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The book investigates the intermingling of land and water in the Sahel, analysing landscapes defined by the ebb and flow of rainfall, flooding, population movements, environmental, political and social crises. An important read for policy makers, practitioners, and scholars of geography, political science, development and African studies.
List of contents
INTRODUCTION: Perspectives on water and land in the Sahel: facing polycrisis 1: Setting the scene. Unfulfilled futures. One hundred years of large-scale irrigation projects in the Sahel
PART I: Contextual issues 2: Environmental crisis narratives in the Sahel and the solutions they call for: The case of Lake Chad 3: Layered crises: climate change, water insecurity and irrigation in the Sahel 4: The "glocal" nature of jihadist insurgencies? Conflict, space, land, and resources in the Sahel
PART II: Cartographic sketches of the Sahel 5: Defining the Sahel. B-ordering an area study 6: Land degradation and the Convergence of Evidence in the Sahel 7: Troubled waters 8: Shapes of the water: the rectangle and the circle. A tentative survey on irrigation in the Sahel 9: Interlude. The Sahel in historical atlases (1493-1789) Interlude: Sahel in historical cartography
PART III: Complicated muddles of water and land 10: Sudan: a 'picture' of irrigation spaces before April 15th 2023 11: Traces of irrigation: Some recent developments in the Chadian region 12: The production of land insecurity and conflict in the Sourou valley (Burkina Faso)
PART IV: Connections, rights and conflicts 13: Land and water rights in the Niger Inner Delta: between negotiation and conflict 14: Ségou(s), the Niger and the other side of the river: how water tells the city in the Sahel 15: Changing patterns of resource conflicts in the Logone floodplains (Cameroon/Chad). Between actors' practices and development narratives
PART V: Towards a fluid research agenda 16: COVID-19, polycrisis and metamorphosis: A reflection on doing collaborative research in, on and with the Sahel 17: Ways of being-knowing and doing with water and land in Africa
About the author
Andrea Pase is a full professor of geography at the University of Padua. In the Sahel, his research interests concern territorial processes linked to water seen both as common resource and as the basis for the modernization of agriculture.
Angela Kronenburg García holds postdoctoral fellowships at UCLouvain (F.R.S.-FNRS) and the University of Padua. She is also affiliated with the University Eduardo Mondlane. As an anthropologist, she conducts research on the intersection of religious and land-tenure change, and on pastoralism, milk and social change in Kenya as well as on energy transition, anticipation and graphite.
Mariasole Pepa is a postdoc researcher at the University of Padua and an affiliate researcher at CEDEJ-Khartoum. She is interested in the transformation in the Sahel through the lenses of water and land as well as exploring alternative methodologies to research approaches, ethics, and practices.
Federico Gianoli is a geographer specialized in GIS and Geoinformatics, focusing on open-source data in spatial analysis. As a consultant for the Joint Research Centre (JRC-EC), he conducts research on land degradation and productivity dynamics. He's also pursuing a PhD on these topics at the University of Seville, Spain.
Marina Bertoncin is an honorary professor of geography at the University of Padua. In Sahelo-Sudanese Africa her research interests concern the geography of the hydraulic territorialisation with a focus on the role of the irrigation projects for the local development (Lake Chad basin, Nile, Niger and Senegal River regions).
Carla Braga is associate professor of Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of University Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique. Her research interests cover decolonial readings of knowledge production about Africa, onto-epistemic dimensions of the current planetary crisis, nature governance and health.
