Sunday 27 April, 2025
By Aden.A.AW-Hassan
Livestock in Somalia is produced in a pastoralist system. The sector sustains most of the rural population who operate the pastoralist production system in a nomadic lifestyle. Livestock is also an important sector at the national macroeconomy, being the leading export commodity in the country, earning much of the foreign currencies needed for trade. However, the pastoralist production system faces numerous challenges. These challenges and ideas for moving forward are discussed.
A brief note on the Importance of Livestock
Livestock, including camel, cattle, sheep, and goats, form the primary economic sector in Somalia, providing livelihoods and employment opportunities for about 70% of the population. The sector generates the largest export revenue with a share of over 85% of the total national exports value. The sector is a main source of government revenue in the form of export levy. The result is that the sector accounts for up to 60% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is an important measure of national income. Despite its importance, the livestock sector relies on pastoral production methods and a nomadic lifestyle. Nonetheless, the nomadic pastoral system is facing multiple challenges. In this paper we examine the sustainability of this traditional production system in the face of a rapidly changing world in so many ways. These changes include the interlinked issues of climate change induced production risks, droughts, demographic changes, and rapidly growing access to modern information, communication and transportation systems.
The Challenges Facing the Pastoralist Production System
By far, droughts are the biggest challenges that the pastoral communities face. Drought often impacts millions of people who lose their lives and livelihoods. Pastoralists live with the devastating consequences of drought, constantly facing a considerable risk of drought incidence without safety nets. Once drought occurs, they face enormous costs in terms of a complete loss of their livelihoods and way of life. The most critical drought impact is on water availability. Lack of drinking water directly affects the health of all living things, particularly people and their animals. The second most important impact of drought is a decline in the availability of feed because of lacking pastures and declining crop-based feed due to crop failures in the crop farming areas. Lack of feed directly causes deterioration of livestock conditions and ultimately their losses. These factors cause the loss of household assets, incomes, and livelihoods. The result of crop and livestock failures is higher food prices which, when combined with declining purchasing power, lead to constrained access to food leading to malnutrition and famine in extreme cases.
The outcome of such scenario is the abandonment of the pastoralist system and migration to towns and cities in search of humanitarian support. These climate-migrants do not go back to pastoralist production systems. International, national, and local organizations regularly monitor and report drought effects.
In Somalia, the drought in 2011 affected 3 million people and caused the death of a quarter of a million people, half of them children. The UN declared Famine in Southern Somalia. However, the situation was complicated by conflict, rapidly rising global food prices, and other long-standing, structural factors [1]. Droughts negatively affect food security, causing malnutrition and famine in extreme cases. The drought of 2016-17 affected a staggering 6.7 million people which needed urgent food assistance, 1.2 million children faced acute malnourishment. That same drought displaced 1 million people. This drought had a significant effect on poverty, consumption, and hunger in rural areas, where agricultural households, and those lacking access to infrastructure and basic services, were most severely affected [2]. The drought of 2019 affected 2.2 million Somalis who have faced elevated level of food insecurity. The FAO of the UN issued a special alert on Somalia, indicating that the number of hungry people in the country that year was expected to be 40 percent higher than estimates made at the beginning of 2019 [3]. In 2022, over 3.2 million people in 66 of Somalia’s 74 districts were affected [4]. In 2022, children in Somalia were exposed to multiple risks with wasting increasing from 11 per cent in 2021 to 16 per cent in 2022 (FSNAU; 2022), exceeding WHO thresholds for emergencies [5]. In 2023, the February assessments issued warnings of high mortality well over that of 2011 drought if April-June rain become inadequate. Fortunately, these latest projections did not materialize as rains have been largely satisfactory around the country [6].
One major drought impact is its effect on food prices through declining domestic supply. Droughts and floods as well as insecurity affect local food production and trade which, intern, affect food prices making, whatever food available, unreachable to the poor. This causes hunger and malnutrition in the pastoralist communities, forcing them to abandon their traditional production and livelihood system and migrate to towns and cities. If this process continues unhindered, Somalia will be in the brink of losing its major economic sector and will face problems associated with an influx of unplanned rural-urban migration. The high pace of urbanization without necessary infrastructure is already being felt in major cities.
From Perils of Drought to Opportunities
Somalia has vast arid lands which are suitable mainly for grazing ruminants. Pastoralists have adopted a production system that suits exploiting these vast grazing lands. However, as noted above, climate change-driven droughts and floods in some cases are making that production system unsustainable. Pastoralism is not only a production system, but also a way of life. However, that way of life is increasingly changing with obvious contradictions. One can observe that on one hand pastoralist households are increasingly reliant on the market for the purchases of food, veterinary medicine, and sales of their animals. On the other hand, they are not commercializing the production system with modern husbandry and inputs, particularly animal feed for increasing productivity and minimizing the effects of droughts. One notable change is that pastoralists currently rely on motor vehicles to move their families and animals to better pastures. Pastoralists are also, with the help of advanced telecommunication, well connected to both livestock and feed markets. There are, however, notable changes in the direction of commercialization. The dairy camel systems with clear intention of commercialization are now present around all major cities and towns. In some cases, those systems rely fully on hand feeding with zero grazing, while in more rural areas camels wholly or partially graze and/or are supplemented with purchased feed.
