A friend and former colleague, Jonathon Landeck, once remarked that "it's hard to build food security on the backs of illiterate farmers." I think again of this in light of a recent UN press release (seen on H-West-Africa) about a call for "greater investments in agriculture and rural development to boost economic growth and reduce poverty in Africa" by Kanayo Nwanze, Vice-President of IFAD. This call seems to be at the confluence of two recent trends - increasing attention to African agriculture and various appeals for more funds for African development generally. It's really not that new a trend (see for instance this call from FAO in 2004) and indeed there have been funds pledged for this kind of thing (such as by the Gates and Rockefeller foundations in 2006). So it is all the more important to take a look again at what is missing in these calls and announcements.
Educated farmers - key to development or threat to stability?
It is deliberately provocative to put the question in this way, but the issue of "empowering" rural people and communities - a concept central to the development discourse - involves learning and action. This is not an abstract or tangential issue to fundamentals like enough food. I once asked a former professor about what he thought was the key problem (if one had to name one) to improving agriculture in Africa. His response? Education of farmers.
This is not to downplay the importance of structural economic and policy issues, various fundamental resource issues, the role of research and extension, or the utility of "greater investments." But it points to something that runs obliquely to the general emphasis in agricultural development on technical issues and on farmers as needing outside knowledge, guidance and resources. "Education" is more than just telling people what we think they need to know or do.
When I was a Peace Corps volunteer many years ago I recall hearing in the extension services that the "paysans sont les ignorants" - farmers and rural people don't know anything. The notion of "éduquer les paysans" (educating the farmers) was really about telling them to do certain things and not to do others. Or convincing them that some new thing was really better for them. (Or in some cases obliging them to do something.) I think that mindset has been ameliorated somewhat over the years, but the idea of rural people as recipients and potential beneficiaries is still pretty much fundamental.
Farmers are no fools, however, and at the very least can calculate risks and potential benefits based on a lot of experience and local knowledge. The "ignorant" farmers were sometimes smart enough to seem dumb.
Education as I think my professor meant it, and as I use it here, is more about capacities, ways of understanding, and new knowledge in context. How to help farmers figure things out, get the information they need, and integrate new and indigenous knowledge - in short, how to enhance the abilities of farmers to make decisions that work for them and their communities.
A question, though, arises, and that is whether rural people so "empowered" is what governments and donors really want, or whether farmers who can ably make use of technical packages provided by extension services and development projects is preferred.
Farmers work in the vernacular - can development work with that?
In southeastern Mali, cotton farmers in the 1990s used literacy skills in the most widely spoken language, Bambara, to organize a major union - SYCOV (since French is the country's official language, SYCOV apparently keeps all documents in Bambara and French). In 2006, a "farmers' jury" on genetically modified Bt cotton was organized in Sikasso, Mali by IIED - and its main working language was Bambara (the report reflects this; Dr. Michel Pimbert of IIED kindly made that explicit in response to a question I asked in 2006 before seeing the report).
Farmers' first languages and local lingua francas are undeniably important if not central to education and sustainable agricultural development, but is enabling rural people to more effectively use them seen as dangerous by governments and troublesome by development donors? After all, what did farmers do in southeastern Mali with their literacy skills? - unionize and vote against GM crops. When I was in Niger, a colleague suggested that the downgrading or abandonment of local literacy programs by the Nigerien government some years before was exactly because of concern that farmers might get too active.
Indeed, local extension agencies themselves may not like the idea of farmers knowing too much, regardless of what language is used: Peter Easton and Guy Belloncle mentioned in a 2000 report (p. 4) a local research program that was quashed because the extension service "judged it inadmissible to try out with local farmers types of experimentation its own extension agents had not mastered."
And it is common to hear foreign development experts dismiss local languages as too many or too costly to try to do any concerted work in. Questionnaires may be useful, translations as needed by people in the field may be necessary, but much beyond that doesn't usually get attention.
There are so many rationales for not investing in use of African languages in agriculture and rural development, but if we accept that education and "empowerment" of farmers are key factors, is it possible to keep putting it off as if it were unimportant, while pouring new money into old approaches?
Structural issue: Language in the discourse on agricultural development
I mentioned on this blog last year having made (extensive) comments on a report about science and technology for African development. I looked not long ago at the final version of the report - revised after input from readers like me - and from what I could tell there was only one additional mention of the factor of language in one of the chapters. And that mention was in the context of challenges, not proposed approaches. A large part of the issue I think is disciplinary - language is for linguists; agriculture for a range of technical disciplines, economics, and perhaps other social sciences.
How then can the attention of donors, governments, extension agencies, and development organizations who are concerned with enhancing agriculture and investing in development in Africa, be drawn to the importance of doing much more in and with the first languages and local lingua francas of rural Africans? How can we at least research and develop approaches that convey information and promote ways of working in the languages that farmers and their communities speak among themselves?
There are some complex questions in this - one is under no illusion that it's a simple matter of adding "language" to project proposals and paying some translators here and there. But a policy on the part of major agricultural research and rural development actors to explicitly treat farmers' languages seriously in agricultural development in Africa would be a good start, and then some resources to determine optimal ways of using those languages in education, extension and new programs could have a significant impact.
Showing posts with label agriculture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agriculture. Show all posts
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Accessing the Internet in Lusoga?
A recent article in the magazine of the Ugandan newspaper East African, with the odd title of "Mother tongue interference on the Internet" (also available here) discusses Kiganira Deogracious Kijambu's "dream that one day he will access the Internet in Lusoga, his mother tongue." He's described as having developed a successful "e-commerce agricultural business."
The latter fact is significant. There is I think a tendency to discount the utility of local language content or interfaces in a medium that knows no local boundaries. E-commerce in a language with just over million speakers? Even if one considers that Lusoga is very close to Luganda, which has a few million more first & second language speakers, this is still relatively small in the global scheme of things.
I've even tended to emphasize not e-commerce in my discussions of African languages and ICT for rural development, but rather information for extension and building on local technical knowledge. So this article is a welcome reality check as it were. If you're planning to expand use of ICT for any kind of rural development in Africa, don't discount the languages that farmers and their communities speak in their work.
The next question is how to link Mr. Kijambu with others in Africa and beyond who can help this dream become a practical reality. More on that later.
