Communicating with East Africa’s pastoralists  In Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia a significant proportion of the population are pastoralists – they make a living from keeping goats, cattle or camels, often in ecologically fragile areas. They produce much of their countries’ meat and milk, but are among the poorest people.
East Africa’s pastoralists face a multitude of challenges, many relating to land ownership. Traditionally, in pastoralist society, land is not owned but ‘belongs’ to a group or family linked by descent or cultural affiliation. But as land is taken over for commercial agriculture or turned into national parks, pastoralists find themselves squeezed into smaller areas or forced to move elsewhere.
This is coupled with a lack of education, medical and veterinary services, in part because pastoralists are ignored by politicians and planners, who are generally city-based and may not view pastoralism as a viable way of life. Their political marginalisation has seen an increase in poverty, with women in particular being severely affected.
Since the early 1990s Panos Eastern Africa has played a significant role in helping pastoralist communities get their voices heard. By communicating better with the general public and politicians, they have started to tackle people’s prejudices and join in political decision making.
They have also discovered the need to communicate differently among themselves: to debate and make decisions about how to adapt their traditional culture to the modern world.
Our first project enabled Kenyan journalists to visit and report from pastoralist areas. Their articles were published in major national newspapers, sometimes exposing corruption or the neglect of pastoralists by the authorities.
We also supported a group of Kenyan NGOs to produce a series of radio programmes in Borana, one of the pastoralist languages. The series provided information about land ownership laws to help pastoralists avoid losing their land to urban developers.
By taking this a step further, groups of pastoralist women and young people were trained to produce the radio programmes themselves. They chose subjects ranging from girls’ rights and education to problems of cattle stealing and conflict between different pastoralist groups. Radio series followed in partnership with Maasai pastoralists in Tanzania and Afar pastoralists in Ethiopia.
An oral testimony project with Kenyan pastoralists gave an insight into some of the cultural, social and economic impacts of resettlement, in particular the changes resulting from the shift from a pastoralist way of life to one which is settled and based on agriculture and enterprise rather than livestock.
Since 1998, in an effort to help pastoralists set their own development agendas and negotiate with politicians, our Addis Ababa office has hosted the Pastoralist Forum – an alliance of organisations working with and for pastoralists in Ethiopia to raise their profile and influence.
The Forum’s many successes include: an annual Pastoralists Day, at which pastoralists from different groups join to celebrate their culture and debate development issues; creating a caucus of members of parliament to represent pastoralist communities; establishing a pastoralist documentation centre; and lobbying government to include pastoralists in Ethiopia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy.
The Poverty Reduction Strategy has also been a focus in Uganda. The original strategy, which aimed to strengthen the country’s agricultural economy, ignored pastoralists. With Panos’ help, pastoralists have lobbied the government to ensure that their needs and priorities are included in the revision process.
Further information
> Minority Rights | Pastoralists in the Horn of Africa (pdf)
> Oxfam | Pastoralist Forum Ethiopia - impact assessment
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