Introduction

This chapter introduces the overall thrust of the book, beginning with the emergence of the WTO as well as the plethora of her rules and regulation. Multilateralism, as a veritable mechanism for global governance in the contemporary era of neoliberal hegemony is also introduced for subsequent interrogation. Following these, the chapter problematizes the material conditions which Multilateral Trading Agreements engender and, to that extent, questions the prospects they offer for the structural transformation of agrarian social formations in West Africa. Overall, chapter one lays out the basis of how, in the final analysis, the book finds that the regimes of the WTO are implicated in the production as well as the exacerbation of the conditions of food insecurity in West Africa.