Amílcar Cabral linked soil health to human freedom – the Guinea-Bissau leader’s ideas matter more than ever today

Up to 80% of Africa's cultivated land is now degraded by intensive farming and climate change. Together with development economist Carlos Lopes and earth politics researcher Lesley Green, environmental researcher Anselmo Matusse recently co-edited a book of translations of agronomist and liberation leader Amílcar Cabral's writings on farming and rural livelihoods. Here, he sets out Cabral's ideas on how restoring the continent's soils means looking beyond farming alone to the links between the environment, history, politics and society.

Who was Amílcar Cabral?

Amílcar Cabral was a Bissau-Guinean and Cape Verdean anti-colonial leader, poet, pan-Africanist and agronomist (crop and soil scientist).

Born in 1924, Cabral is well known for his involvement in Guinea-Bissau's independence struggle. He led a guerrilla warfare movement there against the Portuguese government, until his assassination in 1973.

A lesser-known facet of Cabral's career was his work as an agronomist. In the 1940s, he studied agronomy (soil studies) as a young scholar in Portugal. This education would come to define his thinking on Africa's independence. Namely, that a central part of independence should be the reintroduction of a care-based human-soil relationship.

Cabral's ideas on care-based human-soil relationship rippled across the continent. They influenced independence struggles and pan-Africanist movements, like the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa.

What are his agricultural writings all about?

Cabral's soil science of the 1940s and 50s is based on his extensive fieldwork in Portugal, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde while he worked as an agronomist (soil scientist). This included a 1956 agricultural census of the then Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau), which covered over 60,000km (more than 37,000 miles). The conversations, visits and learnings from this census underpinned his texts that denounced the colonial exploitation of Africa's soils and people.

Cabral's writings from this period focused on the relationship between soil and humans within colonial and capitalist agricultural systems. Particularly, he outlined the destruction caused by colonial agriculture methods.

Colonial farming focused on producing as much as possible for profit. It introduced private land ownership, pushed many small farmers off their land, fenced off land that communities had shared, and left many soils degraded and vulnerable to erosion.

Cabral argued that soil should not be studied only in terms of physical features, such as its composition, climate, plants and landscape. He believed its history also mattered. This includes how people had used the land and how colonialism had changed it. Cabral argued that whether the soil is fertile or not is the result of human-soil interactions and relations, including those of colonial and capitalist exploitation.

Why are Cabral's ideas about soil and farming relevant today?

Returning to Cabral's agronomic works is not simply a matter of reading historical texts. It is an opportunity to revisit ideas about African sovereignty (the ability of African countries to govern themselves and make their own decisions), freedom, and prosperity, deeply grounded in African experiences.

Many African states inherited systems of colonial agronomy. These colonial systems ignored more participatory, locally led, or conservation approaches. They preferred farming methods that focused on producing more rather than protecting the soil for the future.

Cabral's soil science is rooted in careful observation, social engagement, and resistance to ecological exploitation. It offers a compelling framework for food system transformation grounded in national sovereignty and ecological resilience.

Cabral's pointed observation that “to defend the earth is to defend the human” asks us what might change when we see people's liberation as inseparable from fertile soils.

Cabral's central message for Africa today is that the liberation of the soil cannot be separated from the liberation of its people. His writings are more than a technical record of his agricultural work. They also provide a political and philosophical framework for rethinking Africa's future. In this vision, caring for the soil is the foundation of self-determination.

As the former president of Cape Verde and current chairperson of the Amílcar Cabral Foundation, Pedro Pires, stated during the book launch on 24 July 2026, “Personally, we believe that the future does not lie in oil and war; it lies in the land, in agriculture, in production, and in putting wealth at the service of the people.”

What practical lessons do these ideas hold?

An estimated 75%-80% of Africa's cultivated land has become degraded – unfit for agricultural production. Cabral leaves us with many practical lessons about the process of repair. I highlight three below:

Ecologies matter

South African agroecological scholar Raymond Auerbach has described Cabral as “the father of agroecology on the continent and a visionary”. Even though the term agroecology had not yet been coined in Cabral's time, its core principles were central to his thinking. He recognised the close relationship between people, plants, water, nutrients and soils.

Cabral believed farming should work with local ecosystems rather than against them. His ideas suggest that agroecological approaches can not only restore soils but also help free people from exploitative systems.

Local models

Be it carbon sequestration, fortress conservation, or the patented seeds of the “Green Revolution”, many approaches to environmental problems impose solutions from somewhere else on local landscapes.

Thinking globally is important. But Cabral also warned against importing farming models that ignored Africa's landscapes and farming traditions. Instead, he promoted what he called “African agriculture”. This included leaving fields uncultivated for a season or two so the soil could recover, and treating land as a shared resource rather than private property. He believed these approaches helped restore soil health and encouraged communities to work together. Above all, Cabral argued that restoring Africa's soils should start with local knowledge, experience and farming practices.

People's science

Cabral was committed to science that was close to society. He presented his evidence without rhetoric or technical jargon, and bridged gaps between scientists, farmers and policymakers. Cabral's culture of a “people's science” presents a hopeful framework in which science and its solutions are developed in conversation with the land and its people.

James Granelli co-authored this article.

The research that led to the publication of this book was funded by the Science for Africa Foundation (SFA) via the Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science in Africa (DELTAS Africa II) programme (Grant Number: Del:22-010) with support from Wellcome Trust and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, which is part of the EDCPT2 programme supported by the European Union.

By Anselmo Matusse, Research officer, University of Cape Town