The latter fact is significant. There is I think a tendency to discount the utility of local language content or interfaces in a medium that knows no local boundaries. E-commerce in a language with just over million speakers? Even if one considers that Lusoga is very close to Luganda, which has a few million more first & second language speakers, this is still relatively small in the global scheme of things.
I've even tended to emphasize not e-commerce in my discussions of African languages and ICT for rural development, but rather information for extension and building on local technical knowledge. So this article is a welcome reality check as it were. If you're planning to expand use of ICT for any kind of rural development in Africa, don't discount the languages that farmers and their communities speak in their work.
The next question is how to link Mr. Kijambu with others in Africa and beyond who can help this dream become a practical reality. More on that later.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Linking L10n & ICT4D: Bring back AfAgrICT-L?
One way of describing my focus in working on Bisharat and the PanAfrican Localisation project is linking localization (L10n) of information and communications technology (ICT) with ICT for development (ICT4D) in Africa. Last October I framed this as a question on the LinkedIn network in this way: How to promote better integration & synergism among ICT4D & L10n activities in Africa?
It's an ongoing concern and a question that needs to be returned to from time to time. Therefore I will try to periodically revisit this issue here with specific news, questions or ideas. One of those follows:
Bring back AfAgrICT-L?
About 9 years ago, an email list called "AfAgrICT-L" was set up to facilitate communication about use of ICTs in African agriculture and natural resource management. It was set up by CTA, hosted by Bellanet. Its origins go back to 1995 as described on this page (retrieved from the Wayback Machine), and was intended to "be operational for at least 1 year, after which its continued use and relevance will be re-evaluated." Its purposes were described as:
- Identify and indicate key ICT issues and strategies relevant to agricultural development and natural resource management in Africa;
- Improve the common pool of knowledge and expertise available in this area;
- Identify relevant projects and expertise that could assist in defining strategies
- Provide a mechanism for monitoring technical developments and electronic information sources which can benefit those working in the area of agriculture, rural development and natural resource management.
There is now renewed focus on African agriculture as central to African development, and at the same time ICT4D (and ICT in general) is only getting more important in the region. A forum for these topics - ICT, ICT4D, and African agriculture - seems even more timely now than it was several years ago. Of course one could start a website or a list in a short time, but I'm thinking that to revive this known project, and adapt it to the evolving situation, could be of great use for professionals, researchers, and program managers in the coming years.
Then there is the L10n dimension - ICT in African languages. Farmers and rural communities rely even more on African languages than urban areas, and local environmental and agricultural knowledge are embedded in their langauges and cultures. L10n and ICT(4D) in agriculture and NRM would seem to be a natural combination, and support for L10n is much further along now than it was before. So one added dimension for a new AfAgrICT-L could be the intersection of the technical concerns with how to incorporate and adapt localization as appropriate for different goals.
So, is it time to bring back AfAgrICT-L in a new form?
CTA's ICT Update: "Language Technology"
Having mentioned CTA, I should also note that their ICT Update Issue 40 (Dec. 2007) is devoted to the theme "Language Technology." I had the privilege of contributing one of the articles, "Localizing Languages."
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Language - a vital & neglected topic in African agricultural development?
Following are some excerpts with minor modifications from the introduction I wrote to comments on a report about agricultural development in Africa several months ago. These are in italics, followed by some comments to put it in a personal perspective:
I recall working in rural areas and there were many occasions where multiple languages complicated communication or even shaped the way the work was done. At the time it was just one of those things you and your co-workers dealt with. My main counterpart in an animal traction project in the Amlamé district of Togo spoke Ewe as his first language (L1) but the farmers spoke either Kabiye or Akposso as their L1. With a mixture of French and mostly Mina/Ewe, my counterpart could get the messages across. I worked mainly in French and while communication was possible with some of the farmers it was not with the rest. People there were adept at using their "language portfolios" as it were to translate and complete some sort of communication. How much was lost is another matter and I suspect in retrospect that this system is good for the gist but not nuance or detail, and the "devil is in the details" as the saying goes.
It was clear in any event that no one had planned systematically for how communication across languages was to happen - everything sort of depended on extension agents' and farmers' skills in the field.
In working on a forestry project in the Djenné district of Mali, language and ethnicity emerged as issues in deciding which villages to contact for participation in tree planting (the project was just beginning there and it was not possible by any means to go everywhere). The local staff was more comfortable in Bambara than in some other languages, and indeed it was in the Bambara-speaking villages that the work focused (other issues like perception of the readiness of some other groups to reliably participate in tree planting were also expressed - it is hard to sort out the different factors, but that would have been important to do).
The multiplicity of languages is sometimes pointed at as a problem in Africa, but I think that misses the point. In fact it is not the multilingualism that is the issue but the fact that no few if any (as far as I know) discussing how to best work in the linguistic environment.
At the same time, the skill of Africans generally in facilitating communication across languages (which has been discussed in the literature on African languages) may be obscuring the need for more systematic attention to the issue.
It was interesting to note that some researchers with ICRISAT and IITA who had to follow up on field trials with farmers by means of a questionnaire decided to translate the questionnaires into the farmers' languages (Bambara in Mali for sorghum trials I believe, and Hausa in central Niger for cowpea trials). Having one or many field agents translate the questionnaire from French each time it was administered was obviously going to introduce all sorts of unknowns into the quality of the data. The research need for greater precision led to the obvious choice to communicate in the farmers' languages.
So, one wonders, what about the way field agents translate extension information day-to-day?
It took me a while to really catch on to this issue, even though I have worked on language as well as rural development. Which has me wondering why - was I just slow or what? I do think now, as I indicated in the excerpts quoted above, that part of it is a disciplinary culture and divide issue: the issue was agriculture or forestry, and the foreign experts and the research/extension systems function in French (in those countries). Language, or optimizing communication in specific languages, were not something that entered into the discourse.
This gets into speculation for the reasons, but the main point I'm trying to make is that language is a big deal and there hasn't been enough thought given or research done on how big a deal it is, in what precise ways, and how to best address it. Discussing new approaches and techniques for agriculture in Africa, and especially discussing dissemination of knowledge about these, without engaging the issue of language seems to me to be a mistake we don't have to keep making.
Anyway, this is an issue that I've mentioned before (for instance, Sept. 14, 2006) and will come back to periodically.
Sidebar improvements
I've made some more changes on the sidebar, which hopefully is more useful now.
