Journal of African Studies
Online ISSN : 1884-5533
Print ISSN : 0065-4140
ISSN-L : 0065-4140
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Volume 2012, Issue 80
Displaying 1-9 of 9 articles from this issue
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Articles
  • Reconsideration of the Enset Cultivation for Food in Northern Ethiopia during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
    Hiroki ISHIKAWA
    Article type: Articles
    2012 Volume 2012 Issue 80 Pages 1-14
    Published: March 31, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: January 25, 2014
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11619/africa.2012.80_1
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    Enset is a plant genus that is part of the Musaceae family. This plant grows in the tropical highlands of Africa and Asia. It is known that several ethnic groups in south-western Ethiopia make use of starch of the corm and pseudostem of this plant for food.
    Several Europeans who visited northern Ethiopia from the 17th to the 18th century reported that this plant was cultivated for food in the regions near the source of the Blue Nile. Although several articles have been devoted to trace Enset cultivation in northern Ethiopia, these studies fail to grasp its historical background. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the historical background of the Enset cultivation for food in northern Ethiopia by reconsidering Ethiopian and European source on Enset.
    I concluded that before the Oromo migration, several ethnic groups, who grew Enset for food, lived around Lake Fincha situated in the south of the Blue Nile and Enset cultivation for food in the regions near the source of the Blue Nile during the 17th and 18th centuries had close relation with these groups.
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  • Transformation of a Frontier Society:
    Consideration of Settlement Abandonment among the Malo, Mountain Farmers of Southwestern Ethiopia
    Takeshi FUJIMOTO
    Article type: Articles
    2012 Volume 2012 Issue 80 Pages 15-26
    Published: March 31, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: January 25, 2014
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11619/africa.2012.80_15
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    The Malo are a sedentary farming group who live in the mountainous areas of southwestern Ethiopia (population ca. 40,000-50,000). For more than a century, the kingdom of Malo was expansive, ruled by hereditary kings, and predominantly comprised of immigrant farmers/warriors (Gok'a) from neighboring kingdoms such as Gofa and Wolayta. Since the kingdom’s incorporation into the Ethiopian state at the end of the 19th century, however, the peripheral lowland settlements have been abandoned. This article analyzes cases in western Malo, where most settlement abandonment has occurred (nearly 70 settlements). Although the apparent causes of abandonment have varied over time, the process has remained largely constant. Long-term insecurity and regional economic decline are considered to have been important contributing factors. Although western Malo was once a pioneer frontier of the kingdom, it has become peripheral since incorporation into the Ethiopian state, and its dispersed hamlets have not been able to endure the difficulties they have encountered. Those who long to return to their original settlements have formed large nucleated villages in the vicinity. Others have moved to their ancestral Gofa land. Although people migrated from Gofa to Malo in the time of the kingdoms, they now move in the opposite direction, from Malo to Gofa.
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