Humans of Africa (Prior to European Involvement)

Prompt: What was agriculture like in Africa before European involvement (at about 1500)?

Grach Kinder, Adam David Funckytown, Ben Burrito, Natalie Ballin’ Hard, Beefany Sheepherder.

“Ay, these baskets are heavy. But I’m used to it, I suppose. We’re hard workers in my family; especially the women. We work together to build a better life for ourselves and grow food for our community. Our rich and age-old culture values dignity and responsibility to family. Because of our agriculture development, we have been able to settle into permanent homes instead of continuing on in the nomadic ways of our ancestors. Through trade and negotiations with other groups from the surrounding area our families have learned skills to help us use our land better. We have begun to trade with the neighboring communities who are able to produce crops different from our own. When surplus is grown we trade our crop of beans for the millet they give us in return. We’ve improved our tools by using iron instead of stone for hoes and scythes. We’ve also implemented irrigation, terracing, and crop rotations and are now able to produce our food on a much bigger scale, feeding more mouths than we did before. But because of these improvements the need for people working the crops has intensified which has led to an increased use of slave labor. The work can get exhausting at times but everyone in the family helps, so we survive.”

References

"Living While Black: Themes in African American Thought and Experience."ELearning. Penn State University. Web. 05 Feb. 2017. <http://elearning.la.psu.edu/afam/100/lesson-2-part1/african-roots-of-african-american-life-under-slavery/pre-colonial-african-economies>.

"The Bantu Expansion." Jordan, David K. Web. 09 Feb. 2017.

http://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/resources/clarifications/BantuExpansion.html

Reader, John. Africa: A Biography of the Continent. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1998. Print

Widgren, Mats. "Agricultural Intensification in Sub-Saharan Africa." Economic Development and Environmental History in the Anthropocene: Perspectives on Asia and Africa: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. Print. https://stockholmuniversity.app.box.com/s/bv1f2ijsdtgbcd1gk3eg04i5azixhgk0