I see language as an important consideration often - and paradoxically - omitted from discussions on agriculture and rural development in Africa: language and specifically communication about agriculture in farmers' languages and/or local lingua francas. ... The issues of choice of language in development communication, and the implications of those choices for who participates, whose knowledge counts, how well knowledge that is exchanged is understood and appropriated, etc. [have] implications for analysis or action. ...
I think it is fair to say that only in Africa (esp. sub-Saharan) is it the general pattern that the languages dominant in agricultural research and extension are different from those the farming populations speak as their first languages and even lingua francas. There are various reasons for this of course, but the fact is important, and too central to any effort to communicate about science and technology with farmers to be left on the margins of the discourse, let alone to be totally ignored.
Rural realities as concern language and linguistic diversity are not unknown to scholars and practitioners concerned with agriculture in Africa, of course, and many of our African colleagues have themselves lived those realities to one degree or another. However, disciplinarily, such language-related issues are alien to agricultural specialists (to a greater extent even than the broad category of social science), and in practice language differences are left to extension agents and/or intermediary farmers in the field to deal with. Moreover, professional incentives, training and education, etc. are all in English, French and Portuguese, not the first languages of agriculture in Africa.
As a consequence there seems to be a linguistic divide with consequences for understanding, transmission and generation of knowledge etc. This issue, which has many unanswered questions but not easy answers, is underresearched, in part because of a disciplinary divide which linguists on the one hand and the range of specialists concerned with agricultural development on the other need to find the will and means to bridge.
I recall working in rural areas and there were many occasions where multiple languages complicated communication or even shaped the way the work was done. At the time it was just one of those things you and your co-workers dealt with. My main counterpart in an animal traction project in the Amlamé district of Togo spoke Ewe as his first language (L1) but the farmers spoke either Kabiye or Akposso as their L1. With a mixture of French and mostly Mina/Ewe, my counterpart could get the messages across. I worked mainly in French and while communication was possible with some of the farmers it was not with the rest. People there were adept at using their "language portfolios" as it were to translate and complete some sort of communication. How much was lost is another matter and I suspect in retrospect that this system is good for the gist but not nuance or detail, and the "devil is in the details" as the saying goes.
It was clear in any event that no one had planned systematically for how communication across languages was to happen - everything sort of depended on extension agents' and farmers' skills in the field.
In working on a forestry project in the Djenné district of Mali, language and ethnicity emerged as issues in deciding which villages to contact for participation in tree planting (the project was just beginning there and it was not possible by any means to go everywhere). The local staff was more comfortable in Bambara than in some other languages, and indeed it was in the Bambara-speaking villages that the work focused (other issues like perception of the readiness of some other groups to reliably participate in tree planting were also expressed - it is hard to sort out the different factors, but that would have been important to do).
The multiplicity of languages is sometimes pointed at as a problem in Africa, but I think that misses the point. In fact it is not the multilingualism that is the issue but the fact that no few if any (as far as I know) discussing how to best work in the linguistic environment.
At the same time, the skill of Africans generally in facilitating communication across languages (which has been discussed in the literature on African languages) may be obscuring the need for more systematic attention to the issue.
It was interesting to note that some researchers with ICRISAT and IITA who had to follow up on field trials with farmers by means of a questionnaire decided to translate the questionnaires into the farmers' languages (Bambara in Mali for sorghum trials I believe, and Hausa in central Niger for cowpea trials). Having one or many field agents translate the questionnaire from French each time it was administered was obviously going to introduce all sorts of unknowns into the quality of the data. The research need for greater precision led to the obvious choice to communicate in the farmers' languages.
So, one wonders, what about the way field agents translate extension information day-to-day?
It took me a while to really catch on to this issue, even though I have worked on language as well as rural development. Which has me wondering why - was I just slow or what? I do think now, as I indicated in the excerpts quoted above, that part of it is a disciplinary culture and divide issue: the issue was agriculture or forestry, and the foreign experts and the research/extension systems function in French (in those countries). Language, or optimizing communication in specific languages, were not something that entered into the discourse.
This gets into speculation for the reasons, but the main point I'm trying to make is that language is a big deal and there hasn't been enough thought given or research done on how big a deal it is, in what precise ways, and how to best address it. Discussing new approaches and techniques for agriculture in Africa, and especially discussing dissemination of knowledge about these, without engaging the issue of language seems to me to be a mistake we don't have to keep making.
Anyway, this is an issue that I've mentioned before (for instance, Sept. 14, 2006) and will come back to periodically.
Sidebar improvements
I've made some more changes on the sidebar, which hopefully is more useful now.
Friday, September 21, 2007
So, what about the last year?
Busy. Some work highlights:
- Vastly expanded the Pan African Localisation wiki (and that's still in progress). The idea with this is to develop a comprehensive information resource for people of a range of backgrounds approaching localization in African languages. First of all, localizers - people working on or planning a project for some aspect of localization in one or more African langauges. Also policymakers (ICT, language, and increasingly localization), development program planners, local activists, etc. It involves bringing a lot of information together (in many cases just basic with outlinks) and interlinking it. Localization to a certain degree involves bringing together of "previously unrelated skills, or matrices, of thought" (per the well known formulation of Arthur Koestler in another context some years ago) so this wiki is combining information on African languages and sociolinguistics, along with language technology tools, ICT4D information, mention of policies etc. In fact, all these "skils or matrices of thought" can also be understood as interacting parts of a larger "localization ecology," which is a concept I'm working on.
- Presented at and participated in "Regional Consultation on Local Language Computing Policy in Developing Asia" and "PAN Localization Project Phase II Meeting"meetings of the PAN Localisation Project, held in Thimphu, Bhutan in January. The PAN L10n project is funded by IDRC and has been particularly successful in facilitating localization work in several countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The discussion of "local language computing policy" involved representatives from several other countries in the region.
- Attended a one-day seminar on "Recent Experiences on Measuring Languages in Cyberspace" at UNESCO in Paris. This was on 22 February, the second day of a two day observance of "International Mother Language Day."
- Helped organize and participated in the "Pan African Research on L10N Workshop & Localization Blitz" held in Marrakech, Morocco in February 2007. This is another piece in IDRC's strategy to develop a network for localization in Africa. The workshop was organized by the Tactical Technology Collective - same organization that put together Africa Source I (Okahandja, Namibia, 2004) & II (Kalangala, Uganda, 2006) and the Localisation Dev workshop (Warsaw, Poland, 2004). Many of the participants also had been at the PanAfrican Localisation Workshop in Casablanca, Morocco (2005); three others and I came from the seminar in Paris mentioned above.
