AFRICAS WEALTHY, EUROPE MADE WRETHED

ABSTRACT
The number of people under ones control defined wealth in pre-colonial
Africa, but colonialism altered this perception of wealth. Africas wealthy class began
to lose their elitist position to a new class of wealthy people, which are the
landowners. For a broader insight, the development of agriculture in consonance with
access to land in colonial Africa, investigating the extent to which British interest;
policies and tradition influenced the trajectory of wealth redistribution would be
examined. The work adopted a qualitative approach using the historical method,
consulting a wide range of textbooks and journals. In all, colonial policies altered the
idea of wealth in Africa owing to its land reform, which had a huge influence on
agriculture, the major economic activity of Africans.

INTRODUCTION
Struggles over access to and control of land have a long history in sub-
Saharan Africa. For a long time, cultivable land was regarded by students of Africas
economic and agrarian history as abundant and therefore immune from both market
competition and political conflict. Recent scholarship suggests that this view is
oversimplified. Since pre-colonial times, Africans have attached both material and
symbolic significance to land, and rights in land have been exchanged, negotiated and
fought over in the course of political and religious as well as demographic and
economic change.
The intrusion of Africa by the European colonialist altered the pace, pattern
and direction of Africas development necessitated by capitalist accumulation, which
generated conflicts of interest, among Europeans and Africans as well as between
them. The outcome of those conflicts was shaped not only by the material and
political resources, which different groups could marshal in support of their interests,
but also by the terms in which people understood their interests and expressed them.
Historians such as Beinart, Anderson, and Vaughan have shown how major events,
such as famine or soil erosion, became focuses of multiple explanations, which in
turn, shaped people's responses to the events themselves. Similarly, Peters, Comaroff,
and other anthropologists have explored the role of struggles over meaning in shaping
governments' policies and interactions between colonised peoples and colonial
regimes. In particular, a growing body of literature has shown that 'customary' laws
were not static perpetuations of pre-colonial norms, but new systems of law and
adjudication based on colonial administrators' interpretation of African tradition.1
A curious convergence in the conception of pre-colonial African societies
has been occurring between people whose pre-conceptions and pre-occupations are
highly divergent. On the one hand there is the "Colonial" school, which views pre-
colonial African societies as Primitive. Even though the term is now being replaced
by the less objectionable but no less sterile term "traditional", the conception of pre-
colonial, and indeed of much of modern Africa, even among many of the modern-day
"Africanists", is one of a "tribal" stage of development in which economic and social
forces as exemplified by agriculture, is stagnant at a very low level of development.
On the other hand there is the "nationalist" school, which argues that pre-colonial
African society, was characterized by equality, and by "the egalitarian nature of land
tenure system"; in short, pre-colonial African societies were classless. 2 As will be
obvious, these are not explanations at all but merely assertions of the inherent
characteristics of the African genius which prevailed during the whole of the long and

