Land and nomadic people

"However, pastoralism has never been recognised by conventional thinking on development. There have been erroneous views that pastoralists should settle into modern farms; privatise and individualise land, keep fewer livestock etc.

But recent research on pastoralism by Roger Blench, Adrian Cullis, Charles Lane, Jeremy Swift and our own Prof. Mamhood Mamdani etc, have found out that this is a way of life, a scientific practice, a rational and efficient low-intensity stock rearing production system suited to the fragile environment that the pastoralists live in. It is therefore not by accident that pastoralists straddle the semi-arid areas in Africa, from Ankole to Karamoja, Turkana, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea etc.

The mobility of pastoralists is not a backward practice, but a rational adaptive strategy. Mobility also prevents overgrazing and environmental degradation. Besides, there are grass species and salt licks that are scattered over space and time and can only be accessed through mobility. There are about seven million pastoralist communities in Uganda in 27 districts. .

Many governments have tried without success to change pastoralists. In Iran, from 1910-45, the government used gunships to bomb the Qashqa'I into settlement and even tried to change their language, culture and dressing by force. It failed.

In Kenya, in Kitengela sub-location near Nairobi, Maasai pastoralists in the 1980s were encouraged by a government programme to divide their communal lands into individual ownership. It did not work as the pastoralists whom I visited in 2005 have now fallen back to grazing their livestock communall disregarding their individual borders because of the fragile ecosystem that cannot sustain livestock in small land holdings.

Conversion of communal lands in grazing areas to individual ownership have not only benefited a few rich, but even those who have done so have either failed to sustain individual ranches, and if they have sustained them, it is at very high cost."