Arid lands and the political economy of flood recession in Fuuta Tooro

Behind the different logic of economic production in the Sahel lies a different environment that repays the prioritization of long-term risk management over short-term optimal economic growth. This basic difference still is not broadly understood. The first part of this chapter discusses environmental risk and its implications for flood recession agriculture. The second part examines the traditional land tenure system in the Middle Valley as French scholarship found it around mid-century, before much in the way of irrigated development had occurred. A final section illustrates some of the complex issues of political economy through a case study of historical tenure in the Boghe region, Mauritania. -from Author