LOSERS^501pies to new cereals, while new urban eating habits led to an increased
demand for meat by those who could not afford it. In this way, more
and more of Africa's food crops went to animal feed. All along, the
highest natural rates of population growth in the world (3+ percent per
year) were pushing farmers on to marginal soils that quickly wore out.
Or driving them from country to slums in the city.^16 In countries where
political agencies are fragile and ineffective, the scars of mismanage
ment do not easily heal, and the good and bad do not balance.
One should not blame these outcomes on smallholder ignorance or
incapacity, for in Africa, as much as anywhere, farming methods and re
productive behavior mix old values and rituals with a rational response
to material circumstances. African farmers are not fools, and children
start paying their way early in a land where firewood and water are
scarce and much time is spent foraging and carrying. The result is a rea
sonable preference for large families. Large families are also proof of
virility and a source of pride.^17 In general, the women do as they are
told, especially in those cultures where polygamy prevails; and when
the men come home, for they often work far off, they have their way,
often at great risk to health. AIDS? Forget condoms; the men don't
like them. And the women? "They have so many other problems to
think of, why should they think about something that kills you in 10
years?"^18
In the latter days of empire, some governments and foreign advisers
tried to remedy these ills, although their calculations were often dis
torted by extraneous motives and personal interest. Take agriculture.
Even before independence, some colonial rulers tried to correct for
past mistakes and indifference and to introduce "modern" methods.
The "mother" of all such projects was the British groundnut (in
American English, peanut) scheme, launched and sunk in Tanganyika
over the period 1946-54 and "intended to demonstrate what the state
was capable of... when it harnessed modern Western technology and
expertise."^19 The idea came originally from the managing director of
the United Africa Company, a subsidiary of Unilever, a company re
puted to know its oil. The plan was vetted and approved at British
cabinet level. The immediate objective: to alleviate British postwar oil
and fat shortages without spending dollars (buy colonial). In the words
of Food Minister John Strachey, "On your success depends, more than
on any other single factor, whether the harassed housewives of Britain
get more margarine, cooking fat and soap, in the reasonably near fu
ture."^20
The ultimate aim was to "raise the standard of living of the African