Banda district Ghana didn't experience food insecurity until Colonialism

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The logical explanation for this would be that the Slave Trade served as a valve to get rid of surplus population, but also that it served as a way for the population to get capital from the outside. The end of the slave trade meant that the Ghanese export moved toward cash crops (losing land which could be used to grow food) instead, while at the same time losing a valve for surplus population.

This seems really unpleasantly Malthusian.