| | This book contains a comparative analysis of sharecropping associated with the production of export crops in four areas of Africa: abusa contracts in the cocoa farming areas of southern Ghana, musharaka contracts with tenants on the Gezira scheme in Sudan, seahlolo and lihalefote arrangements between foodgrain farmers in Lesotho and sama manila in the groundnut producing areas of Senegambia. Robertson's argument is that sharecropping is not necessarily a repressive, inefficient and inequitable system of production, nor can it usefully be described as 'pre-capitalist' or 'quasi feudal' . Sharecropping is a relationship in which parties combine resources in a productive enterprise in such a way as to spread the risks of production when many factors, such as weather, markets or official policy, are not under their immediate control. It is a system by which the processes of production can be temporarily extended beyond the limits of the household. Its virtue lies in its flexibility in convening and transforming the productive resources available to the partners which makes it superior to theoretically 'more advanced' productive arrangements such as fixed land rents and wage labour. |
