Economic Development and Subsistence Farming: The Case of the Mende of Upper Bambara Chiefdom, Sierra Leone

Abstract

Neo-Marxists and other dependency theorists explain declining domestic food production in Sub-Saharan Africa as the result of increasing production of export crops. This paper examines the Mende agrarian household in Upper Bambara Chiefdom, Sierra Leone, at three points in time (circa 1900, 1945, and 1967) and argues for the reverse causality: the Mende have become commercial farmers of cocoa and coffee because they now lack sufficient labor for self-sufficiency in staple food production.