Broken Houses: Science and Development in the African
Savannahs
Brian Williams, Catherine Campbell, and Roy Williams
Brian Williams in the director of an epidemiology unit that carries out research into the health and safety of
South African mine workers. He has previously worked on the control of tsetse Dies aad trypanosomiasis in
Kenya and on modelling vector borne diseases at Oxford University and the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical medicine.
Catherine Campbell has worked iB South Africa, as a clinical and social psychologist, in areas such as community
health and social identity. She currently lectures in the Department of Social Psychology at the London School
of Economics and Political Science and is collaborating with Brian Williams in a study of South African
mineworkers' perceptions of health and illness
Roy Williams is head of the South African Council for Higher Education, one of the oldest educational
development non-government organizations in South Africa. His research interest is in the application of
discourse theory to development issues.
ABSTRACT In many developing countries people and livestock suffer from preventable or curable diseases, and their
agriculture is vulnerable to natural disasters. A considerable amount-of technical aid is directed at alleviating these
problems using modern science and technology, and yet most of these efforts either fail or even leave peasants and
pastoralists worse offthan before. In this paper we consider some ofthe problems that arise in relation to development
projects,focusing our attention on the savannah regions ofAfrica and, inparticular, on the control oftsetseflies, which
are the vectors ofthe African trypanosomiases. called nagana in cattle and sleeping sic/cness in people. We present a
detailed case study ofaprojectdesigned to enable aMaasai community inKenya to carry outtheir own tsetsefly control.
We examine the complex setofrelationships andpowerstructures that mediate the actionsofthe players in development:
scientists. local communities, governmental and nongovernmental institutions. and development agencies. The purpose
ofthispaperis notto presentsolutions to complexanddifficultproblems butrather to raise questions thatshouldprovide
aframeworkfor a debate concerning the role of science and technology in the development process.
Me;tob;tayu enkaj; naar;ta enopeng - Once a house is
broken it cannot be repaired. Maa Proverb
Introduction
Most people in the world live in poor housing with
inadequate sanitation, are undernourished, and suffer
from preventable diseases. Livestockand crops as well
as people are regularly infected by viral, protozoan,
and helminthic organisms that cause disease. Many of
these parasites are transmitted indirectly by arthropod
and other vectors that thrive in tropical and subtropical
regions. Although substantial efforts have been made
to address these problems using modern science and
technology, many of them have failed 1-8 and therole of
technical development, especially in Africa, remains
controversial. In this paper we consider development
projects in the savannah regions ofAfrica, which cover
about two-thirds of the continent,9 that are intended to
help pastoralists control the African trypanosomiases,
diseases of cattle and people for which the tsetse fly
(Glossina spp.) is the vector. Animal trypanosomiasis,
or nagt1na, is carried by the savannah species of fly,
mainly those belonging to the morsitans group, and
occurs over most of Africa south of the Sahara and
North of the Kalahari. Human trypanosomiasis, or
sleeping sickness, is carried mainly by the forest and
riverine flies of thefusea group and occurs inrellitively
small foci. Here we present a case study of a project
designed to enable a Maasai community in southwest
Kenya to manage animal trypanosomiasis. This case
29
AGRICULTURE AND HUMAN VALUES - SPRING 1995
study highlights the way in which developmentprojects
are nested within a complex set of relationships and
power structures that mediate the actions ofthe players
in the development drama: scientists,local communities, governmental and nongovernmental institutions,
and development agencies.
Why cows matter
Cattle have been getting a bad press. Western editorials report increases in heart disease in humans due to
the consumption of fatty red meat, the inefficient use
of grain to fatten cattle, the generation of milk-lakes by .
subsidized dairy farmers, and the greenhouse effects
of methane produced by flatulent cattle and sheep.10
However, farmers in the arid and semiarid regions of
the tropics and subtropics, where resources are scarce,
the soil thin and marginal, and the rains unpredictable,
have found a way to survive by keeping livestock.
Settled stock-keepers live in small scattered groups
because marginal lands will not support intensive,
irrigated agriculture of the kind carried out in Europe.
Nomadic herders move with the rains and the grazing
opportunities and carefully husband their resources.
On subsistence farms cattle supplement human muscle
power by pulling plows and transporting surplus produce to market. Cattle consume resources that cannot
otherwise be exploited: they eat grass and crop wastes
rather than grain. Their dung is used as fuel, as building material, as fertilizer. Their milk is a major source
ofprotein for children. Hides and surplus milk are sold
to buy clothes and seed, to pay medical expenses and
school fees. For pastoral people living in areas too dry
for arable farming, cattle and small ruminants are
essential. They are not only food, since blood and milk
are the mainstay of the nomadic diet, but also money,
since milk can be exchanged for vegetables, salt, and
cloth, and animals are given as bride price. They are
also a fmal insurance against disaster when they may
be sold to buy available grain. 11 (See Solbrig and
Young7 for a detailed analysis of pastoralism in the
African savannahs.)
