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Hello, My name is Joshua. I live here in Northern Tanzania in Eastern Africa and this is my home. As you can see, we have some Goatsean sheeps. We have also some cattle. Here.
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In Tanzania and across swathes of the African continent, from the Sahel to the Rift Valley and Horn of Africa, there's a hugely diverse community of people whose cultural identity, history and way of life is intertwined with the movement of cattle. Joshua Liza is one of them.
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My whole life has been with cattle. I was born in a small hut within the village, a small hut made of cow dungs. I was fed milk, blood, meat, and from my upbringing all I know was cattle.
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Joshua is a Maasai pastoralist or nomadic herder, and just like the generations before him, dealing with tough conditions is all part of his rhythm of life.
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This is the dry season, so we usually have our animal moving from one area to another. Given the seasons from Margus to January, usually our cattle are here in the highlands and from February we move them down to the lowlands during the rainy season. As you can see, our animals today are a little bit skinny. Because of the dry season, they have not much to eat.
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For Joshua in Tanzania and the millions of pastoralists across the dry lands of Africa, their cattle are their lives.
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To us, cattle is everything. We depend on them to feed our kids, to take our kid to school, to take our patient to the hostels. So to us, cattle is everything. It is our economy. It is our backbone of our survival.
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Joshua's Daily life is rooted in ancient traditions of animal husbandry that provide food, income and identity in some of the harshest settings in the world. And he's part of a huge network of unsung producers who are putting food on the plates of millions of Africans every day. And though they're up against climate change, conflict and marginalization, they're looking to the future. This is their story. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. And this is Shepherd's Eye in the Sky. I'm Bola Mosuro, and as a young girl living in Lagos, it was a familiar sight to see lorries laden with cattle and sometimes driving through the busy highways. We knew they were being transported from the northern states of Nigeria down south, but I wondered at the lives of the pastoralists traveling in makeshift rigs alongside the livestock. Decades later, I've reported as a journalist on the trials and tribulations that pastoralists face, not just in my own country, but across the continent. Over the next hour, we'll hear about the life of these nomadic communities and the challenges they face. We'll meet some of the herders who are blending their traditional sustainable Farming practices with 21st century digital technology to keep their communities and their cattle safe, fed and on the move.
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They used to travel long distance to scout the grazing land, but now they use mobile phone communication.
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There's so much resilience in the fact that they're able to still keep their heritage and way of life and culture and customs while adapting and adopting modernity.
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It's because of the satellite that is acting as a third eye for the pastoralists to see what they can see beyond the normal eyes, the shepherd's eye on the sky.
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And in this UN International Year of the Rangelands and pastoralists on speak with the herders turned researchers who are using their expertise to help ensure that governments and NGO interventions actually work. When we think of cattle farmers, one might think of huge ranches stretching over hundreds of acres, covered in lush pasture, with feeding stations, barns, and surrounded by miles of fencing. But pastoralists are living and working in Africa's rangeland, also aptly known as the dry lands, where the physical and agricultural landscape is very different. Dr. Tahira Mohammad was raised in a pastoralist family. She's now researching food security at the Jameel Observatory in Nairobi in Kenya, and much of her work focuses on pastoralists. I asked her to explain the setting for these communities.
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Pastoralists are the people who make use of the rangelands. The rangeland can be in the dry land of Horn of Africa, the Sahel, or even the mountainous region of Europe, or even any other part of the world, like even Australia.
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And what characterizes the pastoralist way of life?
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So pastoralists are those people who keep livestock for livelihood. And these people rely on the land to produce for their animals. So the animals for the nomadic pastoralists move around to make use of the variable resources, different shrubs and plants to survive. And these people survive on these animals for their food security, for their livelihoods and the upkeep of their families.
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The image of nomadic herders driving their animals across the dry lands of Nigeria, the Sahel, Kenya, Tanzania, and Somalia is easily romanticized, but we're talking about farming on a vast scale. Tahira put it in context.
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Africa's dry land, for example, covers 60% of the continent, and it is home to around 525 million people. And majority of them are pastoralists, and also some are agro pastoralists. And in Africa alone, it supports 268 million people across 36 African countries.
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These rural areas are remote, challenging places, but they're also directly linked to Africa's biggest, most modern, and rapidly expanding cities. If you spend any time on the outskirts of Nigerian cities, such as Lagos or the capital Abuja, places that I know well, you'll see hundreds of cattle trucks pouring into the city. 10,000 cows a day are slaughtered in Lagos and 6,000 in Abuja. The majority of these have been raised by pastoralists, and they're a key part of the food economy. Let's visit a roadside cafe in Lagos to sample a popular Nigerian side dish. Our lunch date is with Sali Sadhunana, a distinguished activist and researcher who's dedicated his life to championing pastoralism.
