The lands of the Africans were confiscated under pretext of an eminent right acquired by conquest; and among the various powers, those unjustly gotten lands were granted and sub-leased to plantations where the native workers suffered all kinds of inhumanities.
Nnandi Azikiwe, 1937, African Morning Post, Accra
If it is true that access to and possession of the land by the poor are indispensable elements for the production and distribution of wealth, then it is not less true that, as in the other continents, the current pattern of land distribution derives from an historical process which has been strongly influenced by the various powers which have governed the Continent during the 20th century. The land policy is nothing more than the manifestation of the economic growth option by the governments in the domain of the development economy.
When, during the long period of darkness of the colonial era the Continent was divided among the world powers and the world rehearsed globalization, families were thrust into indigenous reservations where the women worked for subsistence and the men were compelled to make up the labour force for cocoa, coffee, sugar, copra, tobacco and tea, to the delight of the international free market. In exchange for the export of the agricultural produce of the poor, the rich received industrial goods; in addition, the rich held the most productive lands, the clearest waters and the most leafy trees. This rehearsal of globalization on the African Continent was an international market success for the rich and a total environmental and social disaster for the poor. The reservation lands became progressively depleted, with less productive capacity, while the technological know-how for the production of alternative energy sources stagnated , and creativity vanished in the chores of compulsory labour. In addition, growing urbanization led to the appearance of social movements which everywhere reclaimed independence for the people of the African land.
However, in spite of great leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Frantz Fanon, Amнlcar Cabral, Gamal Nasser, Ahmed Ben Bella and Julius Nyerere, who raised their voices against the structure of the state, sooner or later the new governments ended up adopting the colonial administrative practice. From the time artificial borders were imposed upon Africa by the Berlin Conference, the state instruments entrenched by the colonial administrations were taken up. At the same time, the superiority complexes of the rich foreigners were taken for granted, and the economic postulates of modernisation exonerated. Although the question of the seizure of the African land by Africans was the order of the day for the newly created modern states, the set of problems related to the dimension of agricultural utilisation and the role of international markets led the majority of politicians of the 1960s and 1970s to ignore that pressing issue. The endogenous institutional dynamics of the African societies with regard to the administration of the people and of the land were ignored; the know-how about production and commerce of the rural populations was spurned; the replacement of the colonial йlites by emerging African йlites was made possible through a hyper-intervention of the state; and the rapid transformation of peasants into rural workers was seen as the only alternative to face the increasing deterioration in the international conditions of exchange.
Colonial dualism was maintained and the states continued to award the best lands either to local or foreign йlites, or to state-run enterprises. In countries of east-and southern Africa, such as Kenya, Malawi and Botswana, the poor were left on marginalised lands where the economy was already structurally distorted when they arrived there. In west Africa the structure of the rural economy prevalent in colonial times was maintained, along with the land distribution system; all that changed was the nationalities of management of businesses and services, as well as the colour of their officials7.
In other parts of Africa, following the principle defended by the green revolution, that the poor could also become part of development, provided they received the appropriate technology and infrastructure, Nasser and Ben Bella were the first to challenge the dualistic approach, channelling large investments towards irrigated agriculture. Others, relying on less resources, attempted to reduce dependency and protect the poor from the national 'bourgeoisies'. Julius Nyerere made headway with the Ujamaa Vijijini, and Samora Machel nationalised the land and wanted to turn the state machambas (small farms) into the basis for the formation of national capital. However, the agricultural product, in relation to the number of inhabitants, showed a constant decline along the years, and productivity did not increase at the desired rate. This is due to various reasons, the most important being: the evolution of the international situation and the state's incompetence in business administration; there were strong price distortions resulting from the overvaluation of national currencies; and there were high indirect taxes on agriculture.
The economies began to send off negative signals. Conventional agricultural products for export from Africa had less and less value in the international markets, which in turn were protected by the countries of the North; added to which the economic inefficiency of the private or state-owned great plantations increased, and salaries plummeted in real terms. The growth rate of the agricultural food product was not able to keep company with the population growth rate. The result was that the Continent became a regular food importer. Land distribution maintained the dualistic standard of the colonial period: on the one side an agriculture of scale turned towards the market, and on the other the family land with a dual function of meeting the needs of both consumption and the local market. Some countries attempted a programme of land distribution for the poorest people in order to guarantee self-sustenance, but the greater investment volume continued to be directed towards the large agricultural estates. The latter became state property or the property of members of the government who were strongly protected by the state; and the former continued to be used by rural families with flimsy security of tenure in the face of the current land legislation.
To sum up, in a given period the colonial administrations were characterised by the adoption of the modernisation paradigm and its dualistic models of land distribution between large enterprises turned towards the market, and indigenous reservations for the production of food, so guaranteeing the propagation of the labour force. In some countries, and at a different time, compulsory cultures for the poor were introduced in function of the economic rationality of the coloniser; the latter was in no way related to the sustainability of the income received by the workers and by the land worked by them.
The implementation of the dualistic models resulted in increased migration towards the urban centres; this had a negative impact on the so-called subsistence economy and caused a decrease in the demand for industrial products in the rural areas, that is, there was contraction instead of expansion in the domestic market . The practice of the 'productivist' models showed that the large public investments in infrastructure not only showed poor results in the short term, but also led to an increase in the inflation rate. Furthermore, the accumulation of debt by those who made use of technological packages for the irrigation areas caused them to have to hand over their land to their creditors, reverting to the condition of tenant-farmers. Last, the implementation of protectionist measures has shown that import substitution generates, in parallel, unfair and unsustainable terms of exchange between the rural and the urban worlds.
Footnotes:
- See in this regard the collection of original texts of the time compiled by Minogue, M & Molloy, J, 1974, African Aims and Attitudes: selected documents, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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