Food Supply for an African Wage-Labour Force, 1919–39

Abstract

So far, analysis of African productive activity has been limited to that contained within the peasant household, almost all of which was family rather than wage-labour. There was, however, a considerable amount of hired African labour involved in European and Asian-owned sisal and coffee plantations and extractive industries, particularly gold and diamone mining, as well as in state infrastructural development, mainly communications, road building and railway construction and maintenance, and finally in domestic service work located primarily in the towns.