Revisiting Pastoralism and Marketing in East Africa

The study of pastoralism is replete with prejudices masquerading as science—prejudices that have influenced generations of government officials, development planners, and academic theorists. Addressing the inflammatory belief that pastoral herd accumulation leads to range degradation and desertification, the “new range ecology” has demonstrated the rationality behind building up herds in good years as an adaptive strategy for surviving the devastating droughts that characterize drylands. In fact, grazing pressure on Africa’s rangelands has not resulted in desertification, since the state of pasturelands under “non-equilibrium” conditions of low and highly variable and unpredictable precipitation is determined by rain itself, not human use. Contradicting the misconception that pastoralists do not sell livestock, Pastoral Livestock Marketing in Eastern Africa establishes a paradigm shift by examining the role of markets in pastoral strategies and the contribution of pastoralists to feeding the region. This is a remarkable book in its interdisciplinary scope, melding economic rigor with ethnographic description, something quite rare: it retains a regional, transboundary perspective that sacrifices neither rigor nor focus.

From the colonial period to now, the accumulation of livestock by pastoralists has been attributed to motivations of culture or prestige rather than economic gain, and their purported reluctance to market animals wrongly derided as “irrational.” This work moves decisively beyond such myths; it does so principally by examining in close detail the complex motivations and levels of scale involved in pastoral livestock exchange and market behavior: household, market, market linkages (including cross-border), and policy implications. The practical aim of the work is to help improve livestock marketing to protect the environment, to improve livelihoods, to reduce poverty, to mitigate food insecurity (built into cycles of boom and bust), and to meet consumer demand. Rather than blaming pastoralists for failure to achieve unrealistic or ill-conceived development goals, the book aims to understand pastoralist market behavior so tha development assistance may intervene more effectively on their behalf and in their interests. The work addresses key policy questions that guided the USAID-funded Global Livestock Collaborative Research Support Project, a collaboration involving anthropology, agricultural economics, geography, range ecology and management, plant science, and animal production. The associated studies focus on market organization, pricing, and behavior in rangeland areas of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, and transborder livestock trade over the Kenyan borders with Somalia, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda. What follows is a succinct summary of these studies.

One major conclusion is that almost all pastoral households use livestock markets, albeit at modest levels and more so in times of drought. Markets are also used more when alternative livelihoods are not available, and by households with larger herds. But those markets take a particular form: pastoralists are more sellers than buyers, so markets play a more modest role in restocking than does natural birth. Yet with offtake of 8 to 10 percent per year, herders help sustain a growing urban population—with a growing demand for meat (both internally and internationally). In 2002 Nairobi purchased about four hundred and fifty thousand cattle from range areas, 90 percent for slaughter, to feed three to four million inhabitants. In this process of urban supply, cattle, sheep, and goats are transferred from primary (local) markets to secondary (regional) markets to terminal (or peri-urban) markets. In 2001, for example, Maasai in Kajiado District, who possessed over six hundred thousand cattle and almost twice that many smallstock, sold about fifty thousand cattle and many more smallstock—one third of that total stock originating in Tanzania. Hence cross-border trade is important, with Somalia and Ethiopia alone providing about 20 percent of the Nairobi demand.

But given high market participation and a comparative advantage in livestock production, why don’t pastoralists sell even more of their animals? Regarding supply-side factors, much to the chagrin of colonial officers and development planners, pastoralists are not and probably will never become commercial ranchers. These studies show...