ABSTRACT
Bonte extends the analysis of Sahelian ethnic disharmony to include the situations in Niger, Mali, and Mauritania. Sahelian societies, as is the case throughout much of the African continent, are still predominantly agricultural. Access to land is survival. Land in Africa had been largely equitably distributed in the past. Bonte reports that Sahelian land tenure systems are currently changing in less equitable directions, with members of certain ethnic groups acquiring disproportionate amounts of land, largely for capitalist farming. This, then, is a transformation of historic significance, one that is raising ethnic conflicts.
