Mirages of pastoralist futures: a review of aid donor policy in Sahelian pastoral zones

Based on donor presentations at the United Nations Sahelian Office (UNSO) Technical Consultations on Pastoral Development in Africa (Endnote 1), this contribution explores first the extent to which pastoralists and the pastoral zones are targeted in donor policy and second the type of future society that the aid policies point towards, or imply, for these people and these regions. The policies are found to divide into those that effectively bypass pastoral zones and fail to target pastoralists, those that consider the pastoral zones and their inhabitants as complementary to other zones and other populations, and those that target squarely these zones and their inhabitants. Taking the last group of policies, three different approaches are distinguished: that which focuses on livestock and animal production; that which focuses on people and herders’ organisations; and that which focuses on natural resources and desertification. These policies are reviewed in turn, along with their contrasting and often unrealistic implications as to the type of future society involved. In the end, most of these visions of the future are dismissed as hypothetical constructs — as mirages — in that they tend to be formulated by outsiders and lack a consensus of support from within the pastoralist communities. In the current political climate which favours democracy and decentralisation it is hoped that the pastoralists themselves will be given a voice and an institutional channel in proportion to their numbers, so that they may formulate and express their own aspirations. Certain very fundamental issues have yet to be resolved through the political process, in particular the relative support for two opposing lifestyles and land uses in semi‐arid areas: one based on nomadic livestock‐keeping of drought‐resistant livestock species, and the other on a variety of sedentary activities based in farms and settlements. Finally, some examples are suggested of ways in which donors might be called upon to assist, rather than to initiate, efforts towards the improved political representation of pastoralists.