Hidden hands, hidden harvests: how intra-household secrecy drives cooperative leakage in Tanzania
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Date
2025-12-30
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
The sub-Saharan Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities
Abstract
Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Societies (AMCOS) are vital for integrating smallholders into global value
chains, yet they persistently suffer from side-selling (leakage) that undermines their economic viability. Conventional
governance models typically attribute leakage to external market prices or weak enforcement, overlooking the household as a
critical site of economic contestation. This “institutional blind spot” ignores how domestic power asymmetries and liquidity
constraints shape compliance. Drawing on intra-household bargaining and collective action theories, this study utilizes
qualitative data from Focus Group Discussions, life histories, and Key Informant Interviews in Tanzania’s Muleba and
Karagwe districts to open the “black box” of household decision-making. The analysis reveals that leakage is driven by
“hidden hands”: men conceal cooperative income to preserve authority, while women covertly divert specific grades of coffee
to informal buyers to secure immediate liquidity for household survival. This secrecy generates a “dual channel” market
where high-quality coffee is delivered to AMCOS, while “rejects” and pre-harvest volumes flow into informal “butura” trade
(pre-harvest selling). These behaviours are not merely acts of deviance but rational adaptations to a “moral economy of
necessity,” where immediate cash needs override abstract cooperative rules. The study demonstrates that meso-level
governance failures are rooted in micro-level domestic mistrust. To ensure sustainability, cooperative policy must shift from
punitive enforcement to “household-centered governance,” incorporating gender-responsive auditing and liquidity-sensitive
payment mechanisms that align institutional goals with the lived realities of members.
Description
Journal Article, pp. 52-63
Keywords
Cooperative Governance, Intra-household Bargaining, Side-selling (Leakage), Gendered Moral Economy, Liquidity Constraints