Earlier on this is worded as ‘Expanding pastoral urban areas integrating with industry’ (p.32).

This sectoral strategy is justified on the basis of the following premises:

1. ‘pastoralists could not benefit from urban development and industry linkages’ ‘due to absence of all around integrated urban and industrial development activities’;
2. ‘in major towns of pastoral areas, industrial parks that use pastoralists’ products as raw materials should be built’;
3. ‘pastoral urban development should be linked with small and medium industries that process and use as raw materials the products of pastoralists such as meat, milk, hides and skin’;
4. ‘investors and organized youth shall access [industrial] parks through rentals to give them job opportunities’;
5. ‘where the livelihood of pastoralists is improved and their income increases, there will be a tendency to use modern products and establishing small enterprises like wood works [sic] and metal shops will be used to create jobs for the youth’;
6. ‘[industrial] parks [in pastoral areas] shall also avail products and services that are necessary to pastoral people with reasonable prices’.

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

1. ‘our urban development task … mainly focuses on a strategic thinking of linking urban development to industry’;
2. producing and introducing ‘inputs and technology for agriculture productivity’;
3. linking and coordinating ‘pastoral urban centers … with our industrial development strategy in order to make the area [a] development and growth corridor; and to be integrated with local and international marketing networks’;
4. ‘the urban development activity shall have its own separate program and package and shall be designed within regional urban development framework’.

COMMENTARY

Not on the basis of pastoralist livelihood. The economic advantage of pastoral systems consists of their capacity to make use of highly variable environments, where opportunities are mostly unpredictable and short-lived. Economic success depends on the ability to arrive with a herd in the right place at the right time. Thus, mobility is crucial to the productivity of the system. This is actually quite similar to the way mobility is crucial in commerce, in which case the mobility of commodities means that businesses can take advantage of variability in prices across distant markets. But it is still a matter of arriving in the right place at the right time. In Ethiopia, that kind of mobility is supported as a matter of policy, for example by subsidizing fuel to facilitate transportation. Strategic thinking about industrial development in pastoral areas ‘on the basis of pastoralist livelihood’ should focus on linking industry to pastoral systems, not just to towns. It should look for innovative ways of designing (sustainable) industrial development by linking it with mobile production. Instead, the description of this sectoral strategy seems concerned with towns and crops (‘introducing technology for agriculture productivity’) rather than pastoral systems, showing little understanding of where the economic strength of pastoralism lies. This is a crucial dimension of the policy, waiting to be developed at the level of regional states.

a. Develop plans for pastoral towns and settlement centers so that they will become beautiful, green, and convenient for living (p.61) »