This article investigates the rise of rice as a central staple in Ghana’s everyday cuisine from the early 1970s through the end of Jerry John Rawlings’ presidency in 2001, a period marked by significant economic restructuring and social change. Employing a broad methodological approach—including archival research, oral histories, and analysis of advertisements and government documents—the study examines how intensifying urbanization, shifting gender roles, and evolving taste preferences interacted with the forces of structural adjustment to elevate rice in Ghana’s food culture. While acknowledging the impact of national policies and global market pressures, the focus remains on the agency of Ghanaian consumers, whose sustained demand for rice persisted even under conditions of economic hardship and limited availability. In doing so, this work addresses questions of Temporalities and Periodizations in Global History, highlighting how a single commodity can signal broader socio-economic transformations. It also speaks to Expanding the Global Archive and Multivocality in Global History by integrating firsthand accounts from diverse populations, thus foregrounding nontraditional sources and multiple voices in the historical record. Finally, the article challenges production-centric perspectives on food history, revealing how everyday desires and consumption patterns can reshape national identities and global connections. By centering Ghanaian experiences, this research contributes to Global History and Decoloniality debates and underscores the importance of incorporating local perspectives into histories of globalization, modernization, and cultural adaptation.

In 1963, as Kenya approached Uhuru (Independence), the African Highlands Produce Company—a major tea producer owned by UK-based James Finlay Corporation—faced a costly challenge: frequent hailstorms that severely damaged their tea crops. With estimated annual losses of over £200,000 and around 1.5 million pounds of processed tea affected yearly, the company launched a hail suppression program, deploying nearly 10,000 explosive-headed rockets over its Kericho estates between 1963 and 1967. This effort aimed to reduce hailstorm damage and protect the company’s tea output.

Drawing on business records, newspapers, and archival materials, this paper explores how the hail suppression program became part of a broader strategy for multinational firms to sustain their economic influence in post-independence Kenya. Instead of withdrawing, companies like the African Highlands Produce Company strengthened their ties with Kenya’s new government, which relied heavily on the tea industry to maintain a robust export-driven economy. By 1967, the program had expanded into a government-backed initiative, with funding from Kenyan authorities, multinational tea corporations, and international agencies such as the U.S. National Science Foundation.

This study demonstrates that while Kenya achieved political independence, its economic landscape remained intricately linked with global markets, particularly with British corporations. The hail suppression project exemplified not merely a technological solution but also highlighted a profound economic dependency, as multinational companies adjusted to Kenya’s evolving political milieu in order to secure their positions within the post-independence economy. In essence, this case study elucidates how Kenya’s transition to independence involved significant political shifts and intricate economic realignments, with multinational firms such as James Finlay devising innovative strategies to reconcile their interests with those of the Kenyan government, ultimately reinforcing their influence in the nation’s key export sectors into the contemporary period.

This paper examines the role of official colonial publications in marketing empire through the advertisement of commodities in French Indochina between 1864 and 1909. By analyzing advertisements in key publications such as Le Courrier de Saigon and the Journal Officiel de l'Indochine Française, it explores how colonial commodities were strategically promoted to reflect and reinforce the French colonial project. These advertisements reveal the material and cultural dimensions of colonial rule, showcasing goods that symbolized progress, modernity, and France’s civilizing mission. The paper argues that these commodities were not merely economic products but also tools for constructing colonial identity, legitimizing French authority, and integrating Indochina into the global networks of French imperialism. By focusing on the interplay between commodities, media, and empire, this study highlights how colonial advertising functioned as a mechanism for shaping perceptions of the empire both within the colonies and the metropole. This analysis contributes to broader discussions on decoloniality, global history, and commodity studies, offering new insights into the intersections of marketing, colonial governance, and cultural hegemony in the age of empire.

Kenya is rarely spotlighted as significant in the global tea market. However, statistics indicate that as early as 1995, Kenya began to rival Asian countries for the position of the largest tea-exporting country by volume. Furthermore, over half of this amount has been contributed by 600,000 Kenyan tea smallholders. Especially considering tea’s common image as a quintessential plantation crop, it is no surprise that Kenya’s tea smallholder sub-sector is celebrated as one of the “African successes” in rural development.

Accounting for the path to this success, both historical actors and researchers tend to attribute the higher quality and price of smallholders’ tea to the stringent supervision implemented by related organisations and state agencies. This paper tries to narrate a more textured success story by analysing the staged development of this sub-sector instead of examining it as an entire chunk. Specifically, this contribution focuses on the legalisation of Africans’ tea planting in 1950 and the subsequent three development plans until the 1973 oil crisis. This paper, based on the documents held at the Kenya National Archives as well as the reports and correspondence of the Colonial Development Corporation and the World Bank, aims to demonstrate that the intended tight control was patchy on the ground and the perceived “success” was primarily assessed from the institutional perspective. Correspondingly, smallholders’ role in this feat has been downplayed. Despite diverging from the official design, these smallholders shouldered a greater burden in practice, further disclosing the colonial state’s limitations and Africans’ agency.