People in the pre-colonial Africa were engaging in mining, hunting and gathering, agriculture, and simple manufacturing. However, agriculture was the most involving among other engagements. This study aims to assess the farming activities among pre-colonial Africans primarily and analyze the various farming techniques used in different regions of the continent.
Many parts of the African continent, had unfavorable environmental conditions for substantial agricultural production and suffered from a shortage of labor. However, Africans were innovative and good at adapting to various environmental conditions. Similarly, to deal with some of these harsh environmental conditions, they had to be flexible in their production systems.[1] Generally, pre-colonial farming in Africa centered crop farming, pastoralism, fishing, and hunting. More importantly, the history of agriculture in Africa particularly West Africa was characterized by inventions, developments, changes, variations, and revolutions regarding the type of tools they used, the farming methods, and the labor employed. Additionally, the storage methods, crops cultivated, the effects of vegetation, and the exchange of the farm produce was also evident in the African agricultural revolution over the years.[2] In pre-colonial Africa, agriculture was attended by regional differences. Thus, regarding the level of the agricultural revolution, the African continent experienced variations between the Neolithic and the stone-age era where man began from wandering and gathering, to using tools such as wood and stone implements to gather food.
As time passed by and he began to settle down, Africans started to plant the gathered food around their living area and thus commencing farming. Significantly, the agricultural developments and evolution were developmental and dynamic in nature as it was continuously changing with time. However, the pre-colonial African agriculture was characterized by significant low technological innovations compared to other parts of the world. Therefore, African farmers relied on simple farming tools such as cutlass, the sickle, digging sticks, and the hoe. More importantly, most of these farming tools that the pre-colonial Africans used remained largely crude, yet they were products of indigenous inventions.[3] Consequently, the use of crude farming methods means that they did not use tractors or pesticides and their farming was at the mercy of the weather and the land. Therefore, minor weather condition changes could have severe effects on agriculture including the animals that they reared and people’s livelihood.
The pre-colonial African land was composed of different vegetative cover such each with its variations such as the rainforest, and the savannah. Similarly, different vegetation’s accounted for different seasons of farm produce and cultivation. Countries in the savannah belt such as Borno, Timbuktu, and Ghana experienced lower rainfall than other areas thereby limiting the agricultural activities.[4] The primary crops cultivated include legumes and cereals, as well as root crops such as sweet potatoes. Some other regions of the savannah grassland were palatable for herding and farming livestock such as cattle, horses, goat, and sheep. In other areas such as the rainforest regions, the Africans grew more root crops such as yam, cassava, and cocoyam.
These variations significantly reflected the physical requirements for the crops within different regions of the continent. Moreover, some regions did both cultivation and animal farming with an overlap of a combination of cereals and crop roots.
However, based on the fact that population density was quite low in various regions because people were spread out, there was plenty of lands although labor was scare. There were no economic incentives for property rights, and conflicts over land were seldom. Consequently, land abundance meant that the pre-colonial Africans could use extensive farming methods. Therefore, they could quickly open up new land in case they needed more farming land whenever they wanted to increase the field size. However, the frames were limited by the small labor force that was available because it was primarily the nuclear or extended family members who would join to farm for their crops or open up new land.[5]
The soil type was another significant aspect that contributed to specific agricultural products or farming methods because it differed from one region to another. Similarly, the African environment was severely hostile in more ways, and some of the factors limited the exploitation of some natural resources include crop pests, animal disease, and thin soils. Diseases and pests were a significant deterrent of farming and they dictated what crops could be grown or what animals could be kept. Due to Africa’s geographical alignment with longitudes, there was more variety of plant species from east to west than from south to north. However, the three primary ecological zones were the highlands, Savannah, and the forest.
Bibliographies
Bradfield, Justin, and Annie R. Antonites. “Bone hoes from the Middle Iron Age, Limpopo Province, South Africa.” Quaternary International 472 (2018): 126-134.
Cherniwchan, Jevan, and Juan Moreno-Cruz. “Maize and precolonial Africa.” Journal of Development Economics 136 (2019): 137-150.
Mlambo, Alois. “African Economic History and Historiography.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. 2018.
[1] Mlambo, Alois. “African Economic History and Historiography.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. 2018.
[2] Cherniwchan, Jevan, and Juan Moreno-Cruz. “Maize and precolonial Africa.” Journal of Development Economics 136 (2019): 137-150.
[3] Bradfield, Justin, and Annie R. Antonites. “Bone hoes from the Middle Iron Age, Limpopo Province, South Africa.” Quaternary International 472 (2018): 126-134.
[4] Mlambo, Alois. “African Economic History and Historiography.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. 2018.
[5] Cherniwchan, Jevan, and Juan Moreno-Cruz. “Maize and precolonial Africa.” Journal of Development Economics 136 (2019): 137-150.