1
complex history of pre-colonial Africa and came to grief only with colonialism of the
late 19th century. Ironically, the implications of this idyllic picture of the African past
lead the nationalists to the same conclusions as the colonial school. As Hymer3 points
out that a low level of material production and a low degree of specialization and
exchange accompanied pre-colonial equality. Secondly, by applying this description
to the whole long history of pre-colonial Africa the nationalists are unwittingly
subscribing to the notion that pre-colonial Africa was also stagnant. Thus equality,
poverty and stagnancy, with varying emphasis, seem to characterize the conception of
pre-colonial Africa of both the colonial as well as the nationalist schools.
One thing that both these schools seem to deny to pre-colonial Africa is the
internal dynamics of socio-economic development of African societies, which does
indeed imply the development of social differentiation and inequalities, and the
development of productive forces of the societies. Historical evidence for these
developments in pre-colonial Africa is by no means lacking. There are many
examples of agricultural intensification going beyond the allegedly universal
"subsistence shifting cultivation" which is supposed to characterize much of tropical
Africa.4
Recent studies of pre-colonial history of Africa have shown that while
"primitive communism", in which there was no exploitation of man by man and in
which, there was no need for a state to protect the interests of the ruling class,
undoubtedly existed in certain parts of West Africa; in many cases African societies
had passed well beyond the classless "tribal" stage and had established the state which
implies the existence of classes in the society.
Africa was developing on its own terms and would have continued to if not
for the Europeans who came to alter the pattern of Africas development. Afrocentric
scholars like Walter Rodney consistently argued this line of thought giving requisite
data and argument to support his claim. Like the Japanese after Sakoku policy and
after Chinas closed-door policy, they opened their doors to the Europeans albeit
intense suspicion. However, they did not allow the Europeans to alter their pattern of
development but rather complement it. The case was not the same Africa as Africans
simply took a different turn once colonialism came to alter the pattern of Africas
development. So rather than complement Europeans altered and Africans allowed
them.
Colonial Land Reform
Of all the factors of production, land was most easily accessible in West
Africa. Although there was hardly any technological knowledge with which to
redeem waterlogged or otherwise unsuitable land resources, farmland was plentiful
enough to create a constraint on development in pre-colonial West Africa.5 A major
explanation for this was that population growth had not come to such a high
dimension owing to high mortality rate during the pre-colonial period where
sanitation was poor and death was high. By the 20th century however, mortality rate
had decline and birth rate increased, for instance birth rate was 52/1,000 in the city in
1902 compared with 286/1000 in 1930.6 Also the population of Lagos, which covered
a mere 1.55 square miles on the Island of Lagos, was 25,083 in 1866, 25,518 in 1871
and 37,452 in 1881. By 1911, the census figure had increased to 73,766. 7 The slave
trade, which saw over 11 million active men and women yanked away over a period
of more than 400 years, also contributed to the sparse population of West Africa.
Intensive agriculture featuring definite rotational order for crops could not be
adopted because knowledge of scientific agriculture was lacking. With diminishing
yields from a parcel of land under concentrated cultivation, the farmer captured the

2
signal that it was time to move elsewhere. This was not shifting cultivation per se;
rather it was spatial extension of cultivation.8
But if land was not a constraint on development, labour was. 9 It was indeed
because the supply of labour was inadequate that land did not constitute a problem.
Labour shortage was a reflection of the slave trade and short life expectancy.
Keeping large families was not only fashionable but also desirable; out of the
many born the tendency that some would survive into adulthood was high. Women
were kept for childbearing and polygamy was a common feature among West African
men, apparently to have as many children and wives particularly for the busy periods
of planting and harvesting.10
Family labour was convenient, not only because it was relatively available,
but also because it was easily disciplined. The extended family system had inherent
sanction, which compelled co-operation with the family head, if not obedience to him.
It was also the responsibility of each of the wives of the farmer to ensure that her
children worked fervently so as to curry the fathers favour, besides, since his children
according to their maternal lineage would share the fathers legacy. Unlike the
introduction of colonial labour system, which came with its intermittent industrial
relations crisis, family based labour tended to operate with relative harmony. 11
All land in West Africa though apparently unoccupied has an owner. The
owner in most cases is the king or chief of the district, and the chief or headman of
every village always owns some land. All lands belongs to the king or head-chief who
granted it out to his under chiefs, who in turn granted it out to the people of their
towns and villages. But land does not belong exclusively to the chief of the village,
for sometimes families, of which the chief is not a member, own land. The idea that
land can be sold, or given in such a way that the original owner loses all interests in it,
is utterly foreign to Africa.12
The notion of individual ownership was alien to Africa. Land belongs to the
community, the village or family, never the individual. Everyone in a community has
equal right to the land. The king, head-chief is usually the trustee and as such holds
the land for the use of the community or family. He has control of it, and any member
who wants a piece of it to cultivate or build upon, goes to him for it. But the land, so
given still remains the property of the community or family. He cannot make any
important disposition of the land without consulting the elders of the community, and
their consent must in all case be given before a grant can be made to a stranger.
Individual ownership is a European idea introduced in Africa during the colonial
period.13
On an individual basis, land was passed trans-generationally through
patrilineal segmentary lineages of descent, succession, and inheritance in the late 19th
century. A Logoli farmer in her 70s explains the pre-colonial situation in her own
words:
No one owned their own plot. Land was free for
everyone. Land allocation started recently.... Most of
it used to lie fallow. Wherever you marked your land
was enough for you.14

