Products like gum, copal, rubber, cola nuts, and palm oil provide rather steady income revenue for the West African countries. Land use change spoils entire habitats with the forests. Converting forests into timber is another cause of deforestation. Over decades, the primary forest product was commercial timber.
What is the agriculture like in West Africa?
West African agriculture ranges from nomadic pastoralism in the far north to root-crop and tree-crop systems in the south. In general, the crop-producing areas are roughly horizontal belts following bioclimatic zones (Bossard, 2009).
What plants did the first farmers grow in Africa?
They grew millet and sorghum (plants used for grain and fodder), and later began growing a special strain of rice native to Africa. They also grew tubers (root vegetables), yams, cowpeas, and oil palms, and began mass producing all sorts of succulent melons and fruits.
Which part of Africa had agriculture for thousands of years?
For thousands of years, the only part of Africa to have agriculture was Egypt, interacting closely with Southwest Asia. All of Africa below the Sahara practiced hunting and gathering until approximately 3000 BCE.
What are the cash crops of Africa?
In the early 1970s, cash crops (coffee, cocoa, cotton, groundnuts, oil palm, and rubber) were promoted as a means of involving West African farmers in the global commercial economy and ensuring a supply of tropical products for European markets and industry (Stock, 2012).
What crops were grown in West Africa?
In the Sahelian zone, millet and sorghum are the predominant crops, transitioning to maize, groundnuts, and cowpeas farther south in the Sudanian zone. These food crops are among the top five harvested crops in the Sahelian countries — Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad.
What agricultural products are grown in Africa?
Africa produces all the principal grains—corn, wheat, and rice—in that order of importance. Corn has the widest distribution, being grown in virtually all ecological zones. Highest yields per acre are recorded in Egypt and on the Indian Ocean islands of Réunion and Mauritius, areas where production is under irrigation.
What did farmers grow in the fertile land in Western Africa?
Eventually, however, West Africans began to settle and grow their food full-time. From 3000 BCE to 1000 BCE, the practice of farming spread across West Africa. They grew millet and sorghum (plants used for grain and fodder), and later began growing a special strain of rice native to Africa.
What are the major agricultural system in West Africa?
In the drier parts of West Africa (i.e. the Savanna Zones), permanent cultivation is more common, but the major part of agricultural production is done in fallow farming systems. In the humid areas of West Africa, perennial crops like oil palm, cacao, and coffee have long been cultivated on the uplands.
What resources are found in West Africa?
The country is endowed with rich natural resources. Timber, gold, diamonds, bauxite, manganese, and oil contribute to making Ghana among the wealthier nations in West Africa. While its economy is one of the most successful in the region, it remains heavily dependent on international finance.
How did agriculture develop in the West African region?
The first efforts to domesticate plants in West Africa started slowly. Eventually, West Africans began to settle and grow their food full-time. From 3000 BCE to 1000 BCE, the practice of farming spread across West Africa. These early farmers grew millet and sorghum.
What is plantation agriculture in West Africa?
Plantation agriculture in africa Plantation agriculture simply refers to the cultivation of perennial crops on large extensive areas of land. This method of crop cultivation is the most widely spread in West and East Africa with equatorial type climate.
What were the first crops in Africa?
Several of the continent’s traditional food crops got their start there: a cereal called pearl millet and Africa’s own version of rice.
Which type of crops was introduced to Africa?
Maize, cassava (manioc), peanuts, beans, sweet potatoes introduced to Africa by the Portuguese, possibly from Brazil.
What are some importance of agriculture in West Africa?
Agriculture accounts for 65% of employment and 35% of gross domestic product (GDP), but poverty is highest in rural areas where most of the population depends on agriculture for subsistence.
What were the two most valuable resources in West Africa?
Africa’s two most profitable mineral resources are gold and diamonds.
What were the crops grown in Sudan?
Raffia, oil palm, palm, peas, groundnuts and kola nuts were also grown, and the palm products growing in the vicinity were exploited. By this stage guinea fowl had also been domesticated. Wild sorghum was domesticated and cultivated in Central Sudan. At the same time pottery vessels to store grain and carry water were being created.
What is the history of land and agriculture in Africa?