The fact that the sustainability of pastoral production systems is uncertain, in the face of climate change driven droughts, calls for reexamination of this important sector. Large scale adoption of commercialized livestock production in Somalia needs land, water, and strong institutions that secure land property rights. Land is plentifully available. However, many lands are degraded and poorly managed, lacking clear stewardship to use sustainably. Land is commonly owned and grazed without any grazing management techniques. This resulted in a complete degradation of large parts of these common rangelands. Public institutions remain weak to take charge of proper rangeland management.
Except for the two rivers Shabelle and Juba, there are limited surface water resources. The exploitation of these riverine resources is confined to the land adjacent to these waterways. Groundwater is the other option. Generally, in Africa, “groundwater is a major source of drinking water and as a response to growing food insecurity, its use for irrigation is expected to rise substantially” [9]. However, there is little quantitative information on groundwater resources in Africa. The knowledge gap is much worse in Somalia. Balanced and sustainable exploitation of groundwater requires reliable quantitative information on its quality, quantity, depth, water yields and rechargeability. Such in-depth field level characterization of groundwater resource is required to guide investments, avoid widespread environmental degradation [8] and resource depletion [9]. Nevertheless, Africa groundwater maps and limited borehole information show the existence of substantial groundwater resource in Somalia [8]. Water quality, however, should be considered. In the horn of Africa, including Somalia, some 11.6 million people rely on groundwater for drinking and live in areas of high groundwater salinity (EC > 1500 µS/cm) [7]. Further field investigations are necessary to assist policy makers and investors. Commercial irrigation requires boreholes that yield water at more than 5 liters per second. Recent study suggests the existence of large body of groundwater in Somalia’s arid lands [8], but that does not indicate the quantity, quality and depth of these waters. These are essential pieces of information for investment decisions.
A third factor, which is not less complicated, is the land property rights. If quality and quantity of water is assured and land is available, then decisions to support investment in commercial production appears straight forward. However, pastoralists, who mainly rely on free mobility, are unfamiliar with private property of land and are quite hostile to settled farming, and particularly to animal farms on legally acquired private land. This hostility has already manifested itself against commercial dairy camel projects and against crop farms.
The land property rights problem requires public awareness campaigns, clearly defined land property rights, law enforcement capacity and involvement of pastoralist communities as beneficiaries of commercialized livestock production. The large diaspora community as well as local banks can provide funds for investment. It is important that national and regional governments, as well as international, national and local NGOs consider changes in drought response policies. There is a need for policies that balance immediate humanitarian needs with medium and long-term development goals that can be sustainable. Without a change in drought response policies and maintaining actions driven only by the humanitarian view, the outcome would be the loss of the livestock sector, unplanned and rapid urbanization and persistent poverty in Somalia.
Conclusion
The livestock production in Somalia is at crossroads. The sector will disappear as destitute pastoralists leave the business every time severe drought strikes and settle in and around towns and cities in search of humanitarian support. Policy makers, development and humanitarian partners shall evaluate the situation, assess the natural resources available and chart a new course of action that transforms the sector in a way that makes it sustainable with secured and improved livelihoods, and which will be attractive to commercial investment. The proposed reform will transform Somalia into a leader in modern livestock production for years.
References.
Daniel Maxwell and Merry Fitzpatrick, 2012. The 2011 Somalia famine: Context, causes, and complications. Global Food Security. Volume 1, Issue 1, December 2012, Pages 5-12.
Utz Pape and Philip Wollburg. 2019. Impact of Drought on Poverty in Somalia. Policy Research Working Paper no. 8698. The World Bank Group. 2019.
FAO - News Article: FAO raises alarm over disastrous drought in Somalia where over 2 million people face severe hunger. May 2019.
Multi-Agency Drought Alert 30 May 2022 FINAL (1).pdf (fews.net).
Somalia Situation Reports 2022 | UNICEF Somalia. Monthly snapshot of current needs and responses. January - December 2022. UNICEF Somalia.
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MacDonald, A M, H C Bonsor, B´E´ O Dochartaigh and R G Taylor. Quantitative maps of groundwater resources in Africa. Environ. Res. Lett. 7 (April 2012) 024009 (7pp).
Association of Somali Agricultural Professionals
Aden.A.AW-Hassan - ASAP Board Member.
agriculturesomalia.org
This article is part of a series of articles published by ASAP- Association of Somali Agricultural Professionals based in Atlanta, USA.