Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:18:10.496Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Trade networks in West Africa: a social network approach*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2014

Olivier J. Walther
Olivier J. Walther*
Affiliation:
Division of Global Affairs, Rutgers University, 175 University Avenue, Newark, NJ 07102, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

To date, most of the literature on trade networks in West Africa has considered networks in a metaphorical way. The aim of this paper is to go one step further by showing how social network analysis may be applied to the study of regional trade in West Africa. After a brief review of the literature, this exploratory paper investigates two main issues related to regional trade. We start by discussing how recent developments in regional trade in West Africa have contributed to challenging the social structure of traders. We then discuss the changes that have affected the spatiality of regional trade by looking at the influence of spatial location and geographic scale on traders' abilities to trade. In both cases, we argue that the value of social network analysis in exploring how traders have progressively adapted to social and spatial changes in economic activities has been greatly underestimated. Our discussion is illustrated with the case of two trade networks located between Niger, Benin and Nigeria.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 179 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This research is supported by the National Research Fund of Luxembourg (CROSSTRADE Project C10/LM/783313 and WANETS Project MOBILITY/12/4753257). Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the European Conference on African Studies in Uppsala in June 2011 and at the Border Regions in Transition Conference in Grenoble in September 2011. The author thanks Dimitris Christopoulos, Emmanuel Grégoire, Philipp Heinrigs, Allen Howard, Bill Miles, Jen Nelles, Paul Nugent and Denis Retaillé for their helpful comments.

