ABSTRACT
The Sahelian drought from 1971 to 1976 was a test both for African studies and for the politics of African governments and international agencies. Intellectual analysis and political responses have seemed both a naive and a surprising answer to a conjectural phenomenon. The Sahel supposedly defines the southern belt of the Sahara, though it is a somewhat misleading term. The region stretches from latitude 14°N to 20°N and from the Atlantic to the Chadosudanian region. A concrete historical perspective Africanists can use anthropology and political economy to describe the evolution of African societies. But the first has a microscopic view of reality, the second a macroscopic one. The duality of tradition and modernity, and the separation of local level from world level, are built-in constraints of these sciences. Most of the researchers who have been concerned with drought and famine have viewed them through a single relationship of cause and effect.
