Meeting Global Capital in a Village: The Expansion of Tobacco Contract Farming in Zimbabwe

Foreign interests in Africa’s resources and markets have been rising in recent years. Various studies have described the flow as a ‘new scramble’ that intensified in the twenty-first century. While the continent has been depicted as being in crisis, suffering from a limited inflow of foreign investment, it is now receiving more global investment than at any time in the previous five decades. This chapter argues, however, that capital penetration often leaves farmers in precarious conditions and fosters the ‘scramble’ for Africa even more, without safeguarding smallholder farmers. This is demonstrated through a case study of tobacco contract farming in contemporary Zimbabwe. As shown in a series of works by the Sam Moyo African Institute of Agrarian Studies based in Harare, Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) reconfigured the agrarian structure of Zimbabwe, including through repeasantisation as reflected in the tobacco sub-sector. The chapter presents case study based results of the socio-economic impacts of tobacco contract farming on smallholder farmers and argues that, while contract farming resuscitated the tobacco industry post-FTLRP, it also exposed smallholder farmers to the viscidities of global markets.