The one thousand or so cattle breeds developed
over the millennia have, like their owners, adapted to
extremeclimates andpoor nutrition. They have evolved
resistance to disease and are able to survive with little
water. For these reasons cattle receive songs of praise
as old as civilization.
Trypanosomiasis: eradication or control?
Perhaps the most debilitating diseases of livestock in
Africa are the trypanosomiases caused by protozoan
parasites that are spread among cattle and wild animal
hosts by tsetse flies. Infected livestock develop fever,
lose weight, andbecome weakand unproductive; breeding animals may abort or become infertile. Unless
treated with drugs, many infected animals die of anemia, circulatory collapse, or inter-current bacterial
30
infections. 12 In areas where the tsetse challenge is low,
the disease can be controlled by chemotherapy, but in
areas of heavy drug usage, drug resistance is developing in the parasite populations and there is little prospect of new drugs being developed. It is estimated that
trypanosomiasis excludes ruminant livestock from
seven million square kilometers of otherwise suitable
African range or farm land.
After nearly one hundred years of research and
control, which today costs several hundred million
dollars per year, controlof the African trypanosomiases
remains elusive. Although drug treatment and fly control have alleviated the worst ravages of human
trypanosomiasis, serious outbreaks still occur in certain areas and animal trypanosomiasis remains prevalent over about 10 million square kilometers of Africa.
Attempts to eradicate tsetse have generally been ineffective, damaging to the environment, or both. Eradication has failed, except in habitats marginal for tsetse
survival or in countries, such as South Africa and
Zimbabwe, that have substantial infrastructures,local
expertise, and access to foreign exchange. In their
pursuit of eradication, control workers have employed
sophisticated and expensive technologies, the use of
which cannot be sustained, to prevent reinvasion when
donor funds dry up.
A better strategy for managing trypanosomiasis is
to control rather than eradicate the flies, and to employ
chemotherapy to treat the few clinical cases of
trypanosomiasis that still occur. In many parts of
Africa, cattle have evolved a degree of resistance to
trypanosomiasis. Whereas this "trypanotolerance" was
once thought to be restricted to the shorthorn breeds,
especially the N'Dama found in West Africa, recent
evidence indicates that the Zebu l3 and Orma Boran l4
in East Africa and the white Zebu of the Fulani 15 in
West Africa are also trypanotolerant, especially if they
are well nourished.
Most tsetse control projects have been conducted
on a large scale, with little or no involvement of the
affected communities in theirplanning orimplementation. Some local communities have been actively opposed to tsetse control, believing it to be a prelude to
large-scale settlement in their area. l6 One of the primary beliefs of the scientists involved in the project
described in this paper was that if trypanosomiasis is to
be effectively controlled and managed in the long
term, tsetse control policy will have to be based on the
direct involvement of the local communities, that stock
owners themselves must identify development priorities and be responsible for implementing and managing the programs in collaboration with the scientists.
The Nguruman project
Ten years ago scientists employed by the Kenya-based
International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) started a tsetse and trypanosomiasis re-
Williams et al.: Broken Houses: Science and Development in the African Savannahs
search program at Nguruman, which lies in the Rift
Valley in southwestern Kenya close to the Tanzanian
border. Approximately 6,000 people, mainly pastoral
Maasai, live in the area on the Olkirimatian and
Shompole Group Ranches, which cover about 850
km 2 • The ranches lie to the west ofLake Magadi and to
the north of Lake Natron. Most of the area is semiarid
range land but there are two small irrigation schemes,
one at Nguruman and one atPaakase. During and after
the rains, most families keep to the east of the Ewaso
NgiroRiverbutas the dry seasonprogresses they move
west across the river where the vegetation is thicker
but the tsetse more numerous. If dry weather persists,
they move to the base or the top of the Nguruman
escarpment, areas set aside for emergency grazing,
sometimes to other group ranches or even into Tanzania. Trypanosomiasis has been a severe problem over
much of the area, and at times of drought, when the
cattle are forced to graze in tsetse-infested woodland
and thicket, the combination of nutritional stress and
trypanosomiasis causes heavy livestock production
losses and mortality.
The scientists running the Nguruman project aimed
to develop a method of controlling tsetse flies that
could be carried out and sustained by people living in
rural communities. Considerable effort was put into
designing a trap that could be made by local people
within their inkangitie (homesteads). This work led to
the development of a series of "Nguruman" or "Ngu"
traps.17 which are made from netting and blue and
black cloth. To attract tsetse flies, the traps are baited
with acetone and cow urine. IS The flies are trapped in
a plastic bag. where they die from heat stress. No
insecticide is used. Research over a period of eight
years led to an understanding of the population dynamics of the flies and the epidemiology of the disease. 19. 20
Fly population dynamics were modeled to assess the
density and distribution of traps needed to achieve a
given level of contro1.2l , 22 The local community at
Nguruman was involved in many aspects of the project
throughout its duration. 23 Complementary studies were
conducted to investigate the social structure and economic constraints of the community.
