The Village that Turned to Gold: A Parable of Philanthrocapitalism

International development is increasingly financed and implemented by a nexus of billionaires and corporate foundations known as ‘philanthrocapitalism’. This article develops a critique of this paradigm, focusing on the case of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), and its implementation in Bonsaaso, Ghana. The author interprets the MVP as a staging of the neoliberal fantasy of origins — an imagined history of the spontaneous emergence of capitalism in the frugal activities of smallholder farmers. In Bonsaaso, this fantasy has been shattered by the violence of primitive accumulation — the separation of the peasantry from the land through which capitalist social relations are actually established. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Bonsaaso, the author describes how an influx of foreign gold miners has plunged the region into a profound socio‐ecological crisis. Despite producing several internal reports on this crisis, the MVP has failed to respond to it, and has instead sought to restage its fantasy in a new Village in the north of the country. Yet an analysis of its background documents and financial networks demonstrates the complicity of the MVP in the political economy of primitive accumulation underway in Bonsaaso. The case provides a cautionary tale against the promise of a good and pure capitalism.