Obviously an adequate food base is an essential prerequisite for development. Unless this need can be met there can be little hope for successful economic, social and political development. Agricultural development in most countries is a necessary precondition for economic development unless they are fortunate enough to have other resources which can be exported to finance food imports. Even in the latter case such imports would detract from the accumulation of capital necessary for industrialization and would be unwise from a developmental standpoint, unless the country did not have suitable conditions for agriculture. Comparative economic advantage may dictate the utilization of cropland for the production of non-food agricultural products such as cotton, jute or rubber, but this practice is economically sound only if the country has sufficient food cropland to meet local needs or if the export of non-food agricultural products generates sufficient earnings to offset the cost of food imports. Thus the food question is inextricably entwined with the general problems of agricultural and economic development.

The importance of agriculture to development is not disputed in the developmental literature. Opposing views, however, have emerged as to its proper role in development. Perhaps the most prevalent approach in older, developed countries might be called the integrative view. Agriculture is seen as a more or less equal partner with industry and other sectors of society. As agricultural efficiency and production increase, a release of labor from the agricultural sector requires a reciprocal ability on the part of the industrial sector to absorb such labor. If this release-absorption interaction is not coordinated developmental problems are experienced (Reynolds, 1975: Ch. 1). In countries with the integrative view, agriculture often foots the major burden for the capitalization of industrialization as in the case of the United States and Japan.

While the proximal causes of drought in the Sahel and northeast Africa are known to be due to failure of seasonal rains, possibly linked with long-range climatic changes (Tanaka et al., 1975; Winstanley, 1973; Kelley, 1975; Lamb, 1977), the more persistent problem of human adaptation and survival in increasingly man-made environments during natural disasters is only gradually being appreciated. In recent years emphasis has been placed on man's activities as the major cause of rangeland degradation and famines. It is becoming increasingly clear that drought and famine do not always reflect cause-effect relationships and that the two may coexist independently and often become linked only through politico-economic conditions (Wisner, 1977; Lofchie, 1975; Ball, 1976; Franke and Chasin, 1980: 5; Grossman, 1981; Grove, 1979). In Ethiopia the famine in highland areas in 1972-74 was closely linked to the prerevolution feudal regime (Fitzgerald, 1980; Hussein, 1976; Koehn, 1979; Shepherd, 1975). In the lowlands Bondestam (1974), Cohen (1977) and Flood (1976) associated famine with recent encroachment of pastures by irrigation schemes and with reduced river flooding caused by construction of Koka Dam. However, interaction of physico-environmental and politico-economic factors resulting in the 1972-73 drought and famine and the adaptive responses of the pastoralists in the Awash Valley remain to be studied in depth. The objective of this paper is to examine these relationships among the 130,000 Afar and the 16,000 Kereyu, Arsi and Jile Oromo, the four pastoralist groups traditionally inhabiting the Awash floodplains. The ongoing irrigation development in the Awash Valley with World Bank assistance and the recurrence of drought since 1973 (“Ethiopia”, 1981; Kloos, 1977: 215) make this a timely study. The floodplain ecosystem, although for centuries providing much-needed grazing resources during the dry season, has been relatively neglected in the study of human ecology in Africa (Scudder, 1980: 383). Field work was carried out in 1972/73, 1975/76 and 1982. This was part of disease ecology studies of schistosomiasis and other parasitic infections, irrigation development and migration patterns in the Awash Valley and surrounding highlands (Kloos and Lemma, 1974; Kloos, 1977; Kloos et al., 1981; Kloos, in press) and of a cholera vaccination program in the lower Awash Valley.

Statistical generalizations about peasant behavior in rural Africa that fail to distinguish among kinds of peasants may mask important exceptions. Relationships that hold for the peasantry as a unit may not hold for major subgroups of peasants. For example, there may be significant behavioral differences between rich and poor or male and female peasants. Knowledge of sub-group deviation is needed to build meaningful theory and solve practical problems of rural development.

A few years ago I published an article in this journal titled “Peasant Participation in Communal Farming: the Tanzanian Experience” (1977) which derived a series of hypotheses about peasants and peasant behavior in communal agriculture from a survey of ujamaa villages and villagers. Although it reported differences between men and women in the degree of their participation, it made no further analysis of differences between these sub-groups. The present study seeks to overcome such a deficiency by: (1) examining in more detail the differences between men and women in the degree of their participation in communal production, and (2) determining whether there are significant differences between them in the relationship of their characteristics and attitudes to the degree of their participation. The findings will contribute to an assessment of the scope of applicability of the hypotheses and to an understanding of the factors accounting for differences in sub-group response to communal agriculture.

This village level study in Senegal seeks to improve the understanding of peasant behavior in developing countries. Policy makers designing programs for and interventions in the agricultural sector should benefit from an enhanced understanding of the workings of rural grain transactions. The study attempts (1) to provide a summary of principal producer grain transactions and (2) to discuss in greater detail millet marketing in rural Senegal. The methodology presented and conclusions advanced should encourage other researchers and Third World governments to recognize that evaluations of market process are vital to design effective agricultural policies.

