People in Ghana lived sustainably for millennia—until European colonialism and the trade of enslaved people changed everything.
Food insecurity in Ghana did not become a widespread issue until the 1700s and 1800s, as shown by Logan’s archaeological evidence as well as Oral Histories. That’s when British colonizers switched their trade focus from gold to human beings, and the trade of enslaved people intensified in West Africa and across the Atlantic. In addition, colonial economics created food shortages in Banda and across West Africa. Much less grain entered household storage or local barter systems, as most was sold in markets or directly taken by British soldiers. Local people have passed down stories about this period, recounting how their grandparents struggled to eat and turned to less-desirable foods like cassava. “The slave trade not only rewrote what was valuable and what mattered in terms of economy, but it also removed a lot of people who [were] in their prime,” Logan told me when I interviewed her. Those people held valuable knowledge about farming and food production.
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“There’s been this long-standing argument—and this is something that comes out of the colonial narrative—that parts of Africa have just always been food insecure because their agriculture, environments, or crops are inferior,” says Logan. But, as the data show, African farmers were knowledgeable and successful for thousands of years. Outside forces uprooted that security. Logan and Kuma began to challenge assumptions about why and how hunger became a modern problem in West Africa. As Logan wrote in a 2016 American Anthropologist article, “chronic food insecurity is a condition that was made rather than a condition that has always been.”
12 November 2024