In January 1987 a pilot tsetse control trial was
started. The traps for this trial were made by people of
the Olkirimatian group ranch in their inkangitie. In
January of that year, 100 traps were distributed over
120 km 2 of the ranch. Later in the year. a further 100
traps were deployed. To assess the degree of control
achieved, a few traps were set up to the north of the
suppression zone to monitor the fly population there.
Within eight months, catches in the suppression zone
had fallen by 98-99% relative to catches in the comparison area. 24 In November, about two weeks after
the rains had started, there was an invasion of flies
from the nearby escarpment.24 The traps were sufficiently effective to rapidly reduce the fly numbers to
their previous low levels. Despite repeated seasonal
invasions between 1987 and 1990, fly density within
the suppression zone was always kept below 10% of
the fly density outside the suppression zone and at
times fell as low as 0.1%.
A sentinel herd of cattle kept within the suppression zone by staff of the Kenya Trypanosomiasis Research Institute acquired no trypanosome infections in
1988 and only a few in 1989, whereas cattle kept a few
kilometers to the north of the suppression zone repeatedly became infected~d had to be treated with the
curative drug Berenil 10-15 times per year,13 For
tsetse control using traps to be economically viable,
however, it was clear that control would have to be
extended over the whole of the group ranch and surrounding areas.
The Olkirimatian and Shompole Community
Development Project (OSCDP)
Given the technical success of the project in developing a cheap and effective trap together with a knowledge of the density of traps that would be required to
control tsetse, it was now possible for the ranch members to carry out their own control of the flies. In 1990,
the Olkirimatian Group Ranch Committee and other
community members decided to apply the results of
the research project and extend tsetse control to the
whole of the group ranch. Because control per ae was
outside the mandate of ICIPE, the group ranch committee established a community development project
using Ngu traps to control tsetse and eliminate the
threat of trypanosomiasis. The tsetse control was to be
integrated with other development activities in the
area. Ecotourism would be promoted to take advantage
of the abundant wildlife. Small businesses, especially
those run by women. would be encouraged to diversify
sources of income and increase trade. A neighboring
group ranch, Shompole, was brought into the project,
enlarging the total area over which tsetse were being
controlled to nearly l000km2•Thecommunities would
set their own development priorities and local people
wouldbe trained to implement such development themselves. In May 1991, the Olkirimatian and Shompole
Community Development Project (OSCDP) was
formed. Two British scientists, Robert Dransfield and
Robert Brightwell, who had been responsible for the
research project, acted as advisors.
An economic analysis was made to ensme that
tsetse control would be financially viable. One Ngu
trap with odor baits costs about US$7.50 to make and
operate for a year, excluding labor and transport costs
for servicing. The high mobili~ of the most common
tsetse species at Nguruman,2 Glossina pallidipes,
allows a trapping mortality ratc of 4-6% per day to be
im:qosed using only 2 trapsjkm2, costing S1S/year/
km . Infe$ed cattle at Nguruman are treated with
Novidium , which costs about $2/cow/year. With a
31
AGRICULTURE AND HUMAN VALUES - SPRING 1995
2
generating schemes of the OSCDP project were beginstocking rate of about 30 cows/km , drug costs were
ning to develop solid infrastructures and those responabout $60/year/km2 before the tsetse control started.
sible were gaining experience and expertise. Several
Thus, provided trap maintenance costs could be kept
donor and extension agencies as well as nongovernmenbelow about $45/km2/year, trapping flies would not
tal organizations were showing interest in the project
only be cheaper than treating sickanimals with chemoCritical support was provided by the government of the
therapeutic drugs, but would also increase productivNetherlands through the Kajiado Arid and Semi-Arid
ity by improving animal health. In addition, effective
Lands Development Program (ASAL).
tsetse control would allow the pastoralists to graze
their cattle in much-needed, formally tsetse-infested
The only dark cloud over the project was the
continued presence ofICIPE. Having been involved in
dry season pasture.
the early scientific stages of the project - but not in
The local power structure of the group ranches is
the OSCDP - ICIPE management believed it should
dominated by traditional elites. 25 To involve the whole
be in overall charge. However. despite the widespread
community, a key objective of the project was to
use of odor-baited tsetse technologies in other parts of
mobilize and educate people on development issues,
Africa, and their demonstrable efficacy at Nguruman.
