History of Nutrition in
Eastern Africa
Korean
Minjok Leadership Academy
International
Program
Sung,
Ji Yun
Term
Paper, AP World History Class, June 2012
Table of Contents
Ⅰ. Introduction: Overview of Eastern Africa
Ⅱ. African Environment and Development of Food
Production
Ⅱ. 1.
Geography and Climate
Ⅱ. 2.
Development of Food Production
Ⅱ. 2. A.
Stone Age
Ⅱ. 2. B.
Neolithic Revolution
Ⅱ. 2. C.
Further Development
Ⅲ. Influence from Interaction
Ⅲ. 1. In
General
Ⅲ. 2.
Pre-Colonial Era
Ⅲ. 2. A.
within Africa
Ⅲ. 2. B.
Monsoon Exchange
Ⅲ. 2. C.
Columbian Exchange
Ⅲ. 2. D.
Colonial Rule
Ⅳ. Famine and Malnutrition Problems
Ⅴ. Conclusion
Ⅵ. Bibliography
Ⅰ. Introduction: Overview of Eastern Africa
By
the term East Africa, it is specifically referring to three countries of Kenya,
Uganda, and Tanzania. Eastern Africa refers to the entire area from Ethiopia to
east of the Great Lakes. Thus, eastern Africa includes following countries: the
Great Lakes Region, including Uganda,
Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi. And there is an area so called Horn of Africa, which comprises
Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Djibouti, and Somalia.[i]
Occasionally, other countries such as Mozambique, Madagascar, Malawi, or Sudan
are included, but the above 10 nations are mostly regarded as eastern Africa.
In this paper, the term East Africa refers to the above 10 countries as well.
One
of the notable features of eastern Africa is that it is the birthplace of
humanity; yet it has not developed much since. Some scholars assert that the
harsh climate imposed the development of a new method of food production.
However, such natural limitations greatly impeded the region’s growth. Only in
recent times, after it finally became truly independent of the European Powers,
eastern Africa shows some symptoms of a remarkable development. A brighter
future is highly expected of this region.
In
East Africa, there are a variety of tribes living around the region, forming a
mosaic. Some of them merely have a few hundred people, but some others are
composed of millions of people. Places like Tanzania take pride in that there
are more than a hundred tribes of than 10,000 members. Five peoples--Cushites, Nilotics, Bantu Sudanic and Semitic--make up eastern Africa's main ethnic groups. Each of these
three groups is comprised of several tribes. Some of the better known are the Kikuyu, the Luo, the Kalenjin, the Luhya and the Masai. This area is also home to many people of Arabian, Indian,
and European origin.
Ⅱ. African Environment and Development of
Food Production
Ⅱ. 1. Geography and Climate
The natural
environments of eastern Africa withdraw a deep admiration. They possess
diversity never possible at other areas- from tropical savannah to permanent
snowy fields, deserts with airborne dust, firing volcanoes and rumbling
cataracts. Moreover, there exists Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak of
Africa, Lake Victoria, which is world’s second largest freshwater lake, the marvelous
Great Rift Valley, and then there’s the source of the Nile River, the longest
river in the world. The entire area of eastern Africa is also the world’s
largest habitat of game, providing home to millions of zebras, gnu, bison,
elephants, goats, giraffe, lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas…and thousands
more.
Bounded to
the east by the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, the land rises (often on a
plateau) to the Ethiopian and East African highlands of over 1000 meters, which
contain five of the highest mountain peaks in Africa. Dividing these highlands
is the Great Rift Valley. It is significant in the environment of eastern
Africa because it is surprisingly humid and cool for an area of such latitude.
It shows many microenvironments according to its altitude. It has high and
consistent rainfall as well. Also, the highlands create many waterfalls of Nile
and Congo Rivers. The highlands along the Rift Valley from Ethiopia to South
Africa create rainfall catchments and shadows. They are often fertile and well-watered
oases surrounded by semiarid plains. Thus, it is very rich in crop cultivation,
and most of the little population is concentrated in this area.
On the
other hand, the rainfall of lowland Africa varies greatly from year to year. Djibouti,
regarded as the warmest city in the world, has a mean annual temperature of 86
degrees Fahrenheit. 75% of the area is either arid or semiarid, and the
rainfall is erratic. Famine is a serious issue, especially in the Horn of
Africa and northern Sudan, where it is extremely arid. In the dry lowlands, the
main living is by cattle breeding. As a whole, 90% of the people are involved
in agriculture and livestock in East Africa. It is the least urbanized area
even in the African continent itself.
Ⅱ.
2. Development of Food Production
For thousands of years, the people of eastern
Africa followed a traditional way of life, and many still do. Pastoral tribes
tend herds of cattle and goats and supplement their diet with wild greens, bark
and tubers. Fishing tribes, like the Molo, harvest tilapia or Nile perch from
Lake Turkana and Lake Victoria or pull fish from the sea. Tribes of farmers,
such as the Kikuyu and Luhya, cultivate traditional crops of sorghum, millet,
cowpeas (black-eyed peas) and yams.
Ⅱ. 2. A. Stone Age
The
best and oldest evidence of human nutrition in East Africa can be found in
Olorgesailie, a historical site on the floor of the Great Eastern Rift Valley
that was once a lake in a lush environment teemed with wildlife. Thousands of
wedgelike stone tools, such as handaxes, cleavers, scrapers, knives of varying
sizes litter the ground. However, much of this time is remain unknown due to
lack of archaeological evidence. To enrich the data, historians use comparative
linguistics to propose links between the sketchy archaeological record and the
spread of specific agricultural traditions.
For the
vast majority of human existence, people survived by eating plants and animals
gathered from the wild. Over time, people slowly developed methods of foraging
by adapting to different environments and learning to exploit different sources
of food. Because of the harsh climate and scarce resources, the people were
imposed to maximize the food supply and sustainability. During the Middle Stone
Age, about 1.5 million years ago, regional cultures started to differ; each
developed a unique method according to the natural resources. They invented
spears and sows, and most importantly, fire. They made use of the fire in many
ways- heated sharp blades, cooked food, and chased animals off. In this era,
people usually hunted a big or slow-moving prey, such as snails.
Then,
in the Late Stone Age, about 200,000 years ago, tools became more specialized.
Unlike past tools which all looked the same, they made stone knifes, needles,
axes, etc. specifically for a purpose. Other
techniques include follow agriculture, new tools, and grindstones. They also
started to use traps and grinding stones. Such progress would have increased
their ability to hunt significantly. It became possible to hunt faster-moving
prey, including fish. It led to a diversification of diet.
Despite
all those progresses, however, people had to use most of their time in
gathering food, and hunger was extremely common. In a limited area, there would
only be a limited amount of food for a small tribe; people couldn’t form large
settlements.
Ⅱ. 2. B. Neolithic Revolution
After
all those years of hunter-gatherers, roughly 10,000 years ago, the habit of
attaining food started to change. There are many conflicting opinions on the
origins of the agricultural revolution; it might be started by one genius, by
accident, or just naturally. Nonetheless, it is preferable to have a reliable
food source nearby, so they kept that new lifestyle. What could be more secure
than locking animals and planting crops near the houses?
The
effects of the agricultural revolution altered every aspect of primitive
society’s lives. Firstly, they turned into a sedentary society. Agriculture and
stock farming were not necessarily easier than hunting and gathering. Still,
they were much more stable, which meant it was better for a large number of
people to live together. Production of food contributed a great deal to the
growth of villages and in the end, cities. Civilization, so it is called. In
addition, farming must have required a higher level of discipline; people had
to seed at a particular time, protect the growing plants and animals by any
means, collect harvests up, and moreover, store and distribute the production.
Such severe requirements led to a tremendous cultural transition.
Throughout
the early phase of food crop domestication, people continued to supply much of
the protein they needed through hunting and fishing. Wild
animal populations remained high because agricultural societies occupied
relatively little of the landscape. Livestock, both cattle and sheep and goats
introduced from southwest Asia, could not expand into areas with concentrations
of tsetse- biting, blood-dependent family of flies transmit the dangerous Trypansoma microbes. These areas, mostly
tropical savannahs and forests, remained home to substantial game populations.
Moreover,
some historians claim that Africa was home to one of the earliest
domestications of livestock in the world, and that unlike the case in other
parts of the world, domestication of livestock preceded the development of
agriculture. The Auroch, a humpless
breed of domesticated cattle, became the basis for a pastoral, food-producing
lifestyle that spread across the southern Sahara. Associated with sites showing
evidence of domesticated cattle are grindstones, pottery, and limited indications
of the exploitation of sorghum and millet as foodstuffs dating to 9,000 years
ago. The earliest sites identified as pastoralist suggest that the first
pastoralists continuously moved between desert and Nile and rarely ate cattle,
but they used the animals’ milk and blood. The African tradition of using
cattle for wealth may have started in this area. In Africa, unlike the Middle
East and India, pastoralism may have come before the development of agriculture.
Key
animals that are raised in East Africa are cattle, sheep, goats, camels, pigs,
and donkeys. Cattle, which are the most important of these, were introduced
into the region from North Africa in 3000-2000 B.C.E. and are the economic base
for livestock keepers and pastoralists who live in drier regions. These people
depended on animals for food, with milk products being by far the most
important. Milk is obtained from camels, cows, goats, and occasionally sheep.
The people took it either fresh or fermented in
containers—mainly gourds (kuat in Sudan or kibuyu in
Swahili) or hollowed-out wood. The milk is then churned to make butter and sour
milk which are very popular foods in southern Sudan and among pastoralists.
Butter, which was a major item of barter trade
in the past, is used in preparing other foods or is mixed with other foods to
add flavor. Milk, which people often drink sweetened with sugar, may be used as
an accompaniment for ugali or sima, which is a
type of stiff porridge.
There
were five deadly diseases that became a threat to their livestock: malignant
catarrhal fever, Rift Valley fever, East Coast fever, foot and mouth disease,
and trpanosomiasis. People worked to develop livestock breeds that could
survive in their climates. Goats in particular became widespread, and by about
4,000 years ago a specialized breed of cattle had been developed that could
live at least in the forest-savannah borderlands. It was only about 3,000 years
ago that evidence of stock became available from southern Kenya and northern
Tanzania. Initially, sheep and goats appeared, and then cattle followed. The
former two survive trypanosomiasis better and are less favored as food sources
by the fly.
Among
eastern Africa, the Ethiopian highlands have very unique culinary culture
.Generally, there is too little archaeological evidence available; but one
thing is for sure: the Ethiopian Highlands, like the other highlands of eastern
Africa, represent a major region of plant endemism. This region receives fairly
regular rain from the monsoon system and has many microenvironments based on
altitude. African communities in this area domesticated four crops.
First
two are coffee and finger millet, Eluesine
coracana, which eventually spread beyond the region. For coffee, however,
East Africa is not that fond of except for Ethiopia, its original home. In
Ethiopia, raw coffee is roasted, spiced, and ground into flour. Coffee-drinking
is important in communities of Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia. Very strong coffee
is served in small cups among Muslims in the coastal region as well.
Two
others are teff and ensete, but they remain little grown outside Ethiopia. Teff
is a small grain grown only in Ethiopia to make njera bread, a huge, flat, flabby, rather elastic, and slightly
sour pancake that usually eaten with spicy meat or vegetable stews. Ensete is a
bananalike plant whose stem marrow is edible. However, it has a major disadvantage-
it consists of low protein content. Linguistic evidence indicates that
domestication in this area perhaps started as early as 6,000 years ago. By
4,000 years ago, a process of intensification had begun in the highlands that
would lead to the development of a remarkable civilization.
Ⅱ. 2. C. Further Development
Thousands
of years passed since the Neolithic Revolution, and people tried many things to
intensify the agriculture. The agricultural systems that developed spread into
areas such as river valleys whose favorable conditions made them even more
productive. Some domesticates, such as most livestock, proved capable of
adapting to many different environments through selective breeding. Plant
crops, on the other hand, expanded more in based on environment. For instance,
grain stayed on stalk. Selective seeding was implemented according to the
varying environments. Temperate plants such as wheat could not grow on tropical
climates, and vice versa. Tropical plants include millet and banana.
At
the riverside of the Nile, floodplains were extremely important; after the
water disappeared, the land was extremely fertile. There sedentary foraging
community continued, with people living along the river and collecting the
roots of sledges that grew in the river as well as fish and shellfish.Aquatic
settlements were located along the Nile up to the Ethiopian Highlands, along
the rivers that ran from what is now the Sahara to Lake Chad and the Niger
River, and around Lake Chad.
Between
about 12,000 and 8,000 years ago, both pastoralism and sedentary communities
along bodies of water spread all the way across Africa south of the Sahara.
Both the cattle herding and aquatic settlements along lakes such as Chad and
tributaries of Niger from the North exploited grains extensively. The most
important food grains came from grasses that eventually became the domesticated
crops of Africa. Sorghum, sorghum bicolor,
shows most prominently, and plant biologists have long known that its ancestor
grew wild in the area of the southern Sahara and Sahel. Pearl Millet, Pennisetum glaucum, was also
domesticated in the area. The millets are a group of small-seeded species of cereal crops or grains,
widely grown around the world for food. Millets have been important food staples in history of Africa since they grow
in harsh environments where other crops do not grow well.
In
the forest/savannah frontier region (lakeside of Lake Victoria and coast of the
Indian Ocean in Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya), the grain crops of the drier
savannahs did not grow well. In these areas, people gradually domesticated the
oil palm and several varieties of African yam. Again, the archaeological
evidence is spotty, but linguistic data indicates that such crops were heavily
exploited by about 8,000 years ago.
About
five thousand years ago, much of East Africa was still occupied by hunters and
gatherers, commonly referred to as ndorobo. Unfortunately, most of their
culture was integrated with later migrants and therefore its cultures are lost
to current scholars.
Ⅲ. Influence from Interaction
Ⅲ. 1. In General
Unlike
most people think, people in Africa never lived in isolation. They constantly
contacted within Africa and with other continents as humanity expanded. Over
the 100,000 years of human expansion, ideas, technology, goods, and diseases
have moved from one node to another, even though individuals might never leave
their own node and only contact people from neighboring nodes. It is notable
that sub-Saharan Africa share more in common with other parts of the tropical
Old World such as southern India and Southeast Asia than it would with the
Mediterranean world with which it had much more direct and intimate contact.
Interactions
with other continents, especially the Arabian and Indian peninsulas contributed
in making the East African culture unique. This advantage let coastal parts of
Kenya and Tanzania to use coconut, as well as other spices, as a flavoring,
which made the foods tastier than in inland regions.
Ⅲ. 2. Pre-Colonial Era
Ⅲ. 2. A. within Africa
Recent
studies suggest that some of the most fundamental steps in creating
food-producing societies were taken in Africa. The vast
majority of African’s food crops before the modern era were domesticated in
Africa itself. Sorghum and millet quickly spread along the shores of the Indian
Ocean. Sorghum has been found in Arabia dating to about 4,500 years ago and
millet in India to about 4,000 years ago. In addition, coffee, a variety of
cotton, and sesame spread from Africa into the rest of the world.
In eastern
Africa, two of the great food-producing systems of early Africa converged by
about 800 B.C.E. After several centuries of interaction, people then produced a
new synthesis that in turn spread rapidly in Africa. Before the arrival of
Bantu-speaking agriculturalists, Cushitic-speaking farmers and herders had
gradually moved south from Ethiopia starting about 5,000 years ago. The spread
of cattle from northern Kenya to northern Tanzania took over 1,000 years in
part because of a very difficult process of acclimatization to new disease
environments. These farmers and herders arrived just as the first
Bantu-speaking farmers entered the basin created by the Great Lakes.
The highly
diverse environment of the broader Rift Valley created the opportunity for
experimentation with new combinations of agricultural and animal husbandry
practices. Bantu speakers at first stuck to well-watered highlands, leaving
lowlands to the agropastoral communities. By about 500 B.C.E., they finished
adopting elements of grain production and cattle keeping and began a massive
expansion into the grasslands around the lakes. From the Lakes, they spread rapidly
from the highlands of Tanzania and Kenya to drier lowlands of the Rift Valley,
including the Serengeti Plain. Cushitic-speaking communities continued to
occupy small regions in Kenya and especially Tanzania.
Ⅲ. 2. B. Monsoon Exchange
By
10th century A.D., the inhabitants were unmistakably Bantu migrants
who had pressed northward up the coast during the preceding centuries and
settled in the commercial ports. The
Arabs called them the Zanj, the
Blacks. A non-Muslim people, they soon controlled the trading cities and
provided the goods, whereas the carrying trade itself remained in non-African
hands. The scope of the trade appears to have expanded with the volume as
merchants from China and Indonesia joined those from India, Persia, and Arabia.
From there they controlled the transport of exotic spices from India and the
East Indies to the Middle East and Europe. These spices--cloves, nutmeg, and
cinnamon--worked their way into the local Swahili cuisine. Coastal cooking is
still more intensely flavored with spices than that of the interior.
The
most important crops with external origins in eastern Africa before the
Maritime Revolution came from tropical Asia. Bananas and plantains arrived in
Africa early in the first millennium of the modern era to the East African
coast which is now Tanzania and Kenya with voyagers from Southeast Asia. Bananas
became an extremely important food crop in eastern Africa as well. There are
different varieties of banana which are used for
brewing beer and cooking, and others are eaten when ripe, such as kisukari (Swahili)
or igisukari (Burundi). Among them, a soft
variety of bananas spread to the highland regions of East Africa, preferred for meat and maize dishes, starting
perhaps with the Upare Mountains in eastern Tanzania. They would become a main
staple in these regions after about 1000 C.E.
On the
coast, the merchants eventually merged into the developing Bantu-speaking
coastal communities that became the Swahili. Immigrants from Southeast Asia and
from the African mainland brought chickens, cocoyam, and sugar cane. Most
households in East Africa raise chickens, mostly prepared for guests. There are
different significance reserved to various parts of chicken- for instance, in
western Kenya, the tail part is only for the male head of the family. Later in
the first millennium of the current era, Asian rice and sugar cane became
important crops in eastern Africa. For cocoyam (or taro), it is widespread in
the region and are commonly planted along water courses, and it is a popular
breakfast menu.
Manioc (cassava),
along with pumpkins and sweet potato, is an important crop imported from South
America, and it withstands drought well. Although manioc has a relatively low
nutritional value, it became dominant at the coastal areas and among the Iteso
and Luo of Lake Victoria basin in Uganda. Dry cassava can be roasted or boiled
or eaten fresh. In the coastal areas, people eat fried cassava flavored by
lemon and powdered pepper, along with tea. Its leaves are also used as
vegetables.
The
fifteenth century witnessed the beginning of the process of sharing biota
across the globe in a new way. In particular, exchange across the Indian Ocean
in some ways prefigure the Columbian exchange in the movement of plants,
animals, and people into new landscapes. This “monsoon exchange” brought
African crops, animals, people, and goods throughout Asia and introduced new
ones to Africa, thereby transforming African landscapes.
Ⅲ. 2. C. Columbian Exchange
Around
1000 years ago, the Arabs settled in
the coastal areas of East Africa, and Arabic influences are
especially reflected in the Swahili cuisine of the coast – steamed cooked rice
with spices in Persian style.
