AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN EAST AFRICA. A PROBLEM IN CULTURAL ECOLOGY

Abstract

This thesis Is an attempt to understand the reasons for success or failure of attempts at directed change in agriculture in East Africa Since agricultural development, like agriculture Itself, is dependent on environmental permissibility, the environmental setting for agriculture was first examine. This examination revealed that, although there are many different subsistence environments in East Africa, most of these are fairly explicit as to the opportunities they present for cultivation, and most present severe limitations as well, particularly in the great variation in annual rainfall and in presence or absence of various scourges to crops and herds. The functional result of the various environmental limitations is, for much of East Africa, the ever-present threat of famine. To minimize this, threat- the subsistence strategies of many East African cultivators and herders are adaptations to minimal rather than to average environmental conditions. In addition, much of the content of East African cultures hot ordinarily classified by anthropologists as subsistence practices, but apparently part of social organization