On Apr. 6, Tuareg rebels in the West African city of Timbuktu unilaterally declared their independence from Mali and announced the birth of a new nation called Azawad. The declaration was widely ignored or condemned by neighbouring African states and the international community.

However, considering the arbitrary nature of many national borders in Africa which date to the colonial era, and the likelihood of protracted strife in a hunger prone area if rebel claims are simply dismissed, the international community ought to think carefully about how best to engage with this potential new African country known as Azawad.

The history of contemporary African borders is problematic to say the least. The European colonial powers carved up Africa, and capriciously set territorial borders, at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 at which no Africans were present.

These borders, which largely continued to exist long after independence, often split tribes, lumped incompatible ethnic groups together, or created countries which struggled economically because they were too big, too small, or landlocked. Given the problematic way in which African borders were originally set, it is not surprising that we see struggles to redefine national boundaries in the contemporary era.

Tuareg determined to hold onto homeland

On the surface, the solution to the “African border problem” may appear simple. That is, as opportunities arise, one should always seek to create more ethnically homogeneous states.

The problem is that ethnic territories have never really existed in much of Africa. Rather, the African landscape is often wonderfully diverse with different groups pursuing distinct, and often complementary, livelihood strategies: farmers, herders and fishers to name a few.

As such, countries created with an ethnic rationale typically result in the majority group being privileged over others. These states may also have limited financial viability as they tend to be smaller and less economically diverse.

Azawad, while not a new idea, is the latest ethnic-territorial state to seek recognition. The Tuareg are a lighter skinned nomadic peoples, historically dependent on animal husbandry, that are spread across the drylands of West Africa between Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Libya.

The Tuareg have long aspired to have an independent state, as they were often marginalised by governments in the region that favoured more sedentary agriculturalists. The one exception to this was in Libya, where the former dictator Muammar Gaddafi actively recruited immigrant Tuareg and trained them to be part of his personal defence force.

Problematic birth

Whither, then, this newly proclaimed African state? Four inter-linked phenomenon simultaneously gave rise to the new Tuareg state and also undermine its longer term viability.

The first problem is that Mali has had an uneasy relationship with its Tuareg population, given a history of governance by southern agriculturalists who marginalised the nomadic pastoral group. Particularly, notable rebellions occurred in the early 1960s and early 1990s, followed by a substantial reconciliation during a series of negotiations in the late 1990s.

As a result, the Malian government promised larger amounts of aid for the northern regions, a new province (known as Kidal) was created to give the Tuareg greater representation, and several Tuareg ministers were appointed. While all was not perfect, the situation remained relatively calm until heavily armed Tuareg fighters returned to Mali late in 2011, following the death of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

The second problem is that Azawad emerged by force, not a referendum, just as its parent state, the Republic of Mali, nearly imploded. Gaddafi’s former fighters re-emboldened the secular Malian Tuareg resistance group, known as the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (or MNLA).

The MNLA then began to successfully attack Malian military installations in the north of the country. These military defeats, along with widespread government corruption, led to the toppling of the democratically elected government of Mali on Mar. 22 by a young and disorganised military junta, only a few months away from the next election.

The resulting power vacuum in the South of the country allowed the MNLA to take a series of important northern towns and to declare independence on Apr. 6. The secular MNLA has been accused of potential ties to the Al-Qaeda organisation in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and to conservative Muslim groups such as Ansar Dine, but has continued to distinguish its cause from that of these organisations.

Due to successful economic sanctions imposed by the regional trading block known as ECOWAS, the military junta which temporarily took control in the southern part of the country has now stepped down and handed governance back to civilian leaders.

With an internationally recognised government now back in control of the southern part of the country, and neighbouring countries who are fearful of an independent Azawad, one potential scenario is that the Malian military, with the support of troops from ECOWAS, will fight with a vengeance to reclaim its northern territories.

Fighters in Timbuktu announce Islamic state

The third problem is that it is not at all clear if the majority of peoples within the proposed state of Azawad support its existence. Mali’s northern provinces include many non-Tuareg, most notably the Songhay and Fulani, who likely have little interest in joining a new state that is strongly affiliated with one ethnic group.

Furthermore, the borders of Azawad are disputed, with some configurations, including areas where the Tuareg are a clear minority. Finally, even some Tuareg people residing within the proposed country of Azawad may be fearful of a more fundamentalist Islam – or realise that the desert nation has a problematic economic future when it is not connected to a wealthier southern region which produces surpluses of food and exports gold and cotton.

The fourth problem is that the region in dispute is also on the brink of famine, due to sequential drought years and instability – which has interrupted normal household coping strategies. As such, attempts to resolve the situation militarily will likely make an unfolding humanitarian crisis even worse, and do little to address underlying tensions.

Dialogue over force

A better approach would be for the South (and the international community) to engage with the MNLA in dialogue. The South continues to need to better understand the history of marginalisation of the Tuareg peoples.

Furthermore, the South must also consider how important it is to hold on to the North at all costs. The truth of the matter is that many people in the south of the country may not believe it is worth waging an all-out war to retain a desolate, sparsely populated area of the country.

As for the Azawad coalition, the MNLA needs to understand that separation must be decided by a referendum and not military force (and that they might even lose such a vote). Whether or not Azawad becomes an independent state or a more autonomous region, all of these issues could be discussed if the international community chooses to engage with MNLA in dialogue rather than an a priori refusal to recognise any incipient nation.

The use of military force should only be contemplated after the MNLA refuses to consider a democratic process of new state creation.

*William G. Moseley is Professor of Geography and African Studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota and currently, visiting scholar at the University of Botswana in Gaborone. He has worked and undertaken research in Mali, on and off, since 1987.

