ABSTRACT
The rainy season is due to start over most of the semi-arid zone of the Sahel in Africa next month. Farmers, especially, are anxious. The last 20 monsoons in Sudan, in the eastern Sahel, have brought rainfall well short of the average for the twentieth century. Twenty years is a long time for Sahelians – nearly half their average life expectancy. It is also long enough for climatologists to define a new climatic environment, much less favourable than the wetter decades of the colonial era.
