User:Ame2025brown/Evaluate an Article

User:Ame2025brown/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Desertification in Africa

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen this article because it discusses the degradation of land where productive land becomes barren, unproductive, or simply a desert. It is a common misconception that this process occours naturally - in fact, it is also partially the result of climate change and human practices such as unsustainable agricultural practices. While the process has always been a part of African history, as the diminished use of traditional cyclical land cultivation, colonialism, and a number of other factors influenced the relationship between African people and land, the magnitude and threat it began to pose in the 20th century endangered the lives and livelihoods of millions, resulting in famines, droughts, and other environmental and humanitarian cris.

My preliminary impression of the article was that it was very informative and well-developed.

Evaluate the article
Content:

For the most part, the article was very informative and have an in-depth overview of the issue.

I thought one area of improvement in the "History" section could be an addition of what the land practices were before colonialism and how African people were able to avoid such large-scale destructive practices. An addition of the "slash and burn" agricultural practice (used for instance by Bantu-speaking people) could be beneficial in my opinion. I also think the "Combatting Desertification" section could be longer in order to balance the article as well as provide more information, as it seems a bit lacking - one would assume that there is more than one project which attempts to ameliorate the effects of this disasterous issue.

Tone:

The article seems to be fairly neutral in tone, and I could not find any evidence of strong bias. Perhaps one viewpoint which is underrepresented is the influence of colonialism and the West in the loss of land practices and overall the issue at hand.

Sources:

The links work, and sources are taken from a wide range of authors, sources and overall all come from reputable academic journals. There is only one citation which only states the name of the article and not the journal.

Talk page:

There is only one comment of someone saying "Solution and recommendations of drought and desertification in Africa", as well as a number of edits on the history tab. The article is B-class in terms of content for Africa, Environment, and Geogrpahy, all three WikiProjects making it as being of interest to them as well as marked as having "unknown importance" to all three.