The Future of Pastoralism in AfricaAn international conference in Addis Ababa 21-23 March 2011 
PENHA
was invited to make a presentation of its work among pastoralist women
in the Horn of Africa at a major conference in Addis Ababa. The meeting
was organised by Future Agricultures Consortium, Institute of
Development Studies, Sussex University, and the Feinstein International
Center, Tufts University, Addis Ababa.
Everse Ruhindi from
Uganda gave a paper on behalf of PENHA on “Economic Empowerment for
Pastoralist Women”. This was written in partnership with John
Livingstone. The presentation pointed to the effectiveness of business
skills training for women’s groups in pastoral areas, when combined with
grants for rotating funds. This enables women to acquire productive
assets and expand their micro-enterprises. The paper can be downloaded
as a pdf from this internet link: http://www.future-agricultures.org/events/future-of-pastoralism
Click on “Future of Pastoralism” box and then “Conference outputs” and
go to Panel 12. Other papers can be downloaded. For example, Prof. John
Morton from the University of Greenwich and a PENHA Trustee gave a paper
on “Responsible companies and African livestock-keepers: teaching but
not learning”. This is in Panel 6.
The theme of the conference
was that the future of pastoralism in Africa is uncertain. Radical
changes are affecting pastoralist areas in terms of access to resources,
options for mobility and opportunities for marketing. These changes
also bring new possibilities for making pastoralist livelihoods stronger
but many questions remain about the sustainability of these changes. Is
there opportunity for a productive, vibrant, market-oriented livelihood
system or will pastoralist areas remain a backwater of
underdevelopment, marginalisation and severe poverty? How can
pastoralist ‘drop-outs’ be supported after they leave the livelihood but
continue to interact with the livestock sector?
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Conferences and Workshops
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