Mode of Production and Population Patterns: Policy Implications for West African Development

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard W. Franke
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
West African ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Population Policies ◽  
New Synthesis ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Sahel Region

Recent developments in population theory have made possible a re-examination of demographic evidence from West Africa which suggests that population growth and migration are primarily responses to changes in the nature of the production system. Precolonial, colonial, and independence period data provide a series of correlations consistent with the approach and suggest a possible new synthesis of the West African data. The poorest countries of West Africa are those bordering on the Sahara Desert, known as the “Sahel” region. In response to the drought and famine in that region from 1968–1974, numerous proposals have been made for increased attention to reducing population growth. The analysis presented in this paper leads to the conclusion that population policies other than those attempting to lower the birth rate are called for. These would include relocation of populations previously displaced by colonial labor migrations and the re-integration of herding and farming production systems, both of which policies should be considered as population policies. Data are presented from specific projects underway in Senegal, Mauritania, and Mali, to illustrate the argument.

scholarly journals Ancient Homozygosity Segments in West African Djallonké Sheep Inform on the Genomic Impact of Livestock Adaptation to the Environment

Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 1178
Author(s):  
Isabel Álvarez ◽  
Iván Fernández ◽  
Amadou Traoré ◽  
Lucía Pérez-Pardal ◽  
Nuria A. Menéndez-Arias ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Gene Annotation ◽  
White Blood Cells ◽  
West African ◽  
Challenging Environment ◽  
Response To Stress ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Candidate Regions ◽  
Proliferation And Migration

A sample of Burkina Faso Djallonké (West African Dwarf) sheep was analyzed to identify stretches of homozygous segments (runs of homozygosity; ROH) overlapping with ancient homozygosity-by-descent (HBD) segments. HBD segments were considered ancient if they were likely to be inherited from ancestors living from 1024 to 2048 generations ago, roughly coinciding with the time in which sheep entered into West Africa. It is hypothesized that such homozygous segments can inform on the effect of the sheep genome of human-mediated selection for adaptation to this harsh environment. PLINK analyses allowed to identify a total of 510 ROH segments in 127 different individuals that could be summarized into 124 different ROH. A total of 32,968 HBD segments were identified on 119 individuals using the software ZooRoH. HBD segments inherited from ancestors living 1024 and 2048 generations ago were identified on 61 individuals. The overlap between consensus ROH identified using PLINK and HBD fragments putatively assigned to generations 1024 and 2048 gave 108 genomic areas located on 17 different ovine chromosomes which were considered candidate regions for gene-annotation enrichment analyses. Functional annotation allowed to identify six statistically significant functional clusters involving 50 candidate genes. Cluster 1 was involved in homeostasis and coagulation; functional clusters 2, 3, and 6 were associated to innate immunity, defense against infections, and white blood cells proliferation and migration, respectively; cluster 4 was involved in parasite resistance; and functional cluster 5, formed by 20 genes, was involved in response to stress. The current analysis confirms the importance of genomic areas associated to immunity, disease resistance, and response to stress for adaptation of sheep to the challenging environment of humid Sub-Saharan West Africa.

The Development of Population Policies

1971 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. I. Pool
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
African Population ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Population Policies ◽  
Social And Economic Development ◽  
Use Studies

UNTIL recently the tendency has been to look at African population largely in terms of crude density. From this standpoint tropical Africa was often rated as ‘underpopulated’, and even the recent and prestigious Pearson Commission, although noting the overall effect of population growth on development, stated blandly: ‘In Africa and Latin America…settlement is so sparse that it is impossible to speak of overpopulation.’1Yet two years before, by synthesising a number of land-use studies and by demonstrating that, in terms of available land suitable for agriculture and pastoralism, there was pressure on rural resources, a prominent geographer had attacked, and one would have thought, had laid to rest, this argument. I do not wish to reiterate his case.2Instead, using his article as a base, I will attempt here to make very crude prognoses and predictions and then to look at their policy implications, both for the sector discussed by him and for other sectors of social and economic development.

Organized crime, corruption and the challenges of economic growth in the economic community of West African states

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mallam Isgogo Mohammed ◽  
Abbsinejad Hossein ◽  
Chukwudi C. Nwokolo
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
West African ◽  
Least Square ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Series Data ◽  
Economic Community ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Content Type

Purpose This study aims to examine organized crime, corruption and their challenges to the economic growth of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Organized crime and corruption can have a grossly negative impact on the economic growth process of every system, but the extent of damage they have needs to be measured to determine the policy implications to the region. Design/methodology/approach The study uses the fixed effects model and the feasible generalized least square known also as the random-effects model with the pooled ordinary least square as a control on the defined objectives using secondary time series data that covers the period 2000 to 2019 for 11 countries in the ECOWAS region. The panel nature of the data set provides a rich degree of freedom with 220 (20 years for 11 countries – 20*11 = 220) observations. Findings Results show among others that organized crime does not have a significant impact on economic growth, whereas corruption significantly reduces economic growth. Research limitations/implications Unavailability of data affected the scope of the study in the areas of a number of countries selected and years chosen for the study. The implication is that it would have given the study better degrees of freedom. Practical implications The practical implication of this study has exposed corruption hinders economic growth in West Africa. Social implications The social implication of the study is that it has exposed that though the organized crime was a bad phenomenon it does not retard economic growth significantly in West Africa. Originality/value This study is original and of immense importance as its the first study to focus on organized crime and corruption’s influence on economic growth among West African states.

