Livelihoods & services in the drylands of the Horn

The technical brief “Livelihoods and basic service support in the drylands of the Horn of Africa” was issued in 2013 by the Technical Consortium for Building Resilience to Drought in the Horn of Africa, which supports the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and national governments in the Horn. Recurrent crises and continuing need for relief assistance in the drylands underscore the need to build household resilience. The paper assesses past interventions to support pastoralist livelihoods through basic services in animal health, range improvement, animal breeding, feed supply, marketing, insurance, human health and education, and social protection (safety nets, insurance).

It identifies some areas of best practice:
· community-based animal health worker (CAHW) programmes
· small-scale irrigation to produce high-value crops for assured markets
· collecting and marketing bio-products such as resins, honey and aloe
· innovative distance learning for pastoralists in northern Kenya
· programmes to realise synergy between animal and human health services
· piloting of index-based livestock insurance in northern Kenya.

Key challenges for development in the drylands include:
· upscaling and providing an enabling policy environment for CAHW programmes
· designing animal disease control systems that pastoralists and national governments can afford
· conserving indigenous breeds
· developing methods for equitable distribution of tourism and wildlife conservation revenues
· supporting spontaneous intensification processes that are equitable and environmentally sustainable
· documenting and disseminating good practice in supporting livelihood diversification
· new thinking on institutional models for delivering basic services to pastoralists.

Posted on 4 July 2013 in Pastoralism & Services, Pastoralist Livelihoods & Nutrition