especially those related to land tenure, livestock disICIPE maintained that their use was premature. And
ease control, and wildlife utilization. This process of
despite the success of community-run tsetse control at
empowering people could only be carried out by memNguruman, ICIPE stated that the Maasai community
bers of the local community. The staff of the project
was incapable of carrying out such an operation itself.
formed a "focus" group, and were encouraged by the
Attempts to reach a modus vivendi between the group
advisors to attend workshops, seminars, and other
meetings on pastoralist development issues. By 1993,
ranch management committee and ICIPE failed. 26
project staff were conducting training and education
There was interference with funding from donors. One
donor expressed the opinion that ICIPE had "apparon tsetse control in the Maasai homesteads and funds
ently declared total war against the project.,m Neverw~re being sought to extend this approach to broader
theless. ICIPE continued to claim credit for OSCDP's
development issues.
With the support of the Kenya Wildlife Service, a
successes.28
Ensuing events have been fully documented elsesuccessful community wildlife program was estabwhere. 26 A long series of disputes between the
lished on the ranch. Four individuals, selected from
each of the two ranches, were given intensive training
Olkirimatian Group Ranch Committee and ICIPE culin wildlife tourism. They constructed offices from
minated early in 1993 when group ranch members
local materials, cleared campsites near water, and
removed and returned the pilot control traps to ICIPE.
However. with ICIPE's receipt of substantial Europrovided the sites with signposts, fireplaces, and rubpean Community (Be) funding for further tsetse rebish pits. A range ofbooldets and maps of the area were
search,· certain elders of the group ranch were perproduced for sale and the tourist facilities were adversuaded to allow ICIPE to return and continue working
tised in Nairobi. The local women formed a group to
make headwork for sale both locally and in Nairobi.
on the ranch. In the words of van Klinken27 • "ICIPE
manipulated and divided the group ranch committees
Having been excluded from access to education and
decision making within the traditional Maasai power
in order to bring the project under their control". As a
result of these developments. three key OSCDP manstructures, most of the women on the ranches remain
illiterate. The project therefore arranged for the Kenya
agement staff resigned and the advisors were withdrawn by the donors.
Ministry of Social Services to provide adult literacy
classes for the women.
All traps used in this development project were
Success and failure
made in the inkangitie. In the remote areas of the group
In contrast to many earlier attempts at controlling
ranches. a salaried team of four people deployed and
tsetse by game destruction. bush clearing. and aerial
maintained the traps and trained others in trap making.
and ground spraying.29 many of which failed and none
In the more accessible irrigated areas. traps were serof which were sustainable by local communities. the
viced by members of the local community who were
Nguruman Project established the feasibility of comprovided with bicycles and paid an honorarium from
munity-run tsetse and trypanosomiasis control; the
OSCDP made it a reality. For the first time. the knowlthe tourist revenue.
By early 1993. the OSCDP was functioning well.
edge, expertise. and technology were available to allow
Tsetse flies were under control over much of the area:
local communities affected by trypanosomiasis to cany
their density was reduced by 97% in Ngurumani and
out their own tsetse control operations if they so decide.
populations were declining in other areas. The only
And yet those donor organizations that should have
exception was in Sampu. where ICIPE had continued the
provided key support to the OSCDP at critical moments
pilot control trial but had not maintained their traps. Here
failed singularly to do so and the project has collapsed.
tsetse numbers were on the increase. The various incomeThe OSCDP has been disbanded. the fliesareretuming to
32
Williams et al.: Broken Houses: Science and Development in the African Savannahs
the areas in which they had beeneffectively controlled. In
the brief account that follows we shall trace some of the
reasons for the eventual collapse of the project to the
implicit agendas and partisan interests of various groups
resulting in an unseemly scramble to take over what
remains of the project.
The players
The stakes in the development game involve billions of
dollars and millions of lives. The players with money
include the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the governments of the United States, Europe, and Japan. The science ,and technology that
underpin the development projects come largely from
these countries. The players with the 'problems' include the governments of the Third World and the local
government organizations that act as intermediaries
between national governments and the people whose
lives and conditions are to be improved. Within these
countries are research institutions funded by industrialized countries, and those created as arms of the
national governments. Finally, there are the peasants
and pastoralists and urban poor who are the target of
development.
The World Bank
The World Bank is one of the key players in the aid
game and several analysts have pointed to the tensions
that exist between the Bank's philanthropic goal of helping to eradicatepoverty and the economic constraints that
face a commercial bank. 2. 30, 31 Thus, for example, the
Bank advocates a "regime of law" to provide for "compulsory acquisition of animals in situations of drought
and pressure" and "compulsory acquisition of land and
movement of populations to facilitate private ranching
and wildlife farming,,32 which are unlikely to be in the
best interests of pastoralists and peasant farmers. The
Uganda World Bank Livestock Services Projeci33 has
budgeted $4.5 million for a "rolling eradication" of tsetse
flies over thousands of square kilometers in western
Uganda. This project neither considers how such an area
is to be protected from reinvasion nor proposes community involvement or education, which we believe are
essential prerequisites for successful, long term tsetse
control.
