The Failure of Cotton Imperialism in Africa: Seasonal Constraints and Contrasting Outcomes in French West Africa and British Uganda

Abstract

Cash-crop diffusion in colonial Africa was uneven and defied colonizers’ expectations and efforts, especially for cotton. This study investigates how agricultural seasonality affected African farmers’ cotton adoption, circa 1900–1960. A contrast between British Uganda and the interior of French West Africa demonstrates that a short rainy season and the resulting short farming cycles generated seasonal labor bottlenecks and food security concerns, limiting cotton output. Agricultural seasonality also had wider repercussions, for colonial coercion, investment, and African income-earning strategies. A labor productivity breakthrough in post-colonial Francophone West Africa mitigated the seasonality constraint, facilitating impressive cotton output growth post-1960.

“Sedentarisation” of transhumant pastoralists results in privatization of resources and soil fertility decline in West Africa's cotton belt

“…The expansion of cultivated areas has taken on considerable importance, driven by the demographic growth of indigenous populations, the arrival of migrants from other regions (including agro-pastoralists) and the promotion of cash crops, notably cotton (Ayantunde et al, 2011;Diarisso et al, 2015). Cotton production started in West Africa since the French colonial period (Bassett, 2006;Haas, 2021). Since then, cotton production increased quickly for over two decades beginning in the early 1960's (Speirs, 1991;ICAC, 2019).…”