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Abstract
In this dissertation, I explore the topic of livestock development in The Gambia from both an historical and anthropological perspective. Breed differences have figured prominently in the attempts to promote economic growth with livestock in West Africa. The colonial archives from The Gambia illustrate how incoming cattle from Senegal troubled the campaign against rinderpest due to differences in disease resistance among the herds. With the Veterinary Department gaining control of the viral outbreaks, concerns mounted about the increasing size of the Gambian cattle population. The British response was to destock the countryside by building a boat to ship the surplus to coastal markets. It did not work. Rationalization for this failure focused on Africans unwillingness to do business with the government. Reflecting on this interpretation, I show how colonial development projects in The Gambia, like elsewhere in Africa, did not consider local economic practices when dealing with agricultural problems. In this case, the marketing approach to livestock development failed because of the imperial refusal to enter into the credit system. Doing so would have required offering and taking debt to establish trade relationships within the cattle industry. Just as the British livestock development scheme pegged its shortcoming to farmers aversion to selling cattle, the concept of savings figures prominently in ongoing efforts to identify breeding priorities for livestock development. I examine flock histories from a village in The Gambia, focusing on sheep and goats, to investigate what farmers do with the animals they report to be saving and how this affects breed dynamics in the tsetse zone. An ethnogenetic framework is proposed to analyze how farmers understand the process of biological change in household flocks and relate this to the folk classification of breeds. I found that the way farmers classify breed types appears to contradict how farmers trace trait dominance. This has important implication for the in situ conservation of animal genetic resources. Comparing flock histories from the village with prior reports on farmers objectives, I argue that the category of savings is a translation that serves the interests of development policy, but mistakes what farmers intend to do with their animals. Livestock research may emphasize the material security of keeping goats, yet Gambians own behaviors and explanations draw attention to the way goats help people keep the peace; Rather than stockpile small stock to accrue wealth or prestige, farmers continually repurpose animals from their flocks to assist others. From this I conclude that livestock development in The Gambia requires further attention to the way farmers rely on animals to fulfill relationships and how these exchanges, both social and genetic, influence breed make-up.