Hanlon34 comments on another set of tensions in
the way in which the Bank operates noting that the
Bank's frontline staffoften understand the needs of the
poor, consult broadly and often see participation as
important. But in the end it is "the hard men in Washington who negotiate in secret with top government
officials and ministers on the framework agreement
"who override all other agreements.',34
The Western and Japanese Governments
Western governments and Japan make a substantial financial contribution to technical development
projects. Yet reports abound of ambiguous outcomes
of many of their development efforts. For example, the
British Overseas Development Administration (ODA)
claims that its multi-million-dollar tsetse project in
Somalia in the late 1980s achieved local eradication. 3S
Because the area covered by the program did not
extend to natural tsetse barriers it is probable that the
area has been reinvaded. The adverse social consequences of this eradication attempt may be difficult to
reverse. After conducting detailed interviews among
local farmers, an anthropologist employedby the ODA
discovered that the local people were bitterly opposed
to the project. Many of their chickens, which are an
important part of their diet, had been killed by the
initial spraying. In addition, the people were apprehensive that once the tsetse flies were gone, nomadic
herdsmen would move livestock in and destroy their
crops. In spite of the anthropolo~ist's findings, the
ODA continued with the spraying S. Eventually, both
cultivators and pastoralists lost. After tsetse were declared to have been eradicated, Mogadishu businessmen moved in, bought the land and obtained soft
agricultural loans for its development. They then deforested parts of the area and used the loans for property development in Mogadishu.36
A project funded by the European Community has
also failed to learn the lessons of this experience.
About $30 million is being spent on the preparatory
phase of a tsetse control project in the "common fly
belt", which runs along the Z8mbezi between Zambia
and Zimbabwe, and into Mozambique. and extends up
the Luangwa Valley in eastern Zambia. In 1990 it was
said that the "ultimate goal is to relieve the region of
the constraint of animal trypanosomiasis by eradication of tsetse flies from the common fly-belt,,37 and the
planned expenditure to achieve this end was reported
to be in the vicinity of $300 million. The chances of
eradicating the flies from 300,000 km2 of inaccessible.
underpopulated land in countries where the extension
services are almost nonexistent. are vanishingly small.
In 1992 the plans for zambia became less ambitious
and now "The final aim ... is the control of tsetse and
trypanosomiasis in the Zambian part of the common
fly belt which comprises 110,000 km2 , in which
1,200.000 people and about 700,000 cattle and goats
are living." 3 Unless the EC adopts a community
based strategy in those relatively restricted areas in
which trypanosomiasis threatens cattle, the chances of
achieving even this more limited goal are remote.
The National Governments
The governments of developing countries tend to
view the pastoralist way of life as backward and incompatible with administrative goals such as tax collection, provision of health and education services.
economic development. and promotion of national
unity. S Hence sedentarization, subdivision of group
33
AGRICULTURE AND HUMAN VALUES - SPRING 1995
ranches, and irrigated agriculture are advocated rather
than mobility and trade, even though the former are
inimical to the ecology of semiarid lands.
The group ranch system, adopted in Kenya after
independence, left control of land and resources largely
in the hands of the people living on the ranches. The
Kenyan Government has decided to enforce the demarcation of the Olkirimatian and Shompole Group
Ranches so that each piece of the ranch will be owned
by one person. This can only lead to the destruction of
the pastoral system, 7 which has functioned adequately
until now, and, with the control of tsetse, could function well in the future.
The Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
As First World donors despair at the prospects of
encouraging effective rural development through centralized state bureaucracies, there is an increasing tendency to direct funds through nongovernmental organizations. These include the major world charities, but
smaller NGOs are springing up all over the Third World
to talce advantage of this new direction in which the
money is flowing. Many NGOs are doing good work, but
the disasters are now so many and so grave that much of
their effort is talcen up with "fighting fires", and the
prospects for long term, sustainable control of tropical
diseases in livestock: and people are slight.
The Research Institutions
To make science more directly relevant to the
needs and problems of the Third World, various research institutions have been created. Of particular
note are those set up to promote agricultural research
in Third World countries under the auspices of the
Washington-based Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).39 In addition
there are a number of semi-autonomous institutions,
such as ICIPE, and many national agricultural research
systems (NARS) and universities in developing countries.
The CGIAR centers represent the best of agricultural science that is carried out in the Third WorId.
