Paper short abstract:

In the clash of models over today’s path towards further skewed industrialised development, what are the conceptual and practical lessons from historical experiences in Africa regarding control over land/resources and possibilities for thoroughgoing agrarian transformation?

Paper long abstract:

Analysing access to and control of land both through dimensions of scale and commodification- land and resource grabbing, concentration of land and large-scale capitalist agriculture-- and through social impact, raises big questions over Africa's future. In the framework of the globalised processes of today's world, extremely uneven development and greater socio-economic polarisation are likely to accelerate, driving more people off the land, out of farming and to a mix of diversified but uncertain livelihood strategies in both urban and rural areas.

This paper explores radical experiences in agrarian transformation(s) in the 20th century, from Tanzania and Burkina Faso to a range of redistributive land/agrarian reforms in Zimbabwe or failed market-led ones like South Africa's. It looks at past practical outcomes as well as the theoretical implications for thinking about breaking down the property and patriarchal relations underpinning social organisation: are Africa's rural poor to be reduced to competing for precarious and/or low-paid jobs in increasingly industrialised agriculture that neither feeds the country well nor taps other sections of this labour power, leaving many trapped in impoverished countrysides or peri-urban slums? The 'peasantist vs industrialist' dichotomy may obscure a possible new framework for creating an independent national economy based on a different vision of society as a whole and seeing land-based people as a socially productive and active part of that. Such important debates are returning to the fore within the evident continued harsh realities of the dominant 21st century model of industrialisation for African development.