Sketches from Francis Nicolas

Francis Nicholas was a French colonial administrator who spent a considerable amount of time in the region around Tahoua, Niger, traveling through the valley of Azawagh and other parts of the Tamesna (the customary pasture for many Tamasheq groups). He wrote an ethnography called Tamesna: Les Ioulemmenden de l’Est ou Touareg « Kel Dinnik » (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale), 1950. The work itself is but a sample of all the information he gathered regarding the society of the Kel Dinnik and does not contain many of the sketches he made traveling through the Tamesna in 1944 when employed by the colonial service. I post them here for those interested in the views of these villages back in the 1940s. The source is in French: Documentation Française, Notes et Documents 2112 (Dossier 02).

Food Aid Convention [FAC] in Madrid, Spain

The rice grown along the Niger River in Mali is extraordinary in its quality and nutritional value. Anyone aware of this local produced grain can identify the rice from others as the grains are short and have a pinkish hue. Locals are aware of the high nutritional value and the rice is easily available during the cold season, November through March. The price of locally grown rice during this season is 40% lower than its imported counterparts coming from Pakistan and China and rice both local and imported are the same price during the hot-dry season of April through July. Only in July through October is the locally grown rice more expensive as the granaries empty and scarcity raises the price.

With such advantages one would expect Malian rice producers to be fairing well in income and locals eating well. This is hardly the case. The communities along the Niger River are a mixed patchwork of struggling cultivators, individuals working in the service sector and small elite involved in the import-export business with malnourishment a reality affecting a number of families both rich and poor. Despite the positive qualities of local rice production many residents prefer to spend more money during the cold season and prepare the imported rice for their families. When conducting my research I often asked families why they preferred the Chinese and Pakistani imported rice over their local rice. Two responses were common. People complained that the local rice was either too ‘heavy’ in taste or that only poor people consume the locally produced rice.

Last week the United Nations, non-governmental organizations and donor countries responsible for food aid met in Madrid, Spain from January 26th-28th to discuss the future role of food aid on a global scale. Called the Food Aid Convention or FAC, the meeting was held to approach two major concerns: the food price crisis of 2008, and for 2009 and following years to come a set of rules regarding the appropriate type of food aid and which circumstances merit food assistance. Basically FAC is trying to do more with less and with a number of agencies working at the same goals and/or competing for a shrinking resource base, the convention assembled as a means to set an agenda and parameters for participants.

This is nothing new or revolutionary for governments and aid organizations. Often the neediest and most destitute receive no aid as violence and/or difficulty in transportation retards aid workers’ efforts to distribute aid evenly. At times the political climate can affect the distribution of food aid as national governments may refuse distribution as local militias/rebels may benefit from such operations. The crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo with the Lord’s Resistance Army is one example of where politics stifles food assistance and other forms of aid and civilians receive no assistance. Furthermore, corruption is both a reality and obstacle as food donations are often sold off to merchants in major cities and trucked to local stores for purchase, though labeled as “Not for Resale.”

FAC since the late 1960s has acknowledged the difficulties of food aid and does not ensure that assistance will reach the neediest groups or countries. But as it tightens its fiscal belt and focuses more on areas of vulnerability and potential food insecurity instead of crisis, I implore those in attendance at FAC to implement policies that promote local food production (rice cultivation along the Niger River as one example) instead of creating markets for imports as has happened with past assistance. With groups such as the International Grains Council having influence in FAC over the past three decades, however, I will remain skeptical of food aid’s benevolent hand until I see more Malians eating their own locally cultivated rice.

« Ajébhah » and its Impact on the Community of Takanmba, Mali

Source: Ministère des travaux publics et des transports de la République Française, Institut Géographique National, Dakar, 1961
UTM Projection; Clark 1880 Ellipsoid

I learned this community’s history thanks to some displaced herders living in Gao in late 2006. One of them, a customary chief of a Tuareg fraction was visiting Gao during my interviews and between his narrative, the interviews of other ex-residents of Takanmba and my archival research conducted in October 2008 in France, I was able to piece together the events that shaped this community and then divided it during the rebellion of the 1990s.

Bordering the banks of the Niger River and located at 16° 59’ 50” N; 0° 57’ 25” W, Takanmba, Mali is a local administration unit in the Department of Bourèm; Region of Gao. Its origins are rooted in the historical background I posted in my last blog, Tuareg Hostility towards a Central Authority, as an Arab trader interested in trading with nomadic groups built a house in the area. His heritage and mother tongue assured him connections to the Kounta herders circulating the territory and his proximity to the Niger River assured other prospective Fulani and Tuareg clients to pass his store in the dry season to water their animals. The community grew, first with support from the Kounta and later with the French administration. The place was originally called El Sheikh, after the founder but as more groups moved into the community and the majority became Tuareg, the name gradually changed to Takanmba.

