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This study presents the results of an exploratory research project which is centered on local soil sciences in Niger. Soils constitute a kind of environmental archive underpinning the daily life of everybody living on them. Using two regions of Niger (Tahoua and Dosso) as examples, Sani Ibrahim is trying to understand how local people perceive soils, and what these perceptions can teach us about how soils have evolved over time, how people have used them and are still using them, and how soils are being modified by climate change. In an innovative way, Sani starts from his own position as an “academic” geographer with methods that are available to the “modern scientist”, such as remote sensing, and combines them with local techniques of soil recognition, classification, and use. In this way, he tries to get a larger picture of what we currently understand through de word “soils”.
This publication is part of the project `An African History of Knowledge and Science beyond Academic Conventions’, which was carried out at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science from 2022 to 2024.
See https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/african-history-knowledge-and-science-beyond-academic-conventions
