An Exploration of Credit/Debt in Impact Investments for Rural Development in Ghana

Abstract

This article sheds light on processes of credit/debt signification, negotiation, and contestation in rural development projects funded through social and impact investing. It does so by presenting the case of a development project implemented in Ghana by SustAgric‐Africa (SAA), a social enterprise aiming to lift smallholder farmers in rural Africa out of poverty by promoting sustainable agriculture. By looking at discourses and practices around credit/debt, and the role they play in enacting the relationship between service providers and intended beneficiaries, the article contends that the variable geometries in which this dyad manifests and is made sense of are based on differing and sometimes contraposing ethical horizons and worldviews. The article concludes that, on one hand, the neoliberal logic underpinning “impact” and “social” investments' arrangements facilitates hegemonic processes that tend to strengthen actors in more powerful positions, with their ethicomoral worldviews, and reproduce existing unequal patterns of wealth accumulation. On the other hand, however, it also reveals how intended beneficiaries' practices and worldviews open spaces for questioning the ethical and financial logics implicit in development projects like SAA's, potentially disrupting the plans and imaginaries of more powerful actors.