- Attended the 38th ACAL 2007 & 11th ALTA 2007 Conference held at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, US, in March 2007. This was an opportunity to connect with various people involved in research on and teaching of African languages. It has been my thought for a while that linguists and language instructors can be involved more with localization efforts.
- Submitted extensive comments on the Africa section of the "International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development" in May. More about this in a later post.
- Taught a distance course on "Language and Development Communication for the Payson School of Tulane University. This was an interesting challenge and opportunity to learn as well as teach. I hope I have the opportunity to give this course again.
- Continued to interact online with various people working on aspects of localization and internationalization. This is not really news though - have been doing this in one form or another for several years.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Back again. Gates, Rockefeller & African languages
I've expressed reservations about the medium of blog before - in some ways very useful, but in some ways a drain on time. And then all the blogs and who has time to read most of them?
I've tended to drain my expressive time on several lists, which require less in terms of maintenance and in theory have a built in readership as well as a more egalitarian mode of interaction. As a collective enterprise, even when one person is the "owner," the focus is not so much on the personalities than the issue (though in practice perhaps a few people - and personalities - may dominate for various periods of time). And keeping the list going is a task shared by several people. (But enough on comparative dynamics of lists and blogs!)
Also I've been caught up in other tasks and issues.
Nevertheless, having set this one up and still feeling as strongly as ever about the principles that led me to do so, and being aware that a blog - however little read - still has a presence, I will take it up again. There are several reasons why, but the tipping point, as it were, is reading of a Washington Post article about the Gates, and Rockefeller foundations "joining together to fight African hunger. A lot could be said about this, but in terms of the topic of this blog, I would say that there is a great opportunity to think first about farmer education and building on the bases of their knowledge about their situations, and in order to do this, to work seriously in the languages most familiar to the farmers, their families and communities.
Crop improvement and various technical innovations are important to agriculture in Africa, at least as much as elsewhere. But the foundation for agricultural development there, no less than elsewhere, is educated farmers. This is not just my opinion, but one that is held by many experts. But in Africa there has been very little attention to working in the languages most familiar to the people, especially in rural areas. Mostly agricultural extension messages for instance are translated ad hoc in the field by extension agents, who as a general rule have never had training in use of African languages (even their mother tongues) for this work.
Farmers' languages are not an inconvenience to be worked around in Africa any more than any other part of the world. But in Africa and African development they are usually treated that way. If the Gates and Rockefeller foundations are really "looking for a more systematic, long-term solution to African hunger," they need to balance the usual technical and market approaches with an educational initiative that takes fully into account African languages as a media for communication and innovation.
All this is not to discount English and French but to get real. There is no substitution for communicating in the language(s) that people know best and are most likely to use among themselves, and there is a lot of advantage to promoting "domestication" (in Alpha O. Konaré's term) of new scientific and technical information in those same languages. It's not second best, it's just best.
And there's also an important gender dimension. In general African women farmers are have less facility in the "official languages" (English, French, Portuguese) than men farmers. So the extent to which the community languages are used will be proportionatly more beneficial for women in terms of inclusiveness. Everyone wins, especially women.
I've tended to drain my expressive time on several lists, which require less in terms of maintenance and in theory have a built in readership as well as a more egalitarian mode of interaction. As a collective enterprise, even when one person is the "owner," the focus is not so much on the personalities than the issue (though in practice perhaps a few people - and personalities - may dominate for various periods of time). And keeping the list going is a task shared by several people. (But enough on comparative dynamics of lists and blogs!)
Also I've been caught up in other tasks and issues.
Nevertheless, having set this one up and still feeling as strongly as ever about the principles that led me to do so, and being aware that a blog - however little read - still has a presence, I will take it up again. There are several reasons why, but the tipping point, as it were, is reading of a Washington Post article about the Gates, and Rockefeller foundations "joining together to fight African hunger. A lot could be said about this, but in terms of the topic of this blog, I would say that there is a great opportunity to think first about farmer education and building on the bases of their knowledge about their situations, and in order to do this, to work seriously in the languages most familiar to the farmers, their families and communities.
Crop improvement and various technical innovations are important to agriculture in Africa, at least as much as elsewhere. But the foundation for agricultural development there, no less than elsewhere, is educated farmers. This is not just my opinion, but one that is held by many experts. But in Africa there has been very little attention to working in the languages most familiar to the people, especially in rural areas. Mostly agricultural extension messages for instance are translated ad hoc in the field by extension agents, who as a general rule have never had training in use of African languages (even their mother tongues) for this work.
Farmers' languages are not an inconvenience to be worked around in Africa any more than any other part of the world. But in Africa and African development they are usually treated that way. If the Gates and Rockefeller foundations are really "looking for a more systematic, long-term solution to African hunger," they need to balance the usual technical and market approaches with an educational initiative that takes fully into account African languages as a media for communication and innovation.
All this is not to discount English and French but to get real. There is no substitution for communicating in the language(s) that people know best and are most likely to use among themselves, and there is a lot of advantage to promoting "domestication" (in Alpha O. Konaré's term) of new scientific and technical information in those same languages. It's not second best, it's just best.
And there's also an important gender dimension. In general African women farmers are have less facility in the "official languages" (English, French, Portuguese) than men farmers. So the extent to which the community languages are used will be proportionatly more beneficial for women in terms of inclusiveness. Everyone wins, especially women.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Famine in Niger
I've written previously that although this blog bears the name of Niger's capital, where I lived nearly 4 years, this blog is not primarily about the country but about larger issues of localization around the continent. However since the blog does bear the name of Niamey, and there is no more important matter on earth than life, I want to mention the drastic circumstances that have befallen large parts of Niger (esp. the agro-pastoral zones towards the north). Would that mention here could save a life or make a positive difference somehow in the world response to the unfolding tragedy.
Niger is already practically the poorest place on earth even in a good year. As I used to explain to new Peace Corps volunteers when I was an Associate Director there, life for rural Nigeriens is like a stacked gamble: when it rains enough you survive to try again next year; when it doesn't rain, maybe you die. This grim assessment, something that I gained a little familiarity with when in neighboring Mali in 1984 (year of a huge drought regionwide), has been borne out this year with a vengeance. But this time it's not just an issue of rain but one of locusts - something that is favored by a lot of rain in preceding years.
