Cultivating Success in Uganda: Kigezi Farmers and Colonial Politics (review)

Cultivating Success in Uganda: Kigezi Farmers and Colonial Policies is usefully illustrated and divided into eight chapters: chapter 1 is the introduction; chapter 2 deals with colonial encounters with Kigezi agriculture (food and cash crops); chapter 3 treats soil conservation; chapter 4 treats land tenure; chapter 5 discusses land-reform policies and chiefly authority; chapter 6 is about changes in the agricultural system; chapter 7 provides information on livelihoods, laboring, and differentiation; chapter 8 serves as the conclusion.

As a geographer, Grace Carswell, of the University of Sussex, here offers an eminently readable analysis of developments in colonial and current Uganda. The book can conveniently be divided into at least two substantial parts. One part discusses the situation that developed when colonial leaders attempted to introduce sophisticated agricultural crops, including cash crops. This took place in the southwestern area of the country, at Kigezi. It involved land-tenure reforms, conservation practices, and resettlement issues. Another part of the book explores other dimensions in the Kigezi area, including research that occurred during the colonial period. It is a study that, as Carswell lucidly discusses, enables scholars to question assumptions about pressures introduced by increases in population, changes in the environment, and other issues.

Most certainly, the book features the political economy of labor and land. Several aspects of the discussed topics can benefit readers, including researchers and students. For example, mainstream agriculturalists and agricultural economists should benefit from the discussion of food crops, cash crops, and changes in the agricultural system, while geologists and others will be able to utilize information on soil conservation. The book provides excellent information on Kigezi’s land-tenure system, land-reform policies, and what Carswell calls “chiefly authority”—issues important to many countries that have problems with land-tenure systems.

In varied ways, the book should be useful to both general readers and experts interested in the colonial presence in Uganda and other eastern African countries, because issues pertinent to the situation in Kigezi are similar to those in other former colonial entities. Cultivating Success in Uganda is an excellent and important book, which should be widely read in historical, geographical, and development studies: “Its powerful insights into the nature of policy and its interplay with existing political and economic conditions are a testimony to its meticulous research.”