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Anthropology of Pastoral Societies

University of Werabe

WERABE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

ANTHROPOLOGY OF PASTORAL SOCIETY (SOAN-M3061)

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION


• What is pastoralism and who are pastoralists?
Pastoralism constitutes 12-16 % of the total population of arid and semi-arid regions of eastern
and western Africa numbering between 25-30 million people. These people, in most countries of
the world are “Minorities” of different ethic identities with their own culture and socio-economic
ways of life, i.e., they distinguished by different ways of life, cultural values, language and
considered “Minorities” by such categories. Attention to consider the needs and problems of
pastoralists had started to be paid firstly in 1986 at the meeting held in Senegal (Dakar)
sponsored by UN. Consequently, the project called NOPA (Nomadic pastoralists in Africa)
established by the end of 1990 mainly by UNICEF and UNESCO. The project has its head
quarter at Nairobi (Kenya) and covers many countries in Africa which have concentrations of
livestock. It includes:
1. The Sudano-Sahalian Zone (Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Chad and Burikinafaso)
2. Eastern-African- (Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea etc.)
Definitions
Pastoralism: There are a number of potential definitions of pastoralism, highlighting different
perspectives. For example, an economic definition focuses on livestock production, whereas an
ecological definition emphasizes collectively owned and managed pasture. A socio-cultural or
ethic definition highlights identity and customary social institutions. Other definitions will focus
on geographical mobility.
However, the classic definition given by Jermy Swift is frequently used and little bit
comprehensive. According to swift, pastoralism is production system in which fifty percent or
more of the household gross revenue (the total value of marketed product + the estimated value
of subsistence production consumed with in the household) comes from livestock and livestock
related activities or more than 15 % of the household energy consumption consists of milk and
milk product. But this definition does not consider nomadism which refers the movement of
pastoralists rather emphasize the subsistence base.
Pastoralists- any population or segment of population subsisting primarily via pastoralism (if
also practice significant amount of agriculture, termed "agro pastoralists") The term "subsisting"
is intended to exclude those who raise animals strictly for exchange value rather than direct
consumption (for example commercial ranchers and dairy farmers), though as we will see most
subsistence pastoralists rely on trade to some extent, even if large-scale impersonal markets and
monetary currency are absent.
N.B Anthropologists argued that pastoralism and pastoralists cannot be viewed in isolation which
is the problem of most explanatory models. And it should be viewed as dialectic between
varieties of shaping forces.
Pastoralism currently has taken different form due to the fact that it is constantly in a process of
change (i.e., its dynamic nature). Therefore, whatever definition is given it did not yet fully
explain the changing features of pastoralism. Hence, different variables should be considered in
order to come to pastoralism.
Socio- economic variable. This parameter holds principal features of pastoralism and
its definition.
2. Types of power wielded by pastoralists (political power)
- Some are at the margin of political sphere, some others are active in a political arena, and
others may even be pastoral state.
3. Access to control over land and other natural resources
- Some pastoralists have secured access and other are alienated in terms of their access to
resources.
4. Quality and quantity of environmental resources (The nature of natural resources)
- Some are endowed well while others less endowed
5. Predominant type of animal they raising (The mix of animals)
- Some are cattle herders, other are sheep, goat & camel.
6. Mobility- some pastoralists are constantly on move (i.e., frequent and integrated mobility)
and others are moving back and forth (transhumance) pastoralists. In light of the above
perspective, it is impossible to say pastoralists and their way of life is homogenous. That is
typologies vary and there is a dynamic and varied nature of pastoralists in different areas of the
world. According to Wilson, the most common ground on which to classify pastoralists is based
on duration and distance of livestock movement i.e., mobility and the pattern it takes. These are:
I. Nomadic pastoralists: are those societies that for various reasons not settled permanently at
one place. For example, horticulturalists and hunter gatherer societies are nomads who move
periodically across the ecological setting. Generally, Nomadic pastoralists are people that
constantly on frequent movement and travel long distance for effective adaptation to their
environment. They have little dependence on activities other than pastoralism. The Massai in
Kenya, Gog in Tanzania and the Somali pastoralist in Ethiopia are good examples in this regard.
II. Semi- nomadic pastoralists: are those pastoralists who maintained a permanent base camp
where bulk of the population reside (women’s, children’s and elders) and only some members of
the society (youth) who attached themselves to cattle move back and forth between wet and dry
season. Hence, their frequency of movement is shorter and they partly depend on the other
complementary activities.
III. Settled pastoralists: - are those keeping animals in one place most or all of year,
provisioning them with fodder (e.g., hay), which is the typical pattern for many traditional
European pastoralists (or agro pastoralists); this system is relatively capital-intensive (need
substantial barns, means to transport hay, etc.) The other standard argued by scholars up on
which to classify pastoralists is based on degree dependence on pastoralism and other mode of
adaptation. These are:
I. Agro-pastoralists- are societies in which agriculture constitutes the subsistence base and
people drive their bulk of subsistence from cultivation. But agriculture integrated with livestock
production.
IV. Pure-pastoralists: are societies in which the bulk of subsistence derived from their
domesticated animals (livestock). Here it is not to mean that pure pastoralists do not use
agriculture and agricultural products. Today it is difficult to put a clear demarcation line between
the two; rather they are found in continuum. Taking this continuum as a ground, anthropologist
Paul Baxter classified pastoralists in to three groups:
1. Highly specialized pastoralists: are those pastoralists who derive the biggest sharing of their
subsistence from livestock and livestock products and agricultural in a much-marginalized way
(i.e. they can be said those who do not cultivate). Somali pastoralists in Ethiopia, Samburu and
Masai pastoralists in Kenya are good examples.
2. Those who consider themselves and are considered by others as pastoralists but cannot subsist
without some form of rain fed agriculture (i.e., take cultivation as supplementary activities). Afar
and Borana pastoralists in Ethiopia, Bana in Kenya Karomajong in Uganda and etc. are example.
3. The pastoral societies in which agriculture is a dominant subsistence activity and animal
husbandry again simultaneously the integral component of the economy. In other words, there is
a symbiotic relationship between pastoralism and agriculture. Nevertheless, in spite of such
reliance on rain fed agriculture they consider themselves as cattle people and to the large degree
maintain pastoral mentality. Agro-pastoralists are an Example.

1.2. The pastoral setting The Horn of Africa is home to the largest aggregation of traditional
stockbreeders in the world, estimated at 15-20 million people (FAO, 2000a). For all the states of
the region, arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) represent a major portion of the land area. In such
areas, characterized by erratic rainfall and periodic droughts, pastoralism is a well-suited natural
resource management system. Nevertheless, pastoralists in the Horn of Africa are now amongst
the most marginalized and disadvantaged groups. This is due to a number of elements historical,
social, economic and political in nature linking and influencing one another. Traditional livestock
production is becoming increasingly impracticable because of a greatly reduced access to land
and water, as they are turned over to cultivation. This loss has been facilitated by the reluctance
of states to acknowledge and respect pastoralists’ rights to land (Lane and Moore head, 1995).
Restrictions on the mobility of herders and their cattle have disrupted the process of adjustment
that maintains an ecological balance between men, animals and land (Baxter, 1990). Pastoralist
society has been negatively affected by state borders that divide ethnic groups, separating people
from their kin, pastures, watering places and markets. Colonial and postcolonial arrangements
disrupted the social and political cohesion of pastoral societies, and poverty intensified
competition for resources, further undermining social organization (Markakis, 1993; Barfield,
1993). The result was conflict, both within pastoralist society and with state authority supporting
sedentarised farmers (Maknun, 1986).
State policies throughout the region aim to develop livestock production rather than to improve
the living conditions of pastoralists. They are based on a desire to turn their land over to
commercial cultivation through irrigation, or over to meat production in ranching schemes,
leaving pastoralists, whose land has remained state domain, as the only social group without any
land tenure rights.
In a situation characterized by marginalization, conflict and competition over meager resources,
it is widely recognized that extension and education services have had a limited impact on the
status of pastoralist societies. Often provided by governments, these services have failed to
achieve their goals. Education programmes have been at odds with and in opposition to nomadic
culture at every level, from their principles and goals to their approach to evaluation (Krätli,
2001). Extension services have been undermined by communication gaps between extensionists
and pastoralists (Butcher, 1994).
From the context of Ethiopia pastoral societies constitute 10-12 % of the total population
inhabiting the peripheral dry, arid and semi-arid regions of the country including the central
highland of Ethiopia, 500,000 km2 almost half of the country’s areas occupied by these groups.
In most areas rain fall is <700 mm, which is too scanty to cultivate. The UN development
programmes identify the geographical locations of pastoral societies into five geographical
boundaries.

1. North Eastern pastoralists: - Cover 75, 000 Km2 surface areas, located in the northern part
of the rift Valley. - The annual rain fall <700 mm & it is bimodal type. - The pastoral groups in
this area are: Afar, Issa, Karrayu & Ittu pastoralists

2. South Eastern region: -


The total surface area of 293, 000 km2 – the largest of all.
- It covers the Ogaden region to Ethio-Somali border.
- ARF 100 – 700 mm. i.e., the most arid region in the country
- Bimodal rainfall type. - Constitute Somali pastoralists
3. Southern pastoral region:
- Commonly known as the Borana Oromo (Southern rangeland).
- Total land area 95, 000 Km2 - Better amount of rain fall than the rest and it is bimodal type.
- The temperature is still high - The quality and quantity of natural resource is relatively better
i.e., it has better grazing land.
- Inhabited mainly by Borana and Guji pastoralists. However, there are small Pastoral groups
found along the pocket areas of the Borana Oromo (Garri, Dogodi & Gabra).
4. South western pastoralists:
- Total surface area = 63,000 Km2
- Mean ARF 700mm in the North & 200mm in the south.
- Characterized by some form of irrigated agriculture (i.e., flood retreat cultivation in the Omo
plain) & it’s occupied by agro-pastoralists.
- Encompasses diversified ethic groups (i.e., ethno linguistically diversified region)
- Inhabited by Mursi, Bana, Tsamai, Hamer and Arbori pastoralists
- Also endowed in grazing resources.
5. North western pastoralists
- Commonly thought of as Beneshangul Gumuz region
- ARF 1000-1400 mm and it has relatively high rainfall.
1.3. Characteristic Qualities of pastoralism
1. Dependence on Livestock (the back bone of their economy)
This is the first basic characteristic that accounts for pastoralists’ orientation towards livestock.
Livestock is both the backbone and the cultural value of pastoralists. Despite differences in
dependence on livestock all of them perceive themselves as livestock people (have pastoral
mentality).
Baxter, pointed out, pastoralism is both a mode of perception as well as a mode of production.
(I.e., dependence on livestock has economic value, cultural, social and political value). In this
sense the term “pastoralists” has to be extended to people who have been forced by poverty to
depend on non-livestock activities, as well as to wealthy households who have successfully
diversified into trade or agriculture, both groups still holding common beliefs about the
fundamental importance of livestock to their ways of life and self-perceptions.

2. Marginal environment
The second characteristic which has been focus for new range ecology, are their physical
environment which characterized by extreme variability and unreliability of rain fall. Pastoral
areas, even though they may produce crop in good season, due to its marginal nature in pastoral
environments permanent settlement has often had a negative impact on the local environment
and extensive livestock production is often the sole way to overcome the fluctuating forage
resources.

3. Herd diversification This is herding a variety of different stock in different areas by


pastoralists due to the fact that different animals have different niche specializations and
vulnerability to drought and disease.

4. Herd maximization: pastoralists tend to maximize their herds and this herd growth
opportunistic rather than conservative. The rationale behind herd growth among pastoralists are
obvious:
- To use them during critical time (insurance for poor season)
The larger their herds at the beginning of drought more likely survive at the end.
- Consideration of socio-economic and cultural uses (i.e., as compensation, Marriage payment
etc)
5. Seasonal mobility- Due to vulnerability and variability of rain fall nomadism is enforced
among pastoral people even though the degree of nomadism is virtually not the same. Mobility
allows pastoralists to simultaneously exploit more than one environment, thus creating the
possibility for arid regions to support human life. Rather than adapting the environment to suit
the “food production system”. The system is moved to fit the environment.
It is argued that, the movement among pastoralists is not random rather it is highly ordered and
planned movement based on the logical calculation of: when, How, where, how long to move?
6. Communal ownership of grazing resources (communal tenure arrangements)
Again, this characteristic reveal that, because of the scarce and variability of potential grazing
resources pastoralists tend to develop communal ownership in order to best adapt to this
challenge. This actually does not mean that there are no rules over access to the resources.
Access is regulated well by defined social groups like clan network which is responsible for
rational use of resources.

CHAPTER TWO
FALLACIES, MYTHS, ASSUMPTIONS AND GENERALIZATIONS ABOUT
PASTORALISM
Pastoralist’s way of life, economic and socio-political system have historically been
misrepresented and misunderstood by nation states. They have also been further disadvantaged in
their relation with policy makers; due primarily to the perceptions and analysis of pastoralism
has traditionally been affected by many myths, faulty assumptions and half-truths. These myths
are including the following:
• Nomadic pastoralism is an archaic form of production, whose time has passed.
• Nomadic pastoralism is practiced by people who were not modern and who had been left
behind
• The pastoralist mobility taken as inherently back ward, unnecessary, chaotic and
disruptive.
• Most rangelands are degraded as a result of pastoral over-grazing because they do not
care of the land thus, they increase their herds beyond caring capacity of the land (the so
called ‘tragedy of the commons’)
• Pastoralists do not sell their animals instead they prefer to hoard them.
• They contribute little to national economy and pastoralism has very low productivity.
• A sedentary cattle rising is more productive than mobile system and pastoral mobile
systems are archaic and hence modern scientific methods need to be introduced.
• Pastoralist permanent settlement assumed to benefit them from service to be offered.
However, empirical evidence does not back up these assumptions and misconceptions;
yet, they are common in the minds of policy-makers and often place pastoralists at
disadvantaged position in the policy processes.
2.1. Pastoralism and the environment
Here, emphasis has been laid on to discuss some critical issues regarding how pastoralists
blamed for the way they exploit their natural recourses in line with justification given by
empirical anthropological researches. To this context, there are two contradicting views on
natural resource management capabilities of pastoralist. The first one is pastoralist have been
criticized for destroying the environment by accumulating excessive numbers of animals and
overexploiting the pastures. According to this view, pastoralists damage the environment due to
their irrational fondness for large numbers of animals.
Paradoxically, the second view postulates that, pastoralism should be seen as a dynamic
adaptation to difficult environment, providing pastoralists with high standards of living on the
basis of marginal resources. According to this perspective, environmental damage is not due to
any internal process in pastoral society but caused by external factors (restriction on movement,
bans on bush burning). The stands actually taken between “romantics” (often anthropologists)
and “pessimists” (ecologists, range managers and economists). In line with the above arguments,
the dominant theory on which government pastoral policy and development workers idea rested
on for long is, the Garrett Hardin’s classical theory of “Tragedy of the commons”. The
mounting criticism for the pastoral environmental management pattern came from this Hardin’s
theory for that matter. The theory presented that; pastoralism is inherently destructive of its
environment because livestock are held individually but grazing is held communally. Hence,
pastoralists have no care to look after the environment because any loss in range productivity is
felt by community as whole rather than individual pastoralist. In other words, if land is
communally owned and livestock privately owned, every individual maximize his/her herds at
the cost of communal property regardless of considering possible consequences (i.e., land
degradation). And this idea of Hardin shared by many economists and range managers and they
came up with the proposition that that are only two ways to halt such overexploitation: 1)
Converting the commons into private property that owner will use it wisely. 2) Up holding it to
the state (i.e., putting it under state regulations) that will ensure conservation.

