Climate Shocks, Cash crops and Resilience: Evidence from colonial tropical Africa

A rapidly growing body of research examines how weather variability, anomalies<br/>and shocks influence economic and societal outcomes. This study investigates the effects of<br/>weather shocks on African smallholder farmers in British colonial Africa and intervenes in<br/>the debate on the mediating effect of cash crops on resilience to shocks. We employ a dual<br/>research strategy, involving both qualitative and econometric analysis. We analyse original<br/>primary evidence retrieved from annual administrative records and construct a panel dataset<br/>of 151 districts across West, South-central and East Africa in the Interwar Era (1920-1939).<br/>Our findings are twofold. First, we qualitatively expose a range of mechanisms leading from<br/>drought and excessive rainfall to harvest failure and social upheaval. We then test the link<br/>econometrically and find a robust U-shaped relation between rainfall deviation and social<br/>upheaval, proxied by annual imprisonment. Second, we review a long-standing and unsettled<br/>debate on the impact of cash crop cultivation on farmers’ resilience to environmental shocks<br/>and find that cash crop districts experienced lower levels of social tension and distress in<br/>years of extreme rainfall variability