Western Africa

[westernafrica]

The Atlantic secondary center of rice diversification may well represent innovation from contact between two distinct farming systems--one Mande, based on freshwater floodplains; the other West Atlantic, located along marine estuaries influenced by salt water. Until paleobotanical research illuminates rice prehistory along West Africa's mangrove coast, current evidence establishes glaberrima cultivation along the middle Niger in Mali some two thousand years ago.

[westernafrica]

It is believed that glaberrima was originally domesticated in the freshwater wetlands of the inland delta of the middle Niger River in Mali, an area where rice is grown almost within reach of the Sahara Desert. Genetic diversity in glaberrima also suggests two secondary centers of African rice innovation and development. One emerged on wetlands in the area north and south of the Gambia river between the rivers Sine and Casamance in Senegal, where salt water from marine tides flows over mangrove-covered floodplains. The other secondary center of glaberrima diversification developed in the Guinean highlands between Sierra Leone, Guinea Conakry, and Liberia in a region of abundant rainfall. The diffusion of African rice cultivation appears then to have shifted from initial domestication in freshwater wetlands to marine estuaries and rain-fed, upland areas.

[westernafrica]

Peoples throughout the Upper Guinea Coast of Africa use names for rice derived from African languages. For example, in Senegal and Gambia... the terms mano (Mandinka) and malo (Wolof) or some derivative of maro/maaro are employed for the native African rice.

[westernafrica]

While rice is mentioned in Arabic accounts from the tenth century, Islamic scholar al-Bakri provided the first indication of its deliberate cultivation along the Niger River in 1068. He described the planting of rice twice a year, once at the time of the Niger flood, and again when the ground was still wet, evidently a reference to flood-recession agriculture.

[westernafrica]

The Diola of Casamance, Senegal, refer to rice cultivation as a "woman's sweat" while the Serer of Senegambia note the importance of female labor in all foodstuff processing by placing the deceased's mortar and pestle on her grave. With the dawn of each day women's pounding of rice awakens millions of African villagers, the rhythmic striking of rice grains by the pestle providing the steady heartbeat of community life.

[westernafrica]

South of the Senegal River along the Upper Guinea Coast, precipitation increases steadily. The dominant cereals adapted to semiarid conditions, sorghum and millet, grade into rice over the broad region extending down the Atlantic coast from the Gambia River to Liberia, the area that would become known as the Grain or Rice Coast.

[westernafrica]

It appears to me a very marvellous thing that beyond the [Senegal] river all men are very black, tall and big, their bodies well formed; and the whole country green, full of trees, and fertile; while on this side [Mauritania], the men are brownish, small, lean, ill-nourished, and small in stature; the country sterile and arid.

Venetian pilot Alvise da Cadamosto, c. 1468

[westernafrica]

The West African Grain or Rice Coast. From the Senegal River south, the rainfall is enough to support agriculture.