Abstract
The African Union has approved a pastoral policy initiative aimed at securing, protecting and improving the lives, livelihoods and rights of pastoral communities, adopted by the Conference of African Ministers of Agriculture. The African Union urges all African member states to review their policies impacting pastoralism, to develop a comprehensive policy which takes into account the peculiar needs of pastoralism; and to build human, financial and technical capacities to support pastoral policy development. This paper examines some of the challenges which implementation of the policy in Nigeria will face. Typical of most developing countries, most of the factors that are favourable for successful policy implementations are lacking. Therefore, the prevailing complications and distortions with policy making and implementation must be considered. The paper suggests measures to implement the policy.
Highlights
In recent years, global networks and development agencies have shown a growing concern for the improvement of pastoralists’ livelihoods
Most recently in January 2011, the Executive Council of the African Union approved a pastoral policy initiative aimed at securing, protecting and improving the lives, livelihoods and rights of pastoral communities
The major challenge to Nigeria’s policy implementation is because we refused to be realistic with our existing predicament, pretending to be what we are not and sweeping problems under the carpet rather than dealing with them
Summary
Global networks and development agencies have shown a growing concern for the improvement of pastoralists’ livelihoods. The framework emphasizes the regional nature of many pastoralist ecosystems in Africa and, the need to support and harmonize policies across the Regional Economic Communities and Member States (African Union 2010). This short article examines how the policy could be successfully implemented in Nigeria. Absence or paucity of good data seriously impairs the development of evidence-based policies and monitoring and assessing their impact It is good at the continental level to have a comprehensive policy aimed at improving the rights and livelihoods of pastoralists, while at the national level we have an action plan for translating the policy dreams into reality. From years of experience as a practitioner and for the purpose of this discourse, the two can be differentiated (see Table 1)
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