Coercion and Incentives in African Agriculture: Insights from the Sudanese Experience

Abstract

A dialectic running through the literature on agricultural development in Africa is between coercion and incentives, between the necessity of compelling peasants to produce certain crops or employ particular technology and the possibility of motivating peasants to opt for specific production strategies through rewards. Coercion presumes peasants lack the capacity and or will to develop agriculture and must be forced. Incentives assume peasants will choose development if given the opportunity. Recent examples of coercionist approaches include Hyden (both 1980 and 1983), La-Anyane (1985), and Hart (1982:156-157). Recent examples of incentive-based approaches include Bates(1981), World Bank (1981), Brown and Wolf (1985), and Lele (1984). Both sides of this debate are seriously flawed. Policies based on them are unlikely to break the pattern of underdevelopment in African agriculture. In fact, past policies of coercion and incentives have contributed to present conditions. Current frameworks lack an appreciation of the ways in which African agriculture has already been transformed. They therefore underestimate the structural impediments to progress. This article calls for greater attention to the conditions and relations of production in African agriculture. Specifically, we must examine three factors. The first is the degree to which subsistence production has been undermined. This includes considering how dependent producers are on the market, to what extent out-migration has taken place and how far landlessness has spread. Second, we must look at the degree of control farmers have over production decisions. They may be restricted by such factors as competition for land with commercial growers, sharecropping and other land-tenure relations, lack of resources to provide inputs to agriculture, regulations of development projects or cooperatives, and/or by pressure to allocate resources to off-farm strategies (such as wage-labor) to meet household needs.