The State of Africa in the 1980s
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4611604 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A T Grove (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1986 |
| Volume | 152 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 193 |
| Publication date | 1986-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geographical Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-7398 • E-ISSN: 1475-4959 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/634761 |
| OpenAlex | W2058719230 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 4 |
Famine in Africa in 1985 drew the world's attention to the continent and in particular to the Sahel zone and Ethiopia. These regions, it was remembered, had suffered from drought and famine twelve years earlier. Was the drought still continuing? How had conditions changed over the years? What should be done to prevent such things happening in the future? Have geographers anything to contribute towards answering such questions? Usually academics confine their studies to only limited aspects of the situation, perhaps wisely, but not always convincingly. Here an attempt is made to provide a broad overview. In the course of the early 1980s, each year saw successively lower annual rainfall totals across the Sahel. The driest year for which we have instrumental records seems to have been 1984, with the rainfall less than 60 per cent of the 1931-60 mean along a zone extending from northern Senegal to the Tigrai region of Ethiopia and the Red Sea Hills. The climatic zones effectively shifted 200 to 300 km south of their positions in the middle of the century. Dust storms have increased in frequency and have been observed from space vehicles affecting extensive areas at the southern margins of the desert even at the height ofthe rainy season. Photographs taken from the Space Shuttle strongly suggest the possibility that the dust has accentuated aridity by creating temperature inversions through which developing cumulus clouds are unable to penetrate and thus reach the high altitudes and low temperatures which allow them to yield rain. River flows have declined. The Nile discharge in northern Sudan for 1984-85 was reported to have been lower than that of 1913-14, the lowest previously recorded; the Niger at Niamey was little more than a trickle in April 1985; salt water penetrated further up the Senegal in the dry season than had ever previously been reported. On the Nigerian side of Lake Chad, a great irrigation scheme that had been planned and set in motion in the 1970s at enormous expense, the South Chad Irrigation Project, produced nothing over the 1984-85 season. It depended on water being pumped out of the lake at Kirinowa to irrigate rice during the rainy season and wheat during the dry season. Since its inception there had never been enough water to grow rice and by late 1984 the lake level had fallen below that of the intake canal and no wheat could be planted. People on the Project and from the surrounding region moved on to the lake floor to graze their cattle and grow cowpeas and sorghum. By mid-1985 Nigerians had ?? Mr A. T. Grove is Director of the African Studies Centre, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RQ, and a Fellow of Downing College. This paper was one of the contributions to the Geographical Background to Africa's Crisis Conference, organized by the Royal Geographical Society, and held in the Society's House on 25 November 1985, with the President in the Chair
Geography · Political science · State (computer science · African history and culture analysis · Computer Science · Land Rights and Reforms
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,08 |
| Citation span | 1987 - 2016 (30) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |