ABSTRACTS OF DOCUMENTS ON THE RANGELANDS OF SOMALIA

ABSTRACTS OF DOCUMENTS ON THE RANGELANDS OF SOMALIA

Peter Kuchar views an unusual looking termite mound in eastern Hiraan Region.

BY PETER KUCHAR

INTRODUCTION

Editor’s note: Peter Kuchar is a retired rangeland ecologist with extensive experience in eastern Africa, specifically Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. In Somalia, he was part of the Central Rangelands Development Project, working in Hiraan Region.  In this work he abstracts 227 documents dating from 1844 to 2025. His critical comments appear in italics. (Note: complete versions for some of these documents occur elsewhere in Publications on the Rangelands of Somalia.)

The importance of abstracts

I take notes on whatever I read (methods, results, important concepts, interesting throwaway phrases or ideas) because it helps me understand, and possibly even remember, the important elements of the document, be it a vegetation report, Science Fiction story (Peter is a great Sci Fi fan) or novel. It also greatly reduces my need for stacks of paper.  Getting this information into pdf files reduces the paper load even further, giving me a combination of information at my fingertips and no loads of papers to cart around. Perfecto!

A more typical termite mound

Historical background

Little literature exists on the exploration of, or indigenous activity in, the Somali-inhabited pre-20th century Horn of Africa. (Nineteenth-century piracy in Cape Guardafui area was a local phenomenon not relevant to the development of the interior.) However, a more recent paper (Ehret 1995) reports on research and speculation on the advent of the pastoral camel-culture into what are now the traditional lands of the Somali. It particularly features clan genealogies. 

In Africa a common historical motif, one that began with early visitors and peaked during colonial times, had the African as background and emphasized the accomplishments of whites. This tendency is muted in the Somali Horn of Africa because, unlike what has been implied in East and S-Central Africa, missionaries did not pave the way for colonialism and imperialism in the Horn of Africa. In my readings on Somalia there was precious little in the way of missionary presence and proselytizing, likely because Islam and British militarism prevailed. Early visitors were loath to settle, in contrast to East and Southern Africa, and had little to show except for the enumeration of wildlife they shot.

This first wave of visitors, big-game hunters who flocked to Northern Somalia and the adjacent Ogaden for sport, peaked around the start of the 20th century when the region was regarded as prime hunting territory. Reading their accounts, one feels that they were slightly astonished and even impressed by the alienness of the arid landscape, thorn bushlands, diverse wild animals, including locally vast herds of game, and the buoyant Somalis, who were apparently perfectly adapted to the seemingly hostile environment. Some of the earliest books, by hunters and other visitors, are included here for their miscellaneous comments on landscape, vegetation, animals, and status and conduct of Somali inhabitants. (see Accounts of hunters and explorers.)

The Western political presence in the Horn of Africa included the UK in British Somaliland, a protectorate from 1884 to 1960, and Italy in the rest of Somalia which became a de facto Italian colony. In early 20th century, Italians signed protectorate agreements with local Somali authorities. After WW1 Italy gradually took over Somalia and by the 1930s some thousands of Italian settlers were arriving in Mogadishu and agricultural areas. By 1940 about 50,000 Italians were living in Somalia, their main focus banana plantations in southern coastal Somalia for export. They built up some infrastructure viz. roads, airport and port. In 1949 the UN granted Italy trusteeship of Somalia, and in 1960 Somalia gained independence and united with British Somaliland in the creation of modern Somalia. Thereon the Italian presence declined. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Somalis)

The Italians concentrated on agriculture in the southern part of the coast. Any research carried out in the vast interior ignored the range and pastoral aspect. Early vegetation papers, say those published during the 1930s to 50s, do occur in the Italian literature but I don’t expect them to be particularly useful. They will be unquantified observations and, at best, lists. The Italian colonial-era literature is better known for plant taxonomy (species accounts) and plant uses. That said, there are some sizeable papers on plant nutrients and camel diet, for example a series by TM Bettini:

Bettini TM  1933. Il valore nutritivo dello tiante foraggere ed il pascolamento a rotazione.  Riv. Dizoot. 10: 448-468.

Bettini TM  1935. Sulla composizione chimica e sul valore nutritivo dell-erba medica a diversi stadi di vegetazione.  Riv. Dizoot. 12: 425-438.

