Fasahan Dabbobi argues that West African approaches to technology shaped social, animal, and environmental history. The dissertation focuses on a transregional livestock trade operating across Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Mali from 1890 to 1980. During that period, Muslim migrants built a livestock trading network through the selective usage and adaptation of technology—both old and new. Their creative approach reconfigured social relationships central to the trade and altered the type of animals and animal products available in open-air markets. The dissertation broadens the definition of technology to include the perspectives of Muslim migrants who define technology in relation to human creativity and inventiveness in responding to changing historical contexts. Fasahan dabbobi, which translates from Hausa to animal technology, serves as the organizing principle for the dissertation by naming the complex historical process of incorporating technology into the livestock trade. In particular, the dissertation explores how Muslim migrants, as well as West African veterinarians, shaped the incorporation of four technologies into the trade, including vaccine production, transportation, meat preservation, and leatherworking. While West African actors led these processes, the livestock also shaped the relationships between the trade and technology. For this reason, the dissertation treats livestock as co-participants in the history and users of some of the technologies. By centering technology in scholarly approaches to livestock in Africa, the dissertation proposes an alternative model for thinking about agricultural futures on the continent and the place of livestock in the African Anthropocene.
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