Rinderpest Epidemic Sweeps Africa

Between roughly 1887 and 1897, rinderpest, a highly contagious viral disease of cattle and other hoofed animals, spread across much of sub-Saharan Africa. It killed a very large share of the continent's cattle, along with huge numbers of wild ungulates such as buffalo, wildebeest and giraffe. The loss of livestock brought famine and social upheaval to pastoral and farming communities alike, and it shaped the region's politics and ecology just as European powers were extending their control.

Rinderpest had long been known in Europe and Asia, but it had not previously reached sub-Saharan Africa on a large scale. The usual account holds that the virus arrived in the Horn of Africa in the late 1880s, probably through cattle brought in to supply Italian forces during their campaign around Massawa in what is now Eritrea. Cattle in Africa had no acquired immunity, so the disease struck with exceptional force. Mortality in herds is commonly described as extremely high, often cited at 90 percent or more in the worst-hit areas, though figures varied by place and are only rough estimates.

From the Horn, the epidemic moved through Ethiopia and into East Africa, then south along the Rift Valley and across the Zambezi. By the mid-1890s it had reached southern Africa, and it arrived in the Cape Colony by about 1897. It also spread in the west of the continent, though the pattern there was different. Pastoral peoples such as the Maasai, who depended heavily on cattle for milk, blood and meat, suffered terribly. Farmers lost the animals used for plowing, transport and bride-wealth. Hunger was worsened by droughts, smallpox and other outbreaks that coincided with the epidemic, so historians find it hard to separate rinderpest's effects from those of other crises.

The consequences were wide-ranging. Weakened societies were less able to resist colonial expansion, and in some regions, such as parts of Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, the epidemic is seen as easing European conquest and land seizure. In southern Africa, colonial attempts to control the disease, including culling and movement restrictions, fed resentment that contributed to the Ndebele and Shona risings of 1896. Some scholars argue the epidemic's role in colonization has been overstated, but most agree it was a major factor.

Ecologically, the die-off of herbivores allowed bush and tsetse fly habitat to expand in some areas, which hindered later grazing and spread sleeping sickness. Rinderpest remained a threat for more than a century. A global vaccination campaign eventually succeeded, and in 2011 the disease was declared eradicated, only the second after smallpox.