Critics and the empirical reality


The common criticisms of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ which is the result of empirical
anthropological researches are:
i) The normal communal land tenure arrangement in pastoral societies do not involve open
access to the resources, rather access is frequently reserved for members of particular social
groups. Hence, in order to talk about common property, we have to distinguish between, open
access and controlled common property.

ii) Many others who argue for the idea of ‘Tragedy of the commons’ have not been careful about
different system of property rights and assume only three systems: private, state and commons.
But the actual type of property rights/access at least must involve the following patterns:

Private ownership Collective ownership


Individual Corporate State communal Open access

Here the Hardin’s view anything other than individual or state ownership is open-access is
proved false. It is argued this theory obtain its analytical foundation from the “prisoners
dilemma” and “Game theory”. This is case in which the prisoners try to escape from the prison,
provide information to many that complicate situation.
2.2. Pastoralism and the economy
This is the second area in which pastoralists blamed regardless of their indigenous system.
Economically, pastoralists criticized as if they are irrational. In other words, pastoralists keep
their livestock for cultural as well as economic reasons. Therefore, they do not respond to the
price incentives when selling their livestock and try to hang on to their livestock until they are
forced by drought. The most influential theory in this view is the classical theory of Herskovit’s,
“the East African cattle complex”. According to this theory, pastoralists tend to maximize
their herds on communal grazing land not for economic advantage but for prestige and status. On
top of this, pastoralists considered as very much fond of their livestock by accumulating and
retaining it. The emotional and ceremonial value is so important that livestock cannot be sold to
meet their needs (pastoralists). In this respect, the theory emphasized the mass psychology of
pastoralists. This theory has two seemingly important implications:
1) Pastoralists are in responsive to “market prices”. They don’t want to sell their animal even
though the break of market is in favor of them.
2) The increment of livestock beyond the carrying capacity of the resource (land) will have an
adverse effect in the long run on the system.
What does an empirical anthropological study indicate?
The empirical evidence does not support the idea contemplated by the Herskovit’s theory. Here
some critics of theory: it didn’t take into account:
• The rationality of pastoralist in an environment characterized by ecological and
economic fragility and instability.
• The extensive implications of pastoralists in market transaction
• The relevance of non-market transaction iv. The ineffectual market system
• The sale of animal products and small herds
• the rationality of pastoralist in an environment characterized by ecological and
economic fragility and instability. In the marginal environment where resource is
erratic, unreliable and scarce, herd maximization is rational response to avert risk
associated with small number of herds. In addition to this, herd maximization would
be considered insurance against loss by veterinary disease. Again economically (herd
maximization) is only form of wealth accumulation open for pastoralist societies.
II) The extensive implications of pastoralists in the market transactions. the idea that pastoralists
are resistant to market price is counter criticized in light of empirical studies that pastoralists are
not ignorant of market, they are incorporated either with the regional or national market. For
instance, through purchasing of consumer goods (grain, clothes… etc.). Another point neglected
by theory is the sale of small stocks (sheep, goats) by emphasizing only on large animals. The
sale of dairy products also understated (milk and milk products) in the market transaction
analysis.
iii). the relevance of non-market transactions.
The possession of livestock constitutes the central element in the social, political, cultural and
ritual life of the society. Even though livestock is an economic means of subsistence, this is not
its mere value. To the considerable degree pastoralists have emotional and ideological attachment
to their livestock, but this should not be accounted for their “irrationality”. In addition to this,
they distributed (transfer) animals through gift, marriage payment, religious ceremonies, Mutual
assistance, loan, money social security network etc. but these all did not valued among the
advocate of the above theory.
iv). the ineffectual market system
To this point in effectual market system refers to the situation in which pastoralists become
vulnerable to price fluctuation in a volatile market system. Most of the time market forces are in
favor of grain so that pastoralists pay more livestock.

The theory of pastoral conservatism


This theory takes synthesis of the above theories and it has three main interests:
1. Pastoralists lack the interest in exchanging cattle for cash which prevent them from the
benefit of cash economy
2. Pastoralists retain cattle for social value than economic needs.
3. The lack of institutional means that limit the increase of stock on communal resource.
2.3. Pastoralism and animal Husbandry Techniques
This is again the areas in which pastoralist suffer criticism as if their production system is
stagnant, out dated and worthless production system. There is groundless bias in the mind of
policy makers, economist, ecologists and animal specialists. International development agencies
and African governments devoted much of their energies to suppressing pastoral livestock and
land management techniques based on the assumption that these techniques are unproductive and
ecologically destructive. Nevertheless, empirical studies do not back up these assumptions. And
most researches and analysis by anthropologists and others who are the advocate of the pastoral
society have postulated;
• The efficiency of indigenous pastoral use of natural resources for food production
• The validity and richness of pastoral indigenous know ledge (time tested and time proved
system)
Livestock movement (mobility) as an animal husbandry technique assumed by policy makers as
manifestation of instability, fond of moving, blindly following the tail of animals. For empirical
studies, mobility is optioning less strategy for systematic and sound use of scarce and varied
resources. The indigenous system of land use is appropriate to cope with rainfall variability.
Response to environmental challenge is possible through opportunistic movement across
geographically distributed grazing units. Understanding pastoral techniques needs understanding
of ecosystem of pastoral societies (i.e., answering the question what is sound techniques?
indigenous or new range management techniques.

There are two theoretical debates that during the previous decades around range management
system in pastoral areas. These are equilibrium and non-equilibrium theories. Equilibrium theory
developed in the mainstream range management science, while nonequilibrium theory is by
those argues for the effectiveness of indigenous range management knowledge system.

According to equilibrium model, grazing systems in many parts of Africa are in equilibrium
system that livestock and forage productivity can control each other. In other words, livestock
mortality during drought is derived by density-dependent factors (malnutrition caused by low
calving rate). The theory postulate that increased forage productivity during wet season results in
livestock density while decline in forage productivity results in livestock loss and reduced
density (i.e., there is direct relationship between them). The theory again presented those changes
in rangelands are predictable, so that the right management can be used to control livestock
density in response to change in forage productivity. The failure results in overstocking followed
by degradation because overstocking reduces the productivity of forage resources. Paradoxically,
non-equilibrium theory maintains the idea that grazing systems in arid and semi-arid range
lands are in dis-equilibrium system that vegetation and livestock cannot control each other.
Livestock population is controlled by density-independent factors such as drought, tribal raids
and animal disease which are episodic and hardly predictable with any certainty. Rainfall is
highly unreliable so that making prediction to match livestock density with forage productivity is
impossible. Therefore, livestock population seldom overshoots the carrying capacity of
rangeland since changes are unpredictable. The theory reasoned that in an ecosystem controlled
by stochastic weather events, reduced range productivity creates stress in animal number before
intensity of drought. It is during this time herders take the opportunistic coping strategies to
reduce livestock loss.

The empirical researches are taking the stand of non-equilibrium model that states; variability of
climatic condition, unpredictable productivity, prediction of carry capacity is not useful in an
environment uncertainties dominant future event and the suitability of pastoral land use system.
There is need to understand pastoral areas that are characterized by high level of unpredictable
variability that therefore need to tackled head-on and encouraging the pastoral techniques, rather
attempting to provide blue print solution based simple on concepts such as ‘carrying capacity.’

2.4. Pastoralism and cultural change

The other widely held bias and misunderstanding of pastoralist society is around cultural
adaptation and change. It is assumed that pastoralists are conservative in their very nature and
grimly resistant to all propositions of change /development. In other words, the pastoralists’
value system, behavior and their social organizations are generalized as obstacle for any means
of change/development efforts. Their entire material as well as cultural aspects put into questions
in relation with the compromise of economic development. In the sharp contrast to the above
assumptions, the anthropological inquiries demonstrate:

• The needs to understand pastoral institutions and appropriate balance between state
institutions and pastoral ones.

• The importance of understanding attitudes and behaviors of individuals in making policy


relevant to marginalized groups.

• Pastoral communities are innovative and can adapt new techniques from others. If they
found it effective and if circumstances allow them, they are ready for positive change.

2.5. Pastoralism and conservation

Pastoralists again accused again conservation. The issue of conservation is taken as incompatible
with pastoral production system. For instance, right from the colonial period the conservation
schemes and parks have been appropriated into pastoral areas. Game reserves, national park and
sanctuaries devised into the potential grazing areas which bring with it the alienation of pastoral
communities. All these conservation schemes were intended to introduce new strategies to
efficiently use and conserve rangelands as well as wild life which previously persecuted as a
result of pastoralist movement that is destructive to environment.

• There are two justifications for this assumption:

I. pastoralism and conservation are incompatible.

• II. Pastoralism is ecologically unsound and has destructive effects on environment and
wild life. The empirical research present that Pastoralists do not exploit wild life except
their little reliance during the period of crisis. It is in fact, misleading to believe that,
because wild animals and domestic animal co-existed for many centuries in harmony.
CHAPTER THREE -THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PASTORAL CHANGE

Under this chapter emphasis is on the notions of pastoralist marginalization in their relationship
with nation state. In other words, locating pastoralists within the political economic context and
analyzing their relation with state and how this operate and contribute for pastoralist’s
marginalization and impoverishment.

To this context, marginalization often thought of as the process by which pastoralists deprived of
their ability to control their own life. For instance, where they live and drive their income, what
stock type they produce, how hard and when they work. This process is partly the outcome of
historical process of political subjugation and partly due to the incorporation of pastoral societies
into a state dominated by an outlook biased in favor of other modes of livelihood. The
pastoralists have to an increasing extent lost influence over policies and events that in fact are
central to their livelihood.

The outcome of these processes of marginalization will have grave implications for the
communal resource management regimes that sustained pastoralists for long. Consequently,
resource depletion and destruction are linked to failing management regimes, and in turn
resource problems resulted in food security issues. Marginalization can take different forms:
political, ecological and economic and others. It is argued that the set of circumstances that
commonly experienced by the pastoralists that traditionally marginalized in their relationships
with public authorities should be considered.

These include: - geographical distance from government

- Geographical distance from other population groups

- Lack of transport infrastructure

- Mobile life style

- Cultural differences

- Linguistic differences
- Harsh train and climate which make service delivery difficult

- Unwillingness of professionals to work in these areas.

3.1. Political marginalization

In the first place, political marginalization refers to process by which certain categories within
the political framework it class, ethnic groups or occupational strata are excluded from the
making of decision about their own affairs and see their scope of autonomous action increasingly
circumscribed by externally imposed restrictions.

Many pastoral societies were only incorporated into the state’s polity in the last one hundred
years or so. The relationship between pastoralists and their state center has therefore often been
ambivalent at best, and at worst openly hostile. The general attitude of policy makers towards the
pastoral areas has ambivalent; they have been regarded as troublesome border areas inhabited by
“primitive nomadic tribes” who can contribute little to national economy. Due to this endured
misrepresentation of pastoralist in the mind of policy makers and governments, pastoralists are
not the respecters of their state borders. This can be best illustrated from the case of Ethiopia in
which the Ogaden and Southern Ethiopia have seen recurrent revolts against state authorities in
the 1960’s and 1970’s. And the define characteristic of the relationship has been extractive and
authoritarian.

Politically, pastoralists are subjects of broader pressure from the national government and in the
many African countries they are “minority” in a weak political participation. Their involvement
and representation in the political field is very minimum or no involvement at all.

In light of the above perspectives, it is not surprising that the general attitude of pastoralists to
the center is one of suspicion and hostility. Government viewed as alien and unrepresentative of
their interests and concerns. Consequently, the mutual suspicion and lack of understanding
reinforced between them.

Across the world, in many countries there has been history of tension between nomadic people
who look forward for autonomy and mobility, and government and non-governmental agencies
that run for dominance and security. Hence, pastoralists have been marginalized and
discriminated and have actively persecuted in many countries.

The concept of “participation’’, has been essential to development thinkers, however it neglect
the idea of political participation which stress on legitimate representation, system of public
accountability, party formation, political mobilization, lobbying and so on. There are a number of
circumstances that pave the ways for pastoralist political marginalization. These include:
- Lack of well-developed institutions and experiences in the participation of regional and
national development policy formation.

- The pastoralists’ mobile lifestyle also stimulated the process of marginalization.

- Lack of well-established clear-cut boundary sated by the government.

- In appropriate relationship between state institutions and pastoral institutions (i.e., the
ambivalent relationship)

In spite of the above fact, the global pressure of democratization today is raising consciousness
with regard to participation in various areas of interest for participation such as social equity,
respect for human rights and better economic management. And the trend that has been
previously between state and pastoralists had been changing due to increasing pressure from pro-
pastoralists and others. This is the matter that we will address more in the last chapter of this
course.

3.2 Ecological Marginalization

Ecological marginalization refers to as the process in which pastoralists are forced to retreat from
original settlement and pushed towards peripheries where they produce less and less. This
process was mainly derived by the encroachment of various programs to the original pastoral
grazing land. For example, state sponsored agriculture, conservation schemes, commercial
ranching and so on, which spontaneously leads to the collapse of resources in the pastoral
ecology.

