An island where Africans act like Asians

Whenever you mention that African-Americans seem to have brought with them some sub-Saharan African behavioral patterns, it's now traditional for somebody to say: "Africans are the most genetically diverse people on earth" and/or references to the dazzling diversity of African cultures. In reality, with famous exceptions like the Bushmen and Pygmies, Africa is a fairly homogeneous place for its vast size. As genetic anthropologist L.L. Cavalli-Sforza summed up in his 1994 book The History and Geography of Human Genes, “… differences between most sub-Saharan Africans other than Khoisan and Pygmies seem rather small.” Similarly, sub-Saharan cultures tend to be variations on a rather limited number of themes.

There are some exceptions, however, John Reader's Africa: Biography of a Continent provides a fascinating example of a not very African place in the heart of Africa: the island of Ukara in Lake Victoria in northwest Tanzania, in which a favorable environment leads to a Malthusian trap, which seems to lead to more Eurasian-like behavior.

The population has been around 16,000 for a century, with about one percent of the population annually moving to the mainland, a rate of increase unusual in Africa until recently.

Ukara has a few major advantages over the surrounding mainland of Africa: no tsetse flies to spread sleeping sickness. No lions and no elephants, either, to compete with humans. Life (and death) is presumably less random than on the African mainland, so hard work and investment pay off more reliably.

Life on Ukara sounds rather like life in a poor Southeast Asian peasant society rather than in most of Africa. A 1968 aerial survey showed that 98.6 percent of the land on the island was in use. In contrast to the typical pattern of land use rights in Africa, almost every resource on the island, including each tree, is privately owned, which has prevented deforestation. (Here's a description of Ukara from a libertarian perspective.) People on Ukara practice much more intensive and sophisticated agriculture than elsewhere in Tanzania, supposedly working ten hours per day, every day.

I spent some time looking for accounts by recent tourists visiting Ukara Island, but it became apparent that very few people go there, which is not surprising since people on holiday generally visit big cities or go to less crowded places to relax. We tend to think of islands as being less crowded (and thus more relaxing) than mainlands because they are less convenient to get to, but in Africa, apparently, things work the opposite. Being inconveniently far out in Lake Victoria makes life healthier and less risky than being on the mainland.

Has the Ukaran culture spread with the steady flow of Ukarans to the mainland of Africa? Evidently, no. Phil Raikes wrote in 1986:

This provides a very clear example of Esther Boserup's contention that necessity in the form of population pressure is the mother of agricultural innovation. Further evidence for this comes from the fact that Ukara Islanders who migrate to the mainland, where population density is far lower, promptly drop their labour-intensive methods (over ten hours per day throughout the year) for the much easier methods practised on the mainland.

I'm not sure what the ultimate lessons are from Ukara Island, but the place is worth thinking about.