Mehdi, S: Little Houses in the Sahel

Sahelian population spatial expansion over the last century is about to reach its end. Meanwhile, rural society managements of economic activities have evolved. But such evolutions occur along very different patterns in the Nigerien Sahel. Regional, village and individual level interviewing tools helped to build individual behavior rules in a model simulating the populations and their "terroirs" along two or three generations. Simulations show that once dominant patriarchal families have shifted towards mononuclear ones around the 70‘s and the famine crises. Villages specialize themselves: more a "terroir" is well endowed, more its population involves itself in local activities but more the population also subdivides itself into groups according to their wealths. Introducing a development project reinforce this social differentiation: only well-endowed sites and among them, only favored groups have the saving capacity to get involved. Such an approach is efficient in underlining the huge impact of micro level constraints on long-term population evolutions, which can be very useful in rural development project evaluations.