In other words, ecological marginalization refers to environmental deterioration and resource


degradation in the pastoral areas which in turn explicitly linked with changing tenure
arrangements in the pastoral areas. In Ethiopia for example, national tenure legislation arising
from conditions within arable agriculture in the highlands, is now increasingly relevant also in
the lowlands which inhabited by pastoral societies. Changes in national tenure arrangements also
distribute local uses in new ways. A disturbing trend is the on-going exclusion of pastoralists
from critically important resource. This happens partly through internal stratification, as part of
pastoral societies attempts to reserve previously common resource for their own use at the
expense of less fortunate members of the society, and partly due to external encroachment from
various combination of state and commercial interests.

Resource poverty is thus becoming a major aspect of poverty in pastoral society. In the pastoral
areas, communities have developed coping strategies over centuries to optimize production in
harsh environment. Development and relief efforts by the governments and NGOs have not
strengthened the capacity of pastoral peoples to survive. On contrary, their institutions which are
the strength of the indigenous management systems have been weakened. Dependence is created
and the system of self-help been disabled. The justification for land alienation is often that the
land will be put to a better use and that the community will be benefiting from the development
that takes away part of their grazing land. For example, water development on private ranches,
building of veterinary clinics and employment opportunities for the displaced would be
compared with the opportunities for gone for losing the land. This process of pastoralist’s
alienation can be illustrated by the diagram shown below:

Diagram 3.1 ecological marginalization and its consequences on pastoralist’s prospect

Thus, undermining the pastoralist authority makes their indigenous institutions lose its powers to
regulate resource use. By contrast, if the decisions to allocate resources follow the indigenous
model, then the process of resource privatization will be gradual and adaptive. Sudden resource
alienation creates shocks that might lead to the breakdown of the indigenous institutions.
Moreover, if the action of pastoralists meant to alleviate poverty is incapacitated by
administrative intervention, the breakdown of resource management is therefore not due to the
inability of pastoralists to cope with fast evolving land tenure regimes, rather it is because the
means used to make the adjustment have been lost to them.

3.3 Economic Marginalization


In spite of the potential contributions of pastoralism to the national economy, providing
significant employment and income opportunities that seldom shown in the official statistics, the
pastoralist and their production system has been non-viable through the gradual erosion of access
to land and water, as they are turned over to cultivation. In other words, pastoralists in the many
corners of the world have become among the most marginalized and disadvantaged segment of
the society economically as they are ecologically, socially and politically.

This process of economic marginalization is primarily due to the commercialization of


agriculture in which pastoral land misappropriated and given to private investors. This is because
governments in different countries believe that commercial agricultural schemes will help to
attain the goal of food security of their country. In addition to this, the government policy was
directed to alter the traditional system of production in order to reduce over grazing and
encouraging integration of pastoral economy into the consumer economy. For example, in
Ethiopia during Imperial period, the five-year plan (1968-73) focused on the commercialization
of agriculture in which many investors invited by the government and invest their capital in the
pastoral areas, particularly Awash valley pastoralists like: Afar, Karrayu, Ittu and others given
little or no attention and their indigenous means of subsistence come to crisis consequently.

Surprisingly enough, the performance of agricultural schemes in pastoral areas looks even
grimmer when compared with the magnitude of initial investment in establishing the schemes. It
is arguable that if this investment costs had been diverted to the pastoral sector, the benefit that
could have been derived would have been far greater than from irrigation agriculture. This
condition could vividly show even if pastoral production system found cost effective government
favored agriculture at expense of pastoralism. This again entails the non-viability of pastoralism
in the economic sphere.

3.4 Specific analysis of marginalization of pastoralists: Horn of Africa despite


constraints

1. Government policies

The range of policies pursued by successive post-colonial governments has led to the
marginalization of pastoralists from mainstream national development in most countries in the
Horn. Over the years, there has been a tendency to neglect the needs of pastoralists and even to
envisage the gradual eradication of pastoralism. In addition, there has been a tendency by
governments to focus on the interests of agriculture and urban dwellers, thus marginalizing other
stakeholders. Most states in the Horn have pursued policies based on containment, pacification
and sedenterisation of pastoralists. The pastoral livelihood has always been exposed to the
vagaries of climate and harsh environmental conditions. However, in recent years, pastoralists
have faced a myriad of new problems, including competition for water and pasture in the context
of decreasing access to land; more explicit political and economic marginalization: lack of
appropriate responses to the deteriorating situation; and the proliferation of weapons across the
region.

2. Socio-economic and political marginalization

Government in the Horn is dominated by manipulated of ethnicity, patronage and a political


culture of exclusion. This has continued, in large part, from the period before independence.
Although the governments of the Horn have made some efforts to include pastoralists in the civil
service, cabinet ministries, and the army, they are still not adequately represented in political life.
Pastoralists are not represented according to their numbers in parliament or in high-level civil
service posts, nor do they have education rates in line with the majority of the population. In
many of the semi-arid and arid areas of the Horn, pastoralists have very little formal education.
For Kenya, this is borne out by the 1999 population-housing census. The situation is generally
similar in nomadic areas of Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan and Northern Uganda.

3. Inadequate land tenure policies

The majority of pastoral land resources are held a controlled access system that is communal in
form. ‘Communal’ land tenure relates to that system of tenure in which the tribe or clan or group
has access to land. Tenure is thus a social institution: a relationship between individuals and
groups or tribes consisting of a series of rights and duties with respect to the use of land.

Pastoralists in the horn of Africa have become among the most marginalized and disadvantaged
of minority groups. This is due to their wide dispersal, climatic and ecological conditions, state
neglect, development plans that have excluded them, seizure of their land, land tenure laws,
national borders that restrict their freedom of movement, internal strife and national conflicts.
The corollary has been the neglect of gender issues in the pastoralist communities, where custom
and religious teachings defining women’s, role have been overtaken by rapid modern
development.

Consequently, the bulk of the land in the Horn of Africa, the pastoralist habitat, lies in the semi-
arid and arid Zone, home to the largest aggregation of traditional livestock producers in the
world, estimated at 15 million people. While there is some non-pastoralist production, the
pastoralist contribution is more important economically, providing significant employment and
income opportunities seldom shown in official statistics.

Traditional livestock production is becoming non-viable through the gradual erosion of access to
land and water, as they are turned over to cultivation. This loss has been facilitated by the
unwillingness of states to acknowledge and respect pastoralists’ rights to land. Loss of mobility
of people and animals has disrupted the process of adjustment that maintains the balance
between people, land and livestock. State borders dividing ethnic groups, separating people from
their kin, traditional leaders, places of worship, markets, pasture and watering places, have
adversely affected pastoralist society. Colonial and postcolonial arrangements violated the social
and political integrity of pastoralist society, and material hardship intensified competition for
resources, further undermining social cohesion and traditional authority. The result was conflict
both within the pastoralist society and with state authority.

Pastoralists thus became known as ‘unruly’ and ‘rebellious. State policy throughout the region
aims to develop livestock production, not to improve the life of pastoralists. It is based on the
desire to turn their land over to commercial cultivation through irrigation, or to meat production
through ranching schemes, leaving pastoralists, whose terrain has remained state domain and can
be alienated at whim, as the only sector without any right of land tenure. All attempts to secure
ownership rights for the pastoralists have failed.

4. Good governance and Pastoralism

The political marginalization of pastoralist communities was preceded by forcible eviction from
their land and/or restriction of their movements. Currently, the trend towards globalization of the
market, with pastoral lands increasingly being commercialized and/or turned into national parks,
has resulted in environmental and ecological disaster. Poverty has increased, with women in
particular being severely affected. Pastoralists are faced with a double marginalization- as one of
the dominated Ethnic groups and pastoralists. The marginalization they face as pastoralists is
more severe than the oppression faced by another dominated ethnic group. Traditionally, in
pastoralist society, land ‘belongs’ to a group or family that is linked by descent or cultural
affiliation. Land is not owned but is held in trust for future generations. Because of the political
marginalization of pastoralists, unfavorable land tenure reforms and the alienation of pastoralists
from their lands, traditional mechanisms and customary methods of negotiation, arbitration and
adjudication over land issues are breaking down. Pastoralists do not respect the state, which is
seen as repressive rather than democratic, coercive rather than persuasive, as tax collector and
embezzler rather than assisting development, nor do they respect state boundaries.
However, the issue of land is equally pivotal to pastoralists for whom pastoralist land tenure and
land use is the most sustainable. African states do not consider pastoralism a viable way of life.
Pastoralists are not considered when it comes to formulating macroeconomic policies, or
discussing state-society relationships, questions of democracy and the role of state in
development-i.e., good governance. The role of civil society (i.e., representative institutions
independent of the state) in good governance has been neglected.

The African states’ neglect of the indispensable role of civil society in political, social and
economic development, as well as of gender issues, has cost them dear in terms of the resulting
poverty and conflict. The state must assume the role of regulator rather than dictator, and
recognize the rightful role of civil society.

In good governance, the relationship between state and society is dynamic, involving the state in
encouraging civil and community institutions to cooperate with state organs in development
undertakings. Popular participation does not just mean taking part in elections, but includes
social organization within civil society independent of the state, recognizing the separate role of
civil society in development and the political process, and encouraging a rapport between state
and civil society through transparency and dialogue.
CHAPTER FOUR

THE ROLE OF ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN PASTORAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

4.1. Anthropologists and Development planners

The relationship between anthropologists and development planners and administrators has
frequently been characterized by mutual incomprehension as well as a certain degree of tension.
Today, many anthropologists, for that matter J. Helland argued that if anthropologists’
involvement in development planning and implementation is ought to be accepted, then their role
needs to be clarified and their relationship with those directly responsible for development work
needs to be improved.

Here it is important to reveal what actually the development workers and anthropologists’
problem is. Many scholars argue that the development workers problem is a practical task i.e.,
how to use the means available in order to bring about a certain state of affairs. For example, this
task is obviously technical, such as developing an effective vaccine, eradicating tsetse,
developing higher-yielding crop varieties, exploiting grazing recourses etc. and these solutions to
technical problems as contended by anthropologists relatively unequivocal i.e. the yardstick for
measuring first-order consequences of technical performance are quite clear and it have wide
spread ramifications i.e. second-order consequences affecting human affairs as well as process in
nature in unanticipated ways. For example, the construction of deep wells reliable water
supplies spatial concentration of livestock overgrazing
desertification.

Hence, the applied Anthropologists task is to deal with this second-order consequences in a social system.
In other words, the problem of anthropologists is research task i.e., how to discover and document the
features of the social system which are relevant in order to anticipate social ramifications with higher
degree of certainty and probability.
Due to the different task, they perform there are some difficulties in the relationship between
development workers and anthropologists. Since development workers emphasis is finding
technical solution to specific problems, most of the time they are not concerned about the
possible scenario which social scientists especially anthropologists concerned much about.

Previously, the development workers dealing with specific technical problems frequently sees
anthropologists’ consideration of wider ramification as another obstacle to development.
However, in recent years, there has been growing concern about such unintended consequences
which leads to change in perspectives on development. In other words, this has widened the
scope for cooperation between development planners and anthropologists and provides
development workers understand that social system and processes are very complex phenomena.

4.2. Pastoral Planners Needs for Anthropological Data (information)

There is an increasing demand for anthropological data as a basis for planning development
programs for pastoral areas and this demand arises from:

1. A genuine recognition by the planners themselves that they need this information and that
failure of many programs in the past relies on purely technical factors with insufficient for the
human element. 2. As self-defensive response by planners to complaints by academic
anthropologists who have been concerned with pastoral societies and who are indignant because
previous development programs have appeared to ignore their special knowledge of these
societies.

3. A large part of demand comes as a result of pressure from international agencies who are
expected to finance development programs and who feel that those programs present particular
problems which anthropological data can elucidate.

What sort of Anthropological data in fact demanded?

-Here it’s important to define what anthropological data is. Is information including both
descriptive facts and conceptual models about pastoral societies, in contrast to information about
their physical environment (Soils, climate, vegetation, water) or about physiology of their
livestock.

- Together with other information, a planner needs anthropological information on which to base
forecasts about the future as well as description and analyses of the past and present.

The anthropological data which desperately demand for planners are:

• Information about the way which pastoral people use their energy and time
• About their demography

• About the way in which they manage their livestock and physical environment (including
their pattern of movement)

• About property right in land, water and livestock

• About the distributions of income, wealth and power

• Relationship of pastoral people with each other and with outsiders Decision making
process and the way in which decisions are made

• Pattern of production

• Interaction between all these factors

N.B. Development workers in pastoral societies interested much to the factors listed above as
a sort of anthropological data rather than details of religious observances, ceremonies etc
although these could also be defined as anthropological data.

4.2.1. Anthropological Data as a General Picture of Pastoral Life

In improving the planning of pastoral projects, anthropological data can perform two different
functions: The first of these is to provide a general and all-inclusive picture of the nature of
pastoral life, the ecological constraints under which pastoralist operate, the way in which they
adopt to these constrains and the functions performed by their institutions. In this view, the
anthropologists for most concern is constructing a conceptual model or framework of pastoral
life which reveal how and why different physical and social elements are related. This in turn
helps enhance the compatibility of the development programs being planned with the pastoral
information feedback provided by anthropologists.

Hence, it is argued that, it is helpful; of course, if general picture or model of the particular
society for which development program is currently being planned exist for all pastoral societies
within a nation’s boundaries. This will again in turn restrain planners from intruding hastily and
enable them to see what they will have to replace if, in the course of development they destroy
what was there before.

Here it is important to note that painting the overall picture of particular society for which
development projects is being devised have one obvious problem- the period of time required to
obtain the picture may be at variance with the time-scale and for investment planning and
decision making.
4.2.2. Anthropological Data as Answers to Specific Questions

The second general function of anthropological data is to provide answers to specific questions
arising during the course of development planning. To illustrate this function, the note relies on
experiences in planning pastoral development in Ethiopia in the early 1970’s. The case was
presented by multi-disciplinary planning team in the Ethiopian Government’s Livestock and
Meat Board responsible for planning, identifying and implementing livestock projects to be
funded by World Bank. Such projects are rather special form of livestock program and note one
that everyone believes to be appropriate or valuable. The planning decision which was made in
this case was not different from other livestock planning in other countries.

In five out of the six projects which were prepared, providing anthropological data formed an
integral and early part of the planning process. It was found that far more anthropological
information was collected than could be used in the course of planning which perform only two
roles rather than different roles.

1) Designing the overall content and precise shape of the package which was put together.