Their mission statement reads, "Through international
research and related activities, and in partnership with
national research systems, to contribute to sustainable
improvements in the productivity of agriculture, forestry and fisheries in developing countries in ways that
enhance nutrition and well-being, especially of low
income people:,39 The quality of some oftheir work is
high as judged from the standards of scientific rigor
and precision and publications in international scientific journals. They have had a number of successes,
particularly in relation to plant breeding and germplasm conservation. They take credit for introducing
into India and Pakistan the semidwarf wheat varieties
that resulted in the "Green Revolution" .39 But there is
little mention in these reports of the adverse social
34
consequences of this revolution for poor peasants, the
heavy reliance on fertilizers to sustain crops, or other
long term implications that have raised doubts and
fears in many people's minds. 40 Science has solved the
problems; if the solutions create even greater problems
in the future no doubt science will solve those also.
The most important international livestock research institutes based in the Third World are the
IntemationalLivestockCentreforAfrica (ILCA), based
in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases (IT..RAD)
based in Nairobi, Kenya, both part of the CGIAR. The
former carries out research on livestock production
systems, the latter on immunology and molecular biology with the aim of developing vaccines to protect
ruminant livestock against tick-borne diseases and
trypanosomiasis. Although both institutes have made
significant scientific advances, their research has done
little to enhance the well-being of pastoralists and
peasants. An appropriate and productive approach
would be to work with local communities to identify
key problems and needs before adopting a research
strategy. Then, using all the tools modem science has
to offer, science may contribute to raising the living
standards of poor people. It might be determined, for
example, that certain diseases were the most important
production constraint in a given area and that these
could best be controlled by vaccination; development
of novel vaccines using molecular biology would then
be appropriate. But developing new vaccines for the
sake of using advanced technologies, however intellectually satisfying, will not, on its own, solve the
problems faced by poor livestock farmers.
The Scientists
The scientists working at Nguruman believed that
the failure of science to contribute to the control of
tsetse flies in Africa stemmed from the fact that we
were starting from the solutions and not from the
problems. Molecular biologists are trained in Western
universities in the techniques of polymerase chain
reactions, monoclonal antibodies, and DNA sequencing. Since many students would like to use their skills
to help others, they are set to work on projects that will
help to alleviate the ravages of tropical disease. We
know that in the West the development of vaccines has
contributed greatly to the health ofourcitizenry•So we
send them out to make vaccines against diseases of the
tropics. Unfortunately, many tropical diseases, such as
malaria, trypanosomiasis,leisbmaniasis, and theileriosis,
are caused by protozoan organisms. Protozoa are not
viruses. Theirlifecycles involve many distinct forms and
stages, they are very variable and strain variation is the
rule. We still do not have a subunit vaccine (one based on
parasite molecules rather than whole parasites) that is
effective against any protozoan organism. When we
succeed, such vaccines are likely to confer only partial
Williams et al.: Broken Houses: Science and Development in the African Savannahs
protection for a limited time against some strains of the
parasite. They are likely to cost more than most low
income countries can afford.
The Nguruman project took time and patience.
The scientists had to get to know the people who live
there and they had to get to know the scientists. The
local community had to be engaged in the day-to-day
practice of the research. It was necessary to build up a
sound and reliable understanding of the ecology, entomology, and epidemiology of the flies and the disease.
The scientists were willing to use whatever advanced
science was needed - provided that it would contribute to the solution of the problem. The project succeeded in that it was possible to develop a method of
controlling tsetse flies that was sustainableby the local
people and was cost-effective in terms oftheireconomy
and needs. Having successfully addressed the technical problems, the OSCDP was a natural development.
It was not enough simply to control trypanosomiasis.
Decisions would have to be made concerning the way
in which the resulting increase in available grazing
would be exploited, the impact this would have on the
substantial community of wildlife in the area, who
would pay for and who would benefit from the elimination of the major disease in the area. And the very
success of the project brought with it many of the
ensuing problems. Once the project was seen to succeed, many agencies and institutions wanted to control
it in order to further their own interests, increase their
own standing, and so enhance the flow of dollars
through their institutes and organizations.
Olkirimatian group ranch. The dams are designed to
provide hydroelectric power. It has been suggested
that water from the dams be used for large-scale irrigation. The most significant effect of the proposed developments will be to permanently inundate part of the
downstream flood plain and stop seasonal flooding in
the rest of it. This will destroy vital dry-season grazing. The environmental impact report notes that ..there
would appear to be no practicable mitigating measures
other than compensating for land affected in the flood
plains,,41 which means buying off the relevant elites. It
is interesting to contrast this treatment of pastoral
livelihoods with the detailed and sympathetic attention
the report gives to the flamingos and fish that breed in
Lake Natron into which the Ewaso Ngiro river drains.
