LAND TENURE AND LIVESTOCK DEVELOPMENT IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA AID EVALUATION SPECIAL STUDY NO. 39 by John W. Bennett Steven W. Lawry James C. Riddell Land Tenure Center University of Wisconsin-Madison U.S. Agency for International Development May 1986 The views and interpretations expressed in this report are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Agency for International Development. TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD ..........................iii SUMMARY........................... iv PREFACE.......................... viii GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS .................. x 1. PASTORALISTS IN TRANSITION: A FRAME OF REFERENCE .... 1 1.1 Changing Perspectives on Pastoralism ....... 2 1.2 An Organizing Concept: From Subsistence to Commercial Livestock Production .................. 5 2. THE EAST AFRICAN EXPERIENCE WITH LIVESTOCK PROJECTS .. 8 2.1 Somalia: The Central Rangelands Development Program ...................... 8 2.2 Kenya: The Kenya Range, Livestock, and Ranch Development Program ................ 14 2.3 Tanzania ..................... 23 2.3.1 The Livestock Development Program: Phase II ................... 24 2.3.2 The Masai Livestock and Range Management Project ................. 31 2.4 A Comparative Essay: The Group Ranch Experience .. 35 2.4.1 Concepts, Definitions, and Rights of Tenure ................. 35 2.4.2 Project Planning and Design ......... 40 2.4.3 Problems of Operation .......... 46 2.5 Some Concluding Observations ........... 51 3. THE WEST AFRICAW EXPERIENCE WITH LIVESTOCK PROJECTS ................... 53 3.1 Mauritania .................... 55 3.2 Senegal ...................... 59 3.3 Niger ....................... 64 3.4 Cameroon ...................... 72 3.5 Mali ....................... 76 4.1 The Colonial Era ................. 87 4.1.1 Achieving Free Marketability of Cattle .88 4.1.2 The Traditional Tenure System ...... 90 4.2 The Evolution of the Tribal Grazing Land Policy .. 95 4.3 The Search for Smallholder Livestock Policies Under TGLP .......................104 4.3.1 Background ...............104 4.3.2 The Environment of Smallholder Production ...............105 4.3.3 Improvement of Communal Resource Management ...............111 4.4 The Limits to Collective Action at the Village Level .......................124 4.5 An Institutional Framework for Resource Management ....................127 4.6 Framing New Policies: Their Institutional Implications ...................130 4.6.1 Institutional Structure .........130 4.6.2 Household Income Strategies and Economic Policy .................132 5. LAND TENURE POLICY IN AFRICAN LIVESTOCK DEVELOPMENT . 135 5.1 An Overview ....................135 5.2 Transitional Economies and Tenure Policy .....139 5.3 A Model of Tenure Policy for Pastoral Systems ...143 5.4 Implications for Land Tenure Policy ........144 5.5 Conclusions ....................146 For any Tables, Figure Boxes, or Graphs that may be omitted from this document may be found on Microfiche. FOREWORD This paper emerges from a process of rethinking Agency for International Development (AID) livestock interventions in Africa. Both the Bureau for Program and Policy Coordination/ Center for Development Information and Evaluation (PPC/CDIE) and the Bureau for Science and Technology/Office of Rural and Institutional Development (S&T/RD) have participated in this rethinking process. In the late 1970s, an emerging consensus on the generally disappointing results of AID livestock interventions in Africa led CDIE to commission papers by Michael Horowitz (The Sociology of Pastoralism and African Livestock Projects) and Allan Hoben (Lessons From a Critical Examination of Livestock Projects in Africa). Insights presented in these two papers provided the basis for a workshop held in 1979 on pastoralism and African livestock development organized by CDIE and the Africa Bureau. Staff and cooperating institutions of S&T/RD were significant contributors to and participants in the workshop. A second workshop in 1981 saw the emergence of a consensus among project technical officers, social scientists, and academics that interventions to improve pastoral production required both a sound technical base and an understanding of the resilience and constraints of pastoral production systems. During the year of the first workshop, S&T/RD signed a cooperative agreement with the University of Wisconsin Land Tenure Center. Land tenure in pastoral development projects was seen as one of the most important African land tenure problems to be examined over the life of the cooperative agreement. The present document summarizes a series of pastoral land tenure and land management studies done under the cooperative agreement in West, East, and Southern Africa. The rethinking process embodied