Question

Colonies were instructed to grow cash crops instead of food crops​

Answer 1

Answer:

The issue of cash crops or food crops has sometimes dominated debates over African development. With regard to the role of the former, as Timberlake (1985) has observed, there are two opposing views. First, there are those to the left who see cash crops as naked capitalism continuing to exploit independent Africa as it did colonial Africa, severely exploiting the majority of the rural peasants. Second, there are those to the right who see cash crops as the only way Africa can enter the world marketplace and earn the foreign exchange it so desperately needs to improve the health, education and nutrition of its people. The development history of cash crops in Africa over the last few decades, however, shows that cash crops have produced less and less cash. Over the last three decades, real incomes from cash crops have declined. African shares in world markets of most commodities have worsened, and most African countries have been sinking deeper and deeper into debt. This paper explores the conflict between cash crops for export and food crops for self-reliance. It sees the conflict as one between two approaches to development, that is, between dependency and autonomy, between the diffusionist approach which takes the form of the 'export-led growth model' of development and the 'autocentric approach' which emphasises food self-sufficiency. The conclusion reached is that the former is untenable, given its current socio-economic repercussions. Only the food self-sufficiency model will restore Africa's economic as well as political independence and self-reliance which is so central to a future of freedom from hunger and starvation.