2) To enable a pre investment evaluation and justification in terms of decision-making criteria


(i.e. social cost benefit analysis) of the package formulated.

Nevertheless, the project failed to use some of anthropological data directly in either of roles
which results in failure in improving the planning.

In other words, it is only part of anthropological information needed to design livestock


development projects in Ethiopia was actually made available to project planners. Thus, failure
arose because the planners did not realize early enough in the planning process what the critical
issue going to be.

In line with above perspectives, planners in Ethiopia asked relevant questions but failed to get
satisfactory answers. This was probably due to the studies that have been carried out by
inadequately qualified people.

Obviously, in pastoral areas, anthropologists have generally carried out longer and detailed field
studies than other scientists and as consequences anthropologists offer, and planners expect from
them, information and advice on a very wide range of subjects.

CHAPTER FIVE
PASTORALISM AND DEVELOPMENT POLICY ORIENTATIONS IN ETHIOPIA

5.1 The Pastoral Areas in National Perspectives

Calculated across 39 countries of tropical Africa, Ethiopia has 17% of the ruminant Tropical
Livestock Units (TLUs, where 1 TLU = 250 kg live weight (Jahnke, 1982)) and about 60% of
the equines (Jahnke, 1982: pp 13-14). Ethiopia thus has the largest national totals of these
animals in tropical Africa. This is related to Ethiopia's large area (1224000 km2), high ecological
diversity, large human population and historical and cultural factors.

Ethiopia can be divided into highlands (39%) and lowlands (61%) using 1500-m elevation as a
crude threshold. While the highlands typically have higher annual rainfall than the lowlands, this
is not always the case. The highlands are characterized by relatively low mean temperatures
during growing periods. The highlands have climates that vary from semi-arid to humid (i.e.,
sufficient moisture for 90 to over 270 growing days per year) and contain nearly all of the
important areas for cereal cultivation and mixed crop-livestock enterprise. The lowlands, in
contrast, are dominated by arid to semiarid climates (i.e., up to 180 growing days and 700 mm of
precipitation per year). The lowlands are home to a diverse array of pastoral people who depend
to a high degree on livestock for their sustenance. These livestock, in turn, depend nearly
exclusively on native vegetation for forage, and net primary production is highly variable over
time and space. The lowland regions that support wildlife and extensive livestock operations on
native vegetation can also be referred to as rangelands.

The uncertainties of rainfall and primary production in the rangelands have promoted animal-
based life-styles that enable people to be mobile and opportunistic. Pastoralists typically rely on
milk for food and also use animals to store and generate wealth. Animals are consequently
important in social value systems. Pastoral social systems also commonly emphasis decentralized
leadership that promotes flexibility in resource use. Ethiopia's lowlanders are derived from 29
Nilotic and Cushitic ethnic groups. It has been estimated that 93% of these people are pastoralists
or agro pastoralists, with the remainder being hunter-gatherers or pure cultivators.

It was recently reported (FLDP, nd: p 22) that Ethiopia had about 29 million cattle, 24 million
sheep and 18 million goats in 1987-88. Jahnke (1982: p 14) estimated 6.8 million equines from
FAO data for Ethiopia in 1979. Distribution of animals differs sharply with elevation. The
highlands have 80% of the cattle and 75% of the sheep but only 27% of the goats (FLDP, nd: p
22). Assuming two-thirds of the equines occur in the highlands (with a TLU equivalent of 0.6
each), this translates into a total of 44 TLUs/km2 in the highlands with 76% cattle, 14% equines,
8% sheep, and 2% goats. For the lowlands about one million camels need to be figured in
(Jahnke, 1982: p 13), which brings the lowland total to 11 TLUs/km2 with 49% came, 16%
goats, 16% equines, 12% camels and 7% sheep. Thus, despite being over 50% larger in area than
the highlands, the lowlands have only about 40% as many TLUs at one-quarter the density.
Lowland livestock, however, are more diverse in terms of species composition.

The subsistence character of the livestock contribution to rural economies of Ethiopia is


illustrated by ratios of animals to people. Considering that the human population is currently 42
million, with 12% in the lowlands and 95% in rural areas (EMA, 1988), the rural highlands
support some 72 people/km2 on average, with 1.6 people/TLU. In contrast, the lowlands support
about six people/km2 with 1.8 TLU/person. Other estimates have ranged from 1 TLU/person in
the highlands to 5 TLU/person in the lowlands (FLDP, nd: p 22). These ratios differ markedly
from those of developed commercial systems. For example, successful commercial beef
operations in Kenya may require a herd size of 70 head/person employed. Even pastoral systems
may require at least 5 TLU/person for subsistence, which challenges the commonly held view
that the lowlands have a large, marketable surplus of animals.

Despite the low level of commercialization, livestock production in Ethiopia overall contributed
about 33% of the gross value of annual agricultural output and 15% of gross domestic product
during the mid-1980s. The per capita consumption of animal protein is relatively high for Africa
and averages up to 13 kg/person annually, with 51% consisting of beef (IBRD, 1987). Improved
livestock marketing is viewed as an important national development strategy to increase both
rural incomes and foreign exchange. A rising domestic demand is expected to compete more in
the future with demand for live animal exports (FLDP, nd: pp 1, 10).

During the mid-1980s coffee contributed about 60% of gross annual export revenue for Ethiopia,
followed by hides and skins (12%). Revenue from live animals was far behind at 1%. The recent
volatility in coffee markets has probably increased the relative importance of livestock products
in Ethiopia's exports, but room for improvement exists in absolute terms. It is anticipated, for
example, that expansion of live animal and carcass exports to Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates now offers one of the best opportunities for increased trade; the major
competitor in this market has traditionally been Somalia. Australia has also recently become a
competitor

Although the lowlands have fewer animals than the highlands, the lowlands still play an
important role in the national livestock economy. Overall, the Ethiopian highlands are considered
as livestock-deficit areas with the lowlands as the major source of supply. Twenty per cent of the
highland draught came are thought to come from the lowlands. Lowland breeds of cattle (e.g.,
unimproved Boran; Plate 1.1) and sheep (e.g., Somali black headed) are often regarded as
superior to indigenous highland breeds in terms of size, durability, productivity and/or consumer
preferences in the Middle East.

As a consequence, lowland stock may comprise over 90% of export animals. Boran cattle have
also played an important role in cross-breeding programs with Friesians to provide dairy came
for smallholders in the Rift Valley and highlands. Finally, lowland animals contribute to a very
large flow of income from illegal exports, since all of Ethiopia's international borders occur in
lowland areas. This trade may involve on the order of 150000 cattle and 300000 small ruminants
per annum, and is encouraged by external prices averaging up to 150% higher than those within
Ethiopia in recent years.

Livestock in the lowlands provide subsistence employment and investment opportunities for
around five million people and a source of meat, milk and fiber for residents of some two dozen
major towns and cities within and adjacent to lowland areas. It has been estimated that the
human population in the lowlands will grow at an average of 2.1 % per year with a doubling time
of 26 years. Although this is lower than the 3 to 4% growth rates of the highlands, it will still
produce marked pressure on the less-productive resource base. As will be discussed, economic
interaction between the highlands and lowlands will probably have to be intensified in response
to population pressure.

5.2 History and Evolution of Pastoral Development Policies

The history of pastoral development intervention & policies marked by history of failure that is it
brought little change in the life of the people. And it is argued that this failure was attributed to
various reasons. Firstly, right from its outset, the policy formation and interventions were relied
on faulty assumptions and generalizations. Secondly, since the feudal time policy makers and
development workers focused on the highlanders and they were from highland background who
had little knowledge about pastoral livelihood.

Thirdly, the primary interest of the successive Ethiopian government was to extract surplus under
the context of national development. It is arguable that past development policies were of
utilitarian and extractive (i.e., intended to increase off take from livestock sub sector in order to
promote national development.

There were three important pastoral development interventions & policies introduced into
pastoral areas previously.

1. Development of larger scale commercial farms

2. Range land and livestock development projects


3. Pastoral extension system

1. Development of LSCF

LSCF was given emphasis and expanded fastly before dawn fall of imperial regime (1974). The
main intention of the then government was mechanization of agriculture will best alleviate the
problem of agricultural backwardness. Most of these schemes were devised mainly into areas of
upper, middle and lower Awash valleys giving little or no attention to pastoral communities
inhabited the territory. It can vividly understandable that these schemes were not performed in
the highland areas of the country that best suited to farming. This happened because of
population density, environmental degradation and low carrying capacity of highland areas.

Consequently, commercial farms were launched mostly in the Awash Valley starting from west
Showa down to the rift valley and finally terminates in Lake Abe in Djibouti covering about
70000 Km2 which accounts 6% present of the total land areas of the country.

During 1962, the Awash valley authority was established to distribute land for investors and to
supervise such schemes dividing the areas into three to ease its administration.

These are i) upper Awash ii) Middle Awash iii) lower Awash

i) Upper Awash – the most important development project was sugar plantation and sugar
processing at Wonji and Methara. The production of small-scale plantation concerned with
production of vegetables and cotton was also emphasized.

ii) Middle Awash – this project was largest in terms of area coverage and it was in this area
which most development schemes were concentrated. The primarily objective was to develop
commercial agriculture taking most areas of pastoral land which results in alienation of the
pastoralists (Afar). The establishment of Awash national park also exerted pressure on the Afar
pastoral community and the compensation for land taken was not balanced.

iii) Lower Awash valley – is the most arid region with annual rainfall of less than 200 mm and
largely inhabited by Afar pastoralists. The dominant commercial scheme in this area was the
British based Tendaho plantation share company (TPSC). Cotton plantation was also dominant.
Important plantation areas are Dubti and Assayta. Generally, before the onset of Ethiopian
revolution, there were 33 agricultural schemes operating in Awash valley.

Development policies During the Dreg regime (1974-91)

-like that of five-year plan of imperial government (1968-74), the military government come up
with 10 years prospective plan (1974/5-1984/5) in which large scale commercial farming given
due emphasis to produce industrial raw material. During this time middle and lower Awash
valley were the area in which the agricultural schemes concentrated. Large scale private
mechanized farms and those belonged to imperial government was converted into state owned
farm. Cotton production was the main emphasis because of the domestic textile factory.

- This was the period in which pastoral land labeled as state land and exacerbated pastoral
alienation in different areas of the country.

Overview of livestock development projects

Ethiopia has long collaborated with the World Bank, African Development Bank (ADB), African
Development Fund (ADF), International Development Association (IDA) and other lending
institutions in economic development programs. This has included assistance with a series of
livestock development projects that continues today. Lenders have commonly provided over two-
thirds of the operating funds for any given project, with the remainder contributed by the
Ethiopian Government. In most instances projects have been intended to improve economic
linkages between highland and lowland systems.

The First Livestock Development Project (1958-63) was narrowly focused and created the Dairy
Development Agency (DDA) in the highlands. The Second Livestock Development Project
(SLDP) was initiated by the Livestock and Meat Board (LMB) and budgeted at 14.7 million
Ethiopian Birr (EB). The SLDP ran from 1973-81. The SLDP was only loosely affiliated with the
Ministry of Agriculture (MoA). It was directed by the LMB because the project emphasized
development of a marketing and infrastructure network to promote sales and processing of
livestock. This was supposed to initiate commercial links between the lowlands and highlands.
Only half of the original budget was eventually used because of administrative problems and
Ethiopia's conflict with Somalia, which interrupted projects. The SLDP did succeed, however, in
building a number of primary and terminal markets and slaughterhouses and 600 km of roads.

After the SLDP was initiated the LMB funded studies of several pastoral areas that were thought
to offer potential for supplying animals for the newly created infrastructure. The consultancy
firm AGROTEC/CRG/SEDES Associates (see AGROTEC/CRG/SEDES Associates, 1974a-1)
was chosen to study the southern Borana rangelands because this was considered the most
important region. Other consulting firms and experts supplied by the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) conducted surveys in two other rangelands to the east
(LMB, 1974a) and north-east (LMB, 1974b). These studies included surveys of population
demography, vegetation, water resources, pastoral socio-economics and animal husbandry.

The final reports were used to generate proposals to finance a range project called the Third
Livestock Development Project (TLDP), headquartered in Addis Ababa. Budgeted at EB 88
million, the TLDP was initiated in 1975 with the primary objective of developing infrastructure
and natural resources to support livestock production and marketing. The three target regions
totaled 203000 km2. The TLDP has traditionally operated as a semi-autonomous entity outside
of the MoA. The general manager of TLDP has reported directly to the Vice Minister for Animal
and Fisheries Resources Development Main Department (AFRDMD), who in turn has been
charged with overseeing all aspects of livestock development as one of four vice ministers in the
MoA. The TLDP received a couple of extensions to enable full use of the original funds,
allowing it to operate through 1987.

The TLDP continues to function at the time of writing this, however, with the Ethiopian
Government funding much of the core administrative activity. Additional funds have also come
into TLDP from the Fourth Livestock Development Project (FLDP), operational since 1988. The
FLDP is very diverse and has focused on forage development, livestock epidemiology and
livestock marketing in mixed farming systems of the highlands (FLDP, 1987). A small portion of
FLDP funds, however, were allocated to the Pilot Project, which operates with TLDP staff. The
Pilot Project has been based in the southern rangelands since 1988 and has focused on institution
building and development of extension and monitoring capabilities for better outreach to the
Borana pastoral community (Hogg, 1990a).

It was originally intended that the TLDP would gradually be phased out by the mid- 1980s, but
as of 1992 the TLDP remains as the only corps of national range professionals in Ethiopia. It has
subsequently become the management entity for the South-east Rangelands Project (SERP),
initiated in fiscal 1990-91 with funding from ADF. SERP will operate in what have been the
Eastern Hararghe Administrative Region and Ogaden Autonomous Region. It is intended to be a
hybrid of previous range development projects, combining the infrastructural development
emphasis of TLDP with the outreach approaches of the Pilot Project.

When the TLDP is phased out there will be no permanent organization to represent rangeland
interests within the MoA. It is possible that either a new range department would be created
within the MoA, or that range development would fall under another semi-autonomous authority.

The problems of merging rangeland development interests within the farming-oriented MoA lies
in important distinctions between lowland and highland projects in terms of staff skills, staff
management and implementation of development activities A number of other rural development
projects are currently operating in Ethiopia. These include smallholder dairying in the highlands
and highland reclamation. A concise review of these and other projects is provided in FLDP.

