World Bank Studies: Prospects for Livestock-Based Livelihoods in Africa's Drylands (ePub)

Prospects for Livestock-Based Livelihoods in Africa's Drylands examines the challenges andopportunities facing the livestock sector and the people who depend on livestock in the drylandregions of Sub-Saharan Africa. It presents a novel way of thinking about pastoral development,grounded in a conceptual framework that focuses on the multiple shocks that drylands livestockkeepers face and how those shocks can be addressed, drawing on a state-of-the-art literature reviewcarried out by scientists of leading research institutes and development organizations, andintegrating the results of an innovative approach to modeling development options for the drylandslivestock sector.Looking to the future, the picture is mixed. On the positive side, demand for red meat is expectedto strengthen in domestic and regional markets, suggesting that livestock keepers will have goodmarket opportunities. On the negative side, a large majority of livestock keepers are classifi ed aspoor, and the natural (feed) resource base is likely to be suffi cient to enable improved meat and milkproduction for the growing human population.Prospects for the livestock sector through 2030 vary by aridity zone. In arid and semi-arid zones, areasonable goal for 2030 is to have land use, training, and microfi nance systems established thatpromote an appropriate balance between human and livestock carrying capacities, featuring mainlygrassland/pastoral systems that reliably and sustainably satisfy the minimum income needs ofherder households, produce at least a signifi cant part of the demand in local markets for animalsource food, and provide environmental services for which livestock keepers receive compensation.The goal includes signifi cant employment generation outside the sector. In the higher rainfall zonesof the semi-arid areas, and in the subhumid zones, a reasonable goal for 2030 is to have intensifi edproduction systems established, featuring mainly mixed livestock/arable farming or agro-pastoralsystems that are closely linked to nearby grassland/pastoral systems and that consistently generatemarketable surpluses of differentiated red meat and livestock products that can compete not only inthe expanding domestic market but also in selected regional markets.