Daily Climate: Just two seasons exist here: the rainy and the dry. At the best of times, the temperamental rains come for three or four months and turn dusty plains into green pastures, forests and fields.
But in the late 1960s, the rains came later and ended earlier. A drought started. Crops failed across the region; freshwater rivers turned to saltwater.
In the Sahel, a semi-arid belt across West Africa south of the Sahara Desert, at least 100,000 people perished and millions of cattle died for want of...