A Study of Income and Expenditure in Northern Zaria

Extract

The Province of Zaria, in Northern Nigeria, has a population of some 540,000.The central portion of the Province, covering the largest part of the area, is sparsely populated and contains some pagan tribes who have little to do with the economy of their Hausa neighbours to the north. There is a southern fringe, more thickly peopled, where Christian missions are established and where the people buy and sell with neighbouring communities to the south. This paper is not concerned with these parts. We shall deal only with the northern part of the Province. Its area is about 7,400 square miles. The African population of this area which we are considering amounts to some 323,000, of whom about 40,000 are Fulani cattle people, about 10,000 southern clerks and workmen, and the rest Hausa farmers and traders. The European and Syrian population, comprising about 360 civilians and about 120 military personnel, is fairly evenly divided between the two towns of Zaria and Kaduna. The country stands on the northern edge of the ‘middle belt’ of orchard bush, and extends in places into the southern fringe of the great savannah belt of the western Sudan. Its climate is therefore a good deal kinder than that of the barer lands of Kano and Sokoto, and more suitable for intensive peasant cultivation than the wetter countries to the south where the tsetse and other insect pests have held back indigenous development. The economic activities of the African population will be described in detail hereafter.