Feedback

• I found the "pastoral development" document of the government of Ethiopia not only wrong but alarmingly deceptive. 1.The document does not even recognize pastoralism as a viable way of life as the peasant livelihood system. In as much as the government's policy on peasant agriculture does not aspire to change their way of life, it was expected to do the same to pastoralism as both are traditional ways of life and Ethiopia's social formation is too traditional to transform automatically into industrialization (rural). Thus, as millions and millions of people still depend on pastoralism as a way of life, it is not only necessary but also obligatory to maintain pastoralism. Any macro policy that aspires to beef up pastoralism within the prism of pastoral development is required to come up with a development policy that can really galvanize pastoralism with the ultimate objective of enhancing livestock production for the purpose of starting up/expanding production of meat and milk products exporting animals and/or, encourages pastoral communities towards livelihood diversification(by enhancing their income per household), and so on. Asking/compelling pastoralists to change their way of life and become farmers is fundamentally wrong and is exactly the same as the policies of past governments but in a new guise of 'pastoral development'. The current exercise of producing wheat in pastoral land with the idea of expanding it will definitely bring the government in a collision course with pastoralists who do not want to become farmers. The wheat production might appear successful on the surface but is bound to boil contradictions, if not conflict, later. The proposed government policy on 'pastoral development' is basically a policy of agricultural (farming) development in pastoral land mainly, -and dangerously so,- by obliterating pastoralism as a way of life for millions and millions of people. . There is no comparison between this policy and the AU Framework for Pastoral Development. 2. The AU Framework is framed in much the same way as we advocates of pastoral right have been saying all along. Take pastoralism as a viable way of life because it has the potential to contribute not only to abolishing poverty but also to the national economy as Ethiopia stands now as second in Africa in number of livestock in Africa. Here lies the golden opportunity but no Ethiopian government has ever realized this potential and that has always been the policy problem of governments in Ethiopia. 3. What is unfair about crafting such a policy is that it has been done with a systematic exclusion of experts in pastoral development.
• This policy and strategy statement acknowledged the need for the participation of the local people and strengthening local government which is good. However, the previous pastoral and agro-pastoral policy studies indicated that local people's engagement not only in its implementation but also in crafting this policy and strategy at the begining has been a great problem for its effectiveness. Contantly, I believe that this policy and strategy implementation would be meaning-making if it will capacitate pastorialist area institutions which should be located within pastorialist administration or community (for instance, in SNNPR they were in Hawassa city which is handed KM from the pastorialist areas). As result, most of the time, different projects that have targeted these areas are suffered from high cost of resources mobilization including staffs.