Maize: promoted into Africa, for whose benefit?

06 Dec Maize: promoted into Africa, for whose benefit?

Bemba, after leaving their country to work in urban areas in the south, say they find it

difficult to adjust themselves to the maize flour “mealie meal” they are given there. One

old man probably too fixed in his gastric habits to become adapted to town life said,

“Yes, first I ate through one bag of [maize] flour and then a second. Then at last I said,

‘Well, there it is! There is no food to be found among the Europeans.’”

Audrey Richards,

 Land, Labour, and Diet in Northern Rhodesia

(1939)

Maize and Grace: History,

Corn, and Africa’s New

Landscapes, 1500–1999

1

JAMES McCANN

0010-4175/01/246–272 $9.50 ©2001 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History