910 Geografie, Reisen
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The craggy and hilly Muri Mountains, which are situated to the north of the Benue Lowlands, are an area with a complex pattern of settlement. This roughly 80 km long and 20 km wide mountainous area is inhabited by about 20 ethnic groups belonging to different language families. The present ethnic and linguistic situation is understood as the result of a complex series of migrations and adaptations to the natural environment. This paper will describe actual movements of settlements and consider certain conditions which may have been relevant in the decision to leave a settlement or choose a new one. The most important conditions will be the accessibility of arable land and/or pasture, accessibility of water, and conditions dependent on the historical and political context such as affording of security and possibility of defence. Therefore an interdisciplinary approach seems to be appropriate to evaluate the natural conditions for settlement and cultivation of the various places from a geographer´s point of view, to interrogate into the historical aspects and motifs of the settlement patterns and migrations with a thorough ethnological background, as well as to gain additional information from a linguistic analysis of toponymes and contact phenomena of the languages spoken in the area.
Le Burkina Faso connaît une urbanisation relativement modérée. En effet, selon le recensement de décembre 1985, le taux d'urbanisation s'élevait à 13,6% et cela en tenant compte des seize centres secondaires de plus de 10.000 habitants. En se basant sur les 119 localités de plus de 5.000 habitants, ce taux dépasse à peine 27%. Or des pays tels que la Côte d'Ivoire, le Ghana et le Sénégal présentaient au même moment des taux de 45 à 50%. Cependant la taille et le nombre des centres urbains ne cessent de croître. Mais jusqu'à présent, le pays ne compte que deux principales villes: Ouagadougou et Bobo Dioulasso avec respectivement 441.514 et 228.668 habitants soit 70% environ de la population urbaine nationale. Les estimations de 1992 donnent à Ouagadougou 842.000 habitants et environ 400.000 à Bobo-Dioulasso. Ouagadougou, la capitale est sans doute le pôle le plus développé avec une armature urbaine assez complète, des activités et des fonctions diversifiées. Le développement urbain est ici plus perceptible qu'ailleurs, il en est autant des problèmes: équipements insuffisants et inadaptés, marginalisation des populations démunies, destruction du patrimoine naturel, forte croissance démographique. Les problèmes environnementaux sont multiples et se manifestent différemment avec plus ou moins d'acuité. C'est cet aspect précis que nous allons analyser.
Studies on land use in Africa have usually been carried out by ethnologists or human geographers and were rarely concerned with data on the physical conditions of soil. There is hardly any issue, however, where interdependencies between natural and cultural factors are as evident as in the topic of land use. For this project the approach of three ethnologists, Braukämper, Kirscht and Platte, was therefore combined with the analysis of Thiemeyer as physical geographer. The area of research is the Local Government Area of Marte in the Nigerian State of Borno. As part of the Chad Basin this region is mainly characterised by clay sediments which are commonly labelled firgi by its inhabitants. Beside this general term, however, the local peasants clearly distinguish five types of soil (Kanuri: katti), to which different physical conditions and qualities with respect to their cultivation are attributed. The question arose how far can this popular knowledge, accumulated by agricultural experiences over generations, be correlated with scientific data. That is why samples of the mentioned types of soil were collected by the members of our team and analysed in the laboratory of the Frankfurt Institute of Physical Geography. The detailed presentation of this analysis has to be preceded by the classification of the respective soil types in the terminology of the indigenous farmers.
Nos travaux dans les villages mosi de la région de Tenkodogo, au centreest du Burkina Faso, portent directement sur le thème central du Projet de Recherche de l'Université de Francfort: Les relations mutuelles entre la culture d'une population et son milieu naturel. Sur la base d'une étude approfondie de l'environnement naturel, on devrait répondre à la question suivante: comment les Hommes conçoivent et estimentils ce milieu, quelles valeurs lui attribueton; en outre, sur la base de quels principes et d'après quels critères de préférence utilisentils leurs sols en tant que cultivateurs; quelles raisons déterminent-elles l'expansion des Mosi méridionaux dans cette aire géographique, la fondation des villages ainsi que leur dévéloppement démographique. Enfin quel est l'impact de tout cela sur l'environnement naturel, c'est-à-dire quelles sont les conséquences écologiques des conceptions et comportements susmentionnés. Nos recherches sur le terrain débutèrent en 1991 sous la forme d'une collaboration interdisciplinaire étroite entre l'ethnologie, la géographie physique et la botanique. L'objectif à long terme est une comparaison entre les Mosi méridionaux, leurs voisins bisa, les Gulmance et enfin un groupe mosi du nord.
Occupation du sol et potentiel de l'environnement chez les Gulmance dans l'est du Burkina Faso
(1993)
Dans l'est de Burkina Faso, dans le pays Gulma, le potentiel naturel, c'est à dire la géologie, le relief, les sols, l'hydrologie, la végétation et l'utilisation par l'homme est l'objet d'un levé scientifique. Les conditions données sont mises en évidence pour rendre claire le modèle de colonisation du peuple dans son cadre naturel. Dans ce sens il est particulièrement important de savoir quelle connaissance exacte les paysans ont de leur environnemt et quels facteurs ils font intervenir dans l'exploitation de cet environnement. Dans l'ensemble il apparait une différenciation selon la répartition de la densité du pays; à côté des zones fortement peuplées, d'autres restent pratiquement vides. De là découle aussi la densité et la nature des savanes.
The land use in the Tangale-Waja area is analysed according to the two basic categories of geography: Firstly the manifold interaction between men and environment which form the spatial characteristics of an area, and secondly the decrease of influence with increasing distance. The importance of these two elementary factors is described by indicators as accessibility for the period from the precolonial situation until the time after World War II, when new roads were constructed through the mountainous area. Living in a hilly environment the self contained population (formerly called "hill pagans") had developed special agricultural techniques which can be considered ecologically well adapted. The opening up of the area after the pacification, Christianity and education, led to a considerable increase in population, the expansion of land under cultivation, and the change of settlement structure by down-hill population movement. This resulted in overuse of the fragile natural resources. The size of farm steads became too small for the family unit and the still low accessibility of the hinterland of the main interregional roads as well as inappropriate techniques of agricultural production are shortcomings causing heavy damage to the physical environment and decreasing living standards of the local population.
Yerwa is the last of the Borno capitals. Although established in the first decade of colonial administration, it cannot be compared with the many other towns like Fort Lamy, Jos, Kaduna, Niamey et al. which all developed about the same time. Colonial interference with the development of Yerwa appears restricted, mainly, to insistence upon wider roads than a Borno town otherwise would have featured and resettlement schemes, e.g. Mafoni, Ari Askeri. The following is based on the premise that as the town - despite time and political circumstances of its emergence - is a distinctive Borno town, also occupational diversification and structure are distinctively related to urban Borno culture.