In 2000, when I first arrived in Niger, the country was facing a shortfall in grain. Or actually, the previous year's crop was not going to stretch through the "hungry season" which is the period beginning more or less about the time you plant the new year's crops but the granaries from last year are running low. Obviously the less full the granaries are then the bigger problem you face the next. That is in effect what is happening now. What is a bit confusing hearing about this longdistance is how the state of affairs now couldn't have been better anticipated considering the les than full granaries last year. Indeed there was some early warning back in November, but apparently not all those on the ground agreed on how bad it would be (perhaps because it was mostly in areas away from the capital and administrative centers?).
Back in 2000, the problem was relatively mild, but saying "relative" is easy when you can retreat to a place with food and have money to buy it. That year I gained a renewed appreciation for Sahelians and their resilience, and also for the PCVs who were practically the only foreigners on the front lines as it were, trying to make sure that the villages they lived in were not forgotten when the lists of needs were compiled, seeking ways to generate project monies to assist in matters that get neglected when food is the bottom line, and more.
During the time I was in Niger, each year there was a kind of watch of the weather and then an assessment of the situation in various parts of the country where rainfall was marginal. When I left the country in 2004 I told some new volunteers, as I had earlier incoming groups, that there was a chance that they'd see a major drought or famine during their two years there. Would that I had been wrong.
Though the focus of this blog - to the extent I can add to it and have time to do so - will remain ICT in African languages, I will add any further information I receive from people on the ground in Niger. One letter by the Peace Corps Director in Niger, Jim Bullington, can be read on the Friends of Niger site, which also has links to other articles on the situation in Niger.
I've written previously that although this blog bears the name of Niger's capital, where I lived nearly 4 years, this blog is not primarily about the country but about larger issues of localization around the continent. However since the blog does bear the name of Niamey, and there is no more important matter on earth than life, I want to mention the drastic circumstances that have befallen large parts of Niger (esp. the agro-pastoral zones towards the north). Would that mention here could save a life or make a positive difference somehow in the world response to the unfolding tragedy.
Niger is already practically the poorest place on earth even in a good year. As I used to explain to new Peace Corps volunteers when I was an Associate Director there, life for rural Nigeriens is like a stacked gamble: when it rains enough you survive to try again next year; when it doesn't rain, maybe you die. This grim assessment, something that I gained a little familiarity with when in neighboring Mali in 1984 (year of a huge drought regionwide), has been borne out this year with a vengeance. But this time it's not just an issue of rain but one of locusts - something that is favored by a lot of rain in preceding years.
In 2000, when I first arrived in Niger, the country was facing a shortfall in grain. Or actually, the previous year's crop was not going to stretch through the "hungry season" which is the period beginning more or less about the time you plant the new year's crops but the granaries from last year are running low. Obviously the less full the granaries are then the bigger problem you face the next. That is in effect what is happening now. What is a bit confusing hearing about this longdistance is how the state of affairs now couldn't have been better anticipated considering the les than full granaries last year. Indeed there was some early warning back in November, but apparently not all those on the ground agreed on how bad it would be (perhaps because it was mostly in areas away from the capital and administrative centers?).
Back in 2000, the problem was relatively mild, but saying "relative" is easy when you can retreat to a place with food and have money to buy it. That year I gained a renewed appreciation for Sahelians and their resilience, and also for the PCVs who were practically the only foreigners on the front lines as it were, trying to make sure that the villages they lived in were not forgotten when the lists of needs were compiled, seeking ways to generate project monies to assist in matters that get neglected when food is the bottom line, and more.
During the time I was in Niger, each year there was a kind of watch of the weather and then an assessment of the situation in various parts of the country where rainfall was marginal. When I left the country in 2004 I told some new volunteers, as I had earlier incoming groups, that there was a chance that they'd see a major drought or famine during their two years there. Would that I had been wrong.
Though the focus of this blog - to the extent I can add to it and have time to do so - will remain ICT in African languages, I will add any further information I receive from people on the ground in Niger. One letter by the Peace Corps Director in Niger, Jim Bullington, can be read on the Friends of Niger site, which also has links to other articles on the situation in Niger.
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Today is International Mother Language Day, an observance established by the UN in 1999. Apparently there will be some ceremonies chez UNESCO on Monday 2/23. More info at www.unesco.org/education/IMLD2004. En français à www.unesco.org/education/IMLD2004/fr/.
In the panorama of holidays, anniversaries, and observances it may seem quite minor, but it is one of the only events calling attention to 1) language loss and 2) the too often overlooked (esp. in Africa) importance of first languages in education.
A couple of brief articles give more info: UNESCO urges teaching from earliest age in indigenous mother languages and UN's Mother Language Day Focuses On Conserving World's Linguistic Heritage.
There is no observance that I'm aware of in Niamey. A colleague I mentioned this to a while back asked, but there was nothing. And no time to generate something. Unfortunately the advance support from UNESCO for this seems to be minimal - they pull things together nicely in time (webpage, ceremonies), but for advance planning there is little. I did get a nice letter in response to inquiries offering to send materials, but it was too close to the event to allow for mail to arrive.
Problème avec l'affichage du français ici! Sur un autre ordinateur que j'utilise d'habitude pour regarder ce blog j'ai remarqué que les caractères accentés sont transformés en autres choses... Cela arrive je crois parceque ce page est en UTF-8, et selon la configuration du browser, les entités indiqués par caractères accentés veut transmettre d'autres informations que celles qu'on a esperé. A faami?? Franchement, je ne sais même pas si moi je comprends complètement. Une solution est de mettre, par exemple, & e a c u t e ; (sans les espace intercalés) pour e accent aigu dans le texte (html) du "post" etc. - mais c'est gênant. Donc je chercherai une autre solution...
Enfin, a couple of things written to someone re an interesting survey of cybercafés in Nairobi. It seemed to me that the question re language was missing. In fact language of content and access seems to be given little energy by people promoting ICT. Here are excerpts from my two letters; I omit the nice brief reply (basically saying no) to the first letter that I received this morning:
(Thursday, November 20, 2003 6:51 AM)
Greetings! I saw the item on your Nairobi cybercafé survey in Balancing Act's News Update #183 and found it very interesting. Indeed, this is a topic deserving more research and I hope your effort encourages same.
