The World Trade Organization has promoted Western-style intellectual property (IP) norms around the globe via the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs Agreement, 1995). These IP-related endeavors can be seen as part of a global move in the direction of less state and more private entrepreneurship, often called “neoliberalism”. Whereas some “orthodox” development scholars have welcomed the turn towards market institutions in development policy, other “critical” development scholars have argued that Western IP norms are ill-suited to the needs of developing countries, especially in the agricultural sector.
Both orthodox and critical scholars have two blind spots in their research. On the one hand, they have focused on emerging economies and extrapolated their findings about “neoliberal” policy prescriptions to the rest of the developing world. The poorest African countries have been manifestly ignored in many studies about seed sector development. These countries are often classified as least-developed countries or low-income countries. On the other hand, there is a problematic lack of – even qualitative – data on how the law works on a day-to-day basis. Few scholars have asked farmers and seed companies about their exposure to the law.
The thesis aims to contribute to filling these geographical and empirical gaps. It specifically looks at the implementation of “seed business law” in Africa. It coins this term and defines it as including patent law on agrobiotechnology, plant variety protection law and seed law. These are the legal frameworks that have been transplanted to the Global South over the past decades – in the so-called “neoliberal era” – to support seed companies on their mission towards agricultural intensification.
In addition to a broad desktop study including statistics and legal sources, the thesis makes use of interview-based comparative case studies of seed business law conducted regarding rice in Senegal and cotton in Burkina Faso. Senegal and Burkina Faso have the same legal framework for seed business law (OAPI intellectual property laws and UEMOA and ECOWAS seed laws), but different political economies, especially for crops as different as rice and cotton. Accordingly, comparing the two value chains allows for isolating the effects of political economy on the use of seed business law. The thesis links the fieldwork findings to the development studies literature.
The argument, which emerged bottom-up from the fieldwork, is that seed business law is not supporting multinational seed companies to the extent usually assumed, but is rather locally adapted to the interests of domestic elites (politicians, bureaucrats, traditional leaders, landlords, businessmen, army generals, traders etc.). These interests, part of the local political economy, sometimes revolve around clientelist redistribution via patronage networks, which results in separate circuits of capital accumulation. Local elites have a stake in local seed distribution and try to capture profits from that seed value chain. Multinational seed companies know this and approach local elites to be included in the local seed economy. Multinational seed companies realize that this is a far more effective way of protecting technologies and capturing markets than using seed business law. Accordingly, seed business law is to a large extent disused (not implemented) and to some extent dysfunctional (working towards goals other than the ones for which it was designed), when it is used by local elites to further their own local rural agenda. The research shows that seed business law is not implemented – or at least not as intended – because local rulers are not on board. They often have their own interests in seed production that can be disrupted by seed business law, which is therefore viewed with suspicion. Multinational seed companies turn out to be less powerful than expected.
To understand how international economic law works in poor African countries, one must take a genuine interest in how the domestic politics of those countries work. The thesis argues that legal scholars should scrutinize domestic elites when researching the effects of international legal norms on development in Africa.
Publication
Van Dycke, Lodewijk, Accumulation by dispossession and African seeds: colonial institutions trump seed business law, The Journal of Peasant Studies 50, 3 (2023), 954–985, External Link (DOI)
