Delivering Essential Public Services to Arid Zone Nomads

Abstract

Desert nomad societies have recently attracted the attention of policy makers within the context of arid zone and sparseland development schemes. In general, these schemes have been aimed at major changes in the nomads’ genre de vie, not just towards sedentarization, but also towards upgrading their standard of living. A major element of such development schemes, sometimes the crucial one, has been the provision of essential public services, primarily health and education. While from a Western society perspective, the provision of such public services is viewed as a social development axiom, this is not the case with nomads, who are characterized as unique Third World societies. Their views and attitudes toward development in general and provision of modernized public services in particular are often in conflict with those of national authorities and international aid organizations. Consequently, the process of delivering these services to nomads has become problematical and its success (economic, social and cultural) rather mixed.