Earlier on this is worded as: ‘Maximizing animal productivity and ensuring the increase of benefits’ (p.31). This is the only strategy explicitly focusing on animal husbandry. It accounts for 7 implementation activities out of the 76 in the policy.

This sectoral strategy is justified by the following premises:

1. ‘key problems in animal production and development in pastoral areas’ are:
   • ‘absence of extension services centered on animal and fisheries, that address the objective reality of pastoral areas’;
   • ‘lack of adequate animal health services’;
   • ‘absence of strong range management system’;
   • ‘lack of animal feed production that is ecologically compatible’.

2. ‘major problems that hampered pastoralists from maximized use of own animal resources’ are:
   • ‘lack of animal-breeding technology’;
   • ‘absence of genetic reserve programs’;
   • ‘weak market infrastructure and information exchange systems’;
   • ‘inadequate financial and credit services’;
   • ‘weak credit and animal insurance services’;
   • ‘lack of practice-oriented ecology-centered research’;
   • ‘lack of strong early warning and response systems’.

The strategy is aimed at acting on these premises with the following measures:

1. Providing, strengthening and establishing ‘animal health services, and improved local breed, range management, extension services, market systems’.
2. Preparing ‘detailed packages … for each type of livestock in order to make the livestock and fisheries resources more productive – and holding ‘trainings [by] qualified professionals … to implement these development packages’.
3. ‘In moisture stress lowland pastoral areas’:
   • improving ‘local breeds through selection and community-based breeding programs’, and by introducing ‘mobile health services, drought resistant feed production and technology’;
   • organizing and strengthening ‘animal producers’ cooperatives’;
   • encouraging ‘legal animal traders’ and linking them ‘with local and foreign live animal trade, and milk, meat, leather products processing industries in order to maximize the benefit of pastoralists’;
   • supporting ‘animal and animal products marketing cooperatives … to engage in value addition processes through [the] establishment of animal products processing factories which could create jobs and increase the income source of pastoralists. Such activity will be the basis of our endeavor to modernize animal production and transform to animal led industrialization’.
4. Developing ‘special programs and packages … in order to expand fishery production and marketing where dams are built over big rivers in pastoral areas.
5. ‘In development centers’:
   • providing ‘regular agricultural extension services especially that focus on animal production’;
   • strengthening and maximizing ‘animal production through [the] introduction of technology transfer and qualified professionals in animal production’.
6. In order to ‘involve pastoralists in modern animal husbandry’:
   • focusing on ‘continuous capacity building activities’;
   • providing ‘modern agricultural inputs suitable to the area’;
   • ‘availing technologies in time and in sufficient quantity’;
   • ‘establishing working procedures’.

COMMENTARY

1. National resources in the hands of pastoralists? The description of this sectoral strategy emphasizes the need for ‘developing the animal resources that are in the hands of pastoralists in a modern and maximized way’. Animal resources in pastoral systems are the result of centuries of development and maintenance by pastoralists. By speaking of these resources as being ‘in the hands’ of pastoralists implies a temporary condition that carries no sense of connection. Something ‘in their hands’ is something ‘they’ have picked up but that does not belong to them. In talking of ‘animal resources … in the hands of pastoralists’ the policy implicitly frames pastoralists as simply ‘handlers’ of a resource ‘available in the country’. Deciding how to develop the resources available in the country is the prerogative of the government. Pastoral systems, on which Specific Objective (a) promises to base growth and development, are out of the picture. All this strategy says about them is in the promise to ensure that pastoralists will receive benefits from the way the government decides to develop the ‘animal resources’ that (for the time being) happen to be ‘in the hands’ of pastoralists. But the policy has already mentioned, under Basic Pillar 1, that such benefits are not certain. Handlers are simply told what to do; they might or might not do a good job at it, and if not they can – indeed they must, in the interest of the nation – be replaced by others who are more capable.
2. Overlooking mobility. The general description of the strategy promises ‘mobile health services’: ‘In moisture stress lowland pastoral areas, local breeds will be improved through selection and community-based breeding programs, and mobile health services, drought resistant feed production and technology shall be introduced’ (p.34). However, none of the implementation activities under this strategy make reference to mobility or mobile services.
3. Overlooking pastoral specialization and ecology. The strategy acknowledges that the ‘Absence of animal and fisheries centered extension services that address the objective reality of pastoral areas’ has been ‘a major problem [amongst others] that hampered pastoralists from maximized use of own animal resources’ (p.33). However, the description of ‘the objective reality of pastoral areas’ is limited to being subject to ‘moisture stress’. There is no reference to the expertise and specialization of pastoralists and their herds, (including the existence of long-term selection through sophisticated breeding systems), or the existing infrastructure of customary institutions for managing resources, or to the specificity of pastoral ecosystems (except from moisture stress). In short, the understanding of the ‘objective reality in pastoral areas’ appears to overlook all the elements of pastoralism that make it capable of supplying ‘90% of … the livestock export in Ethiopia’ (p.14) and of being ‘a large contributor to the national economy’ (p.27). Being the only strategy that engages directly and explicitly with mobile pastoralism in the whole policy, it is remarkable that this strategy ignores everything that makes pastoralism successful in its various ecological settings. One is left to wonder how the policy can respond to pastoralists’ demands and build development on pastoralist livelihood systems as promised in Specific Objective (a).
4. Missing the opportunity for a real modernization of pastoral systems? This strategy is where coherence with Specific Objective (a) should have led to an endeavor to mobilize the possibilities offered by cutting-edge scientific research and technological development in order to support and strengthen pastoral systems. In other words, understanding, strengthening, and improving the things that already work well in pastoralism. However, this is not so. Instead of involving modernization in pastoralism, and thus finding a path to modernization that fits the reality of pastoralists, the aim here is to involve pastoralists in modernization: change pastoralism to fit a cliché, an imported model of modernization as industrialization (p.34).

a. Expand and improve the quality of animal health coverage (p.35) »