West African coastal states will fear jihadist threat

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Burkina Faso ◽  
Ivory Coast ◽  
National Park ◽  
West African ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Sahel Region ◽  
Security Crises ◽  
Regional Governments

Subject Jihadists' coastal threat. Significance Deteriorating security and widening jihadist control in eastern Burkina Faso, combined with the wider security crisis in the Sahel region as a whole, have raised credible fears that jihadist violence and other security crises could spread into coastal West African countries (Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo). Sporadic terrorism has occurred in some of those countries in recent years, notably the attack on an Ivorian resort in March 2016 and a kidnapping in Benin’s Pendjari National Park in May 2019. Yet there is still more reason for caution than alarm when it comes to predicting the spread of jihadism in West Africa, given the Malian and Burkinabe insurgencies took years to unfold. Impacts Regional governments may look to increase assistance to President Marc Christian Roch Kabore’s administration ahead of the 2020 polls. Joint security efforts involving Burkina Faso and its coastal neighbours will prove piecemeal given their sporadic, underdeveloped nature. A 2018 joint security initiative and resulting arrests suggest Benin and Togo may be the more vulnerable to new jihadist infiltration.

scholarly journals Agrometeorological services for smallholder farmers in West Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 15-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vieri Tarchiani ◽  
José Camacho ◽  
Hamidou Coulibaly ◽  
Federica Rossi ◽  
Robert Stefanski
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Innovation System ◽  
West African ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
Climate Risks ◽  
African Agriculture

Abstract. Climate variability and change are recognised as a major threat for West African agriculture, particularly for smallholder farmers. Moreover, population pressure, poverty, and food insecurity, are worsening the vulnerability of production systems to climate risks. Application of Climate Services in agriculture, specifically Agrometeorological Services, is acknowledged as a valuable innovation to assist decision-making and develop farmers' specific adaptive capacities. In West Africa, the World Meteorological Organisation and National Meteorological Services deployed considerable efforts in the development of Agrometeorological Services. Nevertheless, the impacts of such services on West African farming communities are still largely unknown. This paper aims to delineate the added value of agrometeorological services for farmers within the Agriculture Innovation System of Mauritania. The results of this quali-quantitative assessment demonstrate that farmers use agrometeorological information for a variety of choices: making strategic choice on the seed variety and on the geographical distribution of plots, choosing the most appropriate planting date, better tuning crop development cycle with the rhythm of the rains and choosing favourable periods for different cultural operations. Globally, the effects of all these good practices can be summarized by an increase of crops productivity and a decrease of cropping costs (including opportunity cost) in terms of inputs and working time.

The Coin of the African Realm

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Herbst
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Regional Economies ◽  
African Countries ◽  
New Strategies

This chapter examines the politics of the currency in West Africa from the beginning of the twentieth century. A public series of debates over the nature of the currency occurred in West Africa during both the colonial and independence periods. Since 1983, West African countries have been pioneers in Africa in developing new strategies to combat overvaluation of the currency and reduce the control of government over the currency supply. The chapter charts the evolution of West African currencies as boundaries and explores their relationship to state consolidation. It shows that leaders in African capitals managed to make the units they ruled increasingly distinct from the international and regional economies, but the greater salience of the currency did not end up promoting state consolidation. Rather, winning the ability to determine the value of the currency led to a series of disastrous decisions that severely weakened the states themselves.

scholarly journals Understanding the variability of the rainfall dipole in West Africa using the EC-Earth last millennium simulation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiong Zhang ◽  
Ellen Berntell ◽  
Qiang Li ◽  
Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Model Simulation ◽  
Rainfall Variability ◽  
Low Pressure ◽  
Last Millennium ◽  
Tropical Atlantic ◽  
Gulf Of Guinea ◽  
Dipole Pattern ◽  
Sahel Region ◽  
Heat Low

AbstractThere is a well-known mode of rainfall variability associating opposite hydrological conditions over the Sahel region and the Gulf of Guinea, forming a dipole pattern. Previous meteorological observations show that the dipole pattern varies at interannual timescales. Using an EC-Earth climate model simulation for last millennium (850–1850 CE), we investigate the rainfall variability in West Africa over longer timescales. The 1000-year-long simulation data show that this rainfall dipole presents at decadal to multidecadal and centennial variability and long-term trend. Using the singular value decomposition (SVD) analysis, we identified that the rainfall dipole present in the first SVD mode with 60% explained variance and associated with the variabilities in tropical Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST). The second SVD mode shows a monopole rainfall variability pattern centred over the Sahel, associated with the extra-tropical Atlantic SST variability. We conclude that the rainfall dipole-like pattern is a natural variability mode originated from the local ocean–atmosphere-land coupling in the tropical Atlantic basin. The warm SST anomalies in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean favour an anomalous low pressure at the tropics. This low pressure weakens the meridional pressure gradient between the Saharan Heat Low and the tropical Atlantic. It leads to anomalous northeasterly, reduces the southwesterly moisture flux into the Sahel and confines the Gulf of Guinea's moisture convergence. The influence from extra-tropical climate variability, such as Atlantic multidecadal oscillation, tends to modify the rainfall dipole pattern to a monopole pattern from the Gulf of Guinea to Sahara through influencing the Sahara heat low. External forcing—such as orbital forcing, solar radiation, volcanic and land-use—can amplify/dampen the dipole mode through thermal forcing and atmosphere dynamical feedback.

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