Abstract
Kano State in northern Nigeria has been presented as a region which has undergone adaptation to rapid demographic growth without adverse ecological effects (Mortimore 1993a). The population has grown by natural increase and by in-migration, fueled partially by growth of the Kano urban and peri-urban zones and sustained by manure-fed upland and irrigated lowland agriculture. This paper presents demographic data for Kano State, collected through the 1990 Demographic and Health Survey (Macro International 1992) for Nigeria, to explore some possible demographic consequences of the population growth observed there. Covered will be sections on women's work and mobility, child nutrition and mortality, birth intervals, and weaning age. By presenting this data, I will suggest two points. First, there is perhaps an alternate hypothesis to the rosy though incomplete picture presented by Mortimore and others. The agricultural transformation in Kano seems to have put progressively more stress on women as domestic producers, which reflects in the demographic data. Second, there is a need for more temporally and spatially robust datasets on health and demography, as well as more concerted efforts to link, via more integrated analyses, agricultural production and health outcomes.
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Rain, D. The women of Kano: internalized stress and the conditions of reproduction, Northern Nigeria. GeoJournal 43, 175–187 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006815632077
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006815632077