After Vasco da Gama succeeded in visiting India, in the 16th century, the Portuguese were able to trade with the
Far East by taking control over Arabs. The aim of Portugal and it explorers was
to monopolize the trade of the Indian Ocean and the East Indies, and eastern
Africa was regarded principally as a way station to the Orient. They made
little attempt to establish systematic government on the coast, so the coastal
area could reserve its own traditions.
Still, the Portuguese had
introduced techniques of roasting and marinating to East
Africa. During the era of the Columbian exchange, Africa received new types of
plants and animals that gave African societies new options in surviving within
their environments, such as the use of spices which turned the bland diet into
aromatic stewed dishes. Portuguese also brought from their Asian colonies fruits like
the orange, lemon and lime. From
their colonies in the New World, Portuguese also brought exotic items from America such as maize, peanuts,
kidney beans, and potatoes, as well as European cabbage and kales. Currently,
some of these are common elements of East African food. Later Portuguese
retreated from East Africa as the spices became less profitable and the Arabs
openly attacked them.
Very
rapidly, African agricultural systems gained new crops from the opening of
contact with the New World. Maize had the earliest prominence, and adapted very
well to African environments. Maize is
the basis of ugali. It is a sticky,
moist dish that is made by mixing flour from a starchy food which is regarded
as the most important food in East Africa. But it can also be made by sorghum,
finger millet, pearl millet, wheat, or cassava. Initially, maize remained
mostly in West Africa, and in eastern Africa, sorghum, millet, and banana (in
the highlands) were far more important as staple crops.
In the savannahs, periodic drought limited its adoption. However, in the late
twentieth century, maize replaced sorghum as the most important cereal in East
Africa. People roasting fresh soft maize is commonly seen in urban areas.
Passerby buys this roasted maize as snacks. In Somali, fresh maize is fried in
oil and taken as a snack. Another popluar East African food made of maize is githeri. It is a boiled mixture of fresh
or dry maize with seeds from beans, garden peas, lablab beans, groundnuts, cowpeas,
and pigeon peas.
For
another, beans (kidney bean, common bean) are especially important in Rwanda
and Burundi- they east beans as breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack. Cooked
with starchy foods like sweet potatoes, cocoyams, and cassava, it is their
frequent dish. Other recipes of beans include stew or sauce.
Ⅲ. 3. Colonial Rule
Between 19th
and 20th century, European empires began to compete for colonies in
East Africa. The British colonizing Uganda and Kenya,
the regions appropriate for cultivation of cash crops such as coffee and tea.
Germans took over Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, and Italy
gained control of Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia some later on. These countries
brought with them their foods. After the colonial
partition of Africa in 1884-85, the British began to arrive. They quickly
confiscated most of the arable land for plantations, driving large numbers of
traditional farmers, largely Kikuyu, to the cities. On their estates the
British proudly stuck with familiar English cooking and made little attempt to
incorporate or assimilate Kenyan cuisine into their own. Likewise, relatively
little remains in contemporary Kenyan cuisine to reflect the British colonial
experience apart from a fondness for tea. A
larger impact was made, however, by Indian merchants and railway workers from
the subcontinent. Samosas, chapati,
curries, rice pilau and chutneys
remain quite popular with Kenyans today.
Ⅳ. Famine and Malnutrition Problems
Famine is
defined as the generalized rise in mortality in a region because of a lack of
food. Although the cultivation of crops has long passed the point which it can
feed all people in the world, there are still many people starving to
death, and it is a real serious problem in East Africa. An estimated 11 million
people in the Horn of Africa “are on the brink of starvation” because of severe
drought and war. Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia need food aid, water,
new livestock and seeds. This is a major hunger crisis in development. In
2011, the rainfall was way below average again, causing the worst draught ever.
It is directly related to the recent sharp population growth in Africa as well.
Although the people don’t yet have the ability to feed themselves, the
population is increasing ever more.
