From Slavery to Aid Politics, Labour, and Ecology in the Nigerien Sahel, 1800–2000

From Slavery to Aid engages two major themes in African historiography, the slow death of slavery and the evolution of international development, and reveals their interrelation in the social history of the region of Ader in the Nigerien Sahel. Benedetta Rossi traces the historical transformations that turned a society where slavery was a fundamental institution into one governed by the goals and methods of 'aid'. Over an impressive sweep of time - from the pre-colonial power of the Caliphate of Sokoto to the aid-driven governments of the present - this study explores the problem that has remained the central conundrum throughout Ader's history: how workers could meet subsistence needs and employers fulfil recruitment requirements in an area where natural resources are constantly exposed to the climatic hazards characteristic of the edge of the Sahara.

1. At the desert's edge; 2. Between Sokoto and Agadez: inter-ethnic hierarchy in the nineteenth century; 3. Entangled histories of colonial occupation, 1899–1917; 4. Governing labour – slave, forced and migrant, 1918–45; 5. The development of 'development', 1946–83; 6. Fighting against the desert, 1984–2000; 7. Between development and dependence.

Benedetta Rossi is Lecturer in African Studies at the School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham. She is editor of Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories (2009) and Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (with Anne Haour, 2010), and author of many articles focusing on slavery and emancipation in Africa and on international aid to Niger.