As Hymer argued in relation to pre-colonial Ghana, 'such leisure classes as

there were depended upon gold-mining and long distance trade rather than land' and
this limited their impact on subsistence farmers. 15 It is this characteristic of land
tenure in pre-colonial West Africa, which has sustained images of a classless society;

3
something that private land ownership during the colonial period came to alter
forever.
Colonialism also altered the mode of land inheritance in West Africa. Since
the land belongs to the community under the king or head-chief. When the king dies,
traditional African societies pass inheritance through the maternal lineage being the
eldest son of the eldest sister. This rule was universal in the Gold Coast and the
Yoruba country. This rule has been abrogated and the English rule of a mans eldest
son inheriting has been adopted in all of East and West Africa.16
Land scarcity did not appear to be a major issue in the pre-colonial West
Africa. Clan elders oversaw land allocation and local disputes. Marriage was the main
channel by which men and women gained access to individual land for farming and
residence. However, access was differentiated by gender: men were allocated land by
their fathers, which corresponded to the section of the shamba their mothers worked
(which affected allocation decisions, given the existence of multiple wives); women,
on the other hand, gained access to use rights to their husband's family land upon
marriage and upon bearing a certain number of children. Women did not 'inherit' land
outright, except at the discretion of their fathers and in exceptional circumstances
where a daughter was either unable to marry or was divorced.17
Agricultural Policies
A recent generalization on cropping and cultivation in Africa reduces the
variety of environmental types to two: 'savannahs' and 'forest and woodland'. 18 West
Africa is endowed with both savannah and forest areas, which makes it possible for
variety of food and cash crops to grow in the different regions and climate of West
Africa.
Most of the natives in West Africa are farmers, however, there were other
non-farming activities that people engaged in to survive. Division of labour also
existed among the people as there are many examples of division of labour, of non-
agricultural specialization and exchange over large areas of not only the rare
commodities such as iron and salt, but also of surplus foodstuffs on a regular basis.19
Pre-colonial West Africa contained large numbers of subsistence farmers
who, by virtue of their usufruct rights in land, could potentially become the peasant
proprietors described in twentieth century accounts, the West African peasantry was
not yet established at the time of colonization. The Gold Coast cocoa farmers had not
yet made their mark, and the development of palm oil exports, largely from the Niger
Delta, was by no means wholly dependent on the work of small-scale farmers.
Slavery remained an important part of the economies in the north of Sierra Leone and
Nigeria, and while these areas were to be relatively marginal in the subsequent
development of colonial trade, in the 1880s and 1890s the future scenario was
unknown. It is only with hindsight that West Africa appears as a world of peasants.
When the new governors arrived to take up their duties often from prior service in
colonies, which relied on indentured labour.20
Britain in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria and before the war,
Germany in Togo have given special attention to forest products and the
introduction of new plants, which put wealth in the hands of a new class of people.
Cattle on the hinterland, cotton in Northern Nigeria, Yorubaland and Togo have all
been closely studied, but the agricultural stations are mainly concerned with the
possibilities of the forest zone. In most areas along the coastal lands, oil-palm forests
are extensive and yield enormous quantities of oil and kernels. Coconut palms
flourish on the long sand spits that fringe the lagoons, and these are being cultivated
for copra. Forest conservation and re-afforestation are carried out partly tor the

