This chapter introduces the ensuing chapters in this book: Agriculture, Autonomous Development, and Prospects for Industrialisation in Africa. This is achieved by offering general historical and theoretical comments about Africa’s agriculture, development, and industrialisation. As the chapter illustrates, the book is located at the intersection of three strands of academic literature: literature on agriculture, literature on development, and literature on industrialisation. As a general trend, these three strands of literature do not sufficiently engage with each other, and this book contributes to addressing this gap through several case studies of countries across sub-Saharan Africa. Much of agricultural and development literature in Africa focuses on the large-scale—smallholder farming dichotomy, including the role of production contestations between the two in the post-independence period. This has tended to crowd out evaluations on prospects for autonomous development and industrialisation. This book, thus, reignites debates on the importance of understanding agriculture’s role in realising cultural- and context-specific autonomous development and industrialisation in Africa.