Better Results By Utilising

African Groundnut Scheme

Under Fire

Better Results By Utilising Existing Facilities

A SPECIAL correspondent in the August issue of the “British Trade Journal and Export World” is of the opinion that the East African groundnut scheme is a missed opportunity, in so far as help ing native and European agriculture and getting results in terms of food produc tion, is concerned.

In the last 30 years, he says, East Africans generally have responded well to our efforts to get them to grow cash crops with the result that considerable quanti ties of cotton, groundnuts and coffee were exported. But, generally, agricultural development of the three British East African territories (Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda) have been ham-strung by the fact that there was never enough money to provide trained staff to carry out the work of teaching the natives Western methods of agriculture. In many cases, one or two Europeans and 20 so-called native instructors have been appointed to areas the size of Wales— the natives, who are without qualifica tions, receiving only from £l2 to £4B per year in salary.

For years, conscientious agricultural workers have cried out for more money and staff to teach and guide and increase production and have longed for the time when the Home Government would wake up to the potentialities of these overseas territories.

But when the dream was at lasyt realised —what happened? Twenty-three million pounds were voted, not for these starved Colonial Agricultural Departments but for the Overseas Food Corporation which will rip up distant uninhabited bush country which the overwhelming majority of the five million natives will never see.

It is to be wondqred why the technical departments of the East African govern ments did not protest; or why the Euro pean settlers and planters did not cry out for subsidised assistance to be given to them in return for the production they could so easily have brought into being.

It could be that the groundnut scheme was too rushed, and that those who should have been most interested were not aware of what was happening until too late.

Had the money and present staff em ployed by the groundnut scheme been shared by the Agricultural Departments of the three territories it would have been possible to put native agriculture on a sound basis and obtain a total export of nuts of over 50,000 tons in 1947 and 100,000 tons in 1948, from native production alone Had the European settlers and planters been assisted with guidance, fertilisers and machinery they alone could have produced a quantity of nuts equal to that of the

native population, and in the same time.

The production of groundnuts by ex perienced farmers could have been in creased in leaps and bounds and would not

have met with the setbacks and the im possible targets of the present scheme.

The muddle that has occurred is typical of Socialist planning everywhere.