Crop-livestock production systems in the Sahel - increasing resilience for adaptation to climate change and preserving food security

Nowadays, the rural people in the Sahelian part of Africa are faced with new challenges such as high demographic growth (4% on average), climate change, environmental concerns and global market changes, which have had major local impacts on their production system organization, dynamics and viability. This paper discusses how livestock production systems in the Sahel, associated with cropping activities or not, have been shaped by this highly variable environment, and what can be said about their ability to cope with the new challenges and maintain their production systems and way of life (i.e. resilience). It analyses how public policies could enhance their adaptive capacities to further changes and ensure population food security. Whereas the main ecological and socio-economic characteristics of production systems in the Sahelian part of Africa are broadly similar from Senegal in the West to Ethiopia in the East, this paper focuses on the countries of the Western part of the Sahel (Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and the Niger).