KAWA MULTIMEDIA PUBLICATIONS
pastoral tribes in Africa
1. Fulani
2. Baggara Arabs
3. Galla
4. Turkana
5. Karamojong
6. Maasai
7. Tusi
8. Lozi
9. Tswana
10. Tuareg.
Successful experiments in Uganda in the Ankole and Bunyoro districts have shown that if widestrips of land around the cleared grazing lands all settled and cultivated, the return of wild animals to these grazing lands will be prevented. Spraying the remaining trees from beneath also makes sure that the tsetse cannot use its favourite shady habitat. It is also essential that there is a good animal health service with sufficient veterinary surgeons. This is possible, but is extremely hard work and expensive; which means that only limited areas can be cleared and settled at a time.
Uganda and Kenya are in the forefront of this sort of clearance and thus have valuable experience to offer in the field of pastoral development. As the century draws to its close and Africa's population will have doubled since the 1960's, more and more developments of this nature will have to take place to exploit this vast potential.
There is a great belt of this type of land which extends right across North Africa between the tsetse regions to the south and the desert lands to the north. There are large areas in eastern Africa from Somalia southwards into Tanzania. Zambia has large areas of these lands and Botswana and Namibia also have large areas of such lands.
Although conditions are difficult, cattle are very important indeed and for a certain type of people the cattle form the basis of a complete existence in two different ways. Semi-nomadic pastoralism is one of them.
The cattle owners have to walk long distances and so cannot have a really permanent home for themselves. Long distances have to be covered because of the continuous need to search for both water and grass. The grass only grows after the rains and so this type of pastoralism means that the tribes people and their cattle follow the rains. Sometimes the rains fail as they did in the early and mid 1970's in the north African lands, so grass cannot be found and the cattle begin to starve- They produce little milk when this occurs, and so the people who depend on them for food and drink also begin to starve. Many of these semi-nomads cultivate a little land during their lengthier stop-overs in the rainy season, or just afterwards. If the rains fail they cannot even do that.
There is another problem, self created, experienced by pome of these tribes. They also keep goats, and a pattern emerges whereby vast herds of cattle overgraze the land and cut up the soil with their sharp hooves, leaving it at the mercy of wind and rainwash. The goats follow behind, eating the grass roots and stripping bushes of their leaves, thus completing the devastation. All this is compounded by the fact that watering places are few and faJ- between, and so vast herds tend to concentrate at them. Healthy cattle -mix with diseased cattle with the result that disease is spread. This is a particular problem in East Africa where the traditionalist Maasai, Karamojong, Samburu and Turkana wander with their herds.
Although this is rather an unhappy picture changes have been occurring in the last ten to" fifteen years. They are accelerating, and gradually the emphasis is beginning to shift towards quality rather than quantity, regular sales and money in the bank rather than vast skinny herds and no money, stable ranching techniques rather than indiscriminate wandering, a greater degree ,of health care rather than an acceptance of a certain percentage of mortality. Let us look at one such tribe who travel great distances on a north-south axis in West Africa-
2. Baggara Arabs
3. Galla
4. Turkana
5. Karamojong
6. Maasai
7. Tusi
8. Lozi
9. Tswana
10. Tuareg.
Successful experiments in Uganda in the Ankole and Bunyoro districts have shown that if widestrips of land around the cleared grazing lands all settled and cultivated, the return of wild animals to these grazing lands will be prevented. Spraying the remaining trees from beneath also makes sure that the tsetse cannot use its favourite shady habitat. It is also essential that there is a good animal health service with sufficient veterinary surgeons. This is possible, but is extremely hard work and expensive; which means that only limited areas can be cleared and settled at a time.
Uganda and Kenya are in the forefront of this sort of clearance and thus have valuable experience to offer in the field of pastoral development. As the century draws to its close and Africa's population will have doubled since the 1960's, more and more developments of this nature will have to take place to exploit this vast potential.
There is a great belt of this type of land which extends right across North Africa between the tsetse regions to the south and the desert lands to the north. There are large areas in eastern Africa from Somalia southwards into Tanzania. Zambia has large areas of these lands and Botswana and Namibia also have large areas of such lands.
Although conditions are difficult, cattle are very important indeed and for a certain type of people the cattle form the basis of a complete existence in two different ways. Semi-nomadic pastoralism is one of them.
The cattle owners have to walk long distances and so cannot have a really permanent home for themselves. Long distances have to be covered because of the continuous need to search for both water and grass. The grass only grows after the rains and so this type of pastoralism means that the tribes people and their cattle follow the rains. Sometimes the rains fail as they did in the early and mid 1970's in the north African lands, so grass cannot be found and the cattle begin to starve- They produce little milk when this occurs, and so the people who depend on them for food and drink also begin to starve. Many of these semi-nomads cultivate a little land during their lengthier stop-overs in the rainy season, or just afterwards. If the rains fail they cannot even do that.
There is another problem, self created, experienced by pome of these tribes. They also keep goats, and a pattern emerges whereby vast herds of cattle overgraze the land and cut up the soil with their sharp hooves, leaving it at the mercy of wind and rainwash. The goats follow behind, eating the grass roots and stripping bushes of their leaves, thus completing the devastation. All this is compounded by the fact that watering places are few and faJ- between, and so vast herds tend to concentrate at them. Healthy cattle -mix with diseased cattle with the result that disease is spread. This is a particular problem in East Africa where the traditionalist Maasai, Karamojong, Samburu and Turkana wander with their herds.
Although this is rather an unhappy picture changes have been occurring in the last ten to" fifteen years. They are accelerating, and gradually the emphasis is beginning to shift towards quality rather than quantity, regular sales and money in the bank rather than vast skinny herds and no money, stable ranching techniques rather than indiscriminate wandering, a greater degree ,of health care rather than an acceptance of a certain percentage of mortality. Let us look at one such tribe who travel great distances on a north-south axis in West Africa-