Imperialism and Development
★★★★★
★★★★★
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A01=Nicholas Westcott
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
agricultural history
Author_Nicholas Westcott
automatic-update
British Government
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=GTF
Category=HBJH
Category=HBTQ
Category=NHH
Colonial development
colonial interventions
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
development economics
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
Groundnut Scheme
Language_English
mechanized farming
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
softlaunch
Tanganyika
Product details
- ISBN 9781847012593
- Weight: 606g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 18 Sep 2020
- Publisher: James Currey
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days
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A compelling exploration of one of the most ill-advised and calamitous interventions in colonial development history.
As colonial development took off after the Second World War, in the context of national food shortages, Britain's Labour Government initiated the Groundnut Scheme, an extraordinarily ambitious project to convert 3 million acres of bush in Tanganyika into the largest mechanized groundnut farm in the world. It was to prove the largest, most expensive and most disastrous development scheme ever undertaken by the British Government. Never previously analysed in depth, the author draws on a wide range of sources to discuss the political dynamics that drove the Groundnut Scheme forward, despite the gravest doubts of agriculturalists and economists, why it went wrong, and what its impact has been since on the practice of economic development.
Initially employing the United Africa Company as agent, the government set up an Overseas Food Corporation to manage the Groundnut Scheme as an example of socialist development in Africa. Army surplus kit and demobbed soldiers poured into the country and were sent up the railway line to Kongwa to beat the bush. By the time the effort was abandoned in 1950, costs had risen to a colossal 36 million - equivalent to over 1 billion today - and yet almost no groundnuts had been exported. The prototype of many large-scale, government-run, high-cost development projects that failed to deliver, the Groundnut Scheme was perhaps the first major failure of agricultural development in Africa, and its legacy in development practice still with us today.
Nicholas Westcott is Director of the Royal African Society and Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. His previous posts include Managing Director, Middle East and North Africa, and prior to that Managing Director for Africa, European External Action Service (EU), Brussels.
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