Editing Belgian Congo (section)

===Great Depression===
The [[Great Depression]] of the 1930s affected the export-based Belgian Congo economy severely because of the drop in international demand for raw materials and agricultural products (for example, the price of peanuts fell from 1.25 francs to 25 centimes (cents)). In some areas, as in the [[Katanga Province|Katanga]] mining region, employment declined by 70%. In the country as a whole, the wage labour force decreased by 72,000 and many such labourers returned to their villages. In Leopoldville, the population decreased by 33%, because of this labour migration.<ref>Anstey R., op.cit., p. 109</ref> In order to improve conditions in the countryside, the colonial government developed the so-called "[[National Institute for Agronomic Study of the Belgian Congo|indigenous peasantry programme]]", aimed at supporting the development of a stronger internal market that was less dependent of fluctuations in export demand, but also to combat the disastrous effects of erosion and soil exhaustion brought about by the mandatory cultivation scheme. This policy began to be implemented on a large scale throughout the Congo after the Second World War, by the colonial government. The scheme aimed to modernize indigenous agriculture by assigning plots of land to individual families and by providing them with government support in the form of selected seeds, agronomic advice, fertilizers, etc.<ref>Clement, Piet (2014), "Rural development in the Belgian Congo: the late-colonial indigenous peasantry programme and its implementation in the Equateur District", In ''Bulletin des Scéances de l'Académie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-mer'', Brussels, 60 (2), pp. 251–286</ref> The [[National Institute for Agronomic Study of the Belgian Congo]], established in 1934, with its large experimental fields and laboratories in Yangambe, played an important role in crop selection and in the popularization of agronomic research and know-how.<ref>Drachoussoff, V., e.a. (1991), ''Le développement rurale en Afrique Centrale: synthèse et réflexions'', Brussels: Fondation Roi Baudouin</ref>