4
maintenance of supply of timber (mahogany, teak and odum), partly for increasing the
quantity of gum copal, and partly for the maintenance or effective rainfall. Such
products as wild rubber, wax and ivory are likely to disappear soon from the list of
exports and their place will be taken The by cultivated products, as cocoa (Gold Coast
and Togo) and Para rubber the limits spread of cocoa in the Gold Coast has been
phenomenal, though of the area for cultivation seem much restricted. At present the
chief plantations are in the southeast of the Gold Coast and adjacent Togo, with a few
in the Benin district of Nigeria. Plantation rubber does well in parts of the Ivory
Coast, Gold Coast, Togo, Dahomey and Nigeria. Coffee, ginger, tobacco and piassava
are possible developments of the near future. Within West Africa itself there is a great
amount of inter-colonial trade in kola and rice.21
At the time of colonization, palm products made up half the total value of
exports from British West Africa and farmers and traders who traded the produce
made extensively wealth. Palm oil had long been a staple of domestic consumption
and internal trade, and processing methods were established before colonial rule. The
men collected palm fruits from wild palm trees, and the women boiled and pounded
the pericarp of the fruit to produce palm oil. Any attempt to transform production and
processing techniques necessitated a challenge to this division of labour, and as
subsequent events demonstrated, it proved remarkably resistant to change. The
development of the palm kernel industry however, was less problematic. Palm kernels
had little value within West Africa, and it was only with the invention of margarine
and the development of processing methods, which made palm kernel oil an
appropriate substance for this new commodity, that the kernels became a major
export. The processing of kernel oil developed from the outset under the control of
capitalist manufacturers, primarily in factories in Germany and Holland, and proved
relatively simple. By contrast the processing of the pericarp to produce palm oil had
to be done locally, since the oil turned rancid on the long journey to Europe, and any
policy for new processing techniques involved direct confrontation with established
African production. As in the case of cocoa, colonial officials were deeply distrustful
of African methods, and in this sector a viable alternative to ineffective official
propaganda offered itself.
The initiative came from William Lever, founder of the vast soap and
margarine empire of Unilever and the only significant representative of the process
Lenin considered characteristic of twentieth century imperialism: the transition from
export of commodities to export of capital.
Colonial Land Reforms.
Colonial officials came to describe its land system as 'communal land tenure'.
Their description conjures up a false vision of primitive communism, and encouraged
a picture of West Africa as an area untouched by the social divisions, which attend the
accumulation of wealth. What truth was there in this? It was indeed the case that (free
born) Africans had easy access to land. Throughout most of West Africa, large tracts
of uncultivated land were available, and strangers were generally welcomed to a
community since their presence and allegiance increased the prestige of chiefs.
Furthermore, the natural abundance of land was not artificially constrained by the
emergence of a landlord class. Since land could not be alienated as private property
there was no possibility of the polarization into a landlord class on the one side and a
landless proletariat on the other. It would be wrong, however, to conclude that pre-
colonial Africa was a congenial 'state of nature' such as that which Locke envisaged
before the introduction of money - a rural idyll where no one infringed on the rights
of another, and differences between individuals arose exclusively from how hard each

5
worked. Quite apart from the qualifications of slavery and centralized states, this
communal land tenure permitted relations of coercion between chiefs and commoners.
Colonial policies precipitated men's out-migration and prompted land
alienation and the inequitable distribution of land. They explain to some extent the
erosion of men's roles and responsibilities for clearing land and grazing livestock.
Colonialism favoured private ownership over communal land tenure, and
family labour over waged work. Production of export crops for the modern world
could build on traditional African relations of production. One of my arguments is
that a commitment to peasant production arose in the course of colonial rule. It was
not dominant in earlier colonial thinking, which by contrast assumed the development
of both wage labour and private property in land as normal elements in the expansion
of colonial trade. The commodity-producing peasantry was largely a product of
colonialism. Neither the idealized version, which informed colonial policies, nor the
more complex reality which troubled local administrators, existed at the time of
colonization. Commodity production certainly pre-dated colonialism, but the relations
under which it operated were varied and relied more extensively on slave labour than
the first officials liked to admit.
The colonizers regarded themselves as agents of change. The colonial
powers developed modern export systems, infrastructure and education facilities that
were necessary to make the whole colonization venture profitable. The
commercialization of land, labour and products gave a specific money value to
activities that had been previously used in social matters. In pre-colonial Africa,
farmers and peasants were producing for either their own use or to trade for other
goods though the concept of production for the global market did not exist for them.
Later on, the concept of rent seeking was introduced in Africa. It is a type of
behaviour associated with interest groups in heavily regulated economies. In
economics, rent seeking is an attempt to derive economic rent by manipulating the
social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than adding
value. It involves costs, such as expenditures, in getting laws passed by government.
Even in those parts of West Africa correctly regarded as more homogeneous,
such as parts of Eastern Nigeria, power structures existed which gave chiefs and
elders extensive control over women and younger men. Though distinctions in wealth
were minimal, it was the elders who controlled the movement of women and the
access of men to marriage, and who dictated contributions to the communal labour of
weeding common land, clearing bush, and maintaining paths.
Europeans brought two institutions to Africa: plantation agriculture and
private property rights. Plantation agriculture required more land than was utilized by
the average African farmer and increased the demand for labor services. On the other
hand, private property rights replaced the communal ownership systems.
Colonizers divided the land and set up property rights. The colonial police
provided the coercive force needed to prevent the Africans from reclaiming their
rights on the land.
Europeans invested in resource extraction. The private side focused on
exporting the resources, while the public side chose to invest in education, health and
infrastructure. The building of roads and railways to carry goods to Europe, as well as
other measures, were considered beneficial for Africas development. However, the
truth is not quite this. Europe conquered Africa primarily to benefit itself, not to uplift
it. Europes goal was to accelerate its own development at the expense of others.
Conclusion

