The Consoling Weed was produced by African Film Productions (AFP), the leading production company in Africa, which had been established in 1913 by I.W. Schlesinger and, since 1915, had been based at Killarney Studios in Johannesburg. Andrew Roberts listed the film as an example of the occasional work of the AFP outside of South Africa (Roberts, 1987, 203). It appears that the film was shot by George Noble, who had previously worked as senior cameraman with Strand Films and at the GPO Film Unit. Noble would subsequently serve as chief cameraman for the Canadian Army’s Film and Photo Unit and, then from 1949, as chief cameraman of the Gold Coast Film Unit (Gold Coast Film Unit Catalogue, 1955, 2).

Filmmaker Geoffrey Mangin explained that the AFP films were intended for screening ‘in the majority of public cinemas that were linked to their group, as well as for government departments and industry’ (Mangin, 1998, 67). Andrew Roberts noted that by the 1930s its films ‘were usually aimed at overseas as well as domestic audiences’ (Roberts, 1987, 202). This was certainly the case with The Consoling Weed. In 1939, The Journal of Education listed The Consoling Weed – ‘which reproduces scenes in the growing, curing and marketing of tobacco, one of the Colony’s most prosperous industries’ – as one of 42 films from home and overseas that had been received by The Empire Film Library at the Imperial Institute, South Kensington (Journal of Education, 1939, 107).

A report by the Imperial Economic Committee at the end of 1937 indicated that the amount of tobacco smoked in Britain was increasing and that the sales, and quality, of Empire tobacco was also on the rise (The Times, 26 November 1937, 9). Since 1919 Britain had levied a much lower duty on Empire tobacco, and reports suggested that the production of tobacco in Southern Rhodesia had increased more than sevenfold between 1920 and 1936, while the imports into Great Britain had increased by approximately twelve times during the same period (The Times, 6 November 1937, 18). The Rhodesian tobacco industry was connected to the broader economic goals of the Empire, which encouraged trade between the colonies and dominions. This was conceived, in part, as a way of counteracting American economic dominance. However, according to Ian M. Drummond, American sales rose steadily during the 1930s, ‘in spite of the price-raising efforts of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration’ so that American tobacco ‘continued to provide over 80% of the British demand’ and consequently there were continued efforts during this period to promote Rhodesian tobacco within Britain (Drummond and Hillmer, 1989, 24).

At the beginning of 1937, Sir Herbert Stanley, the governor of Southern Rhodesia, spoke in London at a lunch attended by the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He again reiterated the need for a greater share of the British market – ‘If they could only persuade British manufacturers to take a little more of the Rhodesian leaf they need have no fear for the future of the tobacco-growing future of the colony’ – and also referred to the developments within the industry (The Times, 15 January 1937, 14). For example, in April 1936 the tobacco auction rooms were opened in Salisbury, which replicated the American business model and replaced the previous system of private negotiation between buyers and growers.

W.E. Haviland, in his 1952 economic analysis of the tobacco industry of Southern Rhodesia recognised 1936 – also the year of the Tobacco Marketing Act – as a turning point in the industry, stating that ‘the expansion in absolute terms since 1936 of the tobacco industry of Southern Rhodesia has been great’ (Haviland, 1952, 8). Peter Scott, also writing in 1952, argued that ‘Southern Rhodesia, which until World War II was a relatively insignificant producer of flue-cured tobacco, now ranks among the world’s leading tobacco exporters’. Scott further noted that ‘since 1945, when tobacco surpassed gold as the premier export of Southern Rhodesia, production has more than doubled’ (Scott, 1952, 189).