ABSTRACT
Semi-arid West Africa is a key area for the understanding of Africa's pathway to agriculture. Classified as a non-centre of plant domestication, the vast area between Senegal and Lake Chad is the place of origin of several African crops. While in the pristine agricultural centres of the Near East, China and Mesoamerica plant domestication preceded animal domestication. The palaeo environmental background for increasing sedentism and incipient plant cultivation is the abrupt termination of the Holocene African humid period. The available archaeobotanical evidence suggests that plant cultivation in the second millennium BC was integrated into existing pastoral or foraging life-ways as a means for risk minimisation and for greater predictability of resource exploitation. Ethnobotanical studies in West Africa have shown that the use of wild plants continues until modern times. Woody plants are especially appreciated, and there is hardly a tree or shrub in West Africa without economic value.
