Food supply and the state: the history and social organization of the rice trade in Kisangani, Zaire
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Abstract
In Kisangani, as in other parts of Africa subject to
political parasitism and economic chaos, people have had
to draw on many channels of access to resources in order
to survive. This pattern of shifting strategies militates
against sustained investment in food supply and thus is a
major factor in the food crisis in Africa.
Thirteen months of fieldwork in the city of Kisangani and
the surrounding subregion of Tshopo revealed how
constantly changing regulations, inflation and poor
infrastructure forced merchants and farmers into
diversification and made long-term investment in rice
production and trade risky. Uncertainty in the supply of
basic resources such as credit, seeds, fuel, spare parts
and produce sacks was linked to the draining of foreign
exchange and development funds toward the nonproductive
activities of the political élite.
Controls on agricultural production such as the forced
cultivation of rice led to suppression of African farmers'
initiative. Trade in rice was in the hands of expatriate
monopsonies until the 1970s, but the indigenization of
expatriate businesses and plantations (zairianization)
only served to isolate further the rural areas devastated
by the Simba rebellion of the mid-1960s. In addition,
zairianization fostered parasitism and discouraged
investment.
In the 1980s, farmers were blocked from organizing their
own markets and cooperatives and farm labor was relegated
telwomen. Large traders agreed to maintain controls on
trade which perpetuated the bureaucracy in order to keep
ahead of the mass of mobile small traders. Government
programs, and approaches such as privatization and
liberalization, initiated by Zaire's external investors,
did not change the terms of access to resources within the
Zairian economy and, thus, agricultural productivity did
not increase. These findings support the theory that
multiple survival strategies generated by economic chaos
and circumvention of and collaboration with the state lead
to declining agricultural productivity. This view has
implications for agricultural development policy.
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