Are there peasants in Africa?

This question is not academic, though academics have contributed extensively to the discussion. Once seen as a transitional stage, peasants and peasant societies have emerged as a focus for research that, to an increasing extent, cuts across disciplines, continents, and historical periods. This developing academic interest is conveying new insights into the relationships between rural dwellers and their political and social systems.

Africa is a continent without peasants, so the conventional wisdom has stated. The syllogistic reasoning runs as follows: cultivable land is relatively abundant, at least in most parts of tropical Africa, resulting in a relative absence of population pressures. Patterns of communal land tenure remain the norm in rural areas. Hence, given the absence of both pressure on the land and individual land title, Africa lacks peasants—since there are neither landlords to collect nor rents to be collected. “Tribal” feelings of solidarity, it is further asserted, preclude the emergence of the peasantry as a class cutting across diverse groups. Finally, the absence in many parts of tropical Africa of cities and structured states meant that cultivators rather than peasants were common. Let us look briefly at these arguments.