History of lowlands development and the TLDP

Interactions among highlanders and lowlanders in Ethiopia historically have been characterized
by a mix of trade and warfare (Luther, 1961; Kaplan et al, 1971; Wilding, 1985a). The
establishment of contemporary trade routes between the highlands and lowlands is commonly
attributed to Emperor Menelik. Following his victory over Italian forces at Adowa in 1896, he
sent his armies to consolidate a grip over the lowlands by 1908. Modern roads followed such
military routes in many cases (Ethiopian Road Transport Authority, unpublished data). Gravel
roads were constructed by Italian companies during 1943-53 for five arteries from Addis Ababa
to the lowlands. During 1960-70 some of these roads were rehabilitated and asphalted by the
Ethiopian Transport Construction Authority. These included roads from Addis Ababa to Negele,
Moyale, Jijiga and Assab.

One of the first attempts at infrastructural development for livestock production in the lowlands
was initiated in 1965 by the Ethiopian Government and USAID. Tilaye Bekele (1987: p 16)
mentions, however, that some stock ponds were built in the southern rangelands by the Ethiopian
Government in the 1950s. The joint Ethiopian-USAID project was referred to as the Pilot
Rangeland Development Project (PRDP) and the Ethiopian side of the project was conducted
through what was then the Range Development Unit in the Livestock Department of the MoA.

The intervention concept focused on development of large ponds to improve access of livestock
to some 1600 km2 of Themeda and Acacia spp savannah within 50 km of the town of Yabelo on
the Borana Plateau, about 570 km south of Addis Ababa. Traditionally Borana pastoralists and
their cattle had relied on ephemeral, rain-fed ponds in wet seasons and deep wells in dry seasons.
Pond development in the PRDP was intended to relieve pressure on wet-season grazing and
improve efficiency of range use overall. About 20 large ponds were constructed using heavy
machinery that removed some 200000 m3 of soil. Some of these ponds became perennial rather
than ephemeral, however, and resulted in a large exodus of people and stock from the central
Borana Plateau that had become degraded over several hundred years of use. Over the next 25
years, pastoralists settled and became permanent residents in several areas that had been opened
up.

The preliminary results of the PRDP were considered encouraging and led the MoA to formulate
a more comprehensive strategy on pastoral development. This, in conjunction with activities of
the LMB led to the selection of the Southern Rangelands Development Unit (SORDU), North-
east Rangeland Development Unit (NERDU) and the Jijiga Rangeland Development Unit
(JIRDU) as the basis of the proposal for the TLDP in 1974. These target areas were considered
superior because of their proximity to highland markets, their generally higher stocking potential
and because they possessed the highest quality animal breeds in the largest numbers. They also
offered good proximity to export markets and meat packing plants. The NERDU area was close
to the port of Assab; the JIRDU area had rail access to Djibouti and the SORDU area was
bisected by a tarmac road conceived as part of a transcontinental highway system. NERDU was
close to the Kombolcha meat packing plant near Dessie; JIRDU was near a plant in Dire Dawa
and SORDU was about 200 km south of the Melge-Wondo plant near Shashamene.

Despite the excellent grazing potential of the lowlands to the west and south-west, these could
not be considered for the TLDP because of remoteness and prevalence of trypanosomiasis
(UNDP/RRC, 1984). The three TLDP sub-projects thus incorporated 27% of the lowlands in
total, home to nearly one million pastoralists herding some three million TLUs in 1974. The
overall purpose of each sub-project was to develop infrastructure (roads, market facilities,
veterinary clinics) and natural resources (water and forage) to stimulate animal production and
off take and to increase incomes and welfare of pastoral producers. The sub-projects are
described below.

JIRDU

Headquartered in Jijiga, this sub-project has been responsible for about 33000 km2 of semi-arid
(60%) and arid (40%) land in the eastern half of Ethiopia (Figure 1.2). In 1974 the human
population was estimated at about 500000, with the majority being seminomadic Somali-
speaking pastoralists. The livestock population was estimated at 600000 cattle (57% of TLU),
1.3 million small ruminants (12%) and 200000 camels (31 %) for a total of over one million
TLU (LMB, 1974a). This represented an average of 32 TLU/km2 in wet seasons and a ratio of
TLU to humans of 2.1:1. Livestock numbers change dramatically depending on season, however.

During the rainy season the population may be almost twice that in the dry season. Rainfall and
forage production tend to decrease to the south and south-east but local forage conditions are
greatly influenced by landscape. Of particular importance are the large valleys that extend west
into the highlands near Harar. These collect soil moisture and offer higher forage production than
the rest of the JIRDU area. These valleys have been traditionally used as dry-season grazing
reserves for livestock which spend the rest of the year on the dry tablelands. The cattle
population is dominated by a short-horned Bos indicus breed regarded as a good dual-purpose
animal well adapted to difficult conditions. It also has a commendable export value to the Middle
East. The cattle are concentrated more to the north in the large valleys, while the small stock and
camels are more abundant to the south and south-east. Except for areas traditionally prioritized
for cattle, access to sub-surface water using traditional means is very difficult. Market access to
Jijiga and Harar is fair, but it is thought that the vast majority of animal off take is illegally sold
to Somalia.

NERDU

Headquartered in Weldia, this sub-project has been responsible for about 75000 km2 of arid
(85%) and semi-arid (15%) land in north-central Ethiopia (Figure 1.2). In 1974 the human
population was estimated at 225000, the majority of whom were nomadic Afar pastoralists. The
livestock population was estimated at 734000 cattle (62% of TLU), 1.2 million small ruminants
(10%) and 206000 camels (28%) for a total of over 1.18 million TLU (LMB, 1974b). This was
equivalent to 16 TLU/km2 and a ratio of TLU to humans of 5.3:1.

Severe drought in 1973-74 probably had reduced livestock numbers substantially compared to
previous years. The less-predictable nature of rainfall and forage production mitigate against
reliable animal production and off take in NERDU, despite good access to large markets in the
region (UNDP/RRC, 1984). Herbaceous forage production and dominance of cattle typically
increase with greater proximity to the highland escarpment. Sites in the Teru Depression and
basins of the Awash and Mille rivers have traditionally been dry-season retreats for livestock.
The main development objectives for NERDU were similar to those for the other sub-projects
except for a great emphasis on rehabilitation of drought-stricken pastoralists. This rehabilitation
was intended to include irrigation schemes as an alternative life-style for those who had lost
access to dry-season grazing because of irrigated cultivation of cash crops along the Awash
River.

SORDU

Headquartered in Yabelo, this sub-project has been responsible for about 95000 km2 of semi-arid
(70%) and arid (30%) land in southern Ethiopia (Figure 1.2). In 1974 the human population was
estimated at 500000, dominated by the Boran (to the west) and Somali (to the east) whose life-
styles vary from semi-nomadic to semi-settled. The livestock population was estimated at 1.3
million cattle (74% of TLUs), three million small ruminants (17%) and 94000 camels (9%) for a
total of over 1.75 million TLU. This equated to 11 TLU/km2 and a ratio of TLUs to humans of
3.5:1. SORDU was considered to have the highest ecological potential for livestock production
of the three sub-project areas because of higher rainfall and lower temperatures. The more
productive environment and reliance on wells for dry-season water also influenced the Borana
people to be more sedentary and socially organized, which was expected to improve prospects
for animal off take. In addition, the Boran breed of cattle was considered of high value for
domestic use and export.

At its height in the early 1980s, the TLDP supported a permanent staff of over 1000 and a
temporary staff of about 4000 (Girma Bisrat, PADEP Coordinator, personal communication).
SORDU had the largest staff due to concentration of activities in the south and the absence of
civil unrest there. Thus, SORDU used 44% of the TLDP budget (Girma Bisrat, PADEP
Coordinator, personal communication). Until the change of government in June 1991, the region
around NERDU had been a focal point of armed conflict. Administrative and natural resources at
JIRDU have been strained in the last few years because of 250000 refugees who have fled
Somalia.

5.3 Pastoral Land Tenure in Ethiopia

Pastoral adaptations in the lowlands of Ethiopia depend entirely on access to wide tracts of land
to make full use of a resource base that is generally poor and unevenly distributed. Although
there is little specific information available about the different pastoral tenure systems, it is
assumed that they display a number of differences. Land tenure systems must be linked to a
number of organizational features (social, political, economic) of pastoral society; on the other
hand land tenure arrangements are also assumed to have evolved in response to the nature of the
resources involved.

The main contemporary problem in Ethiopian pastoral societies, however, is that various
indigenous forms of tenure that no doubt evolved as indicated above now are increasingly
subordinated to unitary national land tenure legislation. Initiatives and reforms within Ethiopian
land tenure legislation at the national level are formulated on the basis of issues relevant
primarily to the arable agriculture in the highlands, secondarily to urban lands. The situation in
the pastoral areas is either ignored or very superficially treated.

Land rights to agricultural land in Ethiopia are obviously much more elaborate than rights to land
and resources in the pastoral areas, specifying the terms and conditions under which farmers gain
and maintain access and security of tenure to land. In practical terms, the pastoral lands have not
been covered by specific national legislation granting security of tenure to the people who live
from pastoralism. By implication, arable agriculture always enjoys precedence over pastoralism
if there is a conflict over land use. As long as the pastoral areas only are of interest to the
pastoralists themselves, access to the available resources is usually governed by the indigenous
tenure regimes in place. If and when there is competition or any kind or confrontation between
pastoralism and other forms of land use, however, the national legislation will, mostly by default,
grant land rights to agricultural competitors.

The recent system of ethnic federalism, which in principle should allow e.g. pastoral societies
like the ‘Afar and the Somali to make their own arrangements with regard to land tenure, has not
yet resulted in land tenure regulations specific to the pastoral system in question. But the
introduction of new legislation itself is only one of many new issues faced by the pastoral
societies. There are a number of other concerns arising from contemporary processes of national
integration that may be equally threatening. Major issues like the recurrent food security crises of
the pastoral areas of Ethiopia may only be properly understood if the current changes in land and
resource tenure are taken into account. The distribution of rights to resources and security of
tenure will be central to any initiative to improve on the current situation of persistent poverty
and high level of risk and enable the pastoral communities to create sustainable livelihoods in the
dry lands of Ethiopia.

Land Tenure in Ethiopia

Access to land is a vitally important issue for the many people in Ethiopia who depend on
agricultural production for their income and sustenance. Land tenure issues therefore continue to
be of central political and economic importance, as they have been at several crucial junctures in
Ethiopian history.

The decisive significance of the land question was perhaps most explicitly expressed in the
course of events leading to the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974. The subsequent 1975 Land Reform
represents one of the most important events in modern Ethiopian history and its imprint still
weighs heavily on the rural (as well as the urban) communities. The 1975 Land Reform no doubt
has had its most significant social and economic impact in the arable farming sector of the
country. Land tenure issues still remain, however, a central, contentious and highly flammable
political theme in Ethiopia, in national as well as regional politics, in both urban and rural
contexts

The 1975 Land Reform

The 1975 Land Reform is one of the most far-reaching land reform projects implemented in
Africa. In 1975 all rural lands in Ethiopia were placed under state ownership and referred to as
the collective property of the Ethiopian people. Within Peasant Associations (PA)s established to
implement the reform, land was distributed to each household on the basis of central guidelines
(using a standard model of 80 families and 800 ha of land for each Peasant Association) but with
considerable local adaptations. The reform provided usufruct rights to everybody with a declared
interest to farm the land, up to a maximum of 10 hectares per household (but normally
considerably less). Sale, lease, transfer, exchange or inheritance of land was prohibited, as was
the use of hired farm labor.

The Land Reform achieved equitable distribution of land within the agricultural communities,
but did not confer secure ownership rights. Repeated re-distributions of land to accommodate
new claimants diminished the size of holdings and security of tenure. The command economy of
the state introduced compulsory delivery of set quotas of agricultural produce at predetermined
prices, which impoverished households even further and deepened rural poverty. The originally
autonomous Peasant Association soon became instruments for coercive state control over the
rural sector. The highly extractive, centralized and authoritarian structure of the Dreg military
government rapidly undermined the initial popularity of the Land Reform.

Pastoral land tenure

Access to land and to the natural resources on it is as important to pastoralists as to arable


farmers. Pastoralists represent some 10% of Ethiopia's population and approximately 40% of the
land area of Ethiopia is considered suitable for pastoral land use only. But in line with the general
social and political marginalization of pastoralists in Ethiopia, land tenure issues as they refer to
pastoral resources and grazing lands are not given much attention in public policy. In the 1975
Land Reform proclamation, only 4 short articles (out of 33) were directed at the situation in the
`nomadic lands'! In the Ethiopian Constitution of 1994, one article only mentions the pastoral
areas.

There are of course some good reasons for the pre-eminent attention given to agricultural lands
in land tenure legislation in Ethiopia. Land is the overwhelmingly most important, valuable and
scarce capital asset in agricultural production, on which the majority of the population depends.
In pastoralism, on the contrary, the most important capital asset is livestock, not land!

In his seminal essay from 1973 on nomad-sedentary relations in the Middle East, Fredrik Barth
points out that "... the time required to extract value from land is great in agriculture, so control
over land is precarious and ad hoc” (Barth, 1973).

This observation reflects the empirical facts of land tenure systems in many situations also in
Eastern Africa. While access to land is important to agriculturalists and pastoralists alike, the
institutional arrangements governing access to and control over land resources are usually
markedly different. Codified land tenure legislation in the region is primarily preoccupied with
tenure of agricultural lands and to the extent land issues are brought into the public domain, such
as in policy debates, legislation or litigation, the issues usually concern agricultural lands.

Pastoral land tenure is at best a simplified version of the tenure regimes in the agricultural areas;
a situation where tenure rights to pastoral lands are either assumed to be non-existent or are
simply appropriated and held by the state is very common (cf S. Shazali & A.G.A. Ahmed, 1999
and Yacob Arsano, 2000).

State ownership of pastoral lands

The exact content of the rights appropriated by the state is a moot point. Pastoralists usually
retain rather vaguely defined rights of access and use, as granted by the state in the most general
terms, but the pre-eminent rights of the state to do as it pleases with pastoral lands is usually not
in question.

Beyond that, there is considerable variation in both the content and organization of pastoral
resource tenure. Much seems to depend on the extent of the involvement of the state, in a
situation where the absence of the state has been, up to very recently, a major feature. Sometimes
user rights are explicitly attached to social groups, i.e. land rights (such as they are) are an aspect
of group membership (often according to some definition of ethnic groups) and sometimes the
state even creates such groups3 for the specific purpose of holding land, managing and/or
developing it.

