The political economy of the ‘green revolution’ in Africa

Abstract

This article sets out to survey the extent to which new agricultural technologies associated with ‘Green Revolution’ (the introduction of high yielding varieties of foodgrains and/or their associated biochemical and mechanical technologies) have been introduced in Africa and attempts a preliminary assessment of their economic and social effects. There is now significant evidence of the introduction and adoption of higher yielding varieties of maize, wheat and rice in Africa, as well as the adoption of other technological innovations in irrigation and mechanisation, albeit with widely varying degrees of success and with many instances of failure. It is noted that there are many standard technical explanations associated with the adoption of new technologies in agriculture, in particular, low levels of credit, poor supply of inputs, inadequate, faulty or no irrigation, poor extension advice, and low producer prices, as well as the poor state of the relationship between agronomic research and farm level innovation. However, the evidence so far collected for Africa suggests that a substantial part of the explanation of whether adoption of innovations takes place or not, and of their degree of success, is the nature of the social relations of production, relations not simply of class or strata, but also of gender. The major technical constraint on successful innovation adoption as revealed by most, if not all, of the studies surveyed turns out to be that of labour supply. The extent to which that constraint can be resolved turns not on increasing family labour supply, which often means increasing the intensity of female labour, but in hiring labour. The very hiring of labour presupposes the existence of a social formation in which free wage labour exists, or In which it can be created. Its creation will depend on the degree to which those interests which seek toaccumulate through agricultural innovation have power and can exercise that power through the State. The first section of this article is an overview of various issues of theory and evidence involved in surveying the green revolution in Africa. The second section surveys the introduction of these new technologies into Africa and the final section draws some conclusions for policy and further analysis.