The revenue crisis in West Africa

The development of agriculture in West Africa is illuminated greatly if we consider the principal local actors to be the rulers of preindustrial states. The economies of these states are backward, rural, undercapitalized, and decentralized. The problem faced by all modern regimes – precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial – has been how to extract from a largely agricultural population a reliable income sufficient to support the regime's expenditure needs. In this matter the successor states are somewhat at a disadvantage, because their standing in the world depends on levels and kinds of spending that were unthinkable twenty years ago, and they are not able to take some of the shortcuts in revenue collection that were available to their predecessors. Much has been made of outside pressure emanating from the centers of world capitalism; but I would like to consider here the internal pressures and options that have pushed all the successor states to base their strategies for independent government on control of agriculture in one form or another.