Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Has the bargaining power of argan oil been beneficial for Amazigh women in Morocco?

This chapter examines the dynamics of female entrepreneurship and multiscale networks within the sociocultural and environmental fabric, with a particular focus on Morocco, Amazigh women and argan oil. Amazigh villages are poverty-stricken, women are highly restricted in the patriarchal society, and most women are illiterate. For centuries, only Amazigh women were able to produce argan oil, and there was little interest in the oil outside the Amazigh community. However, in the 1990’s, this oil became a very valued commodity, for culinary, cosmetic, and medical purposes, and was greatly in demand worldwide. Situated within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this study seeks to unravel the anthropological dimensions of how the female entrepreneur facilitates an innovative socioeconomic model, weaving together a range of cultural, environmental and socioeconomic values within the local context. Drawing on immersive ethnographic fieldwork in villages in the region of Souss-Massa in Morocco, this paper describes how the entrepreneur engages in the production of argan oil products not merely as an economic venture to alleviate poverty among Amazigh women (SDGs) and provide them with more empowerment, but as a culturally embedded practice aimed at enhancing environmental conservation of the endemic argan forest. Labelled as liquid gold, argan oil became the most expensive oil in the world, and co-operatives of only Amazigh women were formed to produce and market the oil. However, reports on the benefits received by the Amazigh women in this enterprise have been mixed and controversial. Some women are earning fair wages, attending literacy classes, gaining self-confidence and being empowered. However, many women are being exploited, earning much less than the national average salary and their literacy is not improving. Overall, earnings by the women in the co-operatives contributed to only 4.1% of the household budget. This paper: 1) contributes to understanding how entrepreneurs reinvent and innovate existing resources by reframing space, place, and people; 2) links local socioeconomic issues to the broader global concern about poverty alleviation, sustainable development, and green transitions; and 3) reflects upon rather than transforms the underlying structural complexities of poverty and entrepreneurship.