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Afternoon. We are here in Lagos. It's the economic capital of Nigeria. It's a very large city with population of more than 20 million. And we have come to a street restaurant which sells ponmo. It's actually the skin of a cow, but it's called ponmo, and it's a delicacy in the southwest.
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How much? This one.
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This one. That's the last price?
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Yes, last price.
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So my name is Sali Sadunana, and I'm a pastoralist leader for an organization called Fudeco, which is a pastoralist grassroots angel in Nigeria. So I was born into a pastoralist background. I found that our people were facing a lot of challenges when I was growing up. So while in secondary school, I started setting up campaigns fighting for the rights of pastoralists. And that's how I got into this work and started working with many researchers in the field.
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Salih is a Cameroonian based in the uk. He's also Fulani, an ethnic group known for their deep connection with pastoralism. Salisbama costs 500 naira. That's about 34 US cents, or about 25 British pence. This is just one of the many affordable, accessible foods that makes use of the whole cow. So how do these cheap, sustainable meat products sold at roadside cafes figure in economic terms? Here's Tahira Mohamed again to explain the value that pastoralists bring to the table.
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It contributes 40% to the GDP of all of these African countries. And in some countries it is even more. On the contrary, the investment, especially agricultural investment in livestock sector is between 5 to 10%. This means that pastoralism is contributing largely to GDP. But because of the limited investment in pastoral infrastructure in the market infrastructure and access to market and also access to finance, it is undermined. And this is basically structural neglect and also like limited investment, as opposed to other highland areas which receive like 30 to 40% of investment and agricultural input.
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It's really important to keep these figures in the front of your mind when thinking about the contribution pastoralists make. We're talking about more than 250, 50 million people across Africa. They're working in the dry lands which cover about 60% of the continent, to produce meat and dairy. That accounts for as much as 40% of GDP, depending on the country. Their contribution is vast. Yet pastoralists, as is often the case with nomadic or traveller communities across the globe, receive a fraction of available support from government and NGOs. And despite having the same needs for infrastructure, healthcare, water and education as everyone else. We'll explore why in a moment. But first let's hear about the challenges in more detail. Most of them are man made. Here's Joshua again.
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It is not easy to be a livestock keeper. You are always indirectly involved on several risks, all challenges. As much as we have a good history with cattle, we also have bitter history with livestock or pastoralism, one being the droughts.
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As well as his work as a pastoralist, Joshua is also a natural resource economist. So he studies how things like government policy and market dynamics affect the agricultural sector. And now, worryingly for Joshua and his family, who now run a communal homestead to help care for their animals, that bitter history is repeating itself. I caught up with him in December of last year to find out if the rains he depends on had arrived.
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We are now experiencing what might come to look like one of the droughts actually that we will Remember, we move some of the old animals, but also even the younger one is skin. One I brought back to our family houses just a few kilometers from the farm, where now we are supplementing the feeding with hay and also other feed that we are buying from the shops. And we have started slaughtering some of the cattles. But if the rain will not rain the next one month, it might be one of those years that we will. Our economy will be shut.
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As pastoralist a worrying situation for Joshua in Tanzania. And it's a story being repeated across the dry lands. Living with this risk of uncertainty is exacerbated when the natural environment is degraded. This is something that Tahira Mohammed studies.
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But for pastoralists, it is not just risk, it is uncertainty. The overall lack of knowledge about the future. They are always in action mode. When it is rainy season, they are planning for disease outbreak because with rainy season they are also accompanying disease. But now, also because of loss of biodiversity, pastoralists have lost a lot of indigenous plant. And there is no research or investment that promotes, you know, rehabilitation of indigenous tubers and plants and shrubs so that the animals will get the nutrient they need.
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And it requires a lot of skill, experience and energy.
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It is a labor intensive work. It requires special skills, special weather. It requires also special movement. You just don't move the animals. You have to ensure that the humidity of the grass or that environment is comfortable for the animal. The water is not saline for the animal.
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Added into this mix is the danger of conflict and movement restrictions.
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Sometimes you are restricted by insecurity because you are in conflict with community. So you cannot move to a prime area because of fear of losing your livestock. Sometimes you are also affected by the large infrastructure development. All this make it difficult for them to make the livelihood out of the dry land that they have been occupying for centuries.