References

REFERENCES

Adams, A.M., Madhavan, S. & Simon, D.. 2006. ‘Measuring social networks cross-culturally’, Social Networks 28: 363–76.Google Scholar
Adamu, M. 1978. The Hausa Factor in West African History. Zaria and Ibadan: Ahmadu Bello University Press and Oxford University Press Nigeria.Google Scholar
Apicella, C.L., Marlowe, F.W., Fowler, J.H. & Christakis, N.A.. 2012. ‘Social networks and cooperation in hunter-gatherers’, Nature 481: 497–501.Google Scholar
Austen, R. 1987. African Economic History: internal development and external dependency. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Austen, R. 2010. Trans-Saharan Africa in World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ayuku, D., Odero, W., Kaplan, C., de Bruyn, R., & de Vries, M.. 2006. ‘Social network analysis for health and social interventions among Kenyan scavenging street children’, Health Policy and Planning 18, 1: 109–18.Google Scholar
Baier, S. 1980. An Economic History of Central Niger. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Beuving, J.J. 2006. ‘Nigerien second-hand car traders in Cotonou: a sociocultural analysis of economic decision-making’, African Affairs 105, 420: 353–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bollig, M. 1998. ‘Moral economy and self-interest: kinship, friendship and exchange among the Pokot (N.W. Kenya)’, in Schweizer, T. & White, D. R., eds. Kinship, Networks and Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 137–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van den, Boogaerde P. & Tsangarides, C.. 2005. ‘Ten years after the CFA franc devaluation: progress toward regional integration in the WAEMU’. Washington DC, International Monetary Fund Working Paper 05/145.Google Scholar
Borgatti, S.P., Everett, M.G. & Freeman, C.. 2002. UCINET 6 for Windows. Software for Social Network Analysis. User's Guide. Cambridge, MA: Analytic Technologies, Harvard.Google Scholar
Boutilier, J.-L. 1971. ‘La cité marchande de Bouna dans l'ensemble économique ouest-africain pré-colonial’, in Meillassoux, C., ed. The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 240–52.Google Scholar
Braudel, F. 1985. La Dynamique du Capitalisme. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Brooks, G. 1993. Landlords and Strangers: ecology, society, and trade in Western Africa, 1000–1630. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Burt, R.S. 1992. Structural Holes. The social structure of competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Burt, R.S. 2005. Brokerage and Closure. An introduction to social capital. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Carley, K.M. 2012. *ORA-NetScenes 3·0·0·2. Pittsburgh, PA: CASOS Center, Carnegie Mellon University.Google Scholar
Chalfin, B. 2001. ‘Border zone trade and the economic boundaries of the state in north-east Ghana’, Africa 71, 2: 202–24.Google Scholar
Cohen, A. 1969. Customs and Politics in Urban Africa: a study of Hausa migrants in Yoruba towns. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Cohen, A. 1971. ‘Cultural strategies in the organization of trading diasporas’, in Meillassoux, C., ed. The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 266–81.Google Scholar
Dobler, G. 2008. ‘From scotch whisky to Chinese sneakers: international commodity flows and new trade networks in Oshikango, Namibia’, Africa 78, 3: 410–32.Google Scholar
Duteurtre, G., Faye, M.D. & Dièye, P.N.. 2010. L'Agriculture Sénégalaise à l'Epreuve du Marché. Dakar and Paris: ISRA – Karthala.Google Scholar
Ensminger, J. 1996. Making a Market: the institutional transformation of an African society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Egg, J. & Igué, J.O. 1993. ‘L'intégration par les marchés dans le sous-espace est: l'impact du Nigeria sur ses voisins’. Paris: Sahel and West Africa Club–OECD.Google Scholar
Everton, S.F. 2012. ‘Network topography, key players and terrorist networks’, Connections 32, 1: 12–19.Google Scholar
Fafchamps, M. 2004. Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: theory and evidence. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fleming, L., King, C.K. & Juda, A.I.. 2007. ‘Small worlds and regional innovation’, Organization Science 18, 6: 938–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grätz, T. 2004. ‘Gold trading networks and the creation of trust: a case study from Northern Benin’, Africa 74, 2: 146–72.Google Scholar
Grégoire, E. 1992. The Alhazai of Maradi: traditional Hausa merchants in a changing Sahelian city. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Grégoire, E. 2003. ‘Réseaux et espaces économiques transétatiques’. Paris: Sahel and West Africa Club–OECD.Google Scholar
Grégoire, E. & Labazée, P., eds 1993. Grands Commerçants d'Afrique de l'Ouest. Logiques et Pratiques d'un Groupe d'Hommes d'Affaires Contemporains. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Hill, P. 1966. ‘Landlords and brokers: a West African trading system’, Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 6, 23: 349–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, K.R., Walker, R.S., Bozicević, M. et al. 2011. ‘Co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies show unique human social structure’, Science 331: 1286–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howard, A.M. 2005. ‘Nodes, networks, landscapes, and regions: reading the social history of tropical Africa, 1700s–1920’, in Howard, A.M. & Shain, R.M., eds. The Spatial Factor in African History: the relationship of the social, material, and perceptual. Leiden: Brill, 21–141.Google Scholar
Howard, A.M. 2010. ‘Actors, places, regions, and global forces: an essay on the spatial history of Africa since 1700’, in Engel, U. & Nugent, P., eds. Respacing Africa. Leiden: Brill, 11–44.Google Scholar
