cover image: What Future for the Western Sahel? - The region’s demography and its implications by 2045

20.500.12592/mhd5q6

What Future for the Western Sahel? - The region’s demography and its implications by 2045

2 Nov 2021

High levels of organized the Marxist-inspired insurgencies that ignited across resistance—such as the large demonstrations by Islamic Southeast Asia and Latin America during the second organizations in Mali, in 2009, that turned back wom- half of the twentieth century, the jihadist presence in en’s rights—have convinced some development pro- the rural portions of the Western Sahel restricts the fe. [...] In a more-populous Western Sahel, the future of agricultural and pastoral liveli- hoods will depend on the development of ground- water irrigation and intensified agropastoralism (a 15 WHAT FUTURE FOR THE WESTERN SAHEL? INTRODUCTION The Western Sahel, the vast swath of arid land A review of the available research suggests that in sub-Saharan Africa that stretches from the absent urgent, well-funde. [...] In contrast, those in the Western Sahel; and third, a worst-case scenario the Western Sahel remain in the early stages of their (“Downward Spiral”) combining persistently high fer- eventual transition to a lower total fertility rate (an tility rates and the continued marginalization of young estimate of the average lifetime number of children people and women, with Western disengagement and born p. [...] which access remained limited until the invention, in Having achieved independence from France or, in the fifteenth century, of the caravel, a lateen-rigged the case of Nigeria, from the United Kingdom in 1960, ship capable of sailing against the trade winds that the states of the region have since been governed by a permanently blow east-to-west along the continent’s varied array of political reg. [...] In parallel, the reputations of the most belea- of Nigeria’s total population.13 Each of the Sahelian guered regimes in the Western Sahel have been stained states, as well as northern Nigeria, continue to expe- by frequent allegations of abuses of power, corruption, rience rapid rates of population growth and retain an and civilian deaths at the hands of security forces and extremely youthful age.
Pages
62
Published in
United States of America

Tables