6 - Yoruba and Igbo

Summary

This survey of the poor and their means of survival in pre-colonial Africa will end with two special cases, the Yoruba and Igbo peoples of modern Nigeria. Their interest is partly that they are especially well documented. Anglican missionaries and evangelists lived among the Yoruba from 1845. Many were themselves Yoruba and the daily journals they kept are unique sources. Anglican missionaries also settled among the Igbo in 1857, although few were Igbo and their knowledge of the country was less profound. Later in the century Roman Catholic missionaries also worked in both regions.

Among Yoruba and Igbo poverty can be studied at a level deeper than mere stereotypes. Moreover, the two societies were distinctive. Although both were only marginally touched at this time by Islam or Christianity, both had cultural traditions which were among the richest in Africa. Many Yoruba lived in towns, with populations ranging up to 100,000, and had an unusually strong kinship structure of large coresident descent groups. Igbo, by contrast, were a classically stateless people whose egalitarian ideology made the status and care of the poor matters of special delicacy.

The Anglican missionaries and evangelists who served in Yorubaland between 1845 and 1900 recorded encounters with exactly 100 identifiable individuals who were very poor in the sense that they were in a state of chronic want. Other persons in similar circumstances are mentioned, but without comparable detail.