Cameroon’s Demsa Museum reveals how colonial trade routes and fossil fuel regimes displaced equine labor, reshaping Sahelian economies and cultures
Original framing: “Cameroon's Demsa Museum traces the history of the horse - and the cars that replaced it” — Africa News
The displacement of equines by motor vehicles in Cameroon mirrors global patterns post-WWII, when colonial powers dismantled indigenous transport systems to integrate Sahelian economies into fossil fuel networks. The 1920s French colonial railroads in Cameroon and Chad deliberately targeted equine trade routes, a strategy repeated across Africa and Asia. This historical amnesia obscures how 'development' often entailed the violent replacement of sustainable systems with extractive ones.
The Demsa Museum’s exhibit inadvertently reveals a deeper systemic truth: the displacement of horses by cars in Cameroon was not an organic transition but a colonial project that prioritized extractive economies over sustainable indigenous systems.
This narrative, amplified by Africa News, serves to naturalize fossil fuel dependency while erasing the Fulani, Hausa, and Kanuri equestrian traditions that sustained the Sahel for millennia. Yet the horse—once a symbol of divine connection and economic resilience—now emerges as a trickster figure, mocking the solemnity of 'progress' by outlasting the engines that replaced it. The solution lies in reviving equine trade routes not as nostalgia but as a climate-adaptive, decolonial strategy, blending indigenous knowledge with modern solar technology. This requires dismantling the power structures that framed motorization as inevitable, from colonial railroads to today’s neoliberal development agendas, and centering the voices of pastoralists who have long known the path forward.