6
 Finally, European colonialist, owing to their land policy, made land more
important than labour upturning the existing status quo in the Africa without
Europeans. Land was the most accessible of all factors of production in pre-colonial
East and West Africa with huge land laying fallow for farmers, colonial policies de-
emphasized the role of labour, which in turn affected the economics of agriculture and
redefined the concept of wealth. The most important factor of production in Pre-
Colonial Africa was labour because it was scarce and land was freely available,
therefore anyone who owned a large number of hands to work with was considered
rich. Colonial land reform affected the mode in which African farmers ply their trade,
although this boosted agricultural output in Africa, this growth only served the
interest of colonial overlords. In all, colonial land reforms altered whom Africans
regarded as a wealthy man, as the control of people, which was a sign of wealth in
pre-colonial Africa paved way for the control of land as a paradigm for measuring
wealth in colonial Africa.
In all, it is important to note that Africa was developing along the lines of its
local peculiarities but Europeans came with their air of superiority to impose how
they do things in Africa, so long as it promote their interest. It has been over fifty
years that most African countries have gained independence, the colonial structures
and legacies should be abandoned to build an Africa that would grow on its own
terms.

7
Endnotes

1 P. F. M. McLoughlin, African Food Production Systems, (Baltimore: 1970), 16-17.

2
J. K. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 166.
3
S. H. Hymer, "Economic Forms in Pre-Colonial Ghana", Journal of Economic
History, Vol. 31, No. 1, (1970), p. 33.
4
N. P. Miracle, Agriculture in the Congo Basin, (Madison, First Touch Pub., 1967), p.
33.
5
W. Oyemakinde, The Structure of West African Economy, Economic History of
West Africa, ed. G. O. Ogunremi and E. K. Faluyi, (Ibadan: Rex Charles, 1996), 7.
6
J. O. Abiodun, Urban Growth and Problems in Metropolitan Lagos, Urban Studies
11 (1974): 341.
7
A. Olukoju, Population Pressure, Housing and Sanitation in West Africas Premier
Port City: Lagos, 1900-1939, The Great Circle 15, no. 2 (1993): 91.
8
Oyemakinde, The Structure of West African Economy.
9
G. K. Helleiner, Peasant Agriculture, Government and Economic Growth in Nigeria,
(Illinois: Homewood, 1966), 55.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
T. C. Rayner, Land Tenure in West Africa, A Report by the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office, 1897.
13
Ibid.
14
S. E. Carter and E. L. Crowley, Agrarian Change and Changing Relations Between
Toil and Soil in Maragoli, Western Kenya (1900-1994), (London: 2000), 37.
15 Hymer, "Economic Forms in Pre-Colonial Ghana", 34.
16
Rayner, Land Tenure in West Africa,
17
Ibid.
18 C. Wrigley, Speculations On The Economic Prehistory Of Africa, Journal of

African History 1, no. 2 (1960): 197.

19 W. Oyemakinde, The Structure of West African Economy.
20 Ibid.
21 W. H. Barker, Economic Geography of West Africa, The Geographical

Association 10, no. 4 (1920): 169.