AGRARIAN QUESTION AND UNGOVERNED SPACES IN AFRICA

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to alert the reader to the dynamic nature of ungoverned spaces and its interconnectivity with agrarian question, which can have significant impact in shaping an adverse future for Africa. The paper relied on qualitative data collected from secondary sources. This paper, which is descriptive in its approach, argues that the contemporary world is organised into a system of governed/governing in which governments(s) exercise authority inside clearly defined boundaries and recognise the authority of other rulers outside those boundaries. It also argues the power of resistibility by the peasants to create an entirely separate niche for themselves outside of the authorised landed/ territorial jurisdiction of the ‘class’ (governments) in a world where a state (or states) claims just about every piece of land, will remain concerned with the consequences created by a territory’s lacking a single and sovereign central government. The paper concludes that the agrarian structure has certainly transformed from its earlier versions, and this transformation has influenced as well as changed all those structures with which it intersected in its journey to change. It recommends that re-evaluating the classical agrarian question and its implications for twenty-first century agrarian politics from a global perspective, which understands that agriculture is a political construction is posed within the novel dynamics of comparative advantage, and this would birth a new regime as agrarian discourse expands.