Local and long-distance labour migrants were an important element in commercial groundnut farming along the Gambia river during the mid-nineteenth century, well before colonial partition. Seasonal and periodic circulation of migrant farmers had prior equivalents in the movements of traders across the Western Sudan, especially those associated with slaving. Traders were important in the development of groundnut cultivation and the initiation of migrant farming, when they realized the groundnut trade could be a valuable replacement for the abolished slave trade. In the pre-colonial era migrant farmers payed ‘custom’ to local rule for the land they farmed. This arrangement eventually gave way to a system of shared labour-time with individual host farmers in return for land. This change was accelerated by the abolition and decline in domestic slavery, which provided a new pattern for the Strange Farmer system. Thus the mobility of population in the Western Sudan, together with the evolution of the Strange Farmer system, provided vital marginal inputs of labour in an area of low population densities and facilitated the development of groundnut farming during the era of legitimate trade.
The article explores the nature and development of commercial food farming during the 1990s around Sokoto, and its reliance on a floating labour force, something which is not unique to that city but is part of Nigeria's nationwide farming boom, focused on urban and regional markets. The evidence collected from the Sokoto hinterland suggests a new buoyancy in commercial agriculture and an inflow of investment, as under the present economic and political conditions the elites and managerial classes have moved into farming as private and state contracting has proved less rewarding. Large-scale grain and fadama farming and food trading have a long history, but now they are embedded in new analytical categories which indicate a strengthening of capitalist relations of production, and there are signs that a wide spectrum of interests believe capital accumulation can be achieved in the agricultural sector. There are big profits in food fanning provided the farmer has sufficient capital to invest and can meet recurrent labour costs. In the 1990s medium-size farms, especially on irrigated lowland represent a significant shift towards capitalist agriculture, at least in the short term. The introduction of motorised pumps via the World Bank's Agricultural Development Projects marks a substantial innovation in irrigated farming, which also has a long history and has yielded food surpluses traded over a wide area. It is plain that the farmers who have benefited most from partial mechanisation and the surge in food prices are the better-off small commodity producers in the villages, often linked by descent or clientage with traditional rulers and/or politicians, together with the new urban managerial classes.
K. Swindell — Population et agriculture dans le bassin Sokoto-Rima (nord-ouest du Nigeria) : étude de l'intervention politique, de l'adaptation et du changement, 1800-iq8o. En dépit d'une pluviosité médiocre et irrégulière, cette zone s'avère être, depuis le début du xixe siècle, une des plus intensément cultivées en Afrique tropicale. Son développement débute avec l'installation à Sokoto, après le jihâd peul, du centre administratif du califat. L'intensification de l'agriculture résulte de la disponibilité d'une main-d'œuvre importante (libre ou servile), de l'utilisation de gadoues et de fumier, et d'une demande urbaine croissante de produits vivriers. Aujourd'hui comme hier, les cultivateurs pallient l'irrégularité des précipitations par un large éventail de techniques culturales, l'exploitation complémentaire des zones inondées comme exondées, et l'irrigation en saison sèche. Pendant la période coloniale, la région est devenue économiquement périphérique par rapport au développement des cultures de rente dans le Sud-Est, pour lesquelles elle a fourni une main-d'œuvre abondante. Depuis l'indépendance, on a entrepris d'améliorer l'agriculture grâce à des plans d'irrigation à grande échelle dont la réalisation devrait modifier l'écologie agricole du bassin Sokoto-Rima.
Opening ParagraphColonial rule brought about significant changes in the regional economies of West Africa, which had already been influenced by Europeans through the slave trade and the succeeding period of legitimate trade. Colonial administration extended the cultivation of export crops, introduced new systems of taxation and currencies, reorientated trading networks, and introduced policies aimed at ending domestic slavery. Levels of population mobility also increased, especially in the agricultural sector, as the seasonal redistribution of labour became an integral part of the production of export crops. This paper looks at the origins and development of dry season labour migration from Sokoto in north-western Nigeria, a migratory system which is generally accepted as being a product of colonialism. The argument takes the opening years of colonial rule in Sokoto and tries to uncover the nature and type of migration which obtained at this time. It is suggested that early migration was influenced by the economy of the central Sudan of the late nineteenth century, and there was an overlap, rather than a sharp break, between pre-colonial and colonial economies. The likely influence of pre-colonial structures is especially pertinent in an area which was the centre of the Sokoto caliphate, the largest and most populous state in nineteenth-century West Africa. But, in the early 1930s, dry season migration changed as the volume of migrants increased and their destination altered; it is the identification of this point of change which distinguishes the early period of migration and the changing impact of colonial policies.
Opening ParagraphIn 1976, Sokoto became the capital of the newly created Sokoto State, one of nineteen comprising Federal Nigeria. This caliphal city and former colonial provincial town subsequently experienced an exponential growth of population from some 80,000 to around 200,000 by 1980. The city expanded physically into the surrounding countryside and new buildings and infrastructures absorbed large areas of farmland, and encircled several villages. This urban advance into the countryside was exacerbated by the fact that it took place within a densely populated area of annual upland cultivation, dissected by tracts of dry-season irrigated floodland. Not surprisingly, access and rights to farmland have become highly charged and sensitive issues. The peripheries and hinterlands of many Nigerian towns have become arenas of conflict and change, where state expropriation and private accumulation have dispossessed and impoverished rural people. The state has taken over land for institutional use or agricultural development projects, while urban and rural capital have accumulated land for speculative building on the edges of cities and for farming within the surrounding countryside. The increased numbers of landless and, more important, the land-poor constitute new kinds and degrees of rural poverty.
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