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Access, control and use of resources in African agriculture: An Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Sara Berry
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Abstract

Recent literature on the agrarian crisis in Africa questions the adequacy of a technocratic approach to explaining and alleviating the crisis. Bringing about sustained growth in African agricultural output and rural incomes will require more than a technological breakthrough. Farmers' capacity to employ improved technology and to increase output and investment depends on their access to productive resources—broadly defined to include not only human, financial and material inputs, but also the knowledge and institutional means to use them effectively. To advance knowledge of the causes of the agrarian crisis and strengthen capacity to develop meaningful measures to alleviate it, it is necessary to understand the conditions under which African farmers gain access to productive resources and the ways in which conditions of access affect resource use and agricultural performance.

Type
Access, control and use of resources in African agriculture
Information
Africa , Volume 59 , Issue 1: Access, control and use of resources in African Agriculture , January 1989 , pp. 1 - 5
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1989

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References

Notes

1 See, for example, Berry, Sara, ‘The food crisis and agrarian change in Africa: a review essay’, African Studies Review, 27 (2), 1984: 59–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richards, Paul, ‘Ecological change and the politics of African land use’, African Studies Review, 26(2), 1983: 1–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Coping with Hunger: hazard and experiment in an African rice-farming system, (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986); Jane Guyer (ed.). Feeding African Cities, (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press for the International African Institute, 1987).

1 I am grateful to Paul Richards for raising this point, and I am responsible for the treatment of it herein.