Earlier on this is worded as ‘Expanding infrastructure development activities in line with pastoral way of life and source of income’ (p.32).

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

1. key infrastructures in pastoral areas, ‘built according to the federal government’s strategic plan and regional states’ needs’ fail to serve pastoralists: ‘their accessibility [by pastoralists] is limited and pastoralists have not been beneficiaries to the level of their need since these infrastructures are built without considering the life style and ecology of the pastoral people’ (p.32).

The strategy is described as aiming to act on this premise with the following measures:

1. ‘improving access to rural roads that connect development centers, where pastoralists are permanently settled, with other centers; and link development centers with main feeder roads; and kebele with kebeles; woreda with woredas and zones with other zones’;
2. improving ‘provision of integrated, sustainable and accessible electric power considering the growing demand for power as watershed, irrigation, mining and tourism development grow’;
3. centering the ‘work in infrastructure development in pastoral areas … on development centers where pastoralists are settled’;
4. gearing the strategy ‘towards creating a modern environment that will enable transformation to grow and develop corridors and create linkages with local and international markets’.

COMMENTARY

1. Not on the basis of pastoral livelihood. The description of this strategy focuses on settlements and is concerned with ‘irrigation, mining and tourism’. Despite acknowledging the problem of building infrastructure in pastoral areas without consideration for the livelihood of people in pastoral systems, the remedy proposed seems to persist in doing more of the same: ‘improving access to rural roads that connect development centers… to other settlements’. That some pastoralists can be persuaded to settle (p.49) and seek alternative sources of income in development centers does not increase the relevance or the accessibility of infrastructure by those who follow a pastoral livelihood. The new group of ‘settled pastoralists’ created by the Voluntary Commune Program should not be an excuse for continuing to ignore people in pastoral systems. Fortunately, the focus on settlements emphasized in the description of this strategy is not entirely reflected in its set of activities.
2. Infrastructure to serve people in pastoral systems. This sectoral strategy emphasizes the idea that the infrastructure in pastoral areas is to be expanded taking the livelihood and income source of pastoralists into account’. As made clear in a previous wording of this strategy, ‘the livelihood of pastoralists’ here means ‘the pastoral way of life’ (p.32), and thus the livelihood of people in pastoral systems. Therefore, the expansion of infrastructure in pastoral areas refers to infrastructure that takes into account the livelihood and income source of people in pastoral systems – i.e. infrastructure that can effectively serve the needs of a food-production system based on livestock and mobility. An obvious example would be extending to rural and remote areas the coverage of mobile phone networks and mobile broadband services, including an adequate mesh of solar-powered charging points for phones and other battery-operated equipment. Another example would be the creation of a network of water tanks and dirt roads for the delivery of water to people and livestock to remote grazing areas, as found in north Kordofan, Sudan.[1] Yet another example would be the creation of a network for the collection of milk from herding camps. This is a whole world of potential innovation, as well as a way of imagining modernization itself, which is being left to develop at the level of regional states.

[1] S. Krätli, O.H. El Dirani, and H. Young, Standing Wealth: Pastoralist Livestock Production and Local Livelihood in Sudan (Khartoum: United Nations Environment Programme and Feinstein International Centre, Tufts University, 2013), p.57.

a. Improve and develop power and quality of service provision in pastoral areas (p.66) »