Technology and Politics in the Ecology of the Sahel

Recent technological and political changes in the Sahel resemble earlier innovations that have failed to increase production or achieve equity in distribution, but perceived needs for large-scale changes remain, based on numerous misperceptions of what occurred in the famine of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drought, large numbers of deaths, and decimation of cattle herds have been stereotyped to justify large capital-intensive development projects. Large dams, cash crops, and complex controls of the desert are among the projected schemes to increase production. The thesis of this article is that if a valid perspective of what occurred to the Sahel ecology in the 1960s is constructed, then capital-intensive projects frequently encouraging commercialization of agriculture will be replaced by labor-intensive, small-scale projects that involve primarily subsistence farming. The possible surplus from subsistence patterns is likely to exceed the surplus of large-scale efforts for a variety of reasons.