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Agriculture and Industry: a Case-Study of Capitalist Failure in Northern Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

Discussion of industrial activity in capitalist Third-World countries has usually centred on a series of dualistic frameworks, most recently the opposition between the so-called ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors of an economy. Such dichotomies attempt to divide the activities of labour as cleanly as possible into two groups sharing common characteristics. The categories that emerge – modern/traditional, large/small-scale, formal/informal – overlap to a considerable degree because, in effect, they all attempt, with varying crudity, to compare the socio-economic characteristics of those dominant capitalist enterprises which are based on intensive capital, high-level technology, and a large scale of production, with those activities in the economy which are not based on such features. As such, the second category tends to have both negative and residual components.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

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page 441 note 3 During the early 1970s, another scheme was initiated at Gombe that involved plantations with excellent water supplies and large-scale mechanisation, wholly financed and organised by the North-East State. Since the farmers were salaried this gave the Government the sort of hold over them which Cadbury Nigeria had eventually sought. Ironically, the plant closed in 1974 due to management problems, alleged corruption, and contaminated water supplies, thus suggesting that control of the farmers is far from being the solution.

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