Pastoralism - Part of the answer to drought in Africa

Mobile pastoralism is part of the solution to the drought in the Horn of Africa, according to the IUCN-hosted World Initiative for Sustainable Pastoralism (WISP). “This crisis was predictable and predicted,” says Pablo Manzano, who works with IUCN in its East and Southern Africa Regional Office and is Global Coordinator of WISP. “Irrigated crop farming and abandonment of pastoralism are being proposed as solutions in order to prevent future crises. But analyses on the subject often don’t take into account the ecological, economic and social factors that make pastoralism highly sustainable in drylands.”

In the current crisis in the Horn of Africa, media and economic experts are accusing pastoralism of being an ineffective livelihood that is periodically subjected to similar crises. Irrigated crop farming is proposed as a panacea but it deepens overuse of water resources and exacerbates conflicts. Livestock mobility is a much more rational land use, allowing the exploitation of patchy resources in drylands and is also an important tool for climate change adaptation.

Securing land tenure for pastoralist communities is needed to conserve resources so that droughts are countered and capital inputs are leveraged for development. Long-term strategies should be based on allowing people to move with their livestock across manmade boundaries, which have been key during other food crises. But even if the present crisis was predicted almost a year ago, no action was taken. Famines are more related to political turmoil than to the amount of rainfall, and they do not occur unless pastoral areas have other problems.

“Investments in drylands by government and international aid agencies have to be reoriented, taking into account local ecological conditions as well as local capacities,” adds Manzano. “Investments should include infrastructure to export pastoralist products, financial services for remote areas, high-quality adapted education, and skills for securing land rights, ideally adapting traditional management to modern legal frameworks. Most of these solutions have been adopted by pastoralists themselves in different parts of the world, often with no external help. It becomes clear from overwhelming evidence from around the world that to use investment to support pastoralism, rather than replacing it, is the only realistic solution.”

G8 outreach to Africa

William Easterly on Aid and Poverty

EPAs should be consistent with citizens needs and Africa's long term development priorities, says ActionAid

African governments should resist imposed deadlines to provide alternatives. ActionAid is urging African governments to seek alternatives that will enable them to continue to sell some of their products to the European market and not rush into signing Economic Partnership Agreement that pit small scale farmers and infant African industries against the well established and subsidised products and services from Europe. An advanced generalised system of preferences that includes both least developing and non least developing countries should be pursued. "This provides space for African countries to determine on their own when to open their markets and which products to protect from unfair competition based on competitiveness and long term development needs of the region," Moussa Faye, Country Director of ActionAid in Senegal says.

The livelihood of small scale farmers and producers will be ruined by the massive influx of subsidised EU agricultural goods if EPAs were signed in the current form. "This will further undermine family and community based food security and reduce the wealthy and naturally endowed continent to dependency on food imports," Brian Kagoro, Africa Policy Manager for ActionAid says. "It will also aid the extractive operations of trans-national corporations in mining and agriculture, alienating African people from their own resources," Brian laments. But while pursuing protectionist measures against EPAs the countries should focus on the bigger challenge of building local economies to strengthen inter-Africa trade and economic growth. "Being in the drivers seat of their own development agenda will make Africa to dictate the terms of partnership with the north and not merely respond to an agenda whose primary beneficiary is Europe," Brian says.