Harmony was not always the norm between groups. Ethnic rivalry between the Kountas and certain Tuareg groups like the Chérifan and Oulliminden were the most intense, particularly up until World War I. Tension also existed between different occupations as merchants came into conflict with herders and cultivators over the exchanges of animals and grains for goods. But given Takanmba’s proximity to the Niger River, the French were able to maintain security and order in the town from the 1900s until the end in colonial rule in 1960. They viewed Soudan Français as the breadbasket to the territories part of Afrique Occidental Française and promoted the cultivation of rice along the river. Takanmba grew as Songhaï and Bella Bella [former vassals of the Tuareg and also known as Tamasheq Noire in French] moved into the area to plant rice and peace was assured by the French garrison installed at the bank of the river.

The land for centuries was a customary water source for herders’ animals during the dry season and pasture-water source during droughts. Now, the area had transformed into a large settlement with the installation of merchants and farmers. Outside its limits herding remained the primary activity but Takanmba had become an island of commerce, farming, and later education as the French built a school after World War II. Herders knew of the benefits of education as they had seen other Africans from the southern part of Soudan Français in the military and administration of the colony. Some families chose to settle with their herds on the outskirts of town in order to send some if not all their children to school with the hopes that they would have a secure future in the government or armed forces.

The population of Takanmba swelled with the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. Herders in the northern regions of Mali, whether they abandoned pastoralism altogether or if they used Takanmba as a center for feeding and watering their herds while seeking out temporary jobs or assistance moved into the town. This placed strains on Takanmba’s infrastructure and natural resources. The farmers living in the town for generations were running into conflicts with herders using the river water to maintain their animals or into conflicts with other farmers [new or settled] who competed for land and water as the Niger River diminished in size and volume. But by the late 1980s, the conflict over natural resources was subsiding as rains returned in the northern regions and water levels of the Niger returned to pre-drought measurements.

Disaster hit Takanmba before farmers had the chance to restock their granaries, before herders had accomplished regaining their flocks and before merchants had debtors pay back their credit from the droughts. The rebellion of 1990-1996, known as « Ajébhah » in the Tamasheq language, was not the first rebellion in post-colonial Mali. Groups in the north rebelled against Bamako’s authority in the 1960s over a tax imposed on the exploitation of wood and also after the 1970s drought but these incidents were small in scale and short-lived. The rebellion of 1990-1996 was large in scale affecting the northern and eastern parts of Mali, initially well-organized [though it deteriorated into factionalism and anarchy after a couple of years], and destructive for some communities like Takanmba.

Bamako’s hold on communities north and east of Tombouctou was weak at best and as the rebel cause divided over purpose and tactics, communities like Takanmba were left vulnerable to banditry, theft and killing by various actors. Accounts of the rebels or bandits posing as rebels commandeering peoples’ animals by force were numerous and those who refused were often beaten to submission. Eight people were killed in such confrontations. For some in the town this was evidence of how ineffective the Malian military was in small towns. People started to migrate to larger towns up the river like Mopti and Ségou where security was more reliable. The Ganda Koï, a vigilante group armed themselves with anything from assault rifles to batons, organized to protect communities living along the Niger River and passed through towns like Takanmba periodically. Their purpose was to maintain order where the Malian government had weak holds but their tactics often shifted into harassing local groups that had the same heritage as rebels, i.e. the Arabs and Tamasheq. The Malian army occupied with operations in the countryside had little means to stop this abuse and more people fled Takanmba. On the eve of the rebellion the town was home to four different Tuareg groups, Arabs and Songhaï. Within the Tuareg there were the Tamasheq Rouge (Imerat) and three different types of Tamasheq Noire fractions (Iborlitan, Tagharlifit and Chamamach). At the end of 1994 the only groups that remained in Takanmba were the Songhaï, a few Imerat and families from another Tamasheq Noire group, the Igelhad, who moved from the countryside into the town due to the greater instability and violence occurring north of the area.

For most of my interviewees the rebellion had little impact or was a nuisance to their routines [circulation for herders was difficult if not impossible in several regions]. For some of them confronting drought with little means to maintain their herds and selling their animals for pittances, or, famine impacting their families and reducing the number of eligible income providers in a household during the 1970s and 1980s was more devastating than the bullets coming from rebels’ and soldiers’ guns. For all of them, both those who lost their livelihoods or family members during the political violence and those affected by environmental/economic crises, what mattered was the vulnerability they faced before these shocks; a phenomena that Michael Watts appropriately titles in his work on food security in the Hausa States of Northern Nigeria and Southern Niger “A Silent Violence.” One must put aside the low numbers of herders impacted by the rebellion as it would be unjust to let the story of Takanmba and those displaced herders living in Gao remain untold.