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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Tropical Africa: Interaction of Factors Related to the Socio-Economic Formations and to Ecology in the Development Toward the Industrial Society
Author:Onischuk, Sergej V.ISNI
Year:1995
Periodical:St. Petersburg Journal of African Studies
Issue:5
Pages:89-100
Language:English
Geographic term:Subsaharan Africa
Subjects:dual economy
labour
agricultural history
Development and Technology
Economics and Trade
Abstract:In order to assess the influence of ecological factors on social formations, it is necessary first to consider how they interact with demographic and technological factors in the historical process of the development of productive forces. Priority should be given to the study of agrarian productive forces as these are the most exposed to the influence of ecological factors. Moreover, the level of development of agrarian productive forces largely predetermines the transfer of manpower from agriculture to nonagrarian branches of production, an important condition of transition from the precapitalist to the capitalist formation. In tropical Africa, where integration of agriculture and cattle breeding was absent, intensification of agriculture was involutional. Intensification of farm labour was accompanied by a drop in labour productivity, and there was a low rate of labour transfer from agriculture to the nonagricultural sector. Production increased mainly through extension of the area under cultivation. Analysis of the relations between population density, total labour expenditure and labour productivity indicates that obstacles to the technological transformation of an African farm, in particular the introduction of the plough, are rooted in the high compensatory barrier in agriculture. Bibliogr., note. (This article was first published in Russian in 1993.)
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