Abstract
This Chapter highlights methodological problems in food system research in West Africa. It historicizes the phenomenon of food insecurity from within the context of southern countries structural dependency. It is underscored that the region’s agro-ecological zones exhibit great varieties in their farm system characteristics and levels of integration into the market. This plethoric vista is compounded even further by the diversity of national policy contexts which themselves are markedly shifting with profound inconsistencies over time. Onerous challenges therefore go with any effort aimed at the fashioning of efficacious, cross-cutting research instruments and methods for the evaluation of agricultural policy outcomes across the region. This situation dictated the imperative for the interpretative mode of inquiry adopted in the book.
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Notes
- 1.
A paradigm may be viewed as a set of basic beliefs (or metaphysics) that deal with ultimates or first principles. It represents a world view that defines, for the holder, the nature of the ‘world.’’ the individual’s place in it, and the range of possible relationships to that world and its parts, as, for example cosmologies and theologies do (Guba and Lincoln, 1994: 107).
- 2.
Varied measures were taken to resolve/mitigate the impact of these generic interview problems including the use of local expertise to bridge possible meta-communicative gaps that may result from cultural/linguistic differences between the respondents and their locales and myself; a back check arrangement whereby responses are reviewed at a return visit to the site and/or compared with data from contiguous settings.
- 3.
Although I understand and speak the Hausa language with considerable proficiency, I am not as adroit in its writing. I could take my received answers faster in English and, also have no need for subsequent transcription.
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Ichimi, G.S. (2024). Methodological Problems in Food System Research in the West African Region. In: The World Trade Organization and Food Security in West Africa. Contemporary African Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53881-0_3
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