African agricultural development: reflections on the major lines of advance and the barriers to progress

Abstract

This study attempts to identify the main obstacles to progress and the developments possible. It would therefore be wrong to consider it as a first agricultural plan for Africa, similar to the one called for recently by the Ghanaian Ministry of Agriculture. Some consider that the main reason for Africa's backwardness in development is sleeping sickness and the other endemic tropical diseases, and others that it is the lingering after-effects of the slave trade and colonization, certain economic aspects of which survive as an orientation of trade mainly towards the former metropolitan country, so that the economy is externally dominated. Many other factors will be mentioned in this study. Whatever the causes, and their multiplicity amply justifies a divergence of explanations, results are certainly not brilliant at present. What made me decide to accept this almost impossible task was Africa's present difficulties, which it would be very dangerous to under-estimate.