an academic grant by the Volkswagen Foundation, to study the impact of medium-scale farmers on rural economies in Namibia, Ghana, and Tanzania. The project will explore the socio-economic implications of this growing agricultural trend, focusing on wealth, kinship, and power dynamics in African communities.
This award, given through the foundation’s funding line “Perspectives on Wealth: Repercussions of Wealth,” will support critical research that seeks to shed light on a rapidly evolving yet often misunderstood phenomenon in rural Africa: the rise of medium-scale commercial farms. The Volkswagen Foundation is the largest German private nonprofit organization involved in the promotion and support of academic research.
Over the past two decades, rural Africa has witnessed the rise of a new class of economic actors: medium-scale farmers. These individuals—typically men—have moved into commercial agriculture, often using capital acquired through other ventures. Their emergence marks a significant shift from traditional smallholder farming, and the effects of this transformation are still being debated among scholars. While some argue that these medium-scale farmers drive economic growth and inclusion, others worry that they may exacerbate inequality, exclusion, and conflict.
Dr Sulle’s team aims to explore these tensions by examining the repercussions of medium-scale farming on wealth accumulation, rural economies, and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Their research will focus on key variables such as the interplay between urban and rural economic life, agri-food value chains, kinship and gender relations, intergenerational inheritance practices, and the role of local politics in mediating access to resources.
“This grant marks an exciting beginning at AKU-ACER. It aligns well with our vision of building strong partnerships with world class universities across the globe,” says Dr Sulle, “We believe that meaningful collaborative academic partnership is critical if we are to address major agricultural and food value chain challenges facing our planet.”
The project’s approach is distinctive in its combination of anthropological and political economy perspectives, which will allow the research team to explore the complexities of medium-scale farming from multiple angles. By focusing on factors like translocality — the movement of people, goods, and capital across rural and urban spaces—the team hopes to uncover the ways in which medium-scale farmers navigate social and economic change.
Dr Sulle’s project is not only a significant achievement for ACER, but also a testament to the power of international collaboration. The project brings together a diverse group of scholars from renowned institutions including: Professor Kojo Amanor from the University of Ghana, Professor Ruth Hall from the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, and Professor Michael Bollig and Professor Clemens Greiner from the Global South Studies Center at the University of Cologne.
The collaboration reflects the global nature of the research, which will address issues that are not only relevant to individual countries but also to broader debates about the future of African agriculture and development. Their work not only promises to illuminate a crucial aspect of African economic life but also has the potential to influence policies that shape the future of agriculture, food security and development in the region.
