New cash cropping in the Black Volta river valley: Banana production, rural innovation, and social entrepreneurship in the Ghana–Burkina Faso border region

Abstract During the mid‐1990s, a banana river irrigation farm that was launched in Southwestern Burkina Faso by a returning emigrant refugee spread throughout the region as far as neighboring Ghana. With relative abundant fertile, arable farmland in Ghana, easy access to input and modest capital mobilization by a few Ghanaian University lecturers to clear farmland and construct ridges and lay pipes for irrigation, a new cash crop production was set in motion. This paper analyzes the implication of this innovative rural agricultural intensification in the Ghana side of the border by shifting the angle of analysis away from narratives of transnational African agricultural commercialization driven by foreign corporations to instead focus on the role played by the local elite. The paper demonstrates that the viability of this irrigated farming can be attributed to imported banana crop variety, local rural producers' entrepreneurial zest, and enhanced existing cross‐border ties and commercial opportunities made possible by the construction of a strategic regional highway linking the farm sites with large urban and market centers in Burkina Faso.