For example, many West African countries have chosen to rely on national marketing organizations instead of using the private trader to commercialize food grains. Such reliance stems from their belief that the private market is noncompetitive and that public sector intervention will lead to efficiency gains. The conclusions of this study show that policy makers should first test the assumption of noncompetitive behavior before assuming that intervention will provide greater efficiency.

The first section of this paper provides some background information on Senegal agriculture. Next comes a summary of producer transactions. An analysis of the millet marketing process appears in the third section, while the last section indicates some policy implications.

Rural development in parts of Nigeria is a function of two comparable, if not, coordinate variables: the government and the townsmen residing in the urban areas. The government provides the access roads, runs schools and health clinics or hospitals built by the townsmen. These urban migrants, as we shall henceforth refer to them for reasons to be explained later, in addition to providing other infrastructural facilities, are the political and economic backbone of the rural communities as well as their source of modernization.

Smock (1971) dwelt upon the political and modernity role of ethnic unions in Nigerian cities. She showed how these unions “facilitated the accommodation between tradition and modernity in the Eastern political system…,” linked “traditional commitments with the modern political and administrative structures,” and prevented discontinuities, a characteristic feature of transitional political systems. For Smock, urban migrants, successfully manipulated tradition to politically modernize their rural villages. Little (1970) reasoned slightly differently. He saw the major functions of urban associations as the adaptation of traditional institutions and the integration of institutions whose raison d'etre is alien to traditional culture. These associations nurtured political leaders and the formation of political parties resulting in modernist ambition and nationalist aspirations for self-government. Meillassoux (1968) perceived urban migrants associations, or voluntary associations as he referred to them, as the mechanism by which the migrants approached the problems of social security and created new social networks. Meillassoux also saw a clear nexus between the norms of these associations and their rural origins in terms of their derivation, their roots, and their purposes.

It is mainly from this rural-urban link that we shall approach our present discussion. This paper shall also show that the psychological and sociophysical condition in the urban area, the acceptance that the city is a place for austere living and endurance of rough conditions all combine to prepare psychically urban migrants for their role in the economic maintenance and improvement of their home rural communities.

At half past two, early in the morning of Thursday, November 22nd, 1962, 250 men carrying axes, pangas and various self-made weapons left the Mbekweni location and marched on Paarl, a small town in South Africa's Western Cape. On the outskirts of the city the marchers formed two groups, one destined for the prison where the intention was to release prisoners, the other to make an attack on the police station. Before the marchers reached Paarl's boundaries, the police received warning of their approach from a bus driver. Police patrols set out and one of these encountered the marchers In Paarl's Main Street. Having lost the advantage of surprise, the marchers in Main Street began to throw stones at cars, shop windows, and any police vans which they came across on their way to the police station. The police at the station were armed with Sten guns and rifles in anticipation of the attack. At ten minutes past four between seventy-five and a hundred men advanced on the station throwing stones. When the attackers came within twenty-five yards of the station the police opened fire killing two. The marchers then broke into smaller groups and several were arrested or shot during their retreat. Some of the men who had taken part in the assault on Paarl police station met up in Loop Street with the group that was marching on the prison. These men regrouped and embarked on an attack of the inhabitants of Loop Street, breaking into houses and assaulting people in the street. A seventeen year old girl and a young man were killed and four other people wounded. According to police evidence, five insurgents were killed and fourteen wounded. By five o'clock, the Paarl uprising was over; police reinforcements had arrived from Cape Town and the men from Mbekweni were in full retreat.

This paper has two purposes. One is to provide an analysis of the causes of the Paarl disturbance. In the literature on black South African opposition movements, the events in Paarl are scarcely mentioned. This is at least partly because the participants were not politically very sophisticated or articulate; they are consequently difficult to write about. The neglect of the events in Paarl can also be attributed to a bias in much of the relevant scholarship: the emphasis of historical studies has been on black ideological response and has tended to focus on the most fluent articulants of black aspirations.

Farmers, agricultural scientists and politicians have become very aware of the need to increase agricultural productivity in Africa. While there has been a recognition of diverse factors that can contribute to increased productivity, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on the need to change farm technology. Although the traditional farming system might have satisfied the needs of peasant society, it has not been able to supply the needs of present day Africa. In most African countries, food production has fallen behind demand (Food and Agricultural Organization, 1974). Thus, there has been a great deal of effort to change the farming practices of the peasants through the introduction of new and/or improved farm technology.

Numerous recommendations have emerged from agricultural research stations, universities and international research institutes in Africa, but the majority of African farming continue to rely on their traditional farming practices. It is therefore not surprising that the Association for the Advancement of Agricultural Sciences in Africa (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1975: iii) has concluded: “The lag between knowledge and practice is usually long, but in some parts of Africa it has seemed to be infinite. The value of research findings, however great, remains potential only until they are transmitted to him who will use them in production practices.” As a result of the failure to improve the farmers practices of African peasants, most African countries continue to spend a substantial amount of their earnings on importation of food (Monu, forthcoming).

This paper takes the view that the non-adoption of recommended farm practices in Africa is attributable in part to the strategy adopted in the introduction of farm practices and the research results which have legitimized this strategy. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to review the strategy commonly practiced in Africa and the research associated with it to point out their shortcomings. In addition, the paper suggests an alternative strategy and research approach.