From a biogeographic perspective, Africa is subdivided into distinct horizontal belts. Human populations living along the Sahel/Savannah belt south of the Sahara desert have often been overshadowed by extensive studies focusing on other African populations such as hunter-gatherers or Bantu in particular. However, the Sahel together with the Savannah bordering it in the south is a challenging region where people had and still have to cope with harsh climatic conditions and show resilient behaviours. Besides exponentially growing urban populations, several local groups leading various lifestyles and speaking languages belonging to three main linguistic families still live in rural localities across that region today. Thanks to several years of consistent population sampling throughout this area, the genetic history of the African Sahelian populations has been largely reconstructed and a deeper knowledge has been acquired regarding their adaptation to peculiar environments and/or subsistence modes. Distinct exposures to pathogens-in particular, malaria-likely contributed to their genetic differentiation for HLA genes. In addition, although food-producing strategies spread within the Sahel/Savannah belt relatively recently, during the last five millennia according to recent archaeological and archaeobotanical studies, remarkable amounts of genetic differences are also observed between sedentary farmers and more mobile pastoralists at multiple neutral and selected loci, reflecting both demographic effects and genetic adaptations to distinct cultural traits, such as dietary habits.

Department of Anthropology and Human Genetics Faculty of Science Charles University Prague Prague Czech Republic

Department of Anthropology Faculty of Natural Sciences Comenius University Ilkovicova 6 842 15 Bratislava Slovakia

Institute of Genetics and Genomics in Geneva Geneva Switzerland

Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde Universidade do Porto Porto Portugal

Instituto de Patologia e Imunologia Molecular da Universidade do Porto Porto Portugal

Laboratory of African Archaeology and Peopling History Department of Genetics and Evolution Anthropology Unit University of Geneva Geneva Switzerland

Laboratory of Anthropology Genetics and Peopling History Department of Genetics and Evolution Anthropology Unit University of Geneva Geneva Switzerland

References provided by Crossref.org

Population history and admixture of the Fulani people from the Sahel

Evidence for Pathogen-Driven Selection Acting on HLA-DPB1 in Response to Plasmodium falciparum Malaria in West Africa

A Population Genetic Perspective on Subsistence Systems in the Sahel/Savannah Belt of Africa and the Historical Role of Pastoralism

Demographic and Selection Histories of Populations Across the Sahel/Savannah Belt

Population history and genetic adaptation of the Fulani nomads: inferences from genome-wide data and the lactase persistence trait