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Challenges to sustaining beekeeping livelihoods in Ghana

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Abstract

Although making a living within the beekeeping value chain can be wobbly due to some challenges, this aspect has often been ignored in academic circles. Discussions of challenges to livelihoods that draw on beekeeping have focused largely on beehive management but paid little attention to related issues that engage broader contexts of the beekeeping value chain. This paper, therefore, examines challenges to beekeeping livelihoods among actors within Ghana’s beekeeping value chain. The study is a cross-sectional study employing a mixed-method and a triangulation of individual interviews and focus group discussions. To examine the different challenges to the beekeeping value chain, we purposively sampled 106 beekeepers, six hive product retailers and two key informants from Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture. The findings revealed that bee abscondment, pest and predators, lack of finance, and bush (wild) fires were some of the challenges to the sustainability of livelihoods of beekeepers. However, participants ranked lack of finance to expand operations as the major challenge to beekeeping livelihoods. Institutional support from Non-Governmental Organisations and financial institutions in the form of credit and education is a critical requirement for making livelihoods hinged on beekeeping secure and sustainable.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Beekeepers’ Associations of Berekum and Nkwanta for willingly providing us with the necessary information that made this study possible. We also appreciate the support given us by the officers of MoFA in the Berekum and Nkwanta South Municipalities.

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The researchers did not receive funding from any source.

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  1. Department of Geography and Rural Development, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

    Emmanuel Bintaayi Jeil, Kabila Abass & Alexander Yao Segbefia

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  1. Emmanuel Bintaayi Jeil
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Correspondence to Emmanuel Bintaayi Jeil.

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We adhered to all ethical considerations. The research team sought permission to enter the communities from the chiefs, elders, and leaders of each community. By this permission, the communities were informed about the research through their leaders. Participants, in particular, were informed about the research and their consent sought. Participants were made to either sign or thumbprint an informed consent form. Oral consent was sought from participants who declined to signing or thumb printing. Participants were guaranteed that the responses they provided would be kept strictly confidential and anonymous. We do confirm that this work is neither published nor under consideration for publication elsewhere and for that matter is original. All authors approved the manuscript and its submission. We have acknowledged all sources with the understanding that plagiarism is an unethical and intellectually dishonest act.

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Jeil, E.B., Abass, K. & Segbefia, A.Y. Challenges to sustaining beekeeping livelihoods in Ghana. GeoJournal 87, 991–1008 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10293-2

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