At present, formal land rights in the pastoral areas of Ethiopia seem to be a matter of loosely
defined group rights that are granted to named ethnic groups without taking locally evolved
tenure rights, if and where these exist, much into consideration. Security of tenure remains poor,
particularly in relationships affecting the interests of the state. These interests are often expressed
in policies favoring other economic activities, including alternative uses of pastoral lands.

In strictly legal terms, all pastoral lands are now owned by the state on behalf of the peoples of
Ethiopia. The 1994 Constitution guarantees access to land for all Ethiopians who want to earn a
living from farming, but leaves it to subsidiary legislation, to be worked out by the ethnically
based regional states, to specify the terms and conditions under which land is made available to
users.

The present government of Ethiopia has been reluctant to change the main structures and
policies of the 1975 Land Reform. The 1994 Constitution declares that all land is the common
property of the various ethnically based regional states (‘the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples
of Ethiopia’) and says (in Article 40), that Ethiopian pastoralists have a right to free land for
grazing and cultivation as well as the right not to be displaced from their own lands. The
implementation shall be specified by law.

A system of leasehold of land from the state is envisaged, particularly in the investment codes of
the various regional states as these are promulgated. The ‘pastoral states’ of ‘Afar and Somali in
particular have yet to develop coherent land policies and as far as smallholder agriculture is
concerned, the structures and regulations of the 1975 Land Reform have tended to remain in
place.

The elaboration and codification of land rights which apply to agricultural lands place legal
restriction on the state to an extent not found in the pastoral areas. The payment of agricultural
land tax, for instance, has provided and continues to provide a large measure of legal protection
and security for farmers in Ethiopia. In fact, farmers often insist on paying the land tax if it for
some reason is not collected (as happened for a period before the current government was
properly established in the rural areas).

In the pastoral areas the payment of land tax was never a practicable proposition, so from an
early-stage pastoralists paid an animal tax, differentiated by species. As a mechanism for taxation
the animal tax was only moderately successful, but most importantly, it was never equated with
the agricultural land tax in legal terms. The animal tax did not confer legal protection with regard
to pastoral user rights the way that the agricultural land tax offered security of tenure in
agriculture.
CHAPTER SIX

SIGNIFICANT SHIFT IN THINKING ABOUT PASTORALISIM AND ITS


IMPLICATIONS FOR PASTORALIST DEVELOPMENT

6.1 ‘Good Governance’ and Pastoralism

In many countries there has a history of tensions between nomadic people who seek autonomy
and mobility, and a sedentary state that strives for dominance and security. As state have
attempted to impose institutions developed for a sedentary population on nomadic population,
pastoral institutions have come under strain and pastoralist/state relations have often been
conflictive (salih, 2001). At best, pastoralists have been marginalized and discriminated against,
and in many places, they have been actively persecuted. However, the global wave of
democratization over the past decade has raised expectations in many places of participation,
social equity, respect for human rights, and better economic management. Understandings of the
role of the state in development have changed, with the so-called ‘good governance’ agenda
becoming central. How do these concepts relate to the pastoral way of life? Do they imply any
changes in the pattern of historical conflict between states and pastoralists? Do the changing
structures and perceptions imply increased openings and opportunities for state and pastoralist
authorities to build mutually collaborative and synergistic relationship? How can these
opportunities be capitalized on?

To address these questions this section introduces some of the changes in thinking about
governance and tries to consider how they might be relevant to pastoralists. There is also a
discussion of what might be appropriate forms of governance in pastoral areas.

What have been the significant shifts in thinking about governance?


It is now widely recognized that a key challenge for the twenty-first century is the construction
of new relationships between ordinary people and the government institutions which affect their
lives. The ‘voices of the poor’ consultation, which took place in 26 countries as preparation for
the world Development report 2000/2001, asked people about their views on their governments
and found that there is a worldwide crisis in the relationship between people and their
governments. Government institutions are not seen to be responsive or accountable.

Although the assumption in the past has been that in representative democracies citizens express
their preference through electoral politics and their elected representatives hold the state
accountable, however in north and South mechanisms are now being developed to allow more
direct connections between people and bureaucracies. It is also recognized that working on
rebuilding relationship between citizens and their governments means neither focusing
exclusively on ‘civil society’ nor ‘state-based’ approaches, but rather focusing on their
intersection. There are therefore new emphases in policy-making on both forms of citizen
participation, and responsiveness and accountability from government institutions. This section
will provide a brief introduction to ideas of participation, accountability, decentralization and
civil service reform.

Participation in Policy

‘Participation’ has been an important concept in development thinking for a number of decades.
In the past, the drive for ‘participatory development’ has focused on the need for local
knowledge and understanding and on direct forms of participation throughout the project cycle.
A range of methodologies and tools have been developed to help facilitate such participation.

However, the concept has often been divorced from ideas about ‘political participation’ which
draw on debates from political science emphasizing legitimate representation, systems of public
accountability, party formation, political mobilization, and so on. Although the two approaches
have traditionally drawn little on each other, they have much to learn from each other (Gaventa
and Valderrama 1999). Both ideas are however now being brought together in the concept of
‘citizenship’ which links participation in the political, community and social spheres, and implies
a shift towards citizens being ‘makers and shapers’, rather than ‘users and choosers’ of
interventions designed by others (Cornwall and Gaventa 2000).

It is also to identify three broad steps in citizen engagement with stats: consultation, presence,
and influence. Consultation involves opening arenas for dialogue and information-sharing.
Present involves institutionalizing regular access for certain groups in decision-making.
Influence brings citizen engagement to the point where groups can translate access and presence
into a tangible effect on policy-making and service delivery.

Policy is often thought of as a smooth linear process which moves from formulation to
implementation. In this way of thinking policy is ‘top-down’, decisions are based on information
which has been gathered, and knowledge is technical and quantified knowledge. However, many
people have questioned this view of policy-making as being unlike what actually happens.
Recent research in Uganda and Nigeria, for example, has suggested that to understand policy
processes in any particular context it is useful to consider the full range of actors, different type
of knowledge and varied spaces of policymaking within particular historical, political and socio-
cultural contexts.

New spaces and arenas for citizen participation have been developed through programs of
democratic decentralization, which include opportunities in the planning, budgeting and
monitoring of programs. At national level, spaces are opening up in sectoral programs, also in
poverty policies and PRSP (poverty reduction strategy paper) processes. At a global level there
are opportunities for citizen groups to contribute to the policies and programs of multilaterals, or
to join in global campaigns on specific issues, such as the campaign against the world trade
organization’s General agreement on trade in Services (GATS).

However, it is necessary to ask:

Whose Voice? Can everyone participate at once? Usually there must be some representation, and
it is important to consider whose voices is being heard, and not assume that communities are
homogenous.

Do traditional pastoralist institutions, with a tradition of representation through male


elders adequately represent the many voices within pastoralist groups?

Whose space? Participation varies a lot depending on where it occurs. It has traditionally
between the jobs of governments to provide, with little space for consultation. We are now seeing
more and more invited spaces in policy processes. Who comes and what people say will depend
on who issues the invitations, and the power relations that surround the forum? It is also
important to look at where people are participating and to find spaces where people most
naturally participate and not to create artificial spaces.

What difficulties might pastoralists face in participating in those spaces which exist for policy-
influencing? How can the physical constraints of large distances and harsh terrain, as well as the
socio-cultural and linguistic differences be overcome in seeking to involve pastoralists in policy
processes?

Whose purpose is served? Why is participation occurring? Often differing actors have differing
purposes. While some may want to challenge power in favor of poor and marginalized people.
Legal framework can enhance citizen participation in governance.

The legal framework for participation can be understood as a ‘bundle’, incorporating the
constitution, national laws and policies relating specifically to participation, the supportive
guidelines accompanying policies and laws, and other local or national laws which can impinge
positively or negatively on citizen participation (McGee 2003). These include legal frameworks:

• For more representative structures, such as quota systems which operate in Uganda and
India;

• For holding representatives to account, such as recall processes in Uganda and the
Philippines;

• For complementing representation with direct forms of participations, such as village


assemblies, in Madhya Pradesh, India;

• For local level participatory planning, such as the processes of participatory budgeting
found in the state of Rio Grande do sul, brazil;

• For greater accountability, such as popular Vigilance committees in Bolivia.

Decentralization structures (discussed below) can also provide space for citizen participation.

Legal framework is, however, only one of the elements that need to be in place for citizen
participation to happen. A review of over sixty case studies of citizen ‘voice’ in service delivery
suggests that certain other conditions also need to exist for consultation to be translated into
influence. In addition to legal standing for non-governmental observers within policy-making
arenas or the institutions of public oversight which scrutinize service delivery, it was also
necessary to haves

• a continuous presence for these observers throughout the process of the agency’s
work;

• Structured access to the flow of information from the agency and

• Either:

- the right of observers to issue a dissenting report to the legislature;


- Or the right of service-users to demand a formal investigation/seek legal redress for
poor delivery of services (Goetz and Gaventa 2001).

Accountability

Accountability is a popular concept at the moment in discussions of good governance. Normally


political scientists think accountability has two aspects:

1. Answerability – to whom do you have to explain why you took a certain decision?

2. Enforceability or punishment. If a mistake has been made, how is that action investigated, is it
punished- how and by whom?

Conventionally people have focused on ‘hierarchical control’ as the key to processes of public
accountability. This involves the supervision and control through a review and reporting process
of service providers, through a chain of command that links bureaucrats to a minister and either a
legislature or other ruler. However, in public services, this has tended to lead a neglect of actual
service outcomes in monitoring, and the dominance of some stakeholders to the exclusion of
others. It has not generally ensured responsiveness to the public or satisfactory services (paul
1994)

However, in recent years there has been a growing emphasis on the importance of service users
influencing the accountability of service providers through a variety of ‘voice’ mechanisms. A
‘new accountability agenda’ has been developing around five questions:

From who is accountability sought? (New types of public actors who are insufficiently
accountable- particularly large international firms)

For what are authorities accountable? (New standard of accountability, e.g., human rights)

To whom are they accountable? (a new sense that authorities should be more directly
accountable to citizens, instead of to other non-elected authorities)

Where is accountability being sought? (For example, in new geographic jurisdictions beyond the
nation-state)

How is the powerful being held to account? (New methods that include an increase in citizen
‘voice’)

A range of accountability institution is supposed to prevent abuses that exacerbate the


deprivations facing poor and marginalized people. However there tend to be failures of these
institutions, including:
• Reporting systems within bureaucratic hierarchies. Often disciplinary procedures are
either too insensitive to the special conditions facing poor and marginalized groups, or
too remote from the sites of injustice. This allows collusion between officials and their
supervisors;

• Oversight of regulatory agencies that fail to take action, either because of corruption or
because of the undue influence of political leaders or interest groups.

• Electoral systems that fail to create incentives for representatives to promote the interests
of the poor, or which fraudulent;

• judicial proceeding that provide little protection for poor and marginalized groups
because of the limited access they provide, the language they operate in, or the bribery of
judges and court officials.

What are the barriers to pastoralists accessing accountability institutions? How can such
institutions be made more accessible? How can reforms be tailored so that they acknowledge the
particular needs of pastoralists?

Decentralization

Recently many countries have introduced decentralization reforms. Decentralization can be


defined in many ways, but it is generally understood that decentralization involves: “the transfer
of power and/or authority to plan, make decisions, and/or manage public functions from a higher
level of government to lower one.” (Conyers, 1990, cited in Nierras et al 2002, p15). There are
different types of decentralization which are often confused when people write and talk:

Deconcentration is the allocation of particular powers or functions by central government to


subordinate levels of national or sectoral bureaucracies. It may involve the relocation of staff, but
lower-level agencies remain part of the national hierarchy. This may strengthen the capacity of
central government to exercise its functions throughout the national territory.

Delegation is the allocation of specified functions or services to other agencies outside the main
governmental hierarchs, such as pasastatal corporations or NGOs, with their own territorial
reporting hierarchies.

Devolution is a form of power sharing between national and sub-national units, in which the sub-
units are granted legal, financial and/or political autonomy over agreed areas of activity. The
allocation of some element of legally guaranteed status represents a reduction in the scope of
central power. Federalism may be seen as one especially strong sub-type of devolutionary
decentralization.
There are many forms and systems of decentralization, but the most common are:

• Federalism – power is shared and coordinated between central government and semi-
independent territorial units or states;

• Local government decentralization;

• Mixed deconcentration and devolution- line Ministries (e.g., health, education) with field
officers at local level are mixed with locally elected government officials;

• Deconcentrated field administration- moving of Ministry officials and responsibilities to


the local area, but still central government control and financing.

There can be many problems with setting up a devolved system, especially in multiethnic
societies. How do you define the areas to which you will give power? How do you delimit areas?
How do you draw boundaries around rural districts? These are all very critical political issues,
which have to be balanced against technical and economic efficiency issues. Decentralization can
alleviate or exacerbate existing culturally based political conflict. In Nigeria, for example,
attempts to accommodate ethnic minorities, have in turn created new ‘minorities within
minorities’ and resulted in the continuing fragmentation of the state and the local government
system. In Sri Lanka and Papua Guinea, provincial decentralization was almost a purely political
response to sub-national political movements. Delimitation may also be used as a device for
enhancing central power, by cutting across and demobilizing cultural units which are seen as
threatening, as for example in cote d’Ivoire where the government’s fear of regional political
opposition was reflected in the extreme weakness and fragmentation caused by a large number of
local government communes. Similarly, in Uganda the delimitation of local government areas
has divided the main ethnic power bases which were seen as the causes of two decades of
conflict and civil war.

However, decentralization can provide opportunities to shape and re-form the relationship
between states and citizens, opening up spaces for dialogue and different types of participation.
If democratization is democratic (that is, when lower level of government is both elected and
largely or wholly independent of central government) then central government is also required to
form new relationships with local level governance institutions.

The most obvious and frequently cited advantage of decentralization is that it Is the only strategy
which addresses the issue of exclusion or subordination of mobilized minority or sub-national
groups. However, because it is inherently a spatial and political strategy, it is probably only
relevant where there is a geographic concentration of cultural segments. Moreover, it may not be
particularly advantageous for nomadic people who cross the boundaries of delimited areas.

