African agricultural productivity and the transatlantic slave trade: evidence from Senegambia in the nineteenth century

Abstract

Agriculture has played a central role in Africa's long-term economic development. Previous research has argued that the low productivity of African economies has posed significant challenges to African efforts to produce an agricultural surplus or to develop commercial agriculture. Low agricultural productivity has also served as a key explanation for the transatlantic slave trade, on the basis that it was more profitable to export humans overseas than to grow and export produce. However, the field has suffered from a lack of comparable empirical evidence. This article contributes to this field by presenting quantitative data on historical land and labour productivity in Africa, from a case study of the agricultural productivity of Senegambia in the early nineteenth century. Focusing on five key crops, our results suggest that both land and labour productivity was lower in Senegambia than it was in all other parts of the world for which we have found comparable data. This article thus lends support to claims that stress ecological factors as one of the main determinants of Africa's historical development.

Maize and Precolonial Africa

“…Section 3 provides a background of the key New World crops that were introduced into Africa during the Columbian Exchange, highlights why maize is the most likely source of an agricultural productivity shock, and describes our strategy for identifying the effects of maize, our data, and the specification we use in our empirical analysis. Section 4 presents our empir-6 Our work is also related to that of Rönnbäck and Theodoridis (2018) who present a case study examining another hypothesis that links agricultural productivity to the slave trades. This hypothesis, first put forth by Hopkins (1973), suggests that the slave trades were driven in part by the relatively low level of agricultural productivity in Africa when compared to the Americas.…”

The Role of Agriculture in the Formation of Macroeconomic Indicators of National Economy

“…But at the same time, the growth of agriculture is the growth impulse for other sectors of the economy, especially for the processing sector. Studies based on the example of African countries show that the low level of productivity and capital in agriculture in the historical aspect was the cause of slave trade because it was more profitable to export people abroad than to grow and export products (Rönnbäck and Theodoridis, 2019). These are of course extreme cases, but temporary studies make it possible to identify such cases and emphasize the relevance of the rational distribution of resources, from the point of view of social justice in society as well.…”

“…In order to improve methods of analysis, it should be noted that climatic conditions and environmental factors are of great importance in the development of agriculture. In many ways, they determine historical development of countries (Rönnbäck and Theodoridis, 2019). It is necessary to take into account these indicators when studying agriculture.…”

“…Special importance is given to farming in the countries where living and climatic conditions of people are not good enough, and where there are food problems. Thus, farming plays a central role in Africa's long-term economic development (Rönnbäck and Theodoridis, 2019). According to the opinion of scientists, farming growth in African countries is more efficient in reducing poverty than the development of nonfarm branches (Dorosh and Thurlow, 2018).…”

How the International Slave Trades Underdeveloped Africa

“…Variables omitted from the analysis could be positively correlated with both slave exports and the probability of adopting slavery. Lagerlof (2009), for example, proposes a model where improved agricultural productivity and increased population density make slavery a more profitable institution for elites to consider, although Ronnback and Theodoridis (2018) provide evidence that labor productivity in the Senegambia region was low during this period. In Lagerlof's model, the additional cost of policing slavery is offset by the opportunity to pay slaves less than their marginal product.…”