As Marx long ago pointed out, humans make choices, but not under conditions of their own choosing. In much of continental Africa, the passing of colonial and national laws and the formulation of development programs have often been inspired by the normative principles of powerful outsiders. This book, most broadly a critique of development aid discourses and policies that are self-perpetuating and reinforce, rather than transform, local relations of domination and dependence, engages with two major themes in African historiography: the slow demise of slavery and the evolution of international development in the Ader region of Niger, revealing their interconnections in the social history of this increasingly arid region straddling the Sahara and Sahel. The basic conundrum, according to Rossi, is that over the long term—from times of precolonial slavery to times of development aid—Ader’s poor face a dilemma of either starving or falling back into dependent, servile-like status. This precolonial status became transposed onto work programs in colonial and postcolonial aid programs, many of which paid workers in food or in very low wages. In other words, dependence has remained necessary to avoid subsistence failure.

Rossi presents a meticulously researched and insightful study of how, over approximately two centuries, transformations turned a society in which slavery was fundamental into one governed by outsiders’ concepts of the local residents’ needs. The consequences were a perpetuation of poverty for the most vulnerable persons, usually those of servile descent and especially women, in an area where recurrent drought and its challenges to natural resources necessitate freedom of movement.

An important contribution of the book is Rossi’s careful analysis of the concept of dependence. From precolonial to colonial and postcolonial eras, personal ties of dependence evolved, but they also persisted, albeit in modified forms. In the overlapping but linguistically and culturally distinct Tuareg and Hausa societies, there were sharp controls in precolonial times over when and where people could move in order to access resources and who could do so. Persons of varying degrees of client and servile (owned, rather than free) statuses were bound to and dependent on predominantly pastoral-nomadic Tuareg aristocratic descent groups who owned most large livestock and weapons, controlled the caravan trade, and collected proportions of crops and livestock from subordinates who were obliged to perform domestic, farming, and caravanning work. Since that time many men of low socioeconomic status and servile origins have migrated away from Ader to sell their labor and raise their status, but many women in this social category cannot migrate, and they remain vulnerable to persisting remnants of precolonial concubinage, or to the unhappy alternative of menial jobs in “work for food” programs of aid agencies.

Although the Ader region is the research focus here, some broader background on Tuareg society beyond the Ader would have been instructive. A nonspecialist reader might come away with the false impression of a vast, centralized, and imperial “statelike” power wielded by the Taureg in precolonial times to dominate all non-Tuareg across the wider region. It should be emphasized, however, that the positions of slaves, former slaves, and their descendants varied (as they do now) across the different Tuareg groups. Furthermore, neighbors of the Tuareg also practiced slavery. The book tends to create the impression that all Tuareg, and exclusively Tuareg, enslaved non-Tuareg “others.” Although Rossi uses the specific Tamajaq term imajeghen (referring to the aristocratic social stratum), not even all imajeghen owned slaves. Tuareg society was complex, consisting of endogamous, specialized occupational groups whose statuses, while ranked and based on descent, were also negotiable. We learn little about nonaristocratic Tuareg, except in brief references to Islamic scholars and smith/artisans—important mediators in Tuareg society who ideally were not supposed to fight and who controlled aristocrats’ moral reputations, but who come across here as almost as predatory as the slave-holders. Finally, more data are needed as well on Hausa precolonial stratification and servitude.

The book’s major strengths are its critique of development aid discourses and policies and its fine-grained analysis of dependency and oppression, whose forms are variegated but whose consequences change little over time. Drawing on archival data, elders’ reminiscences, and her own field research, Rossi convincingly shows how aid programs have failed to meet the region’s long-term needs and are decidedly “top-down” in their decision-making hierarchical structures. The most compelling sections of the book offer personal accounts of adversity, but also resilience.

Overall this book, particularly in its critiques of development, makes a valuable contribution to interdisciplinary research in African studies and specifically to the fields of social history and economic and political anthropology.