Summarized by Jasmin Patenia
Howard Schissel,
“The Sahel’s Uncertain
Future” – Africa Report, July – Aug.
1984
Background
From 1968-1973, a great drought
ravaged West
Africa. In particular, the
Sahel region which includes parts of
Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Chad, suffered immense environmental degradation. The
Sahel was once an area of nomadic cattle raising and sedentary agriculture. During the drought, these
areas were dried out by advancing sand dunes from the
Sahara Desert. As a result, famine swept the region and there was a
massive influx of destitute herders and farmers into urban
areas.
Summary
It is a decade later and the
Sahel’s condition
has not improved. The root of the problem lies in factors of production in rural
areas.
In sum, the last two decades have been
marked by the trend of extending production of cereals like millet and sorghum,
instead of intensifying output. Thus, neither farmer’s productivity nor the
yield per acre has risen in recent years: average millet and sorghum production
remains extremely low…The seed varieties utilized have not been renewed, and
only a small percentage of total cereals output is farmed with animal traction
and fertilizers. Five percent of cereals are produced with irrigation but yields
are much lower than in other parts of the Third World, and conversely, production costs are
higher. (pg. 12)
As a result, the rural
agricultural areas cannot sufficient supply the people who live in the urban
areas. The Sahel is becoming more dependent on imported cereals, mostly
coming from food aid.
Livestock and groundnuts, both
of which once played major roles in the Sahelians’
food supply and exports, have also suffered a great decline. In contrast, the
development of cotton cultivation has had spectacular results. Unfortunately,
there is not the same incentive to invest in upgrading cereal farming or
livestock.
Sahelian
governments have also been criticized because they have chosen to keep grain
prices low to satisfy non-producing urban populations. People have recognized
the need for better strategies to raise producers’ incentives. One attempt was
made by Mali in 1980 to revise its food strategy.
Mali turned to the World Bank, whose agricultural experts
came up with the plan to liberalize the grain trade in the country by ending the
monopoly held by the parastatal authority, OPAM, and
by raising producer prices to encourage farmers to grow more. Unfortunately, the
plans did not work. It was thought that village cooperatives would replace OPAM’s role by buying grains from farmers at official prices
and then reselling them to rural people at a lower price than the one prevailing
on the free market. However, cooperatives often lacked the money to buy the
grain and private traders took control over the grain market by paying farmers
as little as possible for the grain and reselling at its highest demand, at the
highest possible price. In sum, the surplus that could be extracted from the
rural economy was transferred from the state to the private sector, without any
benefits to the rural population.
Even foreign aid has lacked
sufficient study and preparation, or has solely served the interests of the
donor country. One example was the reafforestation
project to plant eucalyptus trees in order to stop the southward spread of the
desert. The project was costly and the trees needed cultivation and water that
the people in that region lacked. As an example of a misguided development plan,
in 1980, France funded a Dire solar energy
scheme in Mali which was supposed to pump water from the
Niger
River to irrigate land.
However, the installation never succeeded and costs were over $1 million. Food
aid packages by Western donors, usually agricultural surpluses of these
industrialized countries, do nothing to encourage the rural economy. In
addition, cheap imported grains press market prices in the
Sahel and further decrease farmers’ incentives to grow.
Though there are numerous donor efforts, new projects have heavy budgetary costs
which the Sahelian governments are unable to support.
The Sahelian region is now one of the most heavily indebted
countries of the Third
World.
Since the Sahel consumes more than it produces and the rate
of economic growth is too low to finance new investments, its trade balance and
balance of payments have gone permanently into the red. These deficits have been
financed by disbursements of foreign aid, capital transfers, and recourse to
foreign borrowing. The result has been a steep increase in foreign debt.
(pg.14)
All these factors add up to a
very fragile Sahelian political system, especially
Chad which is in constant state of instability. Also,
governments in Upper Volta, Mauritania, and Gambia have been threatened by conflict and
dissidents.
Conclusion
The Sahel’s main resource is the capability of its farmers and
herders to adapt to harsh environments. However, the needs of the rural
communities have been ignored by Sahelian
bureaucracies and abroad. Even at times when communities have tried to set up
and manage their own institutions of development at a local level, their efforts
have been undermined by state administration not wanting to grant them the
authority to do so.
The Sahel does not have the geographic advantage of Africa’s
other coastal states, however the region still has hope of providing an
acceptable way of life for its people. First, Sahelian
development must be long term. It must reduce its dependence on foreign aid, and
increase its export capabilities. It must include grass-roots ideas like health
care, education, village-oriented projects, and the better and more efficient
use of local resources. These are the factors necessary to help the
Sahel out of its development slump. Abdel Wedoud Ould Cheikh, sociologist at the
Mauritania Institute of Scientific Research, notes,
“Unless we mend our ways, the
Sahel at the end of the century will, at best, be
very similar to what it is today, or in a more pessimistic scenario, the region
will become the backwater of Africa.” (pg. 14)