Benedetta Rossi is Lecturer in African Studies at the School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham. She is editor of Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories (2009) and Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (with Anne Haour, 2010), and author of many articles focusing on slavery and emancipation in Africa and on international aid to Niger.

'Benedetta Rossi connects the specificities of place with the importance of connections across space, and she connects the continuities of a former slave society with the development initiatives of a colonial and post-colonial state. She uses her rich ethnographic and historical material to analyse insightfully the meaning of unequal social and economic relations, within a region, within an African state, and in relation to the external world.' Frederick Cooper, New York University

• 1. At the desert's edge; 2. Between Sokoto and Agadez: inter-ethnic hierarchy in the nineteenth century; 3. Entangled histories of colonial occupation, 1899–1917; 4. Governing labour – slave, forced and migrant, 1918–45; 5. The development of 'development', 1946–83; 6. Fighting against the desert, 1984–2000; 7. Between development and dependence.

Benedetta Rossi is Lecturer in African Studies at the School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham. She is editor of Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories (2009) and Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (with Anne Haour, 2010), and author of many articles focusing on slavery and emancipation in Africa and on international aid to Niger.

'Benedetta Rossi connects the specificities of place with the importance of connections across space, and she connects the continuities of a former slave society with the development initiatives of a colonial and post-colonial state. She uses her rich ethnographic and historical material to analyse insightfully the meaning of unequal social and economic relations, within a region, within an African state, and in relation to the external world.' Frederick Cooper, New York University

• 1. At the desert's edge; 2. Between Sokoto and Agadez: inter-ethnic hierarchy in the nineteenth century; 3. Entangled histories of colonial occupation, 1899–1917; 4. Governing labour – slave, forced and migrant, 1918–45; 5. The development of 'development', 1946–83; 6. Fighting against the desert, 1984–2000; 7. Between development and dependence.

Benedetta Rossi is Lecturer in African Studies at the School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham. She is editor of Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories (2009) and Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (with Anne Haour, 2010), and author of many articles focusing on slavery and emancipation in Africa and on international aid to Niger.

'Benedetta Rossi connects the specificities of place with the importance of connections across space, and she connects the continuities of a former slave society with the development initiatives of a colonial and post-colonial state. She uses her rich ethnographic and historical material to analyse insightfully the meaning of unequal social and economic relations, within a region, within an African state, and in relation to the external world.' Frederick Cooper, New York University

• 1. At the desert's edge; 2. Between Sokoto and Agadez: inter-ethnic hierarchy in the nineteenth century; 3. Entangled histories of colonial occupation, 1899–1917; 4. Governing labour – slave, forced and migrant, 1918–45; 5. The development of 'development', 1946–83; 6. Fighting against the desert, 1984–2000; 7. Between development and dependence.