The decades
between 1870 and 1920 were portentous ones for Africa: these years encompassed
not only the conquest of Africa but also, as both cause and consequence of that
conquest, a series of environmental disasters that reduced African populations
in many places, destroyed Africa’s economic autonomy, and eventually created
impoverished and dependent economies in the new colonies. The most intense
period of conquest coincided with the spread of rinderpest in Africa for the
first time. Rinderpest, a cattle disease that affects ruminants and is
transmitted through spittle left in grazing area, had been endemic in parts of
Europe and Asia for many centuries. In 1887, the Italian expedition that
conquered Eritrea brought infected cattle to sub-Saharan Africa for the first
time. The disease established itself in African herds and spread rapidly, with
mortality rates in unexposed herds reaching up to 95 percent. Rinderpest,
coupled with the scorched earth policies of the Germans and British in East
Africa when they faced resistance, made the 1890s a decade of famine in East
Africa. With the movement off colonial forces and the gradual increase in
trade, other disease also spread more rapidly.
The
famine crises of the 1890s occurred because colonial conquest had disrupted the
systems that African societies had developed for maintaining access to food in
the face of climatic variability. The new stresses came in the form of a more
rapid circulation of diseases, both human and animal. They also derived from
the disruption and violence of conquest itself. The colonial state system added
to these stressed by imposing a new series of demands on African societies. In
haphazard and often initially unplanned ways, colonial states set about to remake
African landscapes, and Africans, into part of the global economy but in a
subservient and dependent position. From 1917 to 1920, East Africa Campaign
during World War Ⅰ
led to massive famine in large parts of East Africa.
After
the colonial era, famine has reappeared at times in several parts of the
continent. Droughts, storms, and floods wreaked havoc on communities and
infrastructure alike as climate change made the weather even less predictable. Famine
became associated with war. In Ethiopia in the late 1970s, and again in the
early 1990s famine resulted when civil strife combined with a climatic event.
Moreover, many regions of eastern Africa faced food shortages throughout the
period since independence without widespread increase in mortality. The
transportation and marketing systems developed during the colonial era
continued to be able to bring food into food-shortage regions. There were
several crop failures as well, yet it only coincided with famine in those
countries undergoing civil conflict.
Ⅴ. Conclusion
Overall,
the history of nutrition in East Africa was surprisingly not investigated.
Perhaps it was due to lack of food itself, and the image of famine malnutrition
this region has, and people’s misconception that it would not have any
significant dietary culture. However, this is thoroughly wrong. Like other areas of Africa, Eastern African food consists of
dishes made from grains, including sorghum, millet, rice, maize, yam, beans and
cowpeas, flours for bread and stews cooked with vegetables and meat. Fresh milk
and butter features in many
authentic Eastern African foods. So are coconut milk curry and a variety of
spices. Variations are plentiful, due to ethnic and religious influences,
especially contacts of these indigenous African populations with Arabs from the
Horn of Africa and Arabian world. For instance, meat eaten by those in Somalia
for example is mainly halal,
meaning it must be slaughtered alive and the blood poured to the ground.
Already dead animals are not eaten, neither is pork or meal served with
alcohol. Because of the largely nomadic life styles seen in this region, main
meals are eaten mostly twice and sometimes thrice, though with rapidly
urbanization, most working class people have three square meals.
Even when
the Portuguese arrived, they were taken aback by the beautiful and independent
culture of East Africa. Also, due to such diversity of environments, eastern
Africa has the possibility to grow many crops. It was the European invasion,
and their redistricting of Africa, that ruined everything. The local people’s
beautiful culture was destroyed. They were sold as slaves to other continents.
While they went through all of it, a lot of ancient tradition and natural
wildlife they still possessed were lost.
Despite
all those hard times, eastern Africa has lots of possibilities towards
development. Using its blessed natural environments, increased population,
newly coming European and American capital, they will soar into the blue sky
one day. To see that, people around the world must willingly provide aid to the
suffering population. It is not for our good; it is for the common good. It is
for all of humanity.
Ⅵ. Bibliography
Ⅵ. 1. Online
Sites
Ⅵ. 2. Wikipedia Articles
Ⅵ. 3. Printed Sources
Ⅵ. 3. A. Papers
1.