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

By William G. Moseley
ST. PAUL, MN, US, Oct 27 2011 (Al Jazeera)

As sub-Saharan Africa grapples with high food prices in some regions and famine in others, many experts argue that increasing food production through a programme of hybrid seeds and chemical inputs is the way to go.

Irrigated field in Kakamas, South Africa. Credit: Patrick Burnett/IPS

This approach, marketed as a “New Green Revolution” for Africa, is increasingly supported by a triumphant telling of China’s history with this method in the 1970s and 1980s. This Chinese success story is not only distorted, but it is being misapplied in Africa.

China’s Great Famine of 1958-1961 reportedly killed 36 million people. This was a seminal moment for the country and, from that point forward, producing enough food would be a major priority. China would subsequently increase grain production dramatically between 1960 and 2000, with wheat output increasing eightfold, exiling the ghost of famine to the margins of that country’s collective social imagination.

According to many Chinese and Western observers, these stunning productivity increases were due to two factors. First, the Chinese aggressively embraced a Green Revolution approach. They would both borrow hybrid seeds from the West and develop their own such technologies.

Furthermore, they would massively increase nitrogen fertiliser production by importing manufacturing technology, eventually becoming the world’s largest producer of these agricultural inputs.

Second, the Chinese adopted a series of more market-oriented reforms from the late 1970s, allowing for the decentralisation and decollectivisation of agriculture, as well as a rise in producer prices.

Now experts from some the world’s major development institutes and organisations are arguing that sub-Saharan Africa ought to follow the Chinese example in the realm of agricultural development. They not only suggest that this will increase food production, but that it will build a foundation for future industrial development.

The high cost of low prices

While a renewed focus on African agriculture is welcome (as this is an area that has been ignored for more than 20 years), this particular telling of the Chinese success story is distorted, and the type of agricultural development being promoted is problematic.

While Chinese agricultural production did, indeed, increase dramatically from 1960 to 2000, it was done at great environmental and social cost. China now faces stagnating production and declining yields, which are most likely related to soil degradation – due to, among other factors, the overuse of nitrogen fertilisers.

Untold is the fact that China had been seriously exploring a bio-intensive path to increasing agricultural production up until about 1972, when it began to gradually open up to the West. From that point forward, the Green Revolution approach would take precedence.

Furthermore, while the agricultural reforms of the late 1970s and 1980s did allow some peasants to produce more crops, these reforms also led to dramatic increases in inequality in the Chinese countryside.

The current reality is that a rapidly urbanising China is experiencing major shifts in dietary patterns. With increasing prosperity comes increasing consumption of meat, and a greater need for grain to feed these animals. With stagnating grain production, China needs to find other sources of food around the world.

Green revolution in Africa?

By pushing for a “New Green Revolution” in Africa, both China and the West are clear winners. Many Chinese commentators view sub-Saharan Africa as under-populated and land-rich. As such, enhancing agricultural productivity on the continent means that it will have more food to export to China, which increasingly needs such imports.

Moreover, the U.S. is home to some of the world’s major seed companies and agrochemical firms. By encouraging an input-intensive approach to agriculture dependent upon imported technology, U.S. firms are destined to profit.

Most egregious are long-term leases of land (or “land grabs”) in sub-Saharan Africa to foreign entities (often sovereign wealth funds of Middle Eastern, North African or Asian countries, as well as Western hedge funds) for the production of agricultural goods for export. These deals are often “sold” to local publics as a source of employment and as a means to bring the New Green Revolution to sub-Saharan Africa.

The reality is that these leases (often for 50 years or more) essentially allow other regions of the world to export their food insecurity to Africa, or for Western investors to profit from a decade-long trend of steadily increasing global food prices.

While China and the West benefit from this New Green Revolution strategy, it is not clear if the same is true for small farmers and poor households in sub-Saharan Africa.

For most food-insecure households on the continent, there are at least two problems with this strategy. First, such an approach to farming is energy-intensive, as most fertilisers and pesticides are petroleum-based. Inducing poor farmers to adopt energy-intensive farming methods is short-sighted, if not unethical, if experts know that global energy prices are likely to rise.

Second, irrespective of energy prices, the “New Green Revolution” approach requires farmers to purchase seeds and inputs, which means that it will be inaccessible to the poorest of the poor, who are the most likely to suffer from periods of hunger.

If not the New Green Revolution approach, then what? Many forms of bio-intensive agriculture are, in fact, highly productive and much more efficient than those of industrial agriculture.

For example, crops grown in intelligent combinations allow one plant to fix nitrogen for another rather than relying solely on increasingly expensive, fossil fuel-based inorganic fertilisers for these plant nutrients. Mixed cropping strategies are also less vulnerable to insect damage and require little to no pesticide use for a reasonable harvest.

These techniques have existed for centuries in the African context and could be greatly enhanced by supporting participatory collaboration between local people, African research institutes and foreign scientists.

This is not the first time that sub-Saharan Africa has been sold a set of flawed policies based on a misreading of another region’s history and experiences. In the early 1980s, international financial institutions convinced African nations to adopt neoliberal economic reforms based, in part, on a particular telling of the economic history of the Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs) and the Asian Tigers.

African countries were told to focus on exports as the NICs had done, and that a free-market approach was required to reach that end.

What international advisers conveniently neglected to mention was that the export success of the Asian Tigers was also due to generous government support and intervention (and not the free market).

Now China is being held up as an Asian Agricultural Tiger for the nations of sub-Saharan Africa to emulate. Africa’s leaders ought to carefully study their comparative world history before accepting this advice.

* William G. Moseley is a human-environment and development geographer. He is a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S. and is the author of several books, including most recently Taking Sides: Clashing Views on African Issues (McGraw-Hill, 2011). The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of Al Jazeera or IPS.

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

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