Making markets work to build Kenyan pastoralists ‘ resilience to drought

CELEP member Tearfund published the report “Making markets work: the role of livestock markets in building the resilience of pastoralists against drought in Marsabit, Kenya” (2019). Pastoralist communities in Kenya live in harsh environments and their livelihoods have been severely hit by recurring droughts, and such climate-related shocks are becoming more severe and more frequent. Markets have the potential to build pastoralists’ resilience and livelihoods – but are they doing so?

The NGOs Food for the Hungry and Tearfund looked into why the current market systems in Marsabit, Kenya, are offering limited survival options to the 388 pastoralists interviewed. The main reasons included low market access, low market use beause of long distances (particularly for women, elderly traders and people living with disabilities), market closures because of frequent external shocks (e.g. drought, disease, inter-ethnic clashes) and a lack of organised community-based livestock marketing groups to enhance pastoralists’ bargaining power.

There is need to reduce the vulnerability of pastoral households to recurrent droughts. This report recommends how county and national governments, donors, and humanitarian and development partners could work in collaboration with pastoralists themselves, in particular women, people with disabilities, youth and marginalised groups, to build resilience through:

strengthening the role of markets in the short term through restocking programmes, synchronised market days and training in business skills
providing the tools and training for water harvesting and storage and range rehabilitation
helping pastoralists add value to their livestock products, investing in education, and developing stronger coordination between all the actors to enable livestock market systems to work for pastoralists in the long term.

You can find the full report here and a blog article about the study here.

Posted on 29 November 2019 in News, Pastoralism & Marketing