How are pastoralists affected by a static and spatially-based form of government? Can
pastoralists exert more leverage within a decentralized system? What aspects of a decentralized
system make government more accessible to pastoralists?

Moreover, there is rather mixed evidence about the extent to which decentralization has
increased government responsiveness to poor and marginalized groups. A recent review of the
experience of a number of sub-Saharan Africa countries suggested that the degree of
responsiveness to poor people is determined primarily by the politics of local-central relations
and the general regime context- particularly the ideological commitments of central political
authorities to poverty reduction. In most cases, local power structures were ‘captured’ by elites,
and this was reinforced by weak accountability mechanisms. Decentralization is therefore unlike
to improve the lot of poor people without a serious effort to strengthen and broaden
accountability mechanisms at both local and national levels (Crook 2003).

Civil service reform

Civil service reform (CRS) programs have also become very common in developing countries,
often as part of a package of ‘good governance’ reforms funded by donors. The aims of such
programs vary from country to country, but they are often driven, at least partially, by a desire to
improve efficiency in service delivery and reduce costs. Processes informed by ideas from ‘new
public management’ (NPM) usually involve a shift to results oriented performance with a greater
emphasis on efficiency and targets for assessment; ‘down –sizing’ usually through a freeze in
recruitment, coupled with rationalization of the payroll and voluntary redundancy package, but
sometimes through forced retrenchment; increased delegation to departmental heads or
managements: improved financial management systems; performance-related pay with
‘decompression’ of pay scales; market based or lateral recruitment into the civil service from
outside, with a move away from the idea of a career for life; and sometimes the creation of arm’s
length-semi autonomous agencies. However, assessment of CSR programs consistently shows
disappointing performance in terms of outputs, outcomes and impact. It is not yet clear therefore
that CRS will significantly affect the way that services are delivered to pastoralist people.

What might be an appropriate model of governance in pastoral areas?

The critical questions about pastoral governance concern the relationship between the formal
institutions of the state and the informal and partly traditional rules and social structures of the
pastoralists. Customary authorities and traditional rules still dominate large areas of decision-
making, especially about natural-resource management and economic life. In the past, formal
government has struck an uneasy compromise with customary authority, and its functions
overlap. Effective pastoral governance needs to be a mix, varying with local circumstances, of
informal and formal institutions and rules. The role of formal government should be providing a
framework within customary local institutions and rules regulate everyday economic and
political affairs.

No single type of governance will be appropriate for all pastoral areas, but three general
principles should apply:

• Great flexibility and diversity in institutional design to make it possible to track dynamic
changes in the environment, such as drought;

• Subsidiary is crucial, that is, administrative tasks should be carried out as near to the
level of actual users of resources or beneficiaries as is compatible with efficiency and
accountability;

• The transaction costs of organization should be kept as low as possible.

Such an agenda means a retreat from formal state administration, and an extended role for
customary institutions and mixed customary/formal ones. In many cases they may be able to
provide the basis for new pastoral administrative structures. The main role of formal government
should be:

-to create the legal the framework within which a devolved pastoral administration can operate
efficiently, especially over natural resource tenure;

- mediation of conflict;

- to act as a guarantor of minimum democratic processes in local administration;

- to provide appropriate macro-economic policies including development of markets;

- to provide major infrastructure investments;

- to provide major public services;

- to guarantee an effective social security safety net in case of disaster (Swift 2003 c).

6.2 Service provision to pastoralists

Governance issues are very closely liked with service issues. Very often, if poor people have any
interaction with government, it is through services, and the issues of accountability, participation,
and decentralization discussed above all impact on service delivery.
What is significant new thinking on service-delivery?

Much has been written by researchers and other analysts about different approaches to and
models of services delivery. Civil service reform programs (discussed above) are designed to
implement much of the current thinking and writing about service delivery. However, this
writing often does not portray the complex reality of service provision in different contexts.
Standard international ideas about public service organization especially notions of ‘copying best
practice’- are typically unhelpful, especially at the ‘grassroots or frontline.

There are a number of myths which are perpetuated by researchers and analysts about service
provision. Firstly, there is a myth that a single producer (Government or NGO) is responsible for
service-provision. It is, in fact, intrinsically difficult for regular, hierarchically-structured public
organizations (or commercial organization) to provide effective services to poor rural people in
low-income environments.

Instead, arrangements are usually more complex, with a number of public agencies and private
firms producing different types of services, even within the same sector. In many pastoralists
areas there are simply no government or NGOs present, and the limited services available are
provided by a mixture of small-scale private providers. Secondly, the role of the provider at
‘street level’ is critical and often ignored in planning. Thirdly, the effective production of service
requires the active participation of those receiving the service. Some writers refer to this as ‘co-
production’. Co-production can create synergy between what a government does and what
citizens do (Ostrom 1996).

Another element that is often overlooked in thinking about how government relates to people in
service-provision is the issue of trust. Trust is essential to the way that many businesses operate,
and it is often ignored in trying to understand public services. Governments often promise a great
deal, raising expectations, and then fail to deliver, which erodes trust. Reliability is central to re-
building relationships between governments and citizens.

These myths are particularly inappropriate in pastoralists’ areas where there is often a close
relationship between non-formal institutions and services delivery. In many pastoralists’ areas,
populations have been organizing services on their own, through:

• local institutions for access to land and water and dealing with conflicts;

• insurance through traditional initiations of mutual aid;

• traditional animal health care;

• indigenous mechanisms for information sharing;


• indigenous innovation;

• local form of organizing and working together;

• Building on local institutions and leaders to exert more political pressure at


district, regional and national level

In some areas, local efforts are strengthened by other agents, such as NGOs, private
entrepreneurs and government. Given financial and human resource constraints, finding an
appropriate balance between different agents is the absolutely critical issue in ensuring efficient,
sustainable and accessible services to pastoralists.

Service to pastoralists

Human health services

These have been little research specifically focused on pastoralist health, and as a result there is a
lack of data specific to pastoralists, especially demographic data. Such data is expensive and
difficult to collect, with pastoralists often unaware of their age, and also unwilling to reveal
information in surveys. However, available data suggests that there is little evidence for number
of frequently perpetuated myths. Such myths include the fact there are low fertility rates and high
levels of sexually-transmitted diseases. Rather, there appears to be huge heterogeneity among
different pastoralist groups, with population trends dependent on differing cultural traditions
around marriage.

There are a number of different health services which may be available to pastoralists, including:

• indigenous health care, including herbalists, bone-setters, spiritual healers etc. these are
often both highly accessible and highly acceptable to pastoralists;

• government facilities, such as health posts, district hospitals;

• missionary health providers;

• NGOs;

• Private-formal and non-formal providers (shops, vendors, quacks, private practitioners,


providing unregulated, but often accessible, services).

Government health service outlets often do not meet the health needs of pastoralists because:

• Facilities are geographically inaccessible, and coverage is usually very low in pastoral
areas;
• They are mostly staffed by men, or not staffed at all. Government often has problems
recruiting for isolated areas;

• They sometimes require payment in cash, and it can be difficult for pastoralists to pay
cash on demand;

• They are often poorly equipped and lacing in medicine;

• Staff sometimes do not speak local languages;

• Follow-up is difficult;

• There is sometimes a ‘cultural’ gap;

• People often go formal health service providers when their conditions are serious. The
service is then often judged against its failure to solve problems or save lives;

• Traditional Western models, such as old childbirth models, are sometimes culturally
inappropriate.

There are also implications of introducing medicines to communities which have not previously
had access to medication:

• Over-prescribing is common and dangerous to all, especially to those previously


unexpected to medicines. It could also affect natural immunity;

• This and poor compliance results in resistance, especially with drugs for malaria, TB and
STDs;

• There tends to be a reliance on injections and this can be dangerous (especially where
there are high prevalence rates of HIV).

A variety of health care interventions have been tried with pastoralists in different locations.
Mobile services have been run by AMREF to reach nomadic Maasai communities in Kenya and
Tanzania. However, these have tended to be very expensive, involve complicated logistics and,
in the long run, be unsustainable. Even wealthy countries such as Saudi Arabia have found
mobile units to be too costly.

Other interventions have proven more successful and sustainable. Training of traditional birth
attendants (TBAs) is recommended in most literature. Training can reduce morbidity by
discouraging harmful practices and promoting TT (tetanus toxoid) vaccination where available.
Emergency obstetric care can also be provided through safe birthing centers, which can be
simple huts equipped with life-saving equipment and staffed by a skilled provider. However, it
can be difficult in pastoralist areas to recruit women for these jobs. There has been successful
program in Garora in Eastern Sudan, where the Amal Trust has trained traditional birth
attendants (TBAs) to perform weekly checks, distribute vitamins and dispense nutritional advice.
A number of health problems in this area are being resolved gradually through nutrition
programs for women and children.

There are also a number of services in different regions which stress the concept of community
ownership of health provision. Appropriate solutions for pastoralists health care issues will
include:

• An understanding of the issues, including epidemiology;

• An understanding of local cultures;

• An understanding of pastoralist interests and needs;

• A consideration of whether national health strategies are appropriate for pastoralists;

• Identification of local resources;

• Involvement of pastoralists in identifying solutions, owning them and carrying them out;

• A consideration of how pastoralists will pay for health services, including whether there
will be a flexible system which allows for deferred payment;

• A discussion of who can be trained as health providers and communicators.

Most pastoralists are illiterate, so educational materials produced at the national level will not
necessarily be appropriate for them. In other locations, experiments have taken place in
providing joint medical and veterinary health services in an integrated program.

Veterinary services

Like human health services, animal health services can be divided between public, private and
community-based organizations. The services that provide a ‘private good’ in which the user
gains most of the benefit can often be provided by the private sector, for example the sale of
veterinary drugs. For services that benefit a wider public, e.g., vaccinations against contagious
diseases, sanitary and quality control, the public sector has an important role to play.

The role of the public sector includes:

• The role of the private sector can be:

• Provision of curative veterinary clinical services


• Provision of artificial insemination services

• Production of animal vaccines and drugs

• Supply and distribution of veterinary drugs and other animal health inputs

• Management of dips and crushes

• Research and diagnostic support services

Joint roles include:

• Provision of meat inspection and inspection of slaughter houses;

• Vaccination against notifiable diseases;

• Collection of samples for disease surveillance and monitoring;

• Provision of research and veterinary laboratory services for some diseases.

Public-private partnerships can work in the area of livestock services, for example through the
use of networks of local part-time agents, Community Animal Health Workers (CAHWs). Vet
Aid trained 200 paravents in Somaliland in 2001-03, providing a network of paraprofessionals in
133 villages who are trained in the most troublesome diseases, as identified by pastoralists. Some
were also trained in human primary care, and they also play a role in providing disease
surveillance information to national veterinary authorities. The CAHWs have been officially
accepted in new state legislation The advantage of such a system is that animal health services
are provided at minimum cost to the government, and an affordable service provided locally for
pastoralists. However few graduates have been involved so the technical level of service may be
low, and there might a danger of inappropriate dosing, hastening drug resistance.

The fundamental tenets of community-based animal health delivery services are:

• Recognize pastoralist voices and work with them.

• Recognize that veterinary para-professionals have a role in veterinary service provision


that is under used but practical.

• Rationalize the roles of public and private sectors in veterinary service provision.

• Be serious about meeting international standards.

There are no easy solutions to providing animal health care for pastoralists. A high level of
service was provided in socialist times in Mongolia, but this depended on unsustainably high
levels of funding. Therefore community-based animal health care seems to be the most viable
system in pastoral communities. However, it is important that the government provides adequate
monitoring and regulation.

Pastoral women also play a crucial role in livestock husbandry, particularly in caring for young
and sick animals. Several studies have shown a direct and positive effect on livestock production
when female extension workers receive specific training and are employed to work with female
livestock-keepers. However pastoral women are often illiterate so they may need to receive
training tailored to their needs, as well as receive confidence-building measures.

Education

There are two main, and potentially conflicting, rationales for policies and programs for the
education of pastoralists. They may work together or against each other:

• The full accomplishment of the individual as a human being. Education is seen as


being an individual’s basic need and fundamental right. Ideas of inclusion and
empowerment are emphasized in this view.

• National development requires the integration of nomadic groups. Therefore,


education focuses on nomads’ economic and social development, around concerns
like sedentarization, modernization, poverty reduction, resource management and
state building.

Education for pastoralists can be understood as having gone through three phases, reflecting
trends in development thinking about both pastoralists and the role of education:

• Education for sedentarization. Prior to the 1980s, education policy was seen as being
instrumental in encouraging sedentarization (seen as a ‘superior’ existence), and was
based on assumptions that pastoralists’ educational problems were because of
nomadism and would disappear when they settled. The curricula of schools and the
values they expresses tended to be opposed to a nomadic way of life, promoting the
values and world-view of a sedentary society.

• Education for productivity. In the 1980s the development focus shifted and there was
greater concern with how education could improve pastoralism. It was based on a
belief that nomadic pastoralists should receive formal because they control important
‘national’ resources which should be as productive as possible. Education would
change attitudes and beliefs and introduce ‘modern’ knowledge and ‘better’ methods
and practices which would lead to an improvement in the standard of living. It was
believed that education would ‘modernize’ pastoralists without uprooting them from
their culture. However, the claims about the beneficial effects of education on
productivity are not supported by the evidence available. Moreover, this evidence
suggests that education often does transform pastoralists into settled farmers or wage
laborers. Pastoralists’ demand for education is often driven by an interest in new
opportunities, not a desire to acquire further specialization in pastoralism.

• Education for all (reflecting a view coming from the World conference on Education
for All 1990). In this view, education should enhance the life and survival of pastoral
societies, rather than trying to transform them into something else, therefore
education should be based on responsive provision based on consultative,
participatory processes of teaching and learning which value pastoral livelihood
systems as appropriate and technically adapted to their environment and are based in
part on indigenous or local expert knowledge. Such education should recognize that
pastoral children may need to be equipped for life in other livelihood systems, but not
assume this is the main objective of their schooling.

Typically, however, there are a number of problems relating to the provision of education to
pastoralists. The challenges of providing educational services for pastoralists include: low
density of population, mobility, harsh environmental conditions, and remoteness. These lead to
high costs of provision, and difficulties in organization and management. Different types of
provision have been tried in different contexts:

• Drop-in to regular schools;

• Boarding schools, often seen as an “insurance option’ for one body while the family
continues with pastoralism. However, there is a need to create a familiar, friendly
environment and the school may have a majority of non-pastoral children and so school
culture may be anti-pastoralist;

• Mobile schools, such as tent-schools, schools-on-wheels, collapsible schools, cars,


existing Koranic mobile schools;

• Distance education, e.g., by radio in Mongolia for nomadic women.