PRIOR to the beginning of food production, pastoralists and farmers began movements across the continent that transformed African societies ultimately leading to complex political groupings. The beginning of modern day history in Africa can be established partly from the introduction and development …
Where did pearl millet come from?
Pearl millet reached south-east Asia around 2000 BC, or earlier; sorghum arrived in Korea around 1400 BC and cow peas, which originated from Africa, were cultivated in Korea around 1500 BC. Plants introduced to Africa via the Indian Ocean were coconut, sugar cane, rice, water yams and some fruits.
What was the ability to grow cotton and supply many countries with cotton?
The ability to grow cotton and supply many countries with cotton also demonstrates the agricultural skills that Africa already possessed prior to the Atlantic slave trade and European colonisation; and long before cotton weaving became a British industry.
What is the use of iron in Africa?
Iron was used in Africa for tools and for weapons. The use of metal was vital in accelerating …
Why was iron used in Africa?
Iron was used in Africa for tools and for weapons. The use of metal was vital in accelerating agricultural development as well as paving the way for the nascent industrialisation. This advance enabled more land to be cleared for agricultural purposes and for hunting skills to be improved and to become far more effective.
Where did bananas come from?
Bananas were added to millet as a staple food for sea faring vessels; it is quite likely that bananas reached the Indian sub-continent from East Africa.
When did West Africans start farming?
Eventually, however, West Africans began to settle and grow their food full-time. From 3000 BCE to 1000 BCE, the practice of farming spread across West Africa. They grew millet and sorghum (plants used for grain and fodder), and later began growing a special strain of rice native to Africa.
When did agriculture start in Africa?
The independent origin of African agriculture. However, farming did eventually emerge independently in West Africa in about 3000 BCE (some estimates state even a little earlier), in the fairly lush and habitable savanna on the border between present-day Nigeria and Cameroon.
How long have humans lived in Africa?
As long as humans have existed, some of them have always called Africa their home. We evolved in Africa from a long lineage. Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Australopithecus are just a few milestones over the past 3.5 million years – many times longer than Homo sapiens have existed (approximately 200,000 to 250,000 years). Africa is the cradle of our species, and our first home. In fact, we are a very closely related family, much more than usual in nature. DNA testing tells us that a disaster 74,000 years ago, which many think was the super-eruption of Mount Toba, reduced the hu- man population to a few thousand. That was 10,000 years before the biggest human migration out of Africa. As a result, there is more genetic diversity between two different groups of chimpanzees separated by a few hundred miles than there is in the entire human species now spread across Earth. With humans having spent such a long time in Africa, and with such a “recent migration” out, why didn’t something like agriculture evolve there first?
What was the population of sub-Saharan Africa in 500 BCE?
In 500 BCE, it is estimated sub-Saharan Africa had a population of only 7 million.
Why did Africa develop agriculture?
That meant that for millions of years, these animals had evolved to cope with Homo habilis, Homo erectus, the Neanderthals, Homo sapiens, and many others in their environment. It is the same reason why tons of megafauna still exist in Africa, whereas much of it was wiped out in Australia and the Americas when humans arrived there. Animals need generations to adapt their instincts to humans. African animals had a lot of time for that adaptation so it was much more difficult for humans to domesticate a wide variety of animals, and that domestication is one of the first crucial steps for farming.
How many people lived in Africa in 500 BCE?
In 500 BCE, it is estimated sub-Saharan Africa had a population of only 7 million . This is quite low and is due to the fact that foragers need a lot of land to support themselves because they stay on the move, searching for food sources, rather than intensifying the output of a single stretch of land.
What were the consequences of early farming?
It was usually only with a “trap of sedentism” that humans abandoned foraging and started to farm. As farmers, humans had to spend more time actually working (one estimate is 9.5 hours a day as a farmer; 6 hours a day as a forager). The result of early farming was more disease, worse nutrition, worse health, and greater vulnerability to climate and ecological disasters. For instance, we know that for the longest time, foraging communities in the Kalahari Desert in Southwest Africa knew about farming but didn’t adopt it. Why would anyone adopt a way of life that was far less healthy, far more work, and generally much more miserable than foraging?
