Research and Development on Dryland Husbandry in Ethiopia, and: Dryland Husbandry in Uganda: Community Participation and Development, and: Dryland Husbandry for Sustainable Development in the Southern Rangelands of Kenya, and: Dryland Husbandry in the Sudan: Grassroots Experience and Development (review)

These four volumes, published by the Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern African (OSSREA) and distributed by the African Books Collective, describe four dryland husbandry projects (DHP) that ran in Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda from about 1995 to 2003. Essentially they are reports written by the professionals who designed, implemented, and evaluated the projects in the respective countries. Each volume contains a chapter that discusses organization and objectives—economic development, management of dryland ecology, improving quality of life of pastoralists—and situates these within current debates on development concepts and approaches. Then follow a number of background chapters documenting the demographic, ecological, and agricultural context of the particular regions (but with no discussion of culture or social structure of the pastoralist groups involved). These are followed by chapters reporting on project activities (e.g., reseeding of rangelands, water harvesting, or gender projects) and/or technical chapters discussing different aspects of the livestock husbandry system (e.g., rangeland conditions, water resource potential). All volumes have numerous color pictures, figures, graphs, and tables.

The four projects used a similar design, which was then adapted to local circumstances. The approach is described as grassroots, bottom-up, participatory, or action-research, although the main actors seem to be extension agents, local government officials, and other experts rather than pastoralists and agropastoralists themselves. This is evident in the descriptions of three key activities of the projects—water harvesting, range improvement, and training of paravets—which were remarkably similar in design across the different national and ecological contexts (save for details such as which indigenous grasses were used for reseeding pastures). Other common themes in the projects were gender and indigenous knowledge. All projects documented women's role in the local economy and subsequently developed activities that were specifically targeted at women. The projects also examined indigenous knowledge of animal diseases and/or plants, although it is unclear how the knowledge was then integrated into other project activities. Some individual DHP projects had their own additional focus. The Uganda volume, for example, contains a chapter on marketing problems, which includes an interesting discussion of the transformation from a nomadic to an agropastoral system involving processes of intensification, integration, and privatization. The quality of the chapters in the books is uneven. Some are well written and contain clear and useful discussions of project activities. Others consist primarily of lists, end abruptly, or use awkward terms and unclear definitions (e.g., "bushy farms," which are defined as "households with less than 25% of the grazing land cleared" [Sabiiti & Teka, 39]).

The big question is—who will find these volumes interesting? The editors never make clear for whom they are intended. Although one of the prefaces hints at national audiences in Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda, it does not indicate whether these would consist of pastoralists, development specialists, or scholars. I doubt the volumes will prove very useful for scholars of pastoral systems or development, since the technical...