Sahel Drought
The Sahel drought of roughly 1968 to 1974 was one of the most severe climate disasters of the twentieth century. Across the semi-arid belt south of the Sahara, from Mauritania and Senegal through Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta) to Chad, with effects reaching Sudan and Ethiopia, rains repeatedly failed. Livestock died in huge numbers, harvests collapsed, and large populations were forced to move. The crisis drew global attention to desertification and food insecurity, and it reshaped international thinking about famine and aid.
The Sahel is a transitional zone where rainfall is naturally variable and depends on the seasonal northward movement of the West African monsoon. The 1950s and early 1960s had been unusually wet, which encouraged farmers to push cultivation northward and herders to enlarge their herds. Population growth, expanding cash-crop farming such as groundnuts and cotton, and the sinking of boreholes that concentrated animals around permanent water all increased pressure on fragile land. Colonial-era taxes and borders, and the restrictions of newly independent states, had also eroded some traditional ways of coping with scarcity, including long-distance pastoral movement.
When the rains weakened in the late 1960s, the shortfall persisted year after year, with some of the worst conditions in 1972 and 1973. Pastures withered, wells and rivers ran low, and millet and sorghum crops failed. Nomadic pastoralists such as the Tuareg and Fulani lost much of their livestock, and many settled around towns and relief camps. Governments were slow to acknowledge the scale of the problem, in part because of limited resources and political caution, and relief efforts were hampered by poor roads and weak communication. Estimates of deaths vary widely and are uncertain, with figures often cited in the tens of thousands up to several hundred thousand, while millions were affected.
The drought had lasting political and scientific consequences. In Ethiopia, famine in 1973 contributed to the discrediting of Emperor Haile Selassie's government, which fell in 1974. Internationally, the disaster spurred larger relief operations and the creation of regional bodies such as the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel in 1973. It also helped launch research into links between land use, ocean temperatures, and rainfall.
Scientists still debate how much human land use contributed compared with natural climate variability, though most now emphasize shifts in Atlantic sea-surface temperatures and atmospheric circulation. Dry conditions continued in the Sahel into the 1980s, with another severe crisis in 1984 and 1985. The 1968–1974 drought remains a reference point for studies of climate vulnerability, pastoralist livelihoods, and the limits of early-warning and aid systems.