Soy in Africa

A Perpetual Promise since the Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This article traces the changing place of soybeans in Africa from the late nineteenth century to the present, arguing that the continent’s modest material uptake contrasts with a remarkably persistent ‘soy promise.’ Using a discourse‑historical approach and a food regime framework, African trajectories are situated within wider transformations of the global agri‑food system. In the Colonial Experimental Regime (1880s–1930s), soy was cast as a crop of scientific modernity, yet it remained largely confined to trials and station fodder. In the Cold War Developmentalist Regime (1950s–1970s), it re‑emerged as a nutritional technology and aid commodity within U.S.‑led architectures of food aid and market development. In the Corporate-Neoliberal Regime (1990s–present), soy is reframed as a flexible frontier commodity embedded in liberalised value chains and feed complexes, with post‑2010 output growth concentrated in a few countries. The article argues that the durability of the ‘soy promise’ reflects the interplay of imaginaries, institutions, and uneven material outcomes; it also considers whether regional markets, continental trade initiatives, and climate pressures might shift soy’s role beyond its predominantly feed‑centred footprint.