Despite the different types of provision that have been tried, the provision of appropriate
education to pastoralists remains a challenging area. Key issues include:

• Security, especially for girls and in areas close to insecure international borders and in
conflict-prone regions;
• Staffing difficulties. High turnover is common due to low salaries, isolation, lack of
teaching resources;

• Language of instruction. Often teachers and children speak different languages, and it is
not always clear in which language children should become literate;

• Curriculum relevance. School curricula often developed for sedentary people, with urban
bias, so this can be irrelevant to pastoralist concerns and experience. The demotivation
caused by this can lead to a high drop-out rate. However, it is complex to assess what
type of knowledge pastoralists want and why they are sending their children to school.

Food security provision

There has also been new thinking in the area of food security and famine. In the last 30 years,
there have been three particular shifts in thinking about food security:

• From the global and national to the household and the individual. There has been a shift
away from a focus on food supply to ideas of access and ‘entitlement’ to food. Now the
most commonly used definition of food security is one developed by the World Bank in
1986, “food security is access by all people at all times to enough food for an active
healthy life”.

• From a ‘food first’ perspective to a livelihood perspective. The conventional view of food
security used to be of food as a primary need. However, now it has been recognized that
food, especially short-term nutritional intake, is only one of a number of objectives.
People will often endure considerable short-term hunger to preserve longer-term assets
such as seeds. There is now a view of food security which is liked to livelihood security,
and which focuses on the long-term viability of households.

• From objective indicators to subjective perception. Conventional approaches have relied


on objective measurement, such as ‘target’ levels of consumption. However new
approaches have stresses qualitative approaches in which nutritional adequacy is a
necessary but not sufficient condition for food security.

These three shifts together have switched the focus of discussion from national food supply and
price to ‘the complexities of livelihood strategies in difficult and uncertain environments… [and
to] understanding how people themselves respond to perceived risks and uncertainties” (Maxwell
2001. p21) There have also been changes in understanding of famine and its causes.

Demography, economics and political science have all provided theories about the causes of
famine. Two views currently compete for dominance. The first sees famine as a natural disaster
or economic crisis which is not ameliorated because of failures of policy, early warning, markets
or relief intervention. The second views famine as a political issue which should be analysed in
terms of power struggles, state repression and a failure of international groups to enforce the
human right to food. It has also been recognized that there are also close links to conflict.
Virtually every country in Africa, which has suffered a famine in recent decades, has also
suffered civil conflict (Devereux 2000).

Although there are different analyses of why famines occur, in practical terms, similar preventive
measures are being proposed for famine-prone countries as were put forward a number of years
ago, including the provision of roads, seed, fertilizer, schools, clinics and so on.

However, there are also attempts to promote diversification of incomes that do not depend on the
local economy, for example promoting small towns where people can get work which is not
related to rain. There is also a need for appropriate development policies and actions at national
and international level. At national level, some analysts argue that democracy is important in
promoting a ‘social contract’. India, for example, no longer suffers from famine, and this has
been partly attributed to its democratic political system, also the vibrancy of its media which
promotes the sharing of information. At an international level, it is important to ensure that
famine and food aid are not used as political weapons as they have been in the past.

While governments often have policies on food security, pastoralists will usually require specific
polices drawn from an analysis of the characteristics of modern pastoralism which create pastoral
food insecurity. Contrary to popular myth, across Africa, pastoral nutrition is heavily dependent
on cereals and other purchased foods, obtained either through selling livestock products or
earned in exchange for labor. A recent estimate is that Ethiopian pastoralists obtain between half
and three quarters of their total calories intake from purchased foods. This makes pastoralists
very vulnerable to changes in the relative prices of things they sell and those they buy, and they
can become food insecure through the operation of the market in drought years rather than the
failure of their own production systems.

Polices to address pastoral food security should therefore:

• Recognize differences in patterns of food insecurity between pastoral and agricultural


livelihoods, and the need for a specific pastoral food security policy and plans;

• Highlight the importance of better information about pastoral food insecurity, including
local indicators of stress as perceived by pastoralists, collected and reported in a timely
manner in an early warning system which gives adequate warning of a forthcoming
crisis;
• Emphasis rapid reaction strategies;

• Encourage a substantial but orderly destocking of the rangelands in the event of major
drought in a way that reduces high levels of animal deaths, and preserves a reservoir of
breeding females for rapid post-drought recovery;

• Maintain adequate cereal availability at reasonable prices through the affected area;

• Provide employment on useful public works to destitute people in order to protect


entitlements;

• Given the role of human population concentrations in the spread of infectious disease
among malnourished people, maintain as long as feasible the dispersed pattern of
population distribution typical of pastoral areas;

• Give high priority to human health and immunization, recognizing that mortality in
famine situations is more often a direct product of disease than starvation itself.

6.3 Pastoralist productivity

This section looks at recent thinking not only in the area of improving livestock productivity but
also the related and essential issue of promoting the trade in livestock and livestock products for
both domestic and export markets.

It is around livestock productivity that there has been the most pastoralist-specific work and
analysis, with significant shifts in thinking in recent years. The last 30 years have seen
widespread failure of livestock development projects across Africa. Most commentators agree
that despite the expenditure of millions of dollars, there have been few obvious returns and much
damage done. International development agencies and African governments devoted
considerable energies to suppressing pastoral techniques of land and livestock management on
the grounds that pastoralism was unproductive and ecologically destructive. However, empirical
research does not support these assumptions (Behnke and Scoones 1990). Research and analysis
from a number of sources has highlighted:

• The efficiency of traditional pastoral use of natural resources for food production;

• The complexity of pastoral livelihood systems, in which exchange relations and markets
are vital for survival;

• The richness and validity of indigenous pastoral knowledge;

• The innovative and adaptive capacities of pastoralists (waters-Bayer, Bayer et al. 2003)
New thinking in range ecology has to explain some of this failure, challenging the assumptions
of traditional range management thinking based on an understanding of rangelands in the
temperate US. ‘New range management’ (NRM), drawing on the ‘new ecology’ thinking, can be
summarized as follows.

• Grazing systems in many parts of African are not ‘in equilibrium’ that is, livestock and
vegetation do not control each other. External shocks (e.g., drought or war) rather than
endogenous processes (e.g., low calving rates caused by malnutrition) determine
livestock numbers and the state of the vegetation (Behnke and Scoones 1990)

• In these non-equilibrium systems grazing by livestock has only a small effect on the
productivity of grasslands.

• Therefore an ‘opportunistic’ or ‘tracking’ strategy, in which livestock numbers (and so the


demand for feed) closely matches in time the production of grass is the best way to avoid
wasting feed supply which cannot usually be stored economically.

• African rangeland is highly varied in space, producing different amounts and qualities of
feed at different times and in different places. This feed cannot be economically
transported, and therefore herd mobility is desirable to exploit this.

• Efforts to improve management in these disequilibrium systems should focus on


improving the efficiency of opportunism/tracking. This is done by ensuring the quickest
and least costly methods of adjusting the ‘demand’ (from the number, species, breeds and
age/sex composition of herd) for feed to the ‘supply’ of feed which is largely determined
by rainfall.

• Past thinking stressed the potential for improving the productivity (quantity/quality of
feed output) of the rangelands. By contrast, the ‘new ecology’ focuses on particular
patches or key resources as the sites where investments to ensure productivity gains
should be concentrated. The amount/quality of feed available at the height of the drought
in these final areas determines the size of the breeding herd from which herd numbers can
be reconstituted when the drought is over.

• In Africa, ‘disequilibrium systems’ are actually the norm in rainfall areas where the
variability of rainfall, as determined by the ‘coefficient of variation’ of annual rainfall is
in excess of 30% where mean annual rainfall is less than 600mm.

The development policy implications from these include the following:

• In highly dynamic, non-equilibrium environments land degradation is not the major issue
it was once assumed. Therefore, boreholes and water points should continue to be a
priority in areas where water is a limiting factor. The cost of bare ‘sacrifice’ zones
immediately surrounding each borehole is usually outweighed by the benefits of more
efficient fodder use and higher livestock populations. However, very high densities of
boreholes in arid environments may ultimately result in a decreased resilience of the
system as the patchy nature of the environment is destroyed. Changes in resource access
following borehole investment also remain a concern.

• Maintaining the size and health of animal populations through investments in veterinary
care also remains a priority. High populations do not necessarily impose long-term
environmental damage, and healthy animals are able to track environmental variations
more effectively. Conventional veterinary support, through vaccination campaigns, needs
to be complemented by decentralized animal health services and the indigenous
knowledge of herders themselves.

• Conventional range management in dry areas is of limited value. Technical support


should be focused on particular niches where productivity increases are most likely.
Investment in the development or creation of key resource patches, for instance, deserves
attention from technical experts. Breeding programs using exotic breeds should be
abandoned in favor of improving the physiological tracking capacity of indigenous
breeds. So-called ‘traditional’ pastoral systems have higher returns (when these are
calculated to include the cost of products consumed by pastoralists as well as those sold)
than ranches under comparable conditions. The ranch model for pastoral development in
dry land Africa therefore should be abandoned in favor of support for existing system.

Pastoral areas are typified by high level of unpredictable variability. Variability and uncertainty
therefore need to be tackled head-on, rather than trying to implement generalized blueprint
solutions or basing responses on simple concepts such as ‘carrying capacity’. NRM is therefore
about seizing opportunities and evading hazards. This is what pastoralist have always done and
known. The responses of planners and governments have to shift to accept different ways of
interpreting livestock management, encouraging the mobility and flexibility of livestock rather
than restricting or controlling it. Planners need to employ process planning and adaptive,
opportunistic management approaches, building on the innovation and management approaches
of pastoralists.

Pastoralists cope with high levels of variability in many ways. To be able to react to changing
conditions and requirements, pastoralists are interested in a diversity of animal types, and men
and women may work with different animals. When designing polices and plans for livestock
production, it is important to give attention both to the production system and to issues of
adaptation to the environment. Some animals are more able than others to adapt to high ambient
temperature, low-quality feed, low and erratic water supply and resistance to different diseases. A
change in appropriate types of animals as walking long distances become less important, but
coping with low-quality forage becomes more important

There are also many examples if innovation by pastoralists to deal with variability in their
environments. These examples include haymaking in Sahelian countries, the formation of
informal dairy marketing groups, especially by women, and the capturing of new market
opportunities in many areas. Identifying viable locally developed innovations is also a positive
entry point towards involving local people in participatory research and extension. It identifies t
directions in which local people want to develop their livelihood systems and encourages a
greater ‘partnership’ approach between scientists and extension workers.

There are, however, limits to opportunistic management responses in the absence of major
opportunities for productivity increases in the livestock system. A broader perspective, centered
on understandings of ‘sustainable livelihoods’ suggests the need to employ wider assessment of
the dynamics of livelihood change, incorporating the following important external, contextual
factors:

• Multiple, flexible livelihoods, with livestock as part of portfolio Drought risk

• Non-pastoral diversification, but not necessarily the ‘mixed farming’ model

• Globalization and market access

• Land rights

• Disease and markets

• Borders and conflict.

In particular, two aspects that need to be understood as part of complex livelihood systems are
irrigation and land right.

Land rights

Access to land is becoming an increasing problem in Africa, as elsewhere. Land policies are of
fundamental importance to sustainable growth and economic opportunities, but there are
different views on what policy measures should be implemented.

As recently as 1989, the World conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development noted
that “… land availability (is) not a major problem in the context of most African countries”
(WCARD 199:17). However, nowadays, access to land is becoming problematical. African’s
land use and tenure frontiers are shifting. Colonial legacies across much of the continent left
nation-states claiming ownership to over half the landmass in many countries. However, national
ownership did not generally mean equitable and sustainable access to natural resources, but
rather benefits tended to accrue to political and economic elites.

Three major lines of policy towards land prevailed in Africa during the early 1980s. in some
countries, there was a shift towards the socialization of land by way of cooperatives and state
farms (e.g. Mozambique). In other countries, the privatization and individualization of land
ownership was either begun of continued (e.g. Malawi, Kenya). Thirdly, some countries adapted
existing tenures to modify the relationships between tribal chiefs and the state, as in the Gambia
and Lesotho. In general the switch towards the second type of land policy, that is,
individualization and privatization, seems to be prevailing in Africa at the movement.

Those who promote a private/individual model, including the World Bank and other international
organizations, argue that:

• Property right affects economic growth;

• Security of property rights are needed for

-investment

- credit

- insurance for shocks

- facilitation of transfer of land a low cost

• unequal land distribution reduces productivity;

• insecure land rights prohibit letting of land;

• poorly designed land markets and corruption hamper non-farm economic development;

• access to land and improving poor people’s ability to make effective use of land central to
reducing poverty;

• Inequitable land systems can increase conflict and violence. Where these overlap with
race and ethnicity issues, build-up of land-related conflict can even result in the collapse
of states (Deininger 2003).
In the view of those who promote an individual view of land rights, tenure reform should reduce
the role of uncertainty in discouraging investment on land that is held without long-term security.
The granting of land titles that enhance security may induce investment and productivity
increases, both because farmers are surer of reaping the benefit of investment, and because their
access to credit is increased.

However, this justification and approaches to land reform can be questioned from economic,
ecological and social points of view, especially for those regions where agroecological
conditions are limiting and local groups lack the necessary experience and formal education to
compete with better equipped groups in society. In Kenya, for example, the Maasai pastoralists
have lost huge amount of land. They currently face an influx of agricultural groups and large-
scale capitalist farmers following the individualization of land held under statutory group title.
The commoditization of land can be said to responsible for a rapidly growing stratification in this
area (Rutten 1997).

Other approaches to land reform move away from either an emphasis on individualization of
property rights or state ownership of large tracts of land, and instead stress the importance of
community-based property rights (CBPRs). CBPRs emanate from and are enforced by
communities. They are a bundle of rights, both communal and individual, and include rights to
water, land, forest products and wildlife. They can be considered as private, group resources
which give the holders more bargaining leverage with outside interests, including government.
Legal recognition of CBPRs is a way to ensure that local voices are heard and respected in the
use of land and to promoting and supporting local incentives for conservation and sustainable
management (Lynch 2000).

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