in the Horowitz and Hoben papers, the two workshops, and the Land Tenure Center’s research has been followed by two recent developments: a sharp decline in the number of African pastoral development projects and formulation by the Africa Bureau in 1982 of a livestock sector strategy. Both the decline in number of projects and the Africa Bureau strategy indicate a continued concern with developing only those livestock interventions in pastoral areas that are sustainable, productive, and of benefit to pastoralists. We hope that this paper contributes to the development of such approaches. W. Haven North Christopher H. Russel Associate Assistant Administrator Director, Office of Rural Center for Development Information and Institutional and Evaluation Development Bureau for Program and Policy Bureau for Science and Coordination Technology iii SUMMARY The conventional policy model for livestock projects in the 1960s and early 1970s is described in Section 1, "Pastoralists in Transition: A Frame of Reference." The aim of the policy was to make livestock systems more productive in terms of producing more beef for market. Typically, projects were concerned primarily with the physical and technical dimensions of the production process--with animals, pasture, and water--and with organizational and infrastructural aspects of livestock marketing, including establishment of marketing boards and slaughtering facilities and trek routes. As animal numbers grew (for projectand nonproject-related reasons), declining range conditions became an additional concern. Thus livestock programs came to have three main thrusts: improve the quality of animals, increase "offtake" for the market, and improve range conditions. Land tenure was often seen as a major concern with reference to the last objective. This particular combination of policies was rarely successful in reordering the decision behavior of livestock producers. Pastoralists continued to make the key decisions about production and resource use, and they did so in a way that was consistent with strategies that followed tested procedures. In uncertain environments this often involved reduction of risk. Whatever the strategy, it became increasingly clear that livestock policies had been promulgated without sufficient understanding of the broad social, economic, and ecological environment within which pastoralists operate. Recognition of the absence of adequate knowledge for sound policy led, in the mid-1970s, to increased study of pastoral pro- duction systems. The "economic" perspective characteristic of conventional project design was broadened to include behavioral and institutional features not easily incorporated into econometric calculations. It became clear that many pastoralists produce livestock for market, but the importance of the market to individual pastoralists varies considerably and depends upon such factors as the role of other income sources in the household economy, other economic uses made of livestock (for milk, meat, draft power, and so forth), and the relative importance of social obligations met through animal exchanges. This suggested greater focus on the kinds of social and economic benefits required by pastoralists in return for their efforts at changing their pro- duction strategies and learning to manage diminished resources. Nonetheless, an enhanced appreciation of the broader social and economic aspects of the production system does not ensure successful projects. Although efforts have been made to learn about indigenous systems, how indigenous systems interact with new market opportunities and with project activities remains unpredictable. More recent approaches have recognized that pastoral systems in Africa are in an awkward transitional stage, in which pastoralists iv retain many attributes of older systems while responding in often unexpected ways to incentives offered by markets and by projects. Section 1 concludes with a frame of reference that describes the character of the transition process, incorporating some of its key implications to land tenure change. Although the change process affecting pastoralists has certain commonalities throughout the continent which are, to a certain extent, generalizable for their implications to tenure change, sufficient regional differences exist to warrant emphases on different aspects of change and somewhat different approaches to the key issues in the regional studies in Sections 2, 3, and 4. Section 2, "The East African Experience With Livestock Projects," examines World Bank and USAID projects in Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania. In Somalia, the USAID-funded Central Rangelands Development Program concentrated on building up the National Range Agency (NRA), a multipurpose national institution for marketing and processing animals and