Abstract: | 'Nature' - soils, the weather and even population does not in itself explain the agrarian crisis in Africa today. Neither does the alleged backwardness of African agriculture nor the assumed constraints of the so-called peasant mode of production. These explanations fail to provide convincing reasons for the food crisis because they are not historical. By placing the crisis in its correct historical and global contexts and showing the underlying role of Africa's postcolonial class configuration in reproducing it, the author indicates that Africa's hunger is a symptom of deep social and economic problems. Technological and market solutions hold little promise as long as power relations within Africa itself as well as in the wider international capitalist system are not radically transformed. App., notes, ref. |