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So, as Tahira has explained, pastoralists are faced with a range of threats. The constant search for grazing, a volatile and ever changing climate, herds vulnerable to disease and economic instability. Historically, they faced marginalization, living on the fringes of society due to their nomadic lifestyle and excluded from receiving essential services. Yet today, across parts of Africa, pastoralists face ostracization due to political and societal developments. Today in Nigeria, the term herder is used negatively. Rather than recognizing them for putting meat on the table, Herders have become synonymous with the wider malaise of banditry affecting many parts of the country. You see, Nigeria is in the grip of major insecurity. This is not just the Boko Haram insurgency which started in 2009. In the Northeast, but now includes kidnapping, sectarian violence, deadly attacks on communities, and cattle rustling. The increase in jihadism, which has swept through parts of West Africa over the past decade, saw Islamic militants exploit old ethnic and religious tensions between herders and other communities. And the Fulani population, which does include militias, is blamed for the upsurge in extremist attacks and outbreaks of violence between Christians and Muslims. Salih Sadonana described how herders are now perceived in the media and beyond.
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The public image of the herder is that the herder is terrorist and is a kidnapper and is very uncivilized. But they don't think about the livestock product, the dairy products, the meat that they eat in their houses that are produced by these headers. So if you go to cattle market or to the butchery in Lagos, you'll find that over 90% of the cattle will be coming from pastoralists. So people like the products, people like the livestock food chain, but they don't like the people who are producing it, and they never ask.
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These issues are happening in communities across Africa, but they're a serious problem in Nigeria, which is where Aminu Nyako has established a huge off grid dairy business. As a Fulani, Aminu is a face of modern pastoralism in Nigeria, but he knows all about the roots of these tensions and violence.
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Good morning. My name is Aminu Mutola Nyako. I'm the managing director and chief executive officer of Segori International Farms. Seborri Farms is a dairy company located in Mayobello, southern Adama state in northern Nigeria.
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With a background in economics as well as his experience with cattle, Aminu has a unique perspective on why some of the marginalization of pastoralists happened.
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I think a lot of what happens in Africa is due to a lack of cooperation and a lack of deliberateness in policy making. The reason I say this is that we take our blessings for granted. We've always had vast rangeland in Africa. We previously had no such thing as climate change. So grass was readily available in sight at every point in time. But over the last 40, 50 years, you start seeing that housing policy, agro policy, water policy along the River Benue and River Niger. There's pressure on that because of growing population, climate change, and people are chasing economic interest. And that's when you start to hear of clashes that are happening. If you recognize the pattern, you hardly hear of clashes in the rainy season because the rains are everywhere, water is abundant, so everybody can kind of go into the little corner and exist without much pressure. Most of the Time you hear of clashes is in the dry season. And that enmity then goes year on year and avalanches into something bigger. Where you now hear of the big community clashes that happen that then make the news. From an economist mindset, I see this as market failure. I see different communities trying to earn a living, but because property rights are not defined, which typically should be defined by governments, then you see people trying to carve their own share within the larger portion. And that market failure is what leads to disagreements. And rather than look at it as an economic issue, government looks at it as a social issue. And that social issue is what then leads to the caricature and the recurrent themes of banditry and extremism and things of that nature. It is not that the pastoral communities are inherently evil or inherently criminal. It is that they are trying to preserve a way of earning income.
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As Aminu explained to me, in Adamawa State alone there are over 2 million cows. So economically the stakes are high. And the roots of much of this conflict is down to different modes of farming which are incompatible. Here's Salih again to explain.
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So there's what is called in Nigeria the farmer header conflicts, which are disagreements between people herding cattle and crop farmers. So the conflicts come when cattle destroy crops and sometimes when farmers want to take land that is grazing land that have been set aside for grazing. It's a conflict over resources.
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Imagine you've used swathes of communal grazing for decades, then one day it's been used to grow crops which your cattle have just flattened and eaten. Conflict is inevitable and people have died. But the issue runs even deeper and is sometimes believed to be exploited by political elites. And even community leaders were killed and several wounded when armed bandits opened fire.
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On them in the remote community. Northern Nigeria continues to see violence spanning.
- [21:19]
H
But a lot of the time in Nigeria these conflicts are no longer farmer herder conflicts. They are political and tribal and economic conflicts. So people are fighting over identity. But when they bring in outsiders such as armed militias, they begin to do damage to the entire society of that area. And it becomes a conflict area. With guns, with drugs, with other things coming in. Even the people that start the conflict can no longer control the conflict. And it's not good for society, it's not good for Nigeria, it's not good for the farmers, it's not good for the headers.
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Some of these tensions have been heightened by government level programs which have deprioritized the pastoralists. Here's Tahira Mohammed again.
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Traditionally, especially back in the 1970s, pastoralism was considered to be not viable economic activities. And so states tried to force pastoralists into like, you know, villages, trying to make them to be settled like farmers. But on the contrary, this sedentarization undermines their movement. That means when they settle in one place, they overuse the grass in that particular area, they overuse the water resources in that area, and the land cannot regenerate. That means they are making the land to lose its biodiversity value, but also, you know, like making resource very much insufficient for their animals.