Bettini TM  1941  Contributo alla conoscenza della composizione chimica e del valore nutritivo della flora somala.  Inst. Agronomico per l’Oltremare, Firenze, Monogr. No.66

Bettini TM & Abdi DI  1979-80  Il comportamento alimentare del dromedario nell’utilizzazione della boscaglia xerofila spinosa della Somalia.  Tedi di Laure, Mogadiscio

Bettini, TM, AM Abukar & AD Ismail  1980-81  Comportamento alimentare del dromedario somalo. Tentativo di inventario della vegetazione pabulare.  Riv. Agric. Subtrop. Trop. 74: 151-203.

Also notable:

Senni, Lorenzo  1935  Gli alberi e le formazioni legnose della Somalia.  Ist. Agric. Colon. Ital., Firenze, 305p. A collection of observations about a forest mission in Italian Somalia. It includes observations about the environment, different regions, botanic areas; trees and forest types.

Addo, O  1976  Le formazioni forestali della Somalia.  Deg. Thesis, Fac. Agr. & For., Univ. Firenze.  

Relatively recent vegetation papers by Italians also exist, mostly on herbaceous vegetation from coastal parts of southern Somalia. Some are quite good though of academic interest rather than useful for understanding rangelands. A few other vegetation studies are scattered here and there from north to south. However, most Italian publications deal with pastoralists and their animals.

Other (Anglo) early reports describe range and vegetation and a few (e.g. Gillett 1941, Edwards 1944, Hemming 1966a, de Vries 1968) were well worth documenting. Vegetation and range research crested during the World Bank funded, USAID implemented Central Rangelands Development Program (CRDP) in Central Somalia in the 1980s, mainly authored by D. Herlocker and co-workers. The CRDP also had a teaching component of U.S. professors at the Somali National University, who together with Somali students published shorter research papers on plant dynamics vis-à-vis livestock behavior. A separate initiative, carried out from 1979 to 1985, was the aerial- enabled surveys by RMR. This effort produced three multivolume studies, one each for North, Central and South Somalia, with statistics on livestock and detailed mapped data on geology and soils ( but relatively superficial on range and veg, with only structural classes and not much detail on the plant component). There also were some other projects, e.g. Camel Research Project.

Somalia was seen as unique in Africa in having one language and culture. All other countries have several to over a hundred (Tanzania) peoples (‘tribes’). In fact, however, some peoples of South Somalia, notably the Maay (Rahanweyn), have a language different from Standard Somali. Nonetheless the majority of Somalis in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, as well as Djibuti and Yemen, speak Standard Somali (Af-Soomaali). However, two factors have acted against a national Somali identity that would permit development of the populace and resources. First, the politics of Somalia has been the politics of clans, the supreme markers of identity, and clan loyalties have weakened national unity. Secondly, large Somali populations live in contiguous areas of Kenya and Ethiopia, encouraging the rhetoric of a Greater Somalia, which also deflects from nation-building.

In Africa, tribalism engendered civil wars e.g. in Nigeria (Biafran war of 1967-70), Rwanda (Tutsi vs. Hutu 1994), Congo (Congolese civil wars of 1990s into the millennium), Sudan (ongoing), and so too with Somalia, drawn into a war with the Ethiopian gov in the Ogaden (1977-78). It spawned a legacy of instability, large-scale movements of people and some huge refugee camps into the 1990s. In the 1980s R&D flourished, Siad Barre tried to ‘regularize’ Somalia by banning clan politics, and a second phase of CRDP was planned for 1990. But it was clan allegiances leading to civil war, collapse of government and subsequent internecine turmoil of warlords that destroyed Somalia as a nation state in 1991. Subsequently, research on land, range and vegetation was effectively halted except for some satellite-enabled studies on land and water into the 20th century by FAO-SWALIM.

Some abbreviations

ST       vegetation stand (sampling area, plot)

CT       plant community type

CR       Central Rangelands (Hiraan, Galguduud and Mudug regions)

N,C,S  north, central, south

For vegetation classification abbreviations see Pratt & Gwynne 1977 [in 1970-1979 section below].

ABSTRACTS


Accounts of hunters and explorers – 1844 -1959

Reports of rangeland surveys and research

Thanks to Jon Herlocker for his financial and technical support.