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Pastoralism and Development in Africa

November 2013: Aus der Besprechung: "The contributions to the book 'Pastoralism and development' in Africa were originally presented at the conference on 'The Future of Pastoralism in Africa'(March 2011) and are from researchers having a long-term engagement with pastoralists in the Greater Horn of Africa, which includes the countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Puntland, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. The contributions are all relatively short and organized in four parts: 1) resources and production (i.e., the ecology of pastoral systems); 2) commercialization and markets; 3) land and conflict; and 4) alternative livelihoods. The chapters cover a wide range of topics, including: climate change, land grabbing, commercialization, livelihood diversification, and two chapters on irrigated agriculture. 'Pastoralism and Development in Africa' is foremost an argument for the importance of pastoral systems and the economic contributions that pastoral systems make to the local, regional, national, and international economies. However, that does not mean that pastoralism is the only pathway to development in the region. Livelihood diversification is presented as a critical component of development in the Horn. After all the title of the book is not ‘pastoral development’ but ‘pastoralism and development’, meaning that that there are multiple developmental pathways in the Horn, one of them being pastoralism.

Andy Catley, Jeremy Lind, and Ian Scoones (eds.), Pastoralism and Development in Africa: Dynamic Change at the Margins. London (Routledge and Earthscan) 2013. Review by Mark Moritz, in: Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 2013, 3:19