1. Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest level of mechanization (both animal traction and tractorization) of all the developing regions. This is puzzling given the relative abundance of land and the relative scarcity of labor in many of the countries south of the Sahara. Our interest in this subject was sparked by the following unanswered questions:
(i) Why has the spread of mechanization in sub-Saharan Africa been slower than in low-wage, labor abundant economies such as India, Pakistan or China?(ii) Why have animal traction and tractorization spread fairly rapidly in restricted pockets of Africa, but left neighboring agro-climatic regions untouched? For instance, small farmers in Sukumaland, Tanzania, use ox-plows for cultivating valley bottoms while the surrounding upland areas are cultivated with handhoes;
(iii) Why have some cattle owning farm households historically failed to use their oxen for cultivation purposes? and finally;
(iv) Why have the attempts of governments and donor agencies to by-pass the animal traction stage for direct tractorization via tractor projects failed repeatedly?
2. The primary objective of the study was to identify the conditions which lead to the transition from handhoes to animal traction and the further transition to tractors. Information and data required for this study were collected during extensive field visits to 48 locations in ten countries of sub-Saharan Africa. 1 These data were complemented by a detailed review of the English and French literature on the subject. The results of this study are presented in a monograph (entitled: Agricultural Mechanization and the Evolution of Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa) published by Johns Hopkins University Press (Pingali, Bigot and Binswanger, 1987). This paper will summarize the results on the transition from handhoes to animal draft power, while mentioning the further transition to tractors only in passing. Readers interested in the conditions under which tractors are profitable are referred to the above monograph.
3. This paper provides the following: a) an identification of the conditions under which farmers make a transition from handhoes to animal drawn plows; b) a summary of the farm-level benefits of the transition; c) a discussion of the real and perceived constraints to the transition to animal traction; d) an exploration of the possibility of leapfrogging directly from handhoes to tractors; and e) a presentation of the main implications for policy.
