Food Crops as Cash Crops: The Case of Colonial Kigezi, Uganda

Abstract

This article examines the case of Kigezi, where colonial efforts to introduce cash crops such as coffee and tobacco consistently failed. It argues that Kigezi farmers already had cash-earning crops, which were food crops. These were widely produced and traded in the pre-colonial and colonial periods, and the strength and vibrancy of this trade helps to explain the problems the colonial state encountered when it tried to introduce cash crops. Marketing policies introduced by the colonial state for different cash crops in Kigezi served only to discourage cash-crop production there, in contrast to food production.

Urban Food Systems Governance and Poverty in African Cities

“…The anti-famine measures pursued by the colonial state reflected the conviction that African communities and regions were, and should be, self-sufficient in food (Bryceson 1988;Carswell 2003). In Kenya, the ideology of regional self-sufficiency was most visibly expressed by the 1922 Native Foodstuffs Ordinance.…”

Pesticide Use In Vegetable Production In Rural Uganda - A Case Study of Kabale District, South Western Uganda

“…As shown in Table 1 tomatoes, cabbages, cauli ower, and beetroot had the highest frequency. The ndings on the extent of vegetable growing in Kabale District can be attributed to fertile soils, land shortage, quick source of income and general lack of major cash crops (Carswell 2003 and Personal observation). Four vegetable types (cabbage, cauli ower, tomato and beetroot) out of the nine types of the commonly grown and sprayed vegetables are of high demand for home consumption and sale locally or export.…”

Demography, diversity and nativism in contemporary Africa: evidence from Uganda

“…or starve in their over-populated districts' (Kulumba 2004: 27). Indeed, neither of the two major ethnographers of mid-twentieth century Kigezi present any ethnographic evidence that the Bakiga were at any point under serious threat of widespread famine due to overpopulation (Edel 1957;Ngologoza 1998), while Carswell (2003b) correctly rubbishes the idea that mild food shortages constituted a famine in Kigezi in 1943. On the contrary, as demonstrated by the large number of voluntary migrants who have continuously left the region since the 1920s to work elsewhere in Uganda (Carswell 2003a), many Bakiga migrants quite obviously wanted to move to an area where they had more access to land. Indeed, the migrants' desire for more land belies the Protectorate administration's puzzlement that, upon moving to Ankole, a number of Bakiga had somehow acquired 'more land than was necessary' (Protectorate of Uganda 1950: 114).…”