This generation will bury imperialism here. Strategy/Comms/Research. Host, BlackAsInRevolution + Salvage Live. Editor, @salvagedotzone
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Mar 6 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
A few more things on wheat.
Nigeria has never - as in for as long as we’ve been Nigeria and all the time before that - produced more than 165,000 metric tonnes (MT) of wheat in a single year. Nigeria’s consumption of wheat is estimated at 6 million MT this marketing year. That’s a shortfall of 5.35 million MTs of exports. It was 5% of our TOTAL import bill in 2022.
The type of wheat we eat is not indigenous to us. Irregular rain patterns and arid conditions make it perilous to finance and many farmers gave up after 2022. The wheat that Ethiopians eat is indigenous to Ethiopia (Durum). The wheat that Ukrainians eat is indigenous to Ukraine (Turkey Red Wheat). Ethiopia and Ukraine produce different types of wheat to suit their different climates. Both grew their production with types of wheat which are indigenous to them.
So where did it come from? Wheat came to Nigerian society, like many of the things we treat as indigenous today, through colonialism. We didn’t consume much of it - in 1970, our total consumption was around 300,000, largely consumed by urban populations with more disposable income. White bread’s association with the Englishman gave it the air of luxury which colonial nostalgia often does. Most of what we think is indigenous to us - wheat, maize, white rice - came to us from without. I won’t continue lest they say I want to rob Nigerians of everything good.
In the 1970s a glut in production led the US to mount an aggressive export campaign at significantly lower prices. Nigeria, flush with cash from the oil boom and significantly diminished food production capacity in the wake of the civil war, bought a lot of it. It was in the 70s that we even started trying to grow it. By 1985, we consumed 1.5 million MT of it and produced scarcely 10% of that figure. The lesson here is that tastes aren’t static, they change over time and especially in crises like this.
When we found ourselves in economic crisis in the late 1980s, imports were banned, production crept up to 140,000 MT but it wasn’t sustained. One of the main reasons that, even now, we haven’t even been able to nudge over 200000MT is because it’s darn expensive. If you want to grow a crop which isn’t designed for your environment, and when climate change pops in once in a while with devastating floods, it’s going to cost - from irrigation in dry season farming to avoid the treacherous rains, to FX denominated fertilisers to help it grow.
That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try at all, it means we don’t ONLY need to copy. Nigeria has a plethora of indigenous grains. Do you know what set both the Ethiopians and Ukrainians on a track to work with their surroundings, not against them? Research.
It’s depressing to see the lacklustre approach on funding research on sorghum and other millets where we already have a surplus. How do we exploit our competitive advantage rather than devoting most of our arable land to fighting an uphill battle to emulate the successes of others? Crop indigeneity gives us an advantage in the genetic pool to adapt and perfect our own.
Nigerians took to pasta, noodles, even bread as a taste of what was enjoyed by foreigners. We still see it as a luxury; our demand for wheat is far more price elastic than most other grains. Five players mill 96% of our wheat - how much have we ALSO invested in the crops we ALREADY do well. Why are interventions only really targeted at non traditional crops when we barely have a grip on understanding changes in our climate. How do we incorporate what our rich land has given us within our own diets? Where are the campaigns and recede books to grow appeal?
Those foreigners who we invoke for the export argument once turned to quinoa; they made the Peruvian peasant farmer a king. Demand for millet is already soaring. More than that, China is currently mopping up vast quantities of sorghum and other grains. The world won’t find your diamonds for you.
@OpeBee is right, the world didn’t start in 1940, nor did Africa’s history as a continent start in the 1884-5 Berlin Conference. Walter Rodney’s concept of the ‘underdevelopment of Africa’ really makes this clear. Africa is not behind, because we’re simply more backward, but rather because for centuries, the Global North has used specific tactics to thwart the organic process of African development. They did this so that they could have access to our resources – first our people, then our mineral resources too. In short, this exploitation of Africa is not a random fact, it is the reason why some economies in the world can call themselves ‘developed’. Africa was underdeveloped, so that Europe could develop.
To answer the question, they have Africa summits and conferences because they need us. They can’t grow without the resources we’ve been blessed with in abundance, and without the young and vibrant human capital we have. The problem is that since the anti-colonial movements, its been impossible for them to do it overtly, so they’ve devised a number of ways of appearing to help us while, maintaining the unfair balance of power.
That’s why it’s significant that President Tinubu and our Minister for Finance Mr Wale Edun are talking openly about the need to reform the Bretton Woods Institutions. It’s not just about getting the financing for development; it’s about changing the terms of engagement and transforming the institutions which act as referees because they are set up to thwart African development.
Before the Berlin Conference which many treat as the defining moment of the ‘scramble for Africa’, Africa was already set on this path of under development through the slave trade, and the wars of conquest which it fuelled and funded:
1. They severed internal trade links within Africa, banned African boats from trading along our coastal communities through the water and sabotaged collaboration between Africans. 2. The mass extraction of people (both through slavery, and through instigating and arming wars of conquest which led to untold death and destruction) destabilised our already developing mining and agricultural industries.
So, Africa was set up to be a producer of raw materials, while our capacity to add value to those materials was shunted. Walter Rodney describes this process through the concept of the cash crop. Africans were increasingly dependent on exporting to Europe, especially because they didn’t have the same access to internal African trade links. This shaped what we produced, we produced things that Europe had need for, but which didn’t necessarily correspond to our own needs. Also, while our raw materials were essential for making these, the vast majority of African
An excellent example of this was the rapid expansion of cocoa production to meet Europe’s growing taste for chocolate. The African farmers didn’t know the end product it was used for, but they knew to grow it to make a living from exports. (Here’s a video of Ivorian COCOA farmers tasting chocolate for the first time in the 21stCENTURY no less: ). Once we were dependent on export incomes, then they had huge power. My friend @broseph_stalin has a book called Monopsony Capitalism which I think is relevant, it really reveals that the power of buyers can distort markets when relations are unequal. When the power is in the hands of the buyer because of dependency, they have the price setting power. Europeans used this for their benefit, colluding to push down the cost of raw materials at the expense of Africans.
A good read on this:
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney
Also read:
Monopsony Capitalism: Power and Production in the Twilight of the Sweatshop Age, Ashok Kumar
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