The Fair Trade Scandal Audiobook By Ndongo Sylla cover art

The Fair Trade Scandal

Marketing Poverty to Benefit the Rich

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The Fair Trade Scandal

By: Ndongo Sylla
Narrated by: Don Bratschie
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This critical account of the fair trade movement explores the vast gap between the rhetoric of fair trade and its practical results for poor countries, particularly those of Africa. In the Global North, fair trade often is described as a revolutionary tool for transforming the lives of millions across the globe. The growth in sales for fair trade products has been dramatic in recent years, but most of the benefit has accrued to the already wealthy merchandisers at the top of the value chain rather than to the poor producers at the bottom.

By distinguishing local impact from global impact, Sylla exposes the inequity built into the system and the resulting misallocation of the fair trade premium paid by consumers.

The Fair Trade Scandal is an empirically based critique of both fair trade and traditional free trade; it is the more important for exploring the problems of both from the perspective of the peoples of the Global South, the ostensible beneficiaries of the fair trade system.

©2014 Ndongo Samba Sylla (P)2014 Redwood Audiobooks Business Development & Entrepreneurship Economic Globalization International International Relations Politics & Government Poverty & Homelessness Public Policy Social Sciences Trades & Tariffs

Critic reviews

"Ndongo Samba Sylla has given the answer to [the fair trade] question by conducting a very thorough research, an in-depth survey, and a critical reading of the literature on the subject..." (Samir Amin, author of The People's Spring: The Future of the Arab Revolution)
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Rather than sticking only to anecdotes, this book sets out to deliver a broad overview of both the advantages and failures of The Fair Trade movement. On this, I think it delivers.
Although much of the book is dedicated to the author's views on the role that Fair Trade plays in the global economy, which may not be of interest to every reader, he thereby did succeed in placing it in a wider context that I had little awareness of beforehand.
In later chapters, this book presents the findings of empirical research from various studies that have been conducted on how much of the premium paid by customers reaches the producers at the end of the chain, along with other measures of how successful Fair Trade really is at achieving the goals proclaimed by its marketing. The answers may surprise you, as the expression goes.
Overall, I got the impression that the author gave a fairly well-balanced account, rather than trying to sell any personal political viewpoint to the reader.
I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in an objective and in-depth discussion of the nature and scope of Fair Trade's successes and failures.

Well worth reading!

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A good read for practicing development practitioners which questions the exclusive use of free and/or fair trade tools to try and end poverty. Worth reading.

Credible and thought provoking argument.

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If your interest is all about policy, this book is for you. If you want to get a better understanding of the dynamics of fair trade and the producer and consumer levels, the book falls way short.

strictly a policy analysis

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