Kofyar People - Economic and Cultural Change Since The 1960s

Economic and Cultural Change Since The 1960s

During the 1950s, the Kofyar began to settle in the fertile plains of the Benue Valley to the south of the Jos Plateau. Pioneering farms there used extensive slash-and-burn methods, but with rising population density and market stimulus, intensive methods were gradually introduced. By the 1980s, Benue Valley Kofyar were producing considerable surpluses of yams, rice, peanuts, pearl millet and sorghum using labor-intensive but generally sustainable methods – an interesting contrast to the externally-supported agricultural development schemes in the region, which have generally failed.

As in the homeland, millet beer was found to play a key role not only in daily life but in the organization of agricultural production. The highly productive farming system ran almost entirely on human labor, with little external inputs, and a key strategy for mobilizing local labor was the "mar muos", a festive labor party at which all workers were served generaous amounts of millet beer.

Although most Kofyars now live in the Benue Valley (or in cities), the Jos Plateau homeland is still inhabited largely because of the Kofyars' efforts to maintain it as a cultural and economic resource. Many Kofyar who live elsewhere still keep secondary homes in the homeland.