The need to conserve the world's environmental
resources is pressing. But we must be clear about how
we shall do this. Somepeople argue that, by preventing
overgrazing, the tsetse fly is the custodian of Africa's
environment.42 One might as well argue that AIDS is
the solution to Africa's population crisis. Nothing
about crises improves an environment. People have
many babies because many will die. Those that survive
will keep you in old age. Nomads keep many cattle
because drought and disease will kill most of them in
the bad years. When drought and disease kill your
children and your animals you produce more, not less.
This is what any sensible person would do. The only
way to limit the growth of animal and human populations is to offer people insurance against disease and
drought and famine.
The Development Specialists
Many development specialists have years ofexperience at working on a particular problem in developing countries. But although these people may have
great knowledge and experience in the control of a
particular tropical disease, they are less often familiar
with the host of related problems: political, social, and
economic as well as problems of the environment, the
ways in which communities will change and adapt to
new situations, sometimes well, sometimes badly, in
short to the consequences of their interventions in the
complex and dynamic lives of Third World people.
The BC is now planning tsetse control programs
for Kenya and Tanzania. In early 1993, as part of this
program, the BC gave ICIPE about US$7 million to
work on tsetse ecology and trapping. Despite the fact
that one ofthe main proposed research sites was within
the OSCDP -where the communities were already
successfully controlling the flies - none of the consultants sent to Kenya by the BC contacted anyone
connected with the community control operations going on there.
Knight, Piesold, and Partners, a British engineering firm, is engaged in the construction of a series of
dams on the Ewaso Ngiro river, 30 km north of the
The Local Communities
Finally we arrive at the object of our compassion
- the peasants and pastoralists. We classify them as
poor people and regard them all the same. But what do
the Maasai, the Luo, the Hausa, and the Zulu have in
common? Their lives, their environments, their strategies for survival, and their cultures are as different as
any in the world.
At Nguruman, within a single Maasai clan, the
people are grouped and bound in many ways: by age,
sex, and parentage, by political affiliation, wealth, and
employment. The groups change and shift with time.
Sometimes they split. sometimes they merge. There
are many sources of authority, some traditional some
new. Understanding the nature of these relationships is
difficult but acknowledging their complexity may prevent us from drawing facile conclusions.
The successes and failures of the OSCDP depended in part on structures of power and authority
within the groupranch25 that were not well understood
by the scientists and outside advisors who worked
there. The traditional elite within Maasai society is
made up of those whose power is based primarily on
relative wealth of cattle. With the advent of colonialism and subsequently of the modem state, other groups
35
AGRICULTURE AND HUMAN VALUES - SPRING 1995
gained influence, deriving their authority from education and political acuity. Political elites, drawn from
the chiefs and other functionaries appointed by the
colonial governments, were often recruited from the
traditional elites. Now elected councilors need the
backing of a political patron and tend to exploit differences between clans and between age-groups. Power
and influence are gained by offering services to the
dominant political patron, creating a class of leaders
not accountable to the community. 25
The educated elite is drawn from an emerging
class ofyoung, educatedMaasai, aspiring to escape the
strictures and confines of traditional society, but their
role is ambivalent. With communal land rights being
replaced by individual land titles, the educated elite is
provided with an opportunity to exploit their knowledge of the modern political economy to their advantage. The resultant land transfers are instigated and
facilitated by the educated elite, who introduce land
buyers from outside the district to their fellow Maasai,
who may be persuaded to sell their land and so forfeit
their future. 25
Now a new functional elite is emerging. These are
members of the group ranches who, tired of being
manipulated, want to take development into their own
hands. They include youth groups pressing for educational opportunities, women's groups pressing to have
their voices heard for the first time, and groups such as
the management staff of the OSCDP. Independent of
the other power elites, these groups are often small,
isolated, and vulnerable and it was this weakness that
enabled an outside body to manipulate and divide the
group ranch committees.22
Science and development
The authors believe that modern science and technology can make a significant contribution to alleviating
the ravages ofdisease in the Third World, to increasing
agricultural production and food security. However,
each of the players in the science based development
game is using science and technology to achieve their
own ends and the consequences of development are
often the opposite of what was intended.
Perhaps the central contradiction is this. We are
still locked into a reductionist world view deriving
from nineteenth century science in which problems are
reduced to a small number of parameters that we hope
to understand and manipulate. Once we have identified
what we believe is the key factor that gives rise to a
certain problem, we manipulate or try to change it so as
to achieve the desired end. This leads to the search for
'magic bullets' so that we have tried, and failed, to
manage malaria first using insecticides, then using
chemotherapy. Now all our efforts are being put into
mosquito impregnated bed-nets; soon they will be put
into vaccines. We did the same for trypanosomiasis.
First it was game destruction, then bush-clearing, then
36
ground spraying and aerial spraying; now it is tsetse
traps and targets.
