 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.In order to improve conditions in the countryside, the colonial government developed the so-called "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.