Question

Describe the impact of Rinderpest on people’s livelihoods and the local economy in Africa in the 1890s.

Answer 1

Hint: Rinderpest is also known as cattle plague, it was a disease that infected cattle and buffalos. It led to the death of almost 90% of the cattle in Africa in the 1880s. It entered Africa, through the European colonial trade, the disease led to a lot of hardships for the African natives as they were traditionally agriculturalists.

Complete answer: a. Rinderpest is the name of the cattle plague which gripped Africa in the 1880s.
b. It killed almost 90% of the cattle population. It spread throughout sub-Saharan Africa for the first time and it was able to enter Africa because of the European colonial conquest.
c. Beginning in the Eritrean port of Massawa, the virus was passed across the Sahel, arriving near the Senegal River by 1891.
d. The disease spread south out of the Horn of Africa, into the western and eastern Rift valleys, and likely by sea with coastal commerce, infecting East Africa after 1891.
e. In 1896 rinderpest reached the regions of modern Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, and southern Angola The consequences of this were:-
A huge number of people lost their livelihood, as agriculture and cattle rearing were a big part of the economy in the continent.
The remaining cattle were monopolised by the British colonial government; this led to more hardships for the native Africans.
This forced Africans into labour, in their homeland and even overseas where they were exploited and underpaid.

Note: The last reported case of Rinderpest was in Kenya in 2001, a potent vaccine was developed in 1960 and by 2011 the disease was completely eradicated. In each region of the disease, local ecologies, trades, agricultural, social life, and power dynamics shaped the impact of rinderpest. Almost everywhere, rinderpest was followed by drought and locust plague and human diseases, especially smallpox and malnutrition.