HISTORICITE DES MILIEUX Kenneth Swindell Population and Agriculture in thé Sokoto-Rima Basin of North-West Nigeria Study of Political Intervention Adaptation and Change 1800-1980 Tropical Africa is frequently described as an area of dispersed population interrupted by islands of densely populated land and large towns of recent origin In continent as vast as Africa it is easy to under estimate the importance of these islands which reflect the history of particular sub-regions For example it is often overlooked that Nigeria contains about one quarter or one fifth of the total African population and that within this country there are significant areas of high population density and levels of urbanization which are not simply the outcome of colonial rule South-western Nigeria primarily occupied by the Yoruba is notable for its urbanism some 40 of the population living towns of precolonial origin The development of these towns and their allegiant rural populations occurred in an area of subtropical forest which refutes the notion that the forest was so inhospitable as to preclude sophisticated forms of settlement and complex political structures In south-eastern Nigeria the Igbo have much less centralized political and economic systems but this did not inhibit the development of flourishing agricultural-trading systems with high rural population densities Further north the Hausa-Fulani emirates and their cities reach back hundreds of years and are part of series of States which spread across the Sahel and Sudan of West Africa Yet in the central regions of Nigeria one finds relatively empty zone with low population densities and few cities which in part is the product of slave raiding and the abstraction of some eight to nine million people by Europeans during the period of the Atlantic slave trade These Nigerian examples suggest that population settlement and agriculture are geographically and historically specific While one cannot ignore the ecologies of such areas it is equally necessary to appreciate the particular historic events which have occurred and the societies and political structures through Cahiers tudes africaines 101-102 XX 1-1-2 86 pp