The Tanganyika groundnut scheme, or East Africa groundnut scheme, was a failed attempt by the British government to cultivate tracts of its African trust territory Tanganyika with peanuts. Launched in the aftermath of World War II by the Labour Party administration of prime minister Clement Attlee, the goal was to produce urgently needed oilseeds on a projected 3 million acres of land, in order to increase margarine supplies in Britain and develop a neglected backwater of the British Empire. Despite an enormous effort and at a cost of £36 million, the project was a disastrous failure and was finally abandoned as unworkable in 1951.