Tanganyika Government. "Budget
Survey 1963-64", p. 29-Printed by the Survey Division, Ministry of
Lands, Forests and Wildlife. Gives preliminary estimates of G.D.P. for 1962.
2.
B. van Arkadie. "The Structure of
the Kenya economy", p.. 5 (mimeo.) Proceedings of the E.A. I.S.R.
Conference, January 1964, Makerere, Kampala. "...a tentative step towards
a larger study of the growth and structure of the East African economy."
3.
Statistics Division. "The Real
Growth of the Economy of Uganda 1954-1962", p. 50 (mimeo). Statistics
Division, Ministry of Planning and Community Development. A series for
1954-1962 of G.D.P. at factor cost valued at 1960 prices, with a discussion of
the methods used.
5. Turnbull, Colin. Mountain
People. Touchstone, 1972.
(Covers indigenous culture in Northeastern Uganda.)
6. Gulliver, Philip H., (ed.) Tradition
and Transition in East Africa: Studies of the Tribal Factor in the Modern Era. Univ. of California Press, 1969.
7. Lewis, David Levering, The
Race to Fashoda: European Colonialism and African Resistance in the Scramble
for Africa.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987. Excellent recitation of politics,
follies and drama as the Europeans tried to claim what didn't belong to them.
Recommended.
8. Porter, Philip W., Food
and Development in the Semi-Arid Zone of East Africa. Syracuse Univ. Press, 1979.
9. Pouwels, R. Horn & Crescent, Horn
and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast,
800-1900. Cambridge U. Pr.,
1987.
10.
alimentation des populations africaines au Sud du Sahara. Pp. 221 Depouillement de la bibliotheque de I’INEAC,
d’apres un plan analytique par M.P.C. Lefevre (Enquetes bibl. 13) – nutrition
11. 1957 the indigenous cattle of the British dependen
territories in Africa, with material on cerain other African countries
(Bib.: 153-157). London: HMSO (Publ.5)
12. Hogendorn, J. S., and K. M. Scott. 1983. “Very
Large-Scale Agricultural Projects: The Lessons of the East African Groundnut
Scheme.” In Imperialism, Colianialism,
and Hunger: East and Central Africa, ed. R. I. Rotberg, 167-198. Lexington,
MA: Loexington Books.
13. Giblin, J. 1986. “Famine and Social Change During the
Transtition to Colonial Rule in Northeeastern Tanzania 1880-1896.”African Economic History, 15: 85-105.
14. Dawson, M. H. 1987. “Health, Nutrition, and
Popluation in Central Kenya, 1890-1945.” In African
Population and Capitalism: Historical Perspectives, ed. D. Cordell and J.
Gregory, 201-217. Boulder: Westview Press.
15. Barthelme, J. W. 1984. “Early Evidence for Animal
Domestication in Eastern Africa.”In From
Hunters to Farmers: The Causes and Consequences of Food Production in Africa,
ed. J. D. Clark and S. A. Brandt, 200-205. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
16. Maddox, G. 1986. “Njar:
Food Shortages and Famines in Tanzania Between the Wars.” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 19(1): 17-34.
Ⅵ. 3. B. Books
1.
Korean.
(1988) Library of Nations- 동아프리카[East Africa] Library of Nations Series, Time-Life Books
Inc. 1897, 09 Apr. 2012.
2. Korean.
(2005) Lutz van Dijk, 2004, 처음 읽는
아프리카의 역사
[ Die Geschichte Afrikas], Campus
Verlag, p. 85~93, 09 Apr. 2012.
3. Rober
O. Collins, 1990, History of Eastern Africa, Markus Wiener Publishers,
Princeton, 10 June 2012
4. Korean.
(1973) Charles B. Heiser, Jr., 문명의 씨앗,
음식의 역사
[Seed to Civilization: The Story of Food], Kram Publishing Co., Seoul, 10 June
2012
5. Gregory
H. Maddox, 2006, Sub-Saharan Africa: an Environmental History, ABC-CLIO, Inc.,
Santa Barbara, 10 June 2012.
