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Ghana just like most developing countries is facing the challenge of how to deal with high poverty rates coupled with declining prices of traditional export products. The export of non-traditional export products in the agricultural sector is considered as one of the strategies to address poverty. However, concerns are been raised about the free trade policy, stating that free trade may not necessarily be benefiting all participants equally. In other words, other nations, especially developing nations have become worse off after opening up their markets for free trade. On the other hand many developed nations have benefited considerably from free trade. In an attempt to address these market imbalances resulting from free trade, Fairtrade emerged as an intervention tool. Fairtrade aims to improve international trading conditions in order to benefit smallholder producers in developing nations. The Fairtrade organisation further claims that its principles are in line with poverty alleviation and sustainable livelihood. However, Fairtrade suffers a credibility gap because there is a lack of independent research to support their claims. To date in Ghana, there is little research examining the claims of the Fairtrade organisation. Thus, in order to contribute to the Fairtrade discourse in Ghana, the study investigated the validity of Fairtrades claims that it contributes towards poverty alleviation and sustainable livelihood. In line with this, the study objectives were: (1) to assess whether households participating in Fairtrade programmes have achieved greater positive, long term socio-economic impacts than households not participating (2) to ascertain if Fairtrade programmes are lifting people out of poverty, and (3) to evaluate the direct and indirect impacts of Fairtrade in the study area.

To achieve the study objectives, both primary and secondary data were employed. The primary data was collected from smallholder shea producer cooperatives located in…

Schlagworte

Fairtrade, Shea, Northern Ghana, Voluntary Sustainability Standard, Value Addition, Poverty, Agriculture, Non-Traditional Export