The African Poor: A HistoryThis history of the poor of Sub-Saharan Africa begins in the monasteries of thirteenth-century Ethiopia and ends in the South African resettlement sites of the 1980s. Its thesis, derived from histories of poverty in Europe, is that most very poor Africans have been individuals incapacitated for labour, bereft of support, and unable to fend for themselves in a land-rich economy. There has emerged the distinct poverty of those excluded from access to productive resources. Natural disaster brought widespread destitution, but as a cause of mass mortality it was almost eliminated in the colonial era, to return to those areas where drought has been compounded by administrative breakdown. Professor Iliffe investigates what it was like to be poor, how the poor sought to help themselves, how their counterparts in other continents live. The poor live as people, rather than merely parading as statistics. Famines have alerted the world to African poverty, but the problem itself is ancient. Its prevailing forms will not be understood until those of earlier periods are revealed and trends of change are identified. This is a book for all concerned with the future of Africa, as well as for students of poverty elsewhere. |
Contents
The comparative history of the poor | 1 |
Christian Ethiopia | 9 |
The Islamic tradition | 30 |
Poverty and power | 48 |
Poverty and pastoralism | 65 |
Yoruba and Igbo | 82 |
Early European initiatives | 95 |
Poverty in South Africa 18861948 | 114 |
Urban poverty in tropical Africa | 164 |
The care of the poor in colonial Africa | 193 |
Leprosy | 214 |
The growth of poverty in independent Africa | 230 |
The transformation of poverty in southern Africa | 260 |
Notes | 278 |
Bibliography | 356 |
| 377 | |
Common terms and phrases
Addis Ababa aged agricultural alms areas beggars begging blind Cape Town cattle cent centre charity chief chiefly Christian church Ciskei colonial period common countryside destitute drought early earned economic elderly employment especially Ethiopia European famine mortality farm Gold Coast groups Hausa Hausaland hospital households hydnocarpus Ibid Igbo impoverished incapacitated income institutions Islamic Johannesburg journal juvenile Kano Kenya labour lack Lagos land landless later lepers leprosy leprosy sufferers living London marabi migrant mission missionary Nairobi Native Niger Nigeria nineteenth century Northern Nyasaland organisation orphans patients paupers political Poor White population poverty pre-colonial Africa problem prostitutes regions relief Robben Island rural Rwanda savanna settlements sick slaves Social welfare report society South Africa Southern Rhodesia survey survival tradition tropical Africa Tswana Tuareg twentieth century Uganda unemployed urban village wages West Africa women workers Xhosa Yoruba young
