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Experiments with a Public Sector Peasantry: Agricultural Schemes and Class Formation in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Frances Hill
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Extract

The African landscape is littered with the remnants of failed agricultural schemes. Yet, international agencies and national governments, both purportedly interested in development, continue to experiment with schemes that are little better planned than some of their more spectacularly misbegotten predecessors. This government persistence in the face of repeated failures is not interpreted as a defect of planning but as proof of government commitment to modernity in the face of cruel odds. Failures are explained by the intransigence or primitiveness of peasants.

Such explanations begin to break down upon closer examination of actual experiences. Agricultural schemes are commonly over-capitalized, under-planned, and poorly managed (Palmer, 1974). It is worth considering the hypothesis that governments persist in these costly and unremunerative experiments neither because of a commitment either to modernity or productivity or because of simple ineptitude but because of their quest for control. Control over the peasantry is crucial since peasants are the majority of the population in all tropical African countries and earn the bulk of the governments' foreign exchange in all but Nigeria, Zambia, Angola, Botswana and Liberia. Because of this political and economic dependence on peasants, governments want a productive peasantry, but one that remains under secure control. Governments do not want peasants using their productivity to wrest either political or economic concessions.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , December 1977 , pp. 25 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1977

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