As hunger spreads among more than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa, a study by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) as a response to Kenya’s last devastating drought, in 2008-2009, finds that investments aimed at increasing the mobility of livestock herders – a way of life often viewed as “backward” despite being the most economical and productive use of Kenya’s drylands – could be the key to averting future food crises in arid lands.

The report, “An Assessment of the Response to the 2008–2009 Drought in Kenya,” suggests that herding makes better economic sense than crop agriculture in many of the arid and semi-arid lands that constitute 80 per cent of the Horn of Africa, and supporting mobile livestock herding communities in advance and with timely interventions can help people cope the next time drought threatens.

The authors say that encouraging livestock herders to switch to farming crops or to move to cities is simply unrealistic in this region’s great dry lands, which will not support row crops without extensive irrigation, which is scarce and often impractical.

An estimated 70 million people live in these arid lands, and many of them are herders. In Kenya, the value of the pastoral livestock sector is estimated to be worth $800 million.