In looking at the News Update piece and the summary at http://www.ccoak.net/cyber_survey.html I did not notice mention of any questions in what I think is an area of central interest, that of language. Maybe this subject was discussed in the full report, but I had trouble downloading it.
Some questions I would look for would include the languages people use in e-mail and websurfing (not sure how many sites in Kenya have Swahili, for instance, though there are a number in Tanzania of course) and whether users have any preferences in this regard that are not currently met with regard to content language (i.e., would they like to see more content in Kenyan languages). The latter question would seem to fit with the overall theme of the report that users sought more local content: does the language of the local content matter, to whom, in what ways, and to what extent?
This all would bridge to another set of questions re computer interfaces: although Swahili for example uses the ASCII character set, I understand that Gikuyu has some diacritic characters (see http://www.bisharat.net/A12N/KENYA-table.htm ) and that this may pose an inconvenience to people who might want to use this in, say, e-mail (see for example http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfricanLanguages/message/73 ). Have cybercafés dealt with this question or even thought about it?
Thanks in advance for any feedback and all the best!
(Saturday, February 21, 2004 10:51 AM)
. . . Re language I think it's always important and the interest is definitely real. Three things tend to submerge the issue in various agendas/discourses (including those relating to ICT):
1) In my mainly West African experience, there are things close to the heart that people don't make a big thing of overtly.
2) Many Africans have more or less bought into the line that their languages are "tribal dialects" or in any event unsuited for science, technology, and learning. This has been reinforced by the formal education systems which at best assign a secondary role to indigenous languages and in too many cases (esp. in former French colonies)
3) Many Westerners tend to assume away African languages, even though their intent be benign, since they generally don't understand them, and the Africans they interact with the most tend to be able to get by in English or French.
ICT adds another dimension to this. The association of English (or French) with technology, opportunity, and the exciting world elsewhere is understandable, but there could and arguably should be the opportunity for some balance. Nobody is suggesting that Africans have to use their languages on computers and the internet, but the current approaches in many ways tell them that they can't - or shouldn't be so foolish as to think of it.
The latter may seem gratuitous, but I've been dumbfounded by some things I've heard occasionally mainly from Westerners working in development here - why would someone want to use something other than French if they can understand that? ; we're a decade and a half away from any localization for African languages ; the plurality of African languages (and the inability to initiate use in all of them) makes it better to stay with English or French...
Coming back to your cybercafé survey, language is worth the question(s). Especially in the case of Swahili, which of course is an important regional language that is even being considered as a medium for instruction in higher education. But even in the case of Kenya for other maternal languages - there has been some significant publication in Gikuyu, for instance, so why not use it on the internet, or why shouldn't speakers of that tongue be interested in seeing some web content in it? The main thing is that behind the apparent "lack of excitement" on the topic there may be, and likely is, a range of opinion and interest. It would be interesting to know what this is currently and also to follow its evolution, if you are planning to continue the study.
. . .
Last item for this entry - I had joked about agricultural linguistics with a couple of our trainees not long ago. It's not as far out a juxtaposition as it might seem: I just ran across the term environmental linguistics looking for something else yesterday. That has a couple of senses it seems - depending on whether it's the built environment or the natural one - a distinction that means more perhaps to us with ag. & NRM backgrounds than to linguists. The latter sense seems along the lines of the operating premises of the NGO Terralingua. I still think that there's a fertile area for research and practice on language and development in Africa, and linguistics needs to be brought into the mix more vigorously.
In the panorama of holidays, anniversaries, and observances it may seem quite minor, but it is one of the only events calling attention to 1) language loss and 2) the too often overlooked (esp. in Africa) importance of first languages in education.
A couple of brief articles give more info: UNESCO urges teaching from earliest age in indigenous mother languages and UN's Mother Language Day Focuses On Conserving World's Linguistic Heritage.
There is no observance that I'm aware of in Niamey. A colleague I mentioned this to a while back asked, but there was nothing. And no time to generate something. Unfortunately the advance support from UNESCO for this seems to be minimal - they pull things together nicely in time (webpage, ceremonies), but for advance planning there is little. I did get a nice letter in response to inquiries offering to send materials, but it was too close to the event to allow for mail to arrive.
Problème avec l'affichage du français ici! Sur un autre ordinateur que j'utilise d'habitude pour regarder ce blog j'ai remarqué que les caractères accentés sont transformés en autres choses... Cela arrive je crois parceque ce page est en UTF-8, et selon la configuration du browser, les entités indiqués par caractères accentés veut transmettre d'autres informations que celles qu'on a esperé. A faami?? Franchement, je ne sais même pas si moi je comprends complètement. Une solution est de mettre, par exemple, & e a c u t e ; (sans les espace intercalés) pour e accent aigu dans le texte (html) du "post" etc. - mais c'est gênant. Donc je chercherai une autre solution...
Enfin, a couple of things written to someone re an interesting survey of cybercafés in Nairobi. It seemed to me that the question re language was missing. In fact language of content and access seems to be given little energy by people promoting ICT. Here are excerpts from my two letters; I omit the nice brief reply (basically saying no) to the first letter that I received this morning:
(Thursday, November 20, 2003 6:51 AM)
Greetings! I saw the item on your Nairobi cybercafé survey in Balancing Act's News Update #183 and found it very interesting. Indeed, this is a topic deserving more research and I hope your effort encourages same.
In looking at the News Update piece and the summary at http://www.ccoak.net/cyber_survey.html I did not notice mention of any questions in what I think is an area of central interest, that of language. Maybe this subject was discussed in the full report, but I had trouble downloading it.
Some questions I would look for would include the languages people use in e-mail and websurfing (not sure how many sites in Kenya have Swahili, for instance, though there are a number in Tanzania of course) and whether users have any preferences in this regard that are not currently met with regard to content language (i.e., would they like to see more content in Kenyan languages). The latter question would seem to fit with the overall theme of the report that users sought more local content: does the language of the local content matter, to whom, in what ways, and to what extent?
This all would bridge to another set of questions re computer interfaces: although Swahili for example uses the ASCII character set, I understand that Gikuyu has some diacritic characters (see http://www.bisharat.net/A12N/KENYA-table.htm ) and that this may pose an inconvenience to people who might want to use this in, say, e-mail (see for example http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfricanLanguages/message/73 ). Have cybercafés dealt with this question or even thought about it?
