ABSTRACT
Every year after the rainy season ends and crops are harvested, hundreds of thousands of men and women leave their villages to work in West African cities. In West Africa seasonal labor mobility is a very old activity that has endured the changes of the colonial and postcolonial periods and continues to be a rational response to uncertainty for many people. Cin rani and other movements that are partially determined by the climate are common here, for the environment in many places does not permit sedentary living. Niger is a landlocked country lying between the Sahara Desert and the tropical savanna in West Africa. Like most countries in the Sahelo-Sudanian agricultural zone, the food system of Niger is based on nonirrigated agriculture using hoes. Raynaut sees colonial interventions as being critical to the transformation of Maradi Department and of northern Hausaland in general.
