Articles | Volume 72, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-72-243-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-72-243-2017
Standard article
 | 
13 Jun 2017
Standard article |  | 13 Jun 2017

Interpreting mega-development projects as territorial traps: the case of irrigation schemes on the shores of Lake Chad (Borno State, Nigeria)

Marina Bertoncin and Andrea Pase

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Cited articles

Adam, M.: The Chad Basin Development Project. Rise and fall of a giant irrigation project in West Africa, in: Living with the lake, Perspectives on history, culture and economy of Lake Chad, Studien zur Kulturkunde, edited by: Krings, M., Platte, E., and Köppe, R., Köln, 191–203, 2004.
Adams, W. M.: Large scale irrigation in northern Nigeria: performance and ideology, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, 16, 287–300, 1991.
Adams, W. M.: Indigenous Use of Wetlands and Sustainable Development in West Africa, The Geographical Journal, 159, 209–218, 1993.
Agamben, G.: What is an apparatus?, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2009.
Agamben, G.: Pulcinella ovvero Divertimento per li regazzi, nottetempo, Roma, 2015.
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Short summary
From the colonial era up to the present, mega-irrigation projects have played a key role in Sahelian Africa. It is possible to interpret them as territorial traps: they set up boundaries (physical, relational, cognitive and operative) that force evolutive trajectories along rigid pathways. After the failure of the mega-irrigation projects, farmers are faced with significant constraints. They identified a means of escape from these catastrophes by transgressing the boundaries imposed.