Thanks in advance for any feedback and all the best!
(Saturday, February 21, 2004 10:51 AM)
. . . Re language I think it's always important and the interest is definitely real. Three things tend to submerge the issue in various agendas/discourses (including those relating to ICT):
1) In my mainly West African experience, there are things close to the heart that people don't make a big thing of overtly.
2) Many Africans have more or less bought into the line that their languages are "tribal dialects" or in any event unsuited for science, technology, and learning. This has been reinforced by the formal education systems which at best assign a secondary role to indigenous languages and in too many cases (esp. in former French colonies)
3) Many Westerners tend to assume away African languages, even though their intent be benign, since they generally don't understand them, and the Africans they interact with the most tend to be able to get by in English or French.
ICT adds another dimension to this. The association of English (or French) with technology, opportunity, and the exciting world elsewhere is understandable, but there could and arguably should be the opportunity for some balance. Nobody is suggesting that Africans have to use their languages on computers and the internet, but the current approaches in many ways tell them that they can't - or shouldn't be so foolish as to think of it.
The latter may seem gratuitous, but I've been dumbfounded by some things I've heard occasionally mainly from Westerners working in development here - why would someone want to use something other than French if they can understand that? ; we're a decade and a half away from any localization for African languages ; the plurality of African languages (and the inability to initiate use in all of them) makes it better to stay with English or French...
Coming back to your cybercafé survey, language is worth the question(s). Especially in the case of Swahili, which of course is an important regional language that is even being considered as a medium for instruction in higher education. But even in the case of Kenya for other maternal languages - there has been some significant publication in Gikuyu, for instance, so why not use it on the internet, or why shouldn't speakers of that tongue be interested in seeing some web content in it? The main thing is that behind the apparent "lack of excitement" on the topic there may be, and likely is, a range of opinion and interest. It would be interesting to know what this is currently and also to follow its evolution, if you are planning to continue the study.
. . .
Last item for this entry - I had joked about agricultural linguistics with a couple of our trainees not long ago. It's not as far out a juxtaposition as it might seem: I just ran across the term environmental linguistics looking for something else yesterday. That has a couple of senses it seems - depending on whether it's the built environment or the natural one - a distinction that means more perhaps to us with ag. & NRM backgrounds than to linguists. The latter sense seems along the lines of the operating premises of the NGO Terralingua. I still think that there's a fertile area for research and practice on language and development in Africa, and linguistics needs to be brought into the mix more vigorously.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Training sessions yesterday and tomorrow - for new PCVs. Big group, great attitude. For those familiar with Peace Corps and the traditional 3-month pre-service training, we have departed from that model, with a little over eight weeks training in basics before going out to post and then after a couple of months an intensive supplemental technical training. Niger is one of the first to try this in Africa.
Another item - Unicode-Afrique, a Yahoogroup I set up two years ago, marks two years of existence. A modest success, I think, with promise. It is far from the most active Africa & ICT list, but it seems to be filling a niche:
Il y a deux ans aujourd'hui qu'on a crée Unicode-Afrique comme instrument d'éducation, échange d'information, et même collaboration sur les potentialités de l'Unicode pour faciliter l'emploi des langues africaines dans l'informatique et sur l'internet.
Je voudrais prendre l'occasion de rémercier toutes et tous pour votre fidélité au groupe et pour avoir contribué vos questions, reponses et points de vue sur l'Unicode et les langues et écritures d'Afrique.
Que la prochaine année vous porte du succès dans vos travaux et nous permette de continuer et avancer les débats concernant l'Unicode et l'Afrique!
. . .
Back to Peace Corps ... APCDs, and Peace Corps staff generally, have their role described sometimes as in loco parentis, which is not really accurate since PCVs are are all well of age, but it does reflect our role in looking after basic safety & security, making sure that living conditions meet a certain minimum, etc.
A lot of what we APCDs do relates also to aspects of work and even providing advice/mentoring and other info. I had an interesting set of questions from one volunteer recently on vacation westward from Niger in West Africa which let me act momentarily in loco professoris. Anyway the questions and imprompt answers follow:
1. What role did peanuts play in the local economy before the French turned them in to a cash crop? How has the average Nigerien's use of the peanut and it's products changed?
The history of peanuts has been more prominent in countries west of Niger it seems. In Senegal as you saw it was big time economically and socially. Somewhat less so in Mali. In Niger there are not a lot of areas which can produce the crop that well. There was a peanut oil factory in the east of Niger, but either the crop production apparently couldn't support it or it was otherwise unprofitable.
Peanuts of course are native to Brazil, and like other new world crops (like corn) long ago found places in farming systems and foodways. The colonial emphasis on it in some areas may have increased its cultivation and use, but offhand I can't think of any study on this.
2. Why do Fulans and Wodabes seem so much less religious (Islam) in Niger than they do in Cameroon, Mali, Senegal?
Interesting question re Fulɓe and Islam. Up until the 1700s many Fulɓe were pagan (for lack of a better word). For various reasons there was a series of independent "revolutions" or reform movements in which Muslim Fulɓe took power in Fuuta Jalon (Guinea), ~1776; Sokoto & the Hausa states ~1804; Maasina (Mali) 1818; and Fuuta Tooro (Senegal River valley) mid-1800's. For a while you could actually talk of Fulaphone West Africa much as you do Francophone West Africa today (though nobody did).
The character of each was different. Fuuta Jalon was a theocracy with almost feudal hierarchy but an interesting system of rotation of power between two clans (which proved their undoing when the French could play them off against each other). Maasina also maintained the traditional "caste" system in the much more varied ethnic palette of the inland Niger delta, but is mostly known for a far-sighted reorganization of the herding system and interaction with agriculture.
I know less about Sokoto, but the Fulɓe involved apparently became pretty much absorbed into the Hausa state system (at the top), such that you'll sometimes read of Hausa-Fulani states (and one poorly researched article recently mentioned the "Hausa-Fulani tribe" of northern Nigeria). Between the Hausa states and Maasina (which includes Liptaako, Dori, western Niger), the Fulɓe were not as much caught up in it, and even less so in the open expanses to the north.
Fuua Tooro produced Al-Hajj Umar who battled the French in Senegal and when he lost a key battle in Medina on the Senegal River in 1852(?) turned his attentions eastward, conquering Kaarta (Bambara kingdom in western Mali) in 1860(?) and Segu (another more powerful Bambara kingdom) and Maasina in 1862. This is complex and the latter was the cause of some bitter blood and decades of chaos before the French took over.
