Further Insights

Olive Chinoyerem Nwosu

My research examines Kola Nut Production and Trade in Colonial Nigeria from the early 1880s until 1960 when the country gained independence from Britain. Colonization impacted agricultural production practices and trade policies that already existed in Nigeria. I focus on the kola nut commodity and analyze the nature and dynamics of kola nut production and trade and how it thrived under the colonial economy. I argue that British economic policies affected the production and trade of the kola nut in Nigeria because the policies encouraged the production and trade of other cash crop commodities like cocoa, palm oil and rubber exported to Britain to meet overseas and industry needs. Kola nut did not make the list of commodities in high demand by Britain. Agricultural bills and ordinances, the Marketing Board, trade restrictions on local produce exportation, high taxes including licenses were tools of control used by the British administration to control agricultural production and trade. These tools hampered the kola trade which was vibrant in precolonial Nigeria especially among the Hausa traders of northern Nigeria. Historians have examined the cultivation, trading, and marketing of kola nuts in Nigeria and West Africa. The subject of kola nut production and trade in Nigeria has been examined in specific regions of Nigeria, or mostly in precolonial and post-colonial Nigeria. However, scholars have yet to give an holistic analysis of the production and trade of kola nut which includes colonial Nigeria. I intend to provide a body of work that gives an understanding of what happened with the production and trade of the kola nut during the colonial period, and to highlight the general structure of Nigeria’s colonial economy. I support my argument with archival documents from the National Archives Ibadan and Kaduna, Nigeria, and the Abeokuta Archives, Ogun state, Nigeria.

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