SPARC Podcast: Dynamic Drylands
Dynamic Drylands is a four-part podcast mini-series which explores new ways of thinking about aid, development and resilience in the drylands of Africa and the Middle East. You can listen on Spotify, Acast, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and YouTube.
Farmers and herders living in the drylands of Africa and the Middle East are used to dealing with uncertainty. But their resilience is being tested by new and complex challenges.
In this podcast series, produced by Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises (SPARC), broadcaster Bola Mosuro talks to researchers, aid workers and herders about some of the new crises facing the drylands, and the dynamic ways in which people are responding to meet them. She asks: what does long-term resilience look like in these fast-changing places? How are pastoralists and farmers adapting and innovating? And what can governments, development organisations and businesses do to more effectively support them?
One thing is clear: the drylands are more dynamic than you might think.
This podcast is aimed at development practitioners or people with an interest in pastoralism, farming, drylands development, and what effective aid and investment looks like in areas affected by conflict and protracted crises.
More information about each episode, and related resources, is provided below. For queries, get in touch via [email protected].
Episode 1: Do we need to rethink aid in the drylands?
The drylands of Africa and the Middle East are changing. What does this mean for the millions of farmers and herders who live there - and what does effective aid and investment look like in these places?
Farmers and herders in the drylands are used to dealing with uncertainty and environmental unpredictability. So why are these millennia-old livelihood systems increasingly struggling to adapt to new shocks and crises?
In this first episode of Dynamic Drylands, Bola Mosuro talks with experts about the kinds of support farmers and herders need, and what aid programmes work – and don’t work – in the drylands. She investigates how people can adapt and thrive in the face of complex, seemingly unsolvable problems: where decades of marginalisation, insecurity or conflict are compounded by new issues such as climate change, or the rise of militant insurgency.
Contributors: Dorice Agol, Colette Benoudhi, Muzzamil Abdi Sheikh, Simon Levine
You can find out more about the topics discussed in this episode via these SPARC resources:
- Anticipatory action in advance of wicked crises: the case of Somalia (2023)
- Ten traps to avoid if Afghanistan is serious about engaging with context (2024) – Context is critical to
- Somalia: anticipatory action in advance of ‘wicked crises’ (2023) This report, coauthored by interviewees Simon Levine and Muzzamil Abdi Sheikh, looks at the effectiveness of anticipatory action in complex or protracted crises, where options to adapt to new shocks are limited.
- ‘Making the concept of resilience in the Sahel more useful’ (2022) In his blog, Simon Levine goes further into exploring the limited usefulness of ‘resilience’ as a term.
- Understanding what effective aid looks like in the drylands of Africa and the Middle East is a core focus area of SPARC work. Find out more about our latest research here.
Episode 2: Untangling land tenure and conflict in the drylands
The drylands are home to millions of nomadic pastoralists. This second episode of Dynamic Drylands explores how pastoralists’ access to land and natural resources is changing – and often coming into direct contact with others.
The drylands of Africa and the Middle East are home to millions of nomadic pastoralists, who make a living from livestock that move between water sources and seasonal grazing areas. It’s a way of life that has not just survived but thrived for thousands of years.
But pastoralists’ access to land and natural resources is changing – and increasingly coming into contact with other people and new plans for drylands development. In this episode of Dynamic Drylands, Bola explores how pastoralists access and manage land and natural resources, and how to resolve the knotty issue of farmer-herder conflicts.
Contributors: Fiona Flintan, Sarli Sardou Nana, Emmanuel Seck.
You can find out more about the topics discussed in this episode via these SPARC resources:
- ‘What support do Nigeria’s pastoralists need?’ (Video) In this SPARC Short, pastoralist and NGO founder Sarli Sardou Nana recounts the benefits of this nomadic livestock-based system, and what changes are needed to realise its potential.
- Causes of farmer-herder conflicts in Africa (2023) This report, coauthored by interviewee Fiona Flintan, looks into the causes of an increasingly politicised debate.
- Looking at land tenure and natural resource management in the drylands is a core area of SPARC research. Find out more about our work here.
Episode 3: Livestock: Inside the economic engine of the drylands
Livestock keeping is vital to diets and economies across Africa and the Middle East. This episode of Dynamic Drylands explores the markets and financial systems which support millions of farmers and herders in the drylands.
The livelihoods of pastoralists in the drylands of Africa and the Middle East centre around livestock: raising, milking and selling camels, cattle, goats and sheep. Far from being small and unprofitable, livestock keeping supplies millions of people in the region with meat and milk, as well as a source of income and exports.
In this episode, Bola Mosuro goes under the hood to talk with experts about the relationship herders have to their livestock, and how markets and financial measures are being adapted to support people through new shocks and challenges.
Contributors: Rupsha Banerjee, Carmen Jacquez, Kelvin Shikuku.
You can find out more about the topics discussed in this episode via these SPARC resources:
- Financing livestock trade: Formal and informal finance in Kenya, Mali and Somalia (2022) Interviewees Carmen and Rupsha look at the degree to which traders marketing livestock from the rangelands use formal financial services, and examine the development of these financial services.
- Farming after fighting (2023) What does agricultural recovery look like once war has ended? This report uses global case studies to draw lessons.
- Understanding pastoral livelihoods and markets, and how best to support them, is a key thematic area of SPARC research. Follow our latest resources here.
Episode 4 : Pastoralism 4.0: Inventiveness and innovation in the drylands
This final episode of Dynamic Drylands looks at the innovations which are making a difference in the drylands: from social media and the ‘Shepherds Eye in the Sky’ app, to new forms of harambee.
How can a smartphone app improve the way pastoralists and farmers interpret weather and climate patterns? How does AI help with cattle sales? And how are new forms of social support transforming women’s lives and livelihoods?
In this fourth and final episode of Dynamic Drylands, Bola Mosuro finds out about the innovative systems and strategies that herders and farmers are adopting to navigate new uncertainties.
Contributors: Diba Wako, Tahira Mohamed, Alexis Teyie, Joshua Laizer.
You can find out more about the topics discussed in this episode via these SPARC resources:
- Read Alexis Teyie’s article on social media and pastoralism, ‘What’s #trending in pastoralist Kenya?’, on The Elephant.
- Shepherd’s eye in the sky: the potential for AfriScout digital grazing maps to improve pastoralists' grazing and migration decisions (2024) This report analyses the app AfriScout which Joshua Laizer introduces in this episode.
- Watch SPARC’s webinars on pastoralism and innovative technologies via our YouTube channel.
- SPARC’s Innovation Dashboard contains some 50 examples of innovative processes and technologies which are available and scalable in the drylands. Follow our latest innovations resources here.
