p Agriculture is the basis of the economies of most of the independent African countries, a main sphere of their material production. Despite the massive migration of the rural population to the towns and the relatively rapid industrial development over recent decades, nearly 75 per cent of the gainfully employed population in developing Africa are still engaged in agriculture. In some countries, the figure exceeds 80 or even 90 per cent.

p There are huge vacant territories in Africa that can be used for agricultural production. According to FAO figures, Africa accounts for 23.3 per cent of the world’s arable land, whereas its population makes up only some 10 per cent of the world total. Besides, a large part of the land not considered arable today might well become so if appropriate land-reclamation measures were taken.

p In the period of colonial dependence, Africa’s best land was expropriated from the indigenous population by white colonists and plantation companies. Under the pressure of the local administration and Western monopolies, almost all agricultural commodity production was geared to growing the export crops required by the metropolitan and other industrially developed capitalist countries. At the same time, the crops needed for local consumption were mostly grown using the most primitive hand tools and archaic agrotechnical techniques. To cultivate small plots, even in those areas where there are no land tenure restrictions, peasants have to simplify their crop-growing technique to the maximum, because they are short of time even for 188 doing the minimum amount of work. Most farms employ no means for land fertility restoration, crop rotation is not practised, and mineral fertilisers are too expensive.

p In the 1960s and early 1970s, Africa’s farm-produce output grew only slightly faster or even slower than the population. As a result, most African countries are unable to feed themselves, so they have to import some $3 billion-worth of foodstuffs annually. The all-round development of agriculture to raise the output of farm produce stood high in African national economic development plans for the second half of the 1970s, while in some countries it was considered the top priority. Yet to cope with this task some very intricate socio-economic problems had to be resolved, huge investments made and modern technology introduced in agriculture on a comprehensive basis. Outmoded land cultivation methods are still widely used in many African countries. Having no other means of preserving soil fertility, the peasants plough up their fields and leave them fallow for several years, until their fertility is restored by the natural’vegetation. This system results in a non-productive use of the limited arable land resources. Long-fallow lands are out of use for a period two or three times longer than the period they are cultivated, so as little as 25-30 per cent of the arable land can be tilled every year.

p New cultivated areas are also developed by felling or burning out forests. Tree roots are left because the new plot is usually abandoned a few years later. African peasants only remove the trees and shrubs that grow on the surface. Local fires caused by the burning out of the bush or savanna sometimes spread over large areas, occasionally engulfing human settlements, and harm forest resources.

p Despite Africa’s impressive head of livestock, the share of animal produce in its food balance is extremely small because of the animals’ exceptionally low meat and milk productivity. Traditional pastures are exhausted en masse; forests are being destroyed; land erosion is progressing and the top-soil becoming impoverished. Whatever Africa’s potential farm produce, it is not utilised because the shortage^ of transport and storage facilities and the absence of processing plants makes it difficult to market the produce. Under these conditions, the peasants are compelled to sell their produce as fast as possible, which results in a massive supply on the market and an ensuing sharp drop in prices. 189 This makes it unprofitable for the peasants to expand their commodity production.

p After winning independence, some African countries began lo implement deep-going socio-economic changes. They are doing away with Hie vestiges of foreign and feudal land tenure, and have eradicated or weakened the dominance of the middlemen, big merchants and money-lenders who mercilessly exploited the broad peasant masses.

p In many African countries, recent years have seen the state come to play a more important role in the development of agriculture. Government organisations sponsor the construction of hydrotechnical facilities and irrigation systems, organise state, pilot and model farms, improve the marketing apparatus and expand agrotechnical services.

The newly free countries of Africa are making considerable efforts to raise their agricultural production, yet for quite a time they will still be interested in receiving economic and technological assistance from economically developed countries, above all the USSR and other socialist states, which render it on mutually beneficial and equitable terms.