Interdisciplinary Cambridge team join forces to develop new approaches to African farming systems

African farming systems: an interdisciplinary pan-African perspective

British Academy International Partnerships and Mobility Award, 2013-2015.

Professor Henrietta L. Moore (University of Cambridge) and Professor Caleb Adebayo Folorunso (University of Ibadan, Nigeria)

.....with Dr Matthew Davies, University of Cambridge and British Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi Kenya; Professor Charles French, University of Cambridge; Professor Martin Jones, University of Cambridge; Dr Alex Schoeman, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; Dr Kennedy Mutundu, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya; Dr Ambreena Manji, British Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi, Kenya.

African farming systems are often portrayed as fragile and short-lived, with low and unreliable output and this situation is often assumed to play into Africa’s continuing underdevelopment. However, long-term research combining approaches from archaeology, history, anthropology and environmental science, strongly challenge this stereotype. A number of long lived ‘Islands of Intensive Agriculture’ offer a counterpoint and the potential to develop applied approaches to environment management that build on local knowledge. Ongoing Cambridge led work in one of these areas (Marakwet, Northwest Kenya) builds on extensive previous research and is pioneering an interdisciplinary diachronic approach to the development of this system through time while linking this knowledge to modern development and policy issues such as land and water rights and forest conservation (Moore and Davies).

With an International Partnerships and Mobility Award from the British Academy, we build on the Marakwet work to share and expand knowledge of African farming systems across the continent. The project brings together a range of archaeologists, anthropologists and environmental scientists working on comparable projects in Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria. Exchange of knowledge and ideas will be facilitated through three structured field workshops in each of the partner countries (Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria). Participants will be introduced to the field research in each country and will explore comparative ideas and research methods. Reciprocal field trips will give the participants not only the opportunity to observe new ways of doing and thinking, but also the chance to practically experiment with those ideas in their own research area. Focus will be placed on integrating a wide range of research techniques including historical, oral historical, ethnographic, landscape, excavation, geoarchaeological and archaeobotnical. A final workshop in Cambridge in 2015 will introduce the African participants to a variety of scientific archaeological methods and explore the potential for further analysis and collaboration.

Living heritage: a precolonial irrigation channel, ‘upgraded’ with cement in the 1990s is repaired by ‘traditional’ means following a landslide in 2011.
Living heritage: a precolonial irrigation channel, ‘upgraded’ with cement in the 1990s is repaired by ‘traditional’ means following a landslide in 2011.