Leaving the village in search of greener pastures in the city could qualify as an irony of metaphor, but exactly that is happening in the developing world today. A new mantra of urbanization reflects the precipitous decline of rural life in Africa. Climate change triggers resurgent discourse over impoverished rural economies. Despite the creative energy thrown into scholarship on ecology and agriculture, and climatology, equitable land reforms remain a mirage in many sub-Saharan countries.
The argument is familiar - land concerns represent the barnacle which must be removed for poverty to be alleviated and sectarian conflicts resolved. Yet, in these decades of democratization and decentralization, as we march to privatization and freedom of markets within a globalized economy, investments on rudimentary land questions have been comparatively disappointing.
Why then is a widely recognized priority issue, investment on rudimentary land questions, accorded only flirtatious and nervous glances in international development?
The first of many answers is the potential of land reforms to re-configure the status quo. A well-entrenched elite is often far from willing to face fresh challenges. The second is an economic miscalculation and cultural misunderstanding that extractive industries represent modernity and the best growth options. In Africa, “village,” “bush,” “forest” are words with dark connotations of backwardness, destined to be tamed and dragged into the time-space of the civilized world. Along this intrinsic line of thought, the ultimate in governance would rest on severing those debilitating bonds holding rural people to nature.
The resulting chain of ecological effects set in motion in the name of progress is causing diseases to spread, houses to fall in the river, wetlands to be drained, fields to turn to swamp, and farmers to move to urban areas where harsher conditions await them in a concrete jungle. Land use options remain open to the interplay of diverse developmental paradigms and disparate meanings, all of which are radically dependent on the contexts in which they are deployed.
A new paradigm: Ecoagriculture
Commonplace positons of the state suggest that land deserves to be expropriated from individuals and communities that do not “develop” what they own. It opens the door for the grabbing of communally-owned property, particularly in mosaic landscapes where natural habitat forming extensive boundaries with agricultural areas have been highly fragmented. Many of such places are in biodiverse watersheds and nutrient-rich wetlands.
An ecoagriculture approach to land management could constitute a deterrent to land grabs and become the stabilizing factor which recognizes farmers and rural communities as custodians of ecosystems and biodiversity, but also enables them to play those roles effectively. There are residues of once prominent compound farms in Nigeria which could be upgraded to form micro ecoagriculture units, and scaled out for larger investments. Viable rural cooperatives and other organizations that empower people would need to be formed for the purpose. West Africans still grow and gather indigenous crops – cocoyam, oha, wild breadfruit, bush mango, afang, native pear, bitter leaf, fever plant, Bambara groundnuts, pigeon pea and locust bean in rainforest and savannah woodland. Some of these plant species have pharmaceutical qualities. We can only imagine the unresearched species diversity and genetic variety of wild Africa.
Rediscovering indigenous species
While it is important not to idealize all indigenous practices, villagers could farm buffalo, Guinea fowl, ostrich, forest snails and crocodiles in ecoagriculture. Yam, maize, rice, cassava, tomatoes, potato and other staples in West Africa are not indigenous, a reason why they require large quantities of synthetic fertilizer, and are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
During the 1980s, taungya, a practice in Southeast Asia with some origins in the German system of Waldfeldbau, was introduced into buffer zones around Nigeria’s protected areas. Essentially, it consists of inter-cropping vegetables, tubers and fruit trees with cash crops such as rubber or oil palm. Around the Okomu National Park, a multi-national tyre manufacturer allowed local farmers to raise food crops between the rubber trees of their plantation. The arrangement failed because the community interpreted it as a damage-limitation exercise and strategy of appeasement for land which they insisted originally belonged to them in the first place.
The potential of ecoagriculture
Under improved seed technology and enhanced land use planning for ecoagricultural initiatives, villagers will attract credits, store and market their products, earn better incomes, create rural jobs and stem the tide of migration into cities. They can make optimal use of space, breed fish and re-stock their freshwater systems, encourage composting and organic farming, rain and flood water harvesting, and waste recycling. Options abound for solar, wind and small hydro energy applications to drive irrigation and generate electricity in the home. Bamboo and rattan could also be cultivated to make furniture for inland and export markets.
Beyond crops, ecoagriculture will improve civic organization and governance in the village. By their concerted action, informed and pragmatic communities are more likely to cohere into a critical mass leveraging financial support, strengthening community assets, demanding responsive governance and resisting land, environment, energy and agriculture policies that result in their current insecurity of land tenure.
Ako Amadi, Founder/Executive Director, Community Conservation and Development Initiatives, CCDI, Lagos, Nigeria
Ako Amadi studied marine science and fisheries biology at the University of Kiel, before diploma courses in international development at the Institute for Tropical and Sub-tropical Agriculture, University of Kassel, and non-profit management at the School of Government, Harvard University. A one-time head of marine biology at the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography, executive director at the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, and advisor/technical analyst in environment, agriculture, governance and rural development with the Canadian International Development Agency.
Lekki Peninsula, Lagos, Nigeria