Africa's drylands need right support listening to herders who live there

Locals at a watering hole in Kalokol in Turkana County. [Fred Kibor, Standard]

Africa’s drylands are often imagined as vast, empty spaces. Romantic wilderness on the one hand. Zones of hunger, conflict and poverty on the other hand. Media stories tend to emphasise crises and scarcity, portraying these regions as peripheral and fragile.

But this narrative obscures a more complex and hopeful reality. Across these landscapes, millions of pastoralists and dryland farmers are constantly adapting, innovating, and building livelihoods in some of the continent’s most variable environments.

Drylands are areas of low rainfall and high temperature that cover 60% of Africa. They support the livelihoods and food security of half a billion people who depend on pastoralism and crop farming.  Pastoralists alone supply over half the continent’s meat and milk, sustaining millions of households and enterprises. 

Yet drylands people face mounting pressures. These include political marginalisation, insecure land tenure, persistent conflict and climate change. These challenges are often worsened by misguided investments and inappropriate policies. 

In addition, many initiatives in the drylands have failed. Too often, they are shaped by outdated, crisis-driven narratives. These misrepresent drylands as “empty”, “unproductive”, or in need of “saving”.

Such interventions disrupt livelihoods and distort the underlying logic of dryland societies, while being used to justify yet more external investment.

For more than a decade, researchers working with the SPARC programme (Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises) have shown that the most effective support for drylands builds on the local systems and expertise that people already rely on. Yet many external initiatives still attempt to replace these rather than work with them. 

Misconceptions about drylands define them by what they lack rather than by their strengths. They oversimplify complex, dynamic systems to rationalise interventions aimed at taming dryland variability. 

For example, many investments in large-scale irrigation schemes have diverted water from traditional livelihoods while failing to boost agricultural productivity.

Similarly, fixed water infrastructure such as boreholes or dams can disrupt pastoral mobility. In Turkana, northern Kenya, permanent water points contributed to resource conflicts and rangeland degradation, and many have since fallen into disuse.

These “imported” solutions rarely account for local priorities or ecological realities. That’s why dozens of boreholes lie abandoned even in areas still facing water shortages.

Limited long-term learning compounds this problem. Few organisations return to assess how previous resilience projects fared. Millions are spent on building resilience, yet there is little follow-up to understand the outcomes of past efforts.

In contrast, locally-led approaches have proven far more effective. Along the shores of Lake Turkana, joint planning between local communities and the county government has produced investments that people value and maintain. These include shared water systems, fishing equipment and community gardens.

These examples underline a key lesson: initiatives designed around community priorities and local governance structures are more likely to have a lasting impact.

Dryland people's resilience is rooted in mobility, cooperation and environmental knowledge passed down through generations. Pastoralists and farmers have developed finely tuned strategies for living with this variability such as unpredictable rainfall, recurrent droughts and occasional floods. They move herds, manage grazing and water resources, diversify incomes, and draw on social networks that spread risk.

Mobility and flexibility are central. Herders move strategically across rangelands to access water and pasture, balancing environmental and social factors in real time. 

Pastoralists also embrace digital technology, dispelling myths of technological illiteracy. Herders use mobile phones, social media, and digital tools to locate water and monitor pasture.

Initiatives like Livestock247 – a livestock traceability and marketing platform – show how tech can open markets and improve herd management.

Informal networks are another cornerstone of resilience. Motorbike riders scout for pasture during droughts, local traders offer credit to women, lorry drivers deliver goods to remote areas, and mobile money agents keep remittances flowing.

In times of crisis, these social and economic linkages often provide more reliable safety nets than formal aid systems. Empowering women and youth is key.