Brokers in the tea trade between China and West Africa

Brokers have played important roles in the trade of green tea between China and Mali, from the 19th century when tea first came to Mali up to the present. They mediate between tea buyers and sellers, work on their own account, use soft skills, knowledge and networks and make a living from the commission they gain. This article examines the work of brokers in the tea trade, the social constellations in which they are active and the scope of their activity. Based on extensive field research in Mali and China, this article shows how brokers create their own jobs in a dynamic business landscape, which is often delimited by governmental policies, competing entrepreneurial activities and social …

Chances and challenges of African entrepreneurial activity in times of crisis

This special issue looks in new ways at the relationship between small-scale entrepreneurship, economic (and political) crisis, and the outcomes of neoliberal market economy in African countries. I...

Crisis and credit: social and political challenges of the Malian tea market

This article examines the manifold facets of crisis situations in Mali since the 1990s. Most prominent was la crise, the political crisis of 2012 that resulted from the rise of armed separatist gro...

Kokot, Waltraud, Christian Giordano and Mijal Gandelsman-Trier (eds.) 2013.Diaspora as a resource: comparative studies in strategies, networks and urban space. Berlin: LIT Verlag. 307 pp. Pb.: €29.90. ISBN: 978-3-643-80145-6.

Chinese-manufactured commodities and African agency in the democratization of consumption: the example of electronic devices in Cameroon

Chinese Green Tea in Mali, Cultural Mobility and African Agency in the Global South

Abstract The paper offers insights from ethnographic research that reach beyond general assumptions of the working of globalization, especially in the Global South. It examines the ways in which the arrival of products made in China, namely green tea, has influenced the everyday of people in Mali, modifying consumption practices and the business landscape. Chinese green tea, which is known in the Sahel countries of West Africa since the 19th century, has gradually found more and more consumers in Mali, so that from the 2000s onwards tons of green tea arrive every month in the country. Most Malians, the paper shows, consume green tea several times a day and identify with the beverage to such…

Brokerage from within: A conceptual framework

Situated between various social worlds, brokers are highly mobile figures, in a physical and an ideational sense; they channel scarce information and resources, translate different languages and jargons, and mediate and facilitate between individuals and/or organisations, the local and the global, in a wide range of settings. Taking an in-depth ethnographic look at the actual work of brokers and their particular life stories, contributions to this special issue examine brokers’ successes and failures, their vulnerabilities and limitations, (changing) interests and motivations within the cultural contexts that these brokers are part of. By adopting a comparative perspective in a thematic an…