Thanks  , for your consideration on the matter. In further support of (a)category validity & usefulness, particularly in the African context: indeed, the concept and acceptance of identifying indigenous peoples in Africa is perhaps a recently-evolving one, only now taking shape and gaining support from African governments in the post-European colonial period. Only as recently as 2000, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (instituted by African heads of state under the auspices of the OAU and continued by its successor the African Union) adopted a resolution on the Rights of Indigenous Populations/Communities in Africa, and thereby set up (in 2001) a working group to study and report on African indigenous issues. This working group delivered its final report in May 2003, which was then adopted by this resolution in November 2003. The full report can be found here, and it is a quite detailed survey and exposition of indigenous affairs in a modern African context.  Specific mention is made of the Tuareg people as indigenous in several places, such as on p.11: 
 *The Tuareg are part of the indigenous Amazigh peoples (generally known as 'Berbers') of North Africa. They mainly live in southern Algeria, northern Mali and Niger, with smaller pockets in Libya, Burkina Faso and Mauritania. Their precise numbers are not known and published figures range from 300,000 to 3 million. The southern Tuareg of Niger and Mali probably number around one million and 675,000 respectively.  The northern Tuareg, who inhabit the regions of Ahaggar and Tassili-n-Ajjer in Algeria number some 25,000. 
 and on p.36, where the 1992 National Pact signed with the Tuareg in Mali is cited as a positive example of status recognition. 

 The African Commission being sponsored by all but one of the 54 African states may be considered to be representative of governmental support for the concept, even if its resolutions are not separately enforceable. 

 (Partial) governmental recognition of indigenous claim is also indicated by instruments such as Niger's Code Rural 1993, where land-use differentiation is made for pastoral/herder groups such as the Tuareg. 

 Now, whether or to what degree African states actually practise what they have signed up to in adopting the resolution, is another matter altogether- but at least nominally, the concept of particular African indigenous peoples is recognised, and an increasing feature of the political and social spheres.  |  2005 June 29 03:30 (UTC)