Tanganyika groundnut scheme

Map of Tanganyika Territory, 1936

The Tanganyika groundnut scheme, or East Africa groundnut scheme, was a failed attempt by the British government to cultivate tracts of its African trust territory Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania) with peanuts.

Launched in the aftermath of World War II by the Labour Party administration of prime minister Clement Attlee,[1] the goal was to produce urgently needed oilseeds on a projected 3 million acres (5,000 sq miles, or over 12,000 km2, an area almost as big as Yorkshire), in order to increase margarine supplies in Britain and increase the profits from the British Empire.

The scheme's proponents, including Minister of Food John Strachey, had overlooked warnings that the environment and rainfall were unsuitable, communications were inadequate, and the project was being pursued with excessive haste. The disastrous project management, initially by the United Africa Company, and subsequently by the government-run Overseas Food Corporation, led the scheme to be popularly seen as a symbol of government incompetence and failure in late colonial Africa.[2][3]

Despite the enormous effort and spending £36 million (equivalent to over £1 billion in 2020), the project failed abjectly and was finally abandoned in 1951.[4] It was described in 1953 as "the worst fiasco in recent British colonial history."[1]

  1. ^ a b Gunther, John (1955). Inside Africa. Harper & Brothers. p. 408. ISBN 0836981979.
  2. ^ Alan Wood, The Groundnut Affair (1950).
  3. ^ Matteo Rizzo, "What was left of the groundnut scheme? Development disaster and labour market in Southern Tanganyika 1946–1952." Journal of Agrarian Change 6.2 (2006): 205-238.
  4. ^ Westcott, Nicholas (2020). Imperialism and Development: the East African Groundnut Scheme and its legacy. Woodbridge: James Currey. ISBN 978-1-84701-259-3.