Beyond certified organic agriculture for export: a differential instutionalization of organic agriculture in Uganda
Résumé
Since the beginning of the 90s, we can observe in Uganda signs of a progressive development of organic agriculture. Data available indicates that this method of production has been developed mainly to supply organic certified products for the European market. This contribution will show that this idea can be questioned with a more precise look at how organic agriculture has been institutionalized inAfrica. Indeed, our fieldwork revealed the recent development of other initiatives, such as the development of participatory guarantee system (PGS), which is able to supply the local and regional markets. Thus, the hypothesis saying that the institutionalization has been realized only through the development of a certified organic agriculture to supply the international market is partially true. It rather a differential institutionalization process.With the help of an analytical framework not much tested yet on African research field, inspired both by the cognitive public policy approaches (Bruno Jobert, 1994, and Eve Fouilleux, 2000), and those more specific in the study of the public action in Africa (the Cognitive matrix of Fred Eboko, 2015), we intend to study the emergence of organic agriculture, how actors stand up for it in a political arena as a possible alternative methods of production and its institutionalization. This analysis is based on a fieldwork realized in Uganda between May and August 2014 and will be followed by another fieldwork between June and September 2015, as part of a PhD in political science (comparison between Benin and Uganda). The data collected is composed by a grey literature review (international reports, medias, expertise), semi structured interviews and participant observation.