Pastoralism

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Livestock mobility in sub-Saharan Africa: A critical review

By Matthew D. Turner, University of Madison-Wisconsin & Eva Schlecht, University of Kassel and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Pastoralism volume 9, Article number: 13 (2019) 

Livestock mobility is a term increasingly mentioned in pastoral studies, rangeland ecology, and discussions on social dimensions of climate change and conservation. Recently, the logics of livestock mobility have been more appreciated by observers, while uncertainties persist of what it means and how it could be measured. Unexamined associations link livestock mobility with features of pastoral cultures, ecologies, and institutions. This review of the published measurements of mobility in sub-Saharan Africa shows the wide range of mobility patterns practiced by those following a pastoral livelihood. Despite growing barriers and a changing set of incentives facing herders, their movement decisions are still strongly inclined to improve the health and nutritional status of their animals, while maintaining necessary access to markets and avoiding crop damage and areas of insecurity. In short, mobility is not a way of life but results from a succession of decisions shaped by the benefits and costs of mobility. This questions the facile association of mobility with pastoralism.

The review finds that grazing mobilities are more constrained, and travel mobilities are more predictable than is invoked in the imaginaries of non-equilibrium systems and flexible movements. Only at intermediate spatial scales can travel movements be unpredictable in direction and distance -  but pastoralists can only be seen as “chasing rain clouds” within constrained geographies, as they  face not only variabilities but also regularities. 

Pastoralists’ priorities set them apart from other major interests involved in conservation and development in pastoral regions. Without an explicit recognition of these differences and a refined vocabulary about livestock mobility, livestock productivity in extensive systems will stagnate and mobility, no matter how it is measured, will decline.