Migratory drift of Dogon farmers to southern Mali (Koutiala)

Based on data from fieldwork in 2001 and 2002, the author examines the migratory drift of Dogon farmers from their home area in the Mopti region in Central Mali to the cotton belt of southern Mali, some 400 km to the southwest in Koutiala region. This phenomenon has been going on since the 1970s. The author concludes that the prospects for Dogon farmers in southern Mali are gloomy. They arrived in the 1970s and 1980s in search of land. Currently, they account for up to 10 percent of the rural population of southern Mali. They are, however, unable to gain a foothold in the south. In their home area, as well as in their new area, the land allocation system is likely to be the main driving force behind processes of exclusion in a context of stress. In their home area, the severe Sahelian droughts of the 1970s and 1980s pushed them out of their former existence. In southern Mali, however, they arrived 'too late', as a result of which only poor fallow fields, or virgin bush on the plateau or in the depressions are allocated to them. They often have only a weak entitlement to the fields allocated to them. Moreover, their power position in the village, as the latest families to arrive, is fragile. In this context, it is extremely difficult to escape from poverty. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]