Iyah Greetings I
It is obvious, and there is no doubt, that the European influence in the Colonial Times on Africa is responsible for the economical disaster on the continent.
But now Iman want talk about the Sahel Zone in particular.
Sahel is the Zone south of the Sahara through the whole continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, so Ethiopia is direct in that area. This is where the desert becomes savannah.
It was always very hard for people to settle and live in the Sahel Zone, but through centuries they learned how to treat the nature to survive.
The grasslands they used for animals and the better soil for agriculture. So they were able to use all the soils energy without destroying it.
The Colonial Powers only wanted to benefit from their colonies without carrying for the land and the people. So they changed the century old way of living by making the farmer only plant cash-crops for the world market. Now they used vast lands for this and took away the land of the animal farmer. But instead of reducing the animals they got more and more to feed the increasing number of people, all this destroyed the soil and ground. On that ground didnīt grow anything more, so there werenīt any roots to tighten the soil, and that leads to erosion.
Because of this the north-African desert is getting bigger and bigger southwards.
This was the cause for the big famines throughout the Sahel Zone in the `70s and `80s.
Also Ethiopia never was under colonial rule, or used colonial methods like cash-crops, it was in high danger because it was direct in the Sahel.
The Sahel States surrounding Ethiopia used exactly these economic-destroying methods, and this economical disaster didnīt stop at state boundaries! For example, in the last 50 years in Sudan the desert became 160 000 kmē bigger.
But also the Ethiopians themselves were in a way responsible.
Like all Afrricans the Ethiopians too had the highest respect for nature in their history. This is what made the people in the Sahel survive, they lived in harmony with nature. But also in Ethiopia there was an colonial influence of nature-disrespecting behaviour.
In the 16th century the Portuguese missionaries swarmed over the whole of Africa and also came to Ethiopia and brought the increasing European influence. In those days Ethiopia was two thirds covered with forest, in 1960 only 9 percent of this area was forest.
Menelik II saw the coming ecological catastrophe that would be caused by the destroying of the forests, so he ordered eucalyptus trees to be planted in the hills instead of the destroyed forests. But it is clear that an century long process which destroyed the nature more and more cannot be turned overnight, so Haile Selassie I was also faced with that problem.
After the war British naturalists told the Ethiopian Government about the ecological danger and predicted in 1950 that about twenty years later there would be a big famine.
Haile Selassie I was completely aware of the danger and like Menelik he brought help from Europe. But though there was since the 50īs a big forestry process, it was impossible to stop what HAD TO COME after hundreds of years of destroying forests.
From the war until the Revolution an Ethiopian area big as Belgium became desert, the catastrophe was to far to be stopped!
Nature revenges! And it really does!
Bro Gad I
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