Traditional drought and uncommon famine in the Sahel

Africa is not a blank slate awaiting the brainstorms of outsiders, and African governments should assess whether traditional land tenure and social systems are preferable to Western or Eastern methods. In 1969, for example, Mali abolished its short experiment with collective farms and restored traditional land tenure arrangements. They promoted simple, cheap measures such as improved seeds, greater extension services, and small-scale water control projects. Rice production per acre increased 33 percent, and in good years Mali again exports rice.

THERE IS NO QUESTION that the Sahel will undergo more droughts, and that pastoral people will bear the brunt of them. "The pastoralists are caught in a vise between increased cash cropping, population growth, political tensions with other groups, desertification and destruction of their traditions,' observes desertification researcher Michael Glantz.

But drought does not necessarily mean famine. The solution to the Sahel's woes is far more complex than we wish, but the insights of anthropologists, students of human culture, may point the way to some real solutions.

Photo: Members of the nomadic Tuareg tribe draw water for their flocks near the village of Nara in Mali.

Photo: Barely alive cattle are herded from one dry patch of brush to another in Abala, Niger. The drought got progressively worse for the three years following the date of this photo in July 1982.

Photo: Displaced Bella nomads near Douentza, Mali, set up home in a refugee camp after their cattle died. The fence of fringed weavings mimic the walled compounds of Islamic culture.

Photo: Opposite page: a young girl of the Samburu people in northern Kenya tends the clan's cows.

Photo: Using a big stick for a prod, a Fulani cattleman musters his herd of zebu cattle toward a newly-bored water hole in eastern Niger.

COPYRIGHT 1986 Point Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group