Peasants of the Nuba Mountains region

Abstract

Since Sudan's independence three development plans have attempted to reorient the agricultural sector and stimulate the process of social and economic development. Believing that their inadequacies have been largely due to a misunderstanding of existing and evolving production relations, the author has attempted to focus on one region of the country where state sponsored capitalist agricultural schemes have been introduced and are leading to the modification of pre‐existing pre‐capitalist forms. He argues that production relations among the peasantry of the Nuba Mountains should best be described as consistent with simple commodity or petty commodity production. But this mode is itself undergoing a process of change as the peasants interact with the capitalist system through sale of their labour power on the nearby capitalist schemes and purchase of their agricultural implements.