Ellis and Swift!! pointout that developmentpolicy
in pastoral areas has sought to restore a supposed
equilibrium to an area by destocking to the appropriate
"carrying capacity" thus increasing livestock productivity. However, pastoral ecosystems are not in stable
equilibrium but show cycles driven by abiotic factors;
the carrying capacity is too variable for close population tracking. The evolution of pastoral systems that
dominate agriculture in Africa's arid and semiarid
regions is evidence of their viability. Ellis and Swift
argue persuasively for development policies that build
on pastoral strategies rather than constrain them, encouraging in particular those strategies that maintain
livestock mobility and facilitate trade in livestock and
their products.
"Holistic resource management" ,43 a new idea to
livestock scientists, is based on traditional pastoralist
strategies. This advocates short periods of heavy livestock grazing and mobility of cattle. This strategy may
be the best way to rehabilitate degraded range land and
may bring about the "improved pastoralism" advocated by Kituyi. 44 Until the aid environment in developing countries is more conducive to adopting such
relatively unpretentious, indigenous approaches, such
strategies are unlikely to be implemented. The massive
bureaucracies that dominate aid organizations, developmentorganizations, and research institutes presenta
hostile environment for small, flexible, and community-based projects.
The problem that we face is how to avoid the cooption of relatively powerless communities into narrowly dermed, inappropriate utilizations of technologies. The knowledge that modern science provides
gives us great power - power that can be used in
different ways by different people. While peasants and
pastoralists have developed sophisticated strategies of
their own for dealing with disease and drought and
insect pests, modem science also has much to contribute. At Nguruman, the Maasai were able to keep cattle
in the face of a high tsetse challenge. They did this by
using trypanotolerant cattle, by moving their cattle
seasonally to avoid contact with the flies when possible, making optimal use of the seasonal availability
of grazing, and using chemotherapeutic drugs when
necessary. Nevertheless, in very dry years, such as
1984, the combination of drought stress and
trypanosomiasis led to the deaths of up to three-quarters of their cattle herd. Modem science made it possible to develop, with the local community, a method
of tsetse control that was cheap, effective, and viable
and led to the effective elimination of the disease from
the ranch. But the most important aspect of this work
may not have been the scientific achievement. It was
that the Maasai now had a method of control that put
power into their hands. As the fly numbers declined
Williams etal.: Broken Houses: Science and Development in the African Savannahs
and the threat of trypanosomiasis receded, they were
able to take advantage of the new grazing and they
could decide how best to do this.
Questions
If we cannot even decide what constitutes sound/
sustainable/appropriate development, if we cannot
decide what we mean by community participation and
appropriate technology, it will certainly be impossible
to decide how to achieve these goals. The best that we
can do is to end with a series of questions whose
answers must precede anything that we do.
• How do we educate all of the participants in the aid
game? Not only the pastoralists but the bureaucrats of
the World Bank, the civil servants in Washington and
Brussels, the scientists, the experts, and the national
governments?
• How do we "empower" people when their societies
are already structured and where some groups within
already have power? How shall we empower the women
without threatening the men? How shall we empower
the youth without threatening the elders? Indeed, the
very notion that "we" can empower "them" would
seem to be a contradiction in terms.
• How do we accelerate development when successful projects draw envy and greed and the desire for
control from others with more money but fewer scruples
than those we are trying to help?
• Who should decide what the priorities are? Crops,
livestock, sanitation, disease control, provision of infrastructures, industrialization?
• How do we decide what constitutes a successful
project? Whose interests shall we put first when we
make such decisions?
• How do we make outside parties accountable since
their power and their security and their peer groups all
lie without and beyond the communities on whom we
bestow our aid?
• How shall we begin to use science in ways that
provide long term solutions to real problems rather
than quick fixes to artificially conceived scenarios?
The songs of praise that emanate from the North
and the South, from the feedlots of Chicago and the
semidesert scrub lands of Somalia, from those who eat
too much and those who eat too little are very different.
We must learn to recognize and accommodate the
different songs that we sing when we advocate policies
that affect the Hungry World. We must learn to understand the enduring relationship of people and cattle
that has benefited both for thousands of years. If we
respect and build on the hard-won life-styles of such
people we might eventually arrive at development
policies that help rather than hurt those at whom our
aid is directed.
Acknowledgments
We thank Asteir Alrnedorn, Robert Brightwell, Steven
Chown, Felicity Cutts, Robert Dransfield. Karolein
Fonck, Sophy Fonnan, Jo Lines, Kelly Lee, Judith
Locke,PhilipMcDowell,SusanMacMillan,IanMaudlin, Martin Odiit, Michael Packer, Timothy Robinson,
Elaine Sharland, Antje van Roeden, CharI Walters,
Gavin Williams, and William Wint for comments on
this manuscript, some critical. Responsibility for the
resulting article rests entirely with the autIIori
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