The Historical Marginalisation of Small-holder Cotton Farmers in the Cotton Value Chain in Western Cotton Growing Area, Tanzania, c. 1920 to 1960

Abstract

This paper uses primary sources from Tanzania National Archives to examine four decades of cotton farming and marketing by local peasants in the Western Cotton Growing Area (WCGA) in British colonial Tanzania mainland. Cotton was essential for the colonial economy so it was promoted and developed through legislations and enforced by the colonial officials and local chiefs that compulsorily fixed peasants into the farming of the crop. Upon harvest, peasant producers sold the produce to Indian traders who had monopoly over most of the profitable sections of the industry such as ginning (processing) and export of the crop. Under such monopoly of the value chain, peasants were perpetually marginalised by traders when selling their cotton. The colonial intervention to address the situation failed or was undermined by some officials. At the end of the 1940s, peasants and other stakeholders in the production chain took initiatives against marginalisation and from 1953 they eventually wrestled merchants’ monopoly through cooperatives and gained control over the lucrative cotton value chain. This paper discusses this struggle and the final cohesion that was mobilised by the peasants to cement one historical fact that peasants throughout colonial times were not passive receivers of colonial orders. When necessary, such producers resisted exploitation through creative ways as witnessed by cotton producers in the WCGA.