Contract farming and the broken promises of rural development: inequality, resistance, and disruption in Tanzania’s export horticulture

Export-oriented contract farming has been promoted in Africa as a pathway to rural development by linking smallholders to global markets. Based on field research in northern Tanzania, this paper shows that participation was concentrated among relatively better-off farmers, deepening social differentiation. While a minority secured substantial gains, most participants faced unequal contracts that shifted production and market risks onto them, often resulting in marginal or negative returns. Power asymmetries in buyer-driven value chains – where European supermarket demands were enforced by exporters – excluded the poorest and exploited many of those included. Farmers responded through side-selling, strategic default, and mass withdrawal, contributing to the collapse of several schemes and exporters. Situated within critical development studies, the analysis demonstrates how ostensibly ‘inclusive’ business models can reproduce rural inequality and trigger smallholder resistance, challenging prevailing win–win narratives of contract farming.