Word: volta
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Your correspondents missed one vital point concerning the political aspects of desertification. The peregrinations of the Tuareg in Niger, Mali and Upper Volta and the nomadic Masai in Kenya and Tanzania frighten their respective governments, who would prefer to see them sedentary and hence politically under control. So to keep them in place, we have the permanent pumping stations in the Sahel and the "ranches" of East Africa, destroying irreplaceable elements of the human mosaic and creating new deserts, all in the name of "progress...
...gather it and bring it home; in Niger, wood is so expensive that a laborer must spend nearly a quarter of his income on fuel. Elsewhere, the search for firewood is helping to create new deserts. Almost all the trees within 70 kilometers (44 miles) of Ouagadougou in Upper Volta have already been consumed as fuel by the city's inhabitants. Now the circle of naked land is expanding...
...Sahara, where as many as half a million died in the great 1972-74 drought-have brought adequate harvests, but the moisture may prove to be a mixed blessing. The rainfall spawned an almost biblical plague of rats, locusts and caterpillars in Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and Upper Volta. Millions of gerbils, which U.S. children often keep as pets, are loose on the land in Niger, devouring everything in sight...
...prestige is determined by the number of shiny new weapons that rumble past the reviewing stand during a military parade. Moreover, disputed borders and the suspicion of seemingly hostile neighbors frequently lead to intense local arms races. This has been the case with India and Pakistan, Mali and Upper Volta, and Peru, Bolivia and Chile...
Mali and Upper Volta, two of Africa's most impoverished nations, are threatening to go to war. The reason: a claim by Mali to a 100-mile stretch of land in the sub-Sahara now belonging to neighboring Upper Volta. In addition to invaluable water supplies, the disputed land may contain rich deposits of oil, natural gas, manganese and titanium. Although black African leaders have tried to mediate the dispute, troops of the two belligerents have been sniping at one another for the past month, and chances of a full-scale conflict are high...