I'm not as up on the situation in Adamawa (N. Cameroon) or why the Fulɓe are more Islamized there.
3. In Cameroon, the French left the Fulans in power when the country was granted independence? Did the colonizer favor Fulans in other countries as well? Why?
The relationship between the French and the Fulɓe was complicated in part by romantic notions of the origin of the latter and practical issues in that they found them in power in many places. I don't know my Cameroonian history well enough to say why Ahmadu Ahidjo et al were in power when the French left. I am aware that historically the Fulɓe in the north subjugated other peoples (and in fact ran across an interesting article once on the use of tree and bush plantings in that region for village defenses in that area - militaro-forestry?).
In other countries it was really a question of convenience. The Fulɓe had a bit of an advantage with the French in Guinea (they are still the largest group by a small margin) and indeed tended to vote for the French in the famous 1958 referendum in which the rest of the country didn't and which led to Sekou Touré's "non."
4. Why are grazing lands decreasing? Is it because of desertification, Hausas moving north and taking the land for farms, bigger herds, or some combination of these factors?
Combination of factors. More people either owning more animals or looking for more farmland, plus land-degradation and longer term trends in rainfall. I usually shy away from using "desertification" as it covers more than it reveals.
Another item - Unicode-Afrique, a Yahoogroup I set up two years ago, marks two years of existence. A modest success, I think, with promise. It is far from the most active Africa & ICT list, but it seems to be filling a niche:
Il y a deux ans aujourd'hui qu'on a crée Unicode-Afrique comme instrument d'éducation, échange d'information, et même collaboration sur les potentialités de l'Unicode pour faciliter l'emploi des langues africaines dans l'informatique et sur l'internet.
Je voudrais prendre l'occasion de rémercier toutes et tous pour votre fidélité au groupe et pour avoir contribué vos questions, reponses et points de vue sur l'Unicode et les langues et écritures d'Afrique.
Que la prochaine année vous porte du succès dans vos travaux et nous permette de continuer et avancer les débats concernant l'Unicode et l'Afrique!
. . .
Back to Peace Corps ... APCDs, and Peace Corps staff generally, have their role described sometimes as in loco parentis, which is not really accurate since PCVs are are all well of age, but it does reflect our role in looking after basic safety & security, making sure that living conditions meet a certain minimum, etc.
A lot of what we APCDs do relates also to aspects of work and even providing advice/mentoring and other info. I had an interesting set of questions from one volunteer recently on vacation westward from Niger in West Africa which let me act momentarily in loco professoris. Anyway the questions and imprompt answers follow:
1. What role did peanuts play in the local economy before the French turned them in to a cash crop? How has the average Nigerien's use of the peanut and it's products changed?
The history of peanuts has been more prominent in countries west of Niger it seems. In Senegal as you saw it was big time economically and socially. Somewhat less so in Mali. In Niger there are not a lot of areas which can produce the crop that well. There was a peanut oil factory in the east of Niger, but either the crop production apparently couldn't support it or it was otherwise unprofitable.
Peanuts of course are native to Brazil, and like other new world crops (like corn) long ago found places in farming systems and foodways. The colonial emphasis on it in some areas may have increased its cultivation and use, but offhand I can't think of any study on this.
2. Why do Fulans and Wodabes seem so much less religious (Islam) in Niger than they do in Cameroon, Mali, Senegal?
Interesting question re Fulɓe and Islam. Up until the 1700s many Fulɓe were pagan (for lack of a better word). For various reasons there was a series of independent "revolutions" or reform movements in which Muslim Fulɓe took power in Fuuta Jalon (Guinea), ~1776; Sokoto & the Hausa states ~1804; Maasina (Mali) 1818; and Fuuta Tooro (Senegal River valley) mid-1800's. For a while you could actually talk of Fulaphone West Africa much as you do Francophone West Africa today (though nobody did).
The character of each was different. Fuuta Jalon was a theocracy with almost feudal hierarchy but an interesting system of rotation of power between two clans (which proved their undoing when the French could play them off against each other). Maasina also maintained the traditional "caste" system in the much more varied ethnic palette of the inland Niger delta, but is mostly known for a far-sighted reorganization of the herding system and interaction with agriculture.
I know less about Sokoto, but the Fulɓe involved apparently became pretty much absorbed into the Hausa state system (at the top), such that you'll sometimes read of Hausa-Fulani states (and one poorly researched article recently mentioned the "Hausa-Fulani tribe" of northern Nigeria). Between the Hausa states and Maasina (which includes Liptaako, Dori, western Niger), the Fulɓe were not as much caught up in it, and even less so in the open expanses to the north.
Fuua Tooro produced Al-Hajj Umar who battled the French in Senegal and when he lost a key battle in Medina on the Senegal River in 1852(?) turned his attentions eastward, conquering Kaarta (Bambara kingdom in western Mali) in 1860(?) and Segu (another more powerful Bambara kingdom) and Maasina in 1862. This is complex and the latter was the cause of some bitter blood and decades of chaos before the French took over.
I'm not as up on the situation in Adamawa (N. Cameroon) or why the Fulɓe are more Islamized there.
3. In Cameroon, the French left the Fulans in power when the country was granted independence? Did the colonizer favor Fulans in other countries as well? Why?
The relationship between the French and the Fulɓe was complicated in part by romantic notions of the origin of the latter and practical issues in that they found them in power in many places. I don't know my Cameroonian history well enough to say why Ahmadu Ahidjo et al were in power when the French left. I am aware that historically the Fulɓe in the north subjugated other peoples (and in fact ran across an interesting article once on the use of tree and bush plantings in that region for village defenses in that area - militaro-forestry?).
In other countries it was really a question of convenience. The Fulɓe had a bit of an advantage with the French in Guinea (they are still the largest group by a small margin) and indeed tended to vote for the French in the famous 1958 referendum in which the rest of the country didn't and which led to Sekou Touré's "non."
4. Why are grazing lands decreasing? Is it because of desertification, Hausas moving north and taking the land for farms, bigger herds, or some combination of these factors?
Combination of factors. More people either owning more animals or looking for more farmland, plus land-degradation and longer term trends in rainfall. I usually shy away from using "desertification" as it covers more than it reveals.
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