Howard, A.M. 2011. ‘Sierra Leone-Guinea boundary and border zone trade: historical and comparative perspective’. Paper presented at the 5th ABORNE Conference, Lisbon 24–25 September.Google Scholar
Jalloh, A. 1999. ‘African Entrepreneurship: Muslim Fula merchants in Sierra Leone’, Monographs in International Studies. Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies.Google Scholar
Krackhardt, D. 1987. ‘Cognitive social structures’, Social Networks 9: 109–34.Google Scholar
Lambert, A. & Egg, J. 1994. ‘Commerce, réseaux et marchés: l'approvisionnement en riz dans les pays de l'espace sénégambien’, Cahiers des Sciences Humaines 30, 1–2: 229–54.Google Scholar
Little, P.D. 1992. ‘Traders, brokers and market ‘crisis’ in Southern Somalia’, Africa 62, 1: 94–122.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, P.E. 1980. Caravans of Kola: the Hausa kola trade, 1700–1900. Ibadan: Ahmadu Bello University Press.Google Scholar
Lydon, G. 2008. ‘Contracting caravans: partnership and profit in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century trans-Saharan trade’, Journal of Global History 3: 89–113.Google Scholar
Lydon, G. 2009. On Trans-Saharan Trails. Islamic law, trade networks and cross-cultural exchange in 19th century Western Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Matous, P. 2010. ‘Personal networks and practices of Ethiopian farmers’. Paper presented at the Sunbelt XXX Conference, Riva del Garda, July.Google Scholar
McDade, B. & Spring, A.. 2005. ‘The ‘new generation of African entrepreneurs’: networking to change the climate for business and private sector-led development’, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development 17: 17–42.Google Scholar
Meagher, K. 2005. ‘Social capital or analytical liability? Social networks and African informal economies’, Global Networks 5, 3: 217–38.Google Scholar
Meagher, K. 2010. Identity Economics. Social Networks and the Informal Economy in Nigeria. Woodbridge: James Currey.Google Scholar
Meillassoux, C. ed. 1971. The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, J.C., ed. 1969. Social Networks in Urban Situations: analyses of personal relationships in Central African towns. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Newman, M.E.J. 2010. Networks: an introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nugent, P. 2003. Smugglers, Secessionists and Loyal Citizens of the Ghana-Togo Frontier: the life of the borderlands since 1914. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Nugent, P. 2012. ‘Border towns in comparative perspective’, in Wilson, T.M. & Donnan, H., eds. A Companion to Border Studies. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell: 556–72.Google Scholar
Obstfeld, D. 2005. ‘Social networks, the tertius iungens orientation, and involvement in innovation’, Administrative Science Quarterly 50, 1: 100–30.Google Scholar
OECD. 2009. Regional Atlas of West Africa. Paris: OECD.Google Scholar
Pellow, D. 2002. Landlords and Lodgers: socio-spatial organization in an Accra community. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Quarles van Ufford, P. & Zaal, F.. 2004. ‘The transfer of trust: ethnicities as economic institutions in the livestock trade in West and East Africa’, Africa 74, 2: 121–45.Google Scholar
Retaillé, D. & Walther, O.. 2011. ‘Spaces of uncertainty: a model of mobile space in the Sahel’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 32, 1: 85–101.Google Scholar
Schnegg, M. 2006. ‘Reciprocity and the emergence of power laws in social networks’, International Journal of Modern Physics C 17: 1067–76.Google Scholar
Scott, J. 2006. Social Network Analysis. A Handbook. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Scott, J. 2011. What is Social Network Analysis? New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Simmel, G. 1908. Soziologie. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.Google Scholar
Smith-Doerr, L. & Powell, W.W.. 2005. ‘Networks and economic life’, in Smelser, N.J. & Swedberg, R., eds. The Handbook of Economic Sociology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 379–402.Google Scholar
Soulé, B.G. 2000. ‘Prospects for trade between Nigeria and its neighbours’. Paris: Sahel and West Africa Club–OECD.Google Scholar
Stoller, P. 2002. Money Has No Smell: Ethnography of West African Traders in New York City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Teravaninthorn, S. & Raballand, G.. 2009. ‘Transport prices and costs in Africa: a review of the international corridors’. Washington, DC: The World Bank.Google Scholar
Terpend, N. 2006. ‘An assessment of knowledge about trade and markets related to food security in West Africa’. Rome: United Nations World Food Program.Google Scholar
Uzzi, B. 1996. ‘The source and consequences of embeddedness for the economic performance of organizations: the network effect’, American Sociological Review 61: 674–98.Google Scholar
Walther, O. 2008. Affaires de Patrons. Villes et Commerce Transfrontalier au Sahel. Berne: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Walther, O. 2009. ‘A mobile idea of space: traders, patrons and the cross-border economy in Sahelian Africa’, Journal of Borderlands Studies 24, 1: 34–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walther, O. 2012 a. ‘Traders, agricultural entrepreneurs and the development of cross-border regions in West Africa’, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development 25, 3–4: 123–41.Google Scholar
Walther, O. 2012 b. ‘Sons of the soil and conquerors who came on foot: the historical evolution of a West African border region’, African Studies Quarterly 13(1–2), 75–92.Google Scholar
Warms, R.L. 1994. ‘Commerce and community: paths to success for Malian merchants’, African Studies Review 37, 2: 97–120.Google Scholar
Whitehouse, B. 2012. Migrants and Strangers in an African City: exile, dignity, belonging. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar