Hausa Village Research Articles

Engaging conceptions of identity in a context of medical pluralism: explaining treatment choices for everyday illness in Niger.

This article uses ethnographic research to reflect upon how the treatment of 'everyday' illnesses in Niger engages concepts of social identity. Inspired by Bourdieu's concept of social distinction, as well as Appadurai's edited volume on the 'social lives' of 'things', I present an analysis of how medications are understood by their users in terms of social and ideological meaning in one rural Hausa village. Decisions about medication choice were framed by three main themes: belonging to the 'modern' world, 'traditional' Hausa culture, and religious identity. This article does not argue that these notions of identity fully explain medication use, nor necessarily predict treatment choices. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the dynamic meanings given to treatment decisions after they have been made, attributed to the medications themselves and negotiated through their circulation in a context where multiple medical systems are drawn from to manage illness. Producers and sellers of medication also engage these meaning-centred concepts, which have theoretical and practical interest for the social sciences and public health. A virtual abstract for this paper can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_979cmCmR9rLrKuD7z0ycA.

Understanding Indigenous Innovation in Rural West Africa: Challenges to Diffusion of Innovations Theory and Current Social Innovation Practice

Most social innovation (SI) work done in developing countries is carried out through development agencies that focus on initiating innovations and processes, and establishing institutions that cultivate a change-oriented mindset. I offer a general critique of that approach and I link that critique with my observations from 15 years living and working among rural indigenous people in West Africa. I suggest that, not only do much of the SI processes fail to show respect for the creativity and intelligence of indigenous people, they tend to come packaged with exogenous participatory processes, encourage scaling-up, and ignore innovation that is already occurring. These arguments set the stage for an examination of a system of innovation that I discovered operating in a Hausa village in Niger. This system not only challenges the most important theory explaining the adoption and spread of ideas, the diffusion of innovations, it also demonstrates how indigenous people in one of the poorest countries on earth are innovating without intervention or support from development agencies. I complete the paper by suggesting that in some cases more sensible SI can be facilitated by discovering and supporting indigenous processes of innovation rather than by focusing on initiating change.

Niger and Sarraounia: One Hundred Years of Forgetting Female Leadership

Used generically, Sarraounia (Hausa for “queen” or “female chief”) may designate various functions of female leadership. Among the Azna of Lougou, Bagagi, and surrounding Hausa villages and towns of the Mawri group—predominantly animist until recently—this title refers especially to a female lineage that held noncentralized political and religious authority. But religious authority has long become the only remaining, and contested, prerogative of the Sarraounia. History books, which are far too few, largely ignore the queens, priestesses, and female chiefs of the recent past, thus depriving Niger of powerful national female role models. While it pretends to concede equitable gender representation in parliament and politics, Niger’s government constantly defers the promulgation of a “Family Code,” and its proponents are threatened with divine sanction by certain Islamic religious authorities.

The ‘Kitchen’ as Women's Space in Rural Hausaland, Northern Nigeria

In Hausa villages of northern Nigeria the kitchen rarely exists as a separate room. Except in very wet or cold weather cooking takes place in the open courtyard of the multi-generational extended family compound, or gida. Cooking for family members is a female activity shared, or rotated, among co-wives in what are more often than not polygamous households. Thus, the kitchen is a site of female co-operation, jealousy and various other charged emotions. Using empirical data from a village case study this article analyses how kitchens can be viewed from a feminist perspective as sites of women's power.

Development, not division: local versus external perceptions of the Niger–Nigeria boundary

This article traces the evolution of the Nigérien–Nigerian boundary over the past 20 years. It focuses in particular on a single border crossing that separates two neighbouring Hausa villages of equivalent demographic size, administrative status, and economic importance. During the past two decades, border control, monitoring and surveillance have gradually intensified, resulting in the establishment of immigration and customs offices on the Nigerian side of the boundary and a douane (customs) post on the Nigérien side. However, local inhabitants do not view these changes in terms of ethnic partition or division. Rather, they see border control infrastructure positively, in terms both of development and national identity. For the border line Hausa, identity is not zero-sum: feeling more and more Nigérien/Nigerian does not result in diminution of their ‘Hausa-ness’. Post-9/11 international pressures to intensify border controls and monitoring in regions where Muslim extremists are thought to shelter highlight contradictions between indigenous and international conceptions of the African frontier.

Utilization of maternal health services by rural Hausa women in Zaria environs, northern Nigeria: has primary health care made a difference?

Background: Expanding coverage, strengthening of, and increasing access and utilization of maternal health services is one of the key components of Nigeria's Primary Health Care (PHC) efforts , which was started in 1986. A descriptive study was undertaken to document the level and pattern of utilization of selected maternal health services among rural Hausa women in order to assess progress in PHC implementation. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive, quantitative study using structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect data on family planning, antenatal, post natal and delivery services utilization pattern from a total population of 655 currently married women in the reproductive age group in two predominantly Hausa villages in north-western Nigeria. The findings were compared with the baseline data obtained in the local government area at the start of PHC in 1986. Results: About two-thirds of the women had heard of family planning. There were statistically significant associations between age (P Conclusion: Utilization of orthodox maternal health services among the rural Hausa women is abysmally low and PHC implementation has not made any appreciable impact on their maternal health services uptake. KEY WORDS: Primary health care; Progress assessment; Maternal health services; Utilization; Rural Hausa women; Nigeria Journal of Community Medicine & Primary Health Care Vol.16(2) 2004: 47-54

Shari'aas De-Africanization: Evidence from Hausaland

Terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 overlapped with ongoing movements of Islamic fundamentalism in sub-Saharan Africa; however, these movements have not been identical, nor have they encountered uniform responses from the governments overseeing them. This is evident in the Hausa borderlands of Niger and Nigeria, where I conducted fieldwork (first begun in the early 1980s) two months after the attacks. Differences in the application of shari'a (Islamic law) on both sides of the border accentuate differences in Hausa culture and society along national (i.e., Nigerien vs. Nigerian) lines. Traditional Hausa customs that have flourished for centuries (praise-singing, drumming, group dancing, and singing) are now proscribed in the northern Nigerian state of Katsina, where shari'a is tantamount to de-Africanization. In contrast, Zinder, a neighboring state in the Republic of Niger, has so far resisted a comparable Islamization of its legal code. Cultural differentiation across the Niger-Nigeria boundary persists along religious lines, despite the status of Islam as the common faith. This inflected globalization of Islam highlights the significance of national boundaries in delimiting the influence of religious revivalism. Other differences relating to Islamization are inferred from comparing the extent of pilgrimage to Mecca and the incidence of wife seclusion in neighboring Hausa villages on each side of the Niger-Nigeria boundary.

Shari'a as De-Africanization: Evidence from Hausaland

Terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 overlapped with ongoing movements of Islamic fundamentalism in sub-Saharan Africa; however, these movements have not been identical, nor have they encountered uniform responses from the governments overseeing them. This is evident in the Hausa borderlands of Niger and Nigeria, where I conducted fieldwork (first begun in the early 1980s) two months after the attacks. Differences in the application of shari'a (Islamic law) on both sides of the border accentuate differences in Hausa culture and society along national (i.e., Nigérien vs. Nigerian) lines. Traditional Hausa customs that have flourished for centuries (praise-singing, drumming, group dancing, and singing) are now proscribed in the northern Nigerian state of Katsina, where shari'a is tantamount to de-Africanization. In contrast, Zinder, a neighboring state in the Republic of Niger, has so far resisted a comparable Islamization of its legal code. Cultural differentiation across the Niger-Nigeria boundary persists along religious lines, despite the status of Islam as the common faith. This inflected globalization of Islam highlights the significance of national boundaries in delimiting the influence of religious revivalism. Other differences relating to Islamization are inferred from comparing the extent of pilgrimage to Mecca and the incidence of wife seclusion in neighboring Hausa villages on each side of the Niger-Nigeria boundary.

Food diversity and drought survival. The Hausa example

Two Hausa villages in the Sahel of south-eastern Niger were surveyed for food procurement practices, with special focus on dietary use of wild plants. Activities and behaviours during years of adequate rainfall were compared to practices during drought. A diversified food base was maintained through hunting, gathering, agriculture, horticulture, and animal husbandry. Members of households surveyed (n = 112) foraged for edible wild plants located in bushlands adjacent to villages, within household compounds, or within agricultural fields. Dominant agricultural crops were beans, millet, peanuts, and sorghum; prominent household garden species were melon, okra, and squash. At the time of the survey most households experienced marginal crop yields. Edible wild plants were prominent in local diet during both drought and during years of adequate rainfall; more than 80 species were commonly consumed. Protein values of several wild plants exceeded 20%, including Amaranthus hybridus, Cassia occidentalis, Cenchrus ...

Nationalism Versus Ethnic Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa

Part and parcel of the conventional wisdom about rural publics in Africa is that populations on the periphery will accord ethnic solidarity greater significance than national consciousness. A survey of neighboring Hausa villages on different sides of the Niger-Nigeria boundary counters this myth. Probing issues of self-identity and ethnic affinity, we found that most Hausa villagers on the frontier did not place their Hausan ethnic identity above their national one as citizens of Nigeria or Niger and expressed greater affinity for non-Hausa cocitizens than for foreign Hausas. However, expressed attachments to ethnic, national, and other social identifications (such as religion) varied according to village: citizenship does make a difference in the political consciousness of villagers on the geographic margins of the state. More survey research in other transborder regions should shed further light on processes of state penetration and national integration in developing countries.

Structural and Ideological Tensions in a Rural Hausa Village

In this article an attempt is made to achieve three separate but complementary tasks. First, to make a contribution to the ethnography of the Hausa of northern Nigeria. Although considerable attention has been paid to the historical development of the centralized emirate systems which provide the overarching framework for the organization of Hausa society (see for example Smith: 1960), comparatively little attention has been paid to the lower levels of Hausa political organization especially in the areas where 90 percent of the Hausa live. A notable exception to this neglect of the Hausa is the outstanding contribution made by Polly Hill (1972 and 1977), who in her introduction (1972: xiv) states her insistence that rural (Nigerian) Hausaland is . . . the great under-explored region of West Africa. Hill, however, concentrates her effort mainly on economic life and the more directly political aspects receive relatively little attention. Secondly, this article seeks to examine critically the relationship between the political structure existing in the village and the various, seemingly contradictory, ways in which the inhabitants describe it. It shall be suggested that at several critical points the structure is ambivalent1 and exhibits a variety of tensions which pull it in different directions.2 It shall be further suggested that the divergent descriptions of the structure given by informants are, in fact, an ideological representation of these (empirical) tensions. As such they are individually partial, both in the sense of being incomplete and in the sense of representing particular configurations of interest. Thirdly, to suggest some explanations for the tenacity of these traditional institutions and the continuance of the traditional leadership patterns as the major political force in Hausa village life. In doing this it shall be argued that to attempt an explanation in terms of autochthonous village equilibrium dynamics cannot really answer the problem. Rather, it is only by placing this microcosm in the context of the Nigerian political and social systems as a whole that the basic lack of major change can be fully understood.

Aspects socio-économiques de la préparation et de la circulation de la nourriture dans un village hausa (Niger).

C. Raynaut—Cooking and Circulating Food in a Hausa Village: Socio-Economic Aspects. The study of the preparation and distribution of food is most likely to cast an interesting light on the deep relational structure under-lying an economic system. In the Hausa village of Soumarana (Niger Republic) the households are not self-sufficient and autarchic as far as food is concerned. They rely to a large extent on commercial transactions to supplement home grown produce. Labour division obtains both in the production of the basic foodstuffs and in their ulterior preparation and circulation. Not only do butchers, for instance, form a special professional category, but men and women cook, sell and buy different kinds of food. Commercial transactions reach their peak during the scarcity season, just before the harvest, when people are short of both food and money. This apparently paradoxical situation is linked with recent social changes and the increase of tensions between elders and youth, and between men and women. Women, especially, have become able to maximize the profit from their own crops while making the men pay for the food they cook for them: exchanges are no longer based on barter and food has become an item in the money-based economy.

Transformation du système de production et inégalité économique; le cas d'un village haoussa (Niger)

ABSTRACTSupported by data collected in a Hausa village in Niger, this paper analyses the changes which affect the social organization of agricultural production. The main points outlined are: the breaking up of traditional family estates; the increasing number of commercial operations dealing with the land; the generalization of hired farm-labour. This evolution, which entails a rapid spreading of merchant relationships, raises the question of the role which money plays in a global economic system ruled by groundnut trading. In such a socio-economic context, strong inequality-producing mechanisms are at work: the merchant-orientated “circulation” of land and labour tends to increase the vulnerability of the poorest and the advantages of the richest. Wheras the gap is indubitably widening between peasant producers and members of the urban “bourgeoisie,” a detailed analysis shows that it still remains moderate among the village community. This is basically linked to the low development level of the producin...

L'émigration dans un village du Niger.

J. Barotj — Emigration in a Village of the Niger Republic. The economy of the formerly agricultural Hausa village of Affala is now based on wages remitted by young male migrants. Three types of migration can be distinguished : short range, to urban centers in the Niger Republic itself ; middle range, to big West African cities (Dakar, Abidjan) ; and long range, to France. The migrants re-group and orga-nize according to village affiliations and tend to keep aloof from the foreign milieu.

Big Houses in Kano Emirate

Opening ParagraphIn 1971–2 I undertook research in part of the very densely populated farming zone around Kano city (often called the Kano close-settled zone) in order to compare it with a Hausa village, Batagarawa, some 100 miles further north in Katsina Emirate, where I had lived and worked in 1967. At Batagarawa farmland is not scarce and members of the community are free to establish farms on uncultivated (bush) land, some of which is no further than a mile or so from the village. For some 30 to 40 miles or more around Kano city, on the other hand, there is little or no uncultivated bush and farmers with insufficient land are obliged to buy or to ‘borrow’ (aro) farmland from others. My purpose was to compare and contrast the socio-economic organization and economic conditions of farmers in the two localities, with special reference, in so far as this variable could be isolated, to population density.

Rural Hausa: A Village and a Setting.

This book was originally published in 1972 and relates to the Hausa-speaking people of West Africa. At the time of publication there were perhaps as many as 15 million Hausa-speaking people in the area, most of whom lived in the countryside in northern Nigeria and the neighbouring Niger Republic. This book is at once an examination of the socio-economic life of a small Hausa village and a study of the way of life of the rural Hausa generally. The book as a whole provides a wide-ranging survey both of what was known and of what was, and in some cases still is, little understood. Very few books had been written on the rural Hausa, much of the literature consisting of scarce pamphlets and official reports; this book not only reports important research, but also surveys literature which was otherwise not generally available. The themes which emerge from this study are similar to many which Polly Hill has stressed elsewhere: people who do not fit into crude stereotypes and socio-economic life are always much more varied and sophisticated than superficial observers would suppose.

Hidden Trade in Hausaland

There have been few attempts to study the functions of rural West African market-places in relation to the socio-economic life of the communities they serve,I and many of the questions which require propounding receive an implicit answer. Thus it is conventionally supposed that where cash percolates into every crevice of the economy, as it does in the Hausa village in northern Nigeria to which this article relates, most cash transactions involving farm produce will then necessarily occur in a market-place. No one asks what happens if the nearest market-place is inconveniently distant (as is obviously common where nucleated settlements are lacking) and few have been interested to explore such extra-market transactions between farmers as must surely commonly occur in West Africa's forest zone because of the great bulkiness of root-crops and plantain. The fast-growing literature2 on West African marketing and market-places lays increasing stress on the role of city markets,3 on the marketing of different types of produce4 and on market typology and location.5 As most of this new-style research is undertaken by economists, geographers and rural sociologists, so it is becoming distinctly old-fashioned to study 'the village market', which is thought to have been 'done already' by social anthropologists, to the extent that a stereotyped, even sentimental, image of 'the village and its market' bars the way to further investigation. Perhaps it is because most of the few wholly 'marketless areas' which have been studied happen to be either anomalous or economically backward,6 that the study of more localised 'marketlessness' has been ignored. However, it is certain that modern studies of marketing nexuses ought to be based on the much better understanding than we now possess of the great variety of functions which may, or may not, be served by the humble local market. The extreme technical difficulty of operational research in West African marketplaces has been insufficiently emphasised,7 partly accounting, as it does, for the under-development of the subject. Although, as Mintz has written, market-places are useful 'for the scholar in getting at an important aspect of the rural economy', yet:

Challenge to the Profession

Most of us have traveled a good deal, I suspect, many in foreign countries. We have known in some measure what is called cultural shock and have struggled with the hardship of the sounds and forms of another language. If so, you can more easily imagine with me now the almost unbelievable saga of Charles Wayo as related in the February issue of Ebony. Five years ago Charles Wayo, then only fourteen and known by his tribal name of Kofi Akakpo in the Hausa village of Ghana where he lived, found in a trash pile a torn and dirty copy of Ebony. Unable to read it, he still found in its pictures a land where black people live like the white people he had seen-in good houses, with good clothing, and with automobiles and material things he had never even dreamed of. A fierce ambition arose in him-to go to that land and get such an education that he could return to his own people and help them to live in the same way. In the little school where he worked as janitor, he saw English words and sentences on the blackboards. To the little English that he had acquired in school, he now added more. He memorized what he found on the boards

The ecology of the mosquitos of the Northern Guinea Savannah of Nigeria

The ecology of the mosquitos of the Northern Guinea Savannah of Nigeria