On May 10, 2023, the Malian Ministry of Agriculture posted a very positive press release on the cereal harvest in 2023-2024. This season again, it should beat that of the previous year (by 6% exactly), “under the effect of an expansion of the planted areas, favorable weather conditions and an improved distribution of fertilizers to producers”. Mali now exports 10-15% of its grain to neighboring countries. In December 2022, the government even decided to block them in the hope of slowing the rise in prices internally!
Food shortages persist in the Sahel, but now much less because of the climate than because of insecurity, which hinders the work of farmers. This is the case in Niger. In this country, ranked among the poorest in Africa, harvests are breaking records: 69% for cereals in 2022 compared to the previous year, with an increase of one third in the total area of crops sown. Food insecurity is caused by the Islamists and the lack of fertilizer, much more than by drought.
For specialists, this information is not surprising. The general public has kept a vintage image of the Sahel, fixed in the 1980s: an immense sub-Saharan zone inexorably nibbled away by sand and dunes, for lack of precipitation. “West Africa did indeed experience a brutal drought from 1968 to 1993,” explains Luc Descroix, hydrologist at the Institute of Research for Development. ” It’s from the past. We now have robust data that allows us to say that rainfall has returned to its long-term average level. »
Additional good news, the return of rain in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad will continue, under the effect of climate change. “The land is warming faster than the water in the Gulf of Guinea,” explains Luc Descroix. It makes the monsoon more powerful. »
Analysis of satellite photo series confirms “a trend towards re-greening on a regional scale as a result of improved rainfall conditions from the 1990s”, explain French and African researchers in a study published in 2021 in the journal Physio-Geo. The period 1968-1994 was “a dry anomaly”, with causes still poorly understood.
Luc Descroix covers a lot of ground. He was in Guinea when Le Point interviewed him. He explores on the spot another phenomenon, even more counter-intuitive than re-greening linked to global warming. The decline of the famine would sometimes be the consequence, and not only the cause, of the increase in the population in the Sahel. “We are seeing accelerated re-greening in the most populated regions,” notes the hydrologist.
He has a hypothesis, based on his observations, to confirm: “The more numerous peasants have the means to switch from extensive agriculture to thoughtful intensive agriculture. Nothing new. One could compare certain sectors of the Sahel to the terraced cultivation areas of Tuscany. The land is unrewarding, but with hard work it can feed many people. »
Wouldn’t overpopulation necessarily exhaust a spontaneously nurturing earth? “The idea is gaining ground, but it does not yet have consensus,” smiles Luc Descroix. Let’s call myself an Afro-optimist…”