Cows for Africa

I am sure that all the worthy charities are very aware and carry out the appropriate research before spreading cows to the impoverished of Africa. But one of my corespondents pointed out that cows were perhaps not the best animal to help Africans. This was because most African populations have a relatively high intolerance to lactose. This is a gene that only occurs in about 5% of Scandinavian and northern Europeans, but is found in over 75-90% of Africans.

A paper published last June states that:
"On average, Sherman and Bloom found that 61 percent of people studied were lactose intolerant, with a range of 2 percent in Denmark and 100 percent in Zambia. They also found that lactose intolerance decreases with increasing latitude and increases with rising temperature, and especially with the difficulty in maintaining dairy herds safely and economically."
(see http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=25469)

Superficially, it would seem that those organisations advocating cows for Africa, are simply using the Europeans' familiarity with the cow as a symbol of fecundity to drive forward a campaign to colonise the continent with an animal product that are not part of the normal diet. Is this yet another form of imperialism?

I thought that perhaps goats milk might be better, but apparently it has only 'marginally' less lactose ( http://askdrsears.com/html/3/t032400.asp ).

Unfortunately my search of the internet for some positive data on the benefits of milk failed to yield results -- all I could find was information on the high levels of intolerance. Which rather reinforces the environmental negativity of cows. Any facts and figures would be useful.

The results of my research, albeit rather superficial, shows that the only Africans that normally have a significant degree of tolerance to lactose, are the nomadic herders -- and these are the very groups that are overgrazing and losing animals in droughts. The sedentary populations have the highest intolerance rates. So the Hutu in Rwanda are relatively intolerant, whereas the Tutsi are more tolerant. I am sure all this is well-known to the aid agencies promoting gats and cattle, but I found that very few others were very aware, and it seems to me to be an important issue.