9 - Rural poverty in colonial Africa

Summary

During the one long lifetime which elapsed between the partition of tropical Africa and its liberation, immensely complicated changes took place in the nature of rural poverty. Until many local studies have been made it would be idle to pretend that any overall understanding is possible. All that can be done at this stage is to indicate certain patterns of change which are already documented for particular regions.

Yet two generalisations may be made. One is that conjunctural poverty changed most. With certain exceptions, the great famines which in the past had periodically decimated populations ceased in the mid colonial period and were replaced by more subtle problems of nutrition and demography. The second generalisation is that no such dramatic change transformed structural poverty. Here, as so often in the history of the poor, continuity predominated. With rare exceptions, colonial Africa remained rich in land. Its very poor continued to be chiefly those who lacked labour and family support. Where especially unprivileged strata had existed, they often survived. A few escaped poverty. Certain new categories of poor were created by colonial rule and economic change. They included groups impoverished by land alienation, but these were less numerous than in South Africa and the able-bodied among them were generally able to escape extreme poverty by working for others, for the means of survival for the poor were also changing.