Colonial Agriculture for Africans

The Authors: Dickson A. Mungazi is Regents Professor of Education and History at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.
L. Kay Walker is Assistant Professor of Education at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.

"Emory D. Alvord, an American agricultural missionary from Washington State, built one of Africa's first modern agricultural extension systems aimed at native small landholders. Alvord's remarkable career in the crucible between European colonists and the African population is documented for the first time by Dickson A. Mungazi and L. Kay Walker, drawing on archival records of Alvord's writings and other sources. This remarkable book sounds a clear warning for anyone who would seek simple solutions to Africa's dilemmas, and demonstrates that Africa's problems of agricultural policy have deep roots indeed." (William A. Masters, Purdue University. Author of 'Government and Agriculture in Zimbabwe')
"Emory D. Alvord was an American missionary who ventured into Southern Rhodesia in 1919 to teach Africans how to improve their agricultural skills. He joined the government, first as agriculturist for the instruction of Africans from 1926 to 1943, and then as the Director of Native Agriculture, from 1944 to 1950. This is an interesting study, well researched and written, of the interplay of contesting visions of African development, one in which Alvord and native Africans often found themselves losing out to colonial efforts to protect white power and privilege." (Donald G. Baker, Professor of Political Science, Southampton College, Long Island University, New York)
"'Colonial Agriculture for Africans: Emory Alvord's Policy in Zimbabwe' is a pioneering work that explores, through a combination of biographical, institutional, and intellectual history, the roots of agricultural insufficiency and the colonial sources of the current dilemma of famine in potentially rich Zimbabwe. Dickson A. Mungazi and L. Kay Walker carefully unravel the Victorian theories of African inferiority which found articulation and policy application in colonial Africa of the first half of this century, and they demonstrate - in the spirit of George Orwell's 'Shooting an Elephant' - the webs of