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It's not an overstatement to say these issues of access to land are enmeshed with biodiversity. The movement of cattle was always a natural way of maintaining soil health. The animals spread manure, turn the earth, spread seed, and move on before the pasture is exhausted. But this sedentary farming puts the land under much more pressure. Add in more frequent droughts, the risk of travel caused by insurgency, and the result is more static farming, and the strain on the land is worsened. It's a vicious cycle, but pastoralists are resourceful people and they're now harnessing the technology of places like Kenya's Silicon Savanna in order to access a solution that's orbiting the skies above Africa.
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The technological innovations is keeping pastoralists safe and securing the future for their livestock.
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I'm bola mosul. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC world service. And this is shepherd's eye in the sky.
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You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service and this is Shepherd's Eye in the Sky. So we've heard about the pastoralists who are fighting climate change and social exclusion to maintain their role as the most reliable food producers in the African continent. With generations of knowledge of animal husbandry, these pastoralists play a crucial role in the future of Africa's food security. But climate change, conflict and patchy support has left them marginalized and more often increasingly at odds with farming communities reliant on land ownership and globalisation. Over the next 30 minutes we'll hear how pastoralists are using technology, mobile communication, solar power, smart applications and open source real time satellite data in order to maintain resilient and sustainability sustainable livelihoods in the drylands. We'll also be hearing what approaches are being suggested in the NGO and aid sector to help build bridges between international development practice and ancient wisdom. But first let's consider the potential of a powerful tool most of us carry around every day. The mobile phone. Just like the rest of the world, people in the drylands of Africa are embracing digital life and mobile technology is having a huge impact on pastoralist lives. However, creative approach is needed in light of the challenge around resources and infrastructure on the continent. Here's an expert who knows all about this quickly developing landscape.
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I'm Mark Kaigwa, the founder and CEO at nendo, a research and creative agency based out of Nairobi in Kenya, which some people call Silicon Savannah. NENDO did some research work and so we were tasked with looking into a number of knowledge gaps that were there around social media use and Internet and mobile phone use within the dry land regions in four different African countries and examining what opportunities for resilience, markets and livelihoods there was, even amidst conflict or certain land issues among these communities. Our main findings were that pastoralists really are using and participating in in social media and finding great ways to get access to information on weather or food and fodder or water or livestock prices.
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This meeting of mobile phones, community and innovation goes right to the heart of what pastoralists need a tool to help them stay agile, in touch and safe while being cognizant of the limitations on the ground. While those of us Living in big cities may rely on apps to hail taxis, order food delivery or even search for love. For pastoralists, it's all about finding better grazing and avoiding conflict hot spots. So one was made. It's called afriscout. Here's Joshua Liza to tell us more.
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Afriscout is a digital tool that incorporates indigenous knowledge with technology to simplify the pastoralist lifestyle. It is kind of guiding cattle where to graze. It is mostly like the Google map for cattle.
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I can say as we've heard that search for pasture is the herder's life. So how did the dream of a real time map application to locate ideal spots for water and cattle grazing become a reality? Joshua gave us the lowdown.
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Afriscout story can be traced back to when the co founder visited Ethiopia. They met the pastoralists who are moving with the animals. They were wondering where are they taking? And they stopped and asked them if they know at least where they are going. Surprisingly they told them we are searching for pasture and water. The question came into mind was are you sure where you are going? There is. And the answer came like no, we are only counting on our luck. So pastors were moving without being sure that they will be having pasture or not. And this is the story across Africa. We move without knowing where we are going because we are looking to get pasture, the best resource for our cattle.
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Africout makes use of open source real time satellite data, exactly the same technology that guides us through traffic. But in this case it's to find water and grazing. And it's all available on a rugged smartphone specifically designed for use in challenging settings. We'll hear more about that in a moment. But here's Joshua again.
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So when they went back they started now producing every 10 maps on the land cover to see where there is a greenish pasture distribute to the pastoral community. And it has happened in Kenya, it has happened in Ethiopia, it has happened in Tanzania. Now we have a big problem with that. It was unreliable because of the remoteness of the area. We take around four days or five days to distribute to all villages. For the people who haven't got the maps, sometimes they delayed by the time they receive the maps it will be useless. So that is where now we moved to digitalizing the maps. They started a satellite assisted program assist them to have information on where they can get quality pasture and water. While saving time mind you, we can spend up to a week looking for pasture. We came up with the idea that we should have an application, a mobile application that only provide information where to get pasture, where to get water, how long from one location to another.
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B
The result is that the search for water and pasture has been reduced from seven to 14 days of gruelling scouting to 10 minutes on the phone. But there's been another benefit.
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E
But also the important feature of the application was to allow the pastor to share information among themselves on alert, the outbreak of the disease, the conflict on their territories and so forth. And funny thing enough is we saw it being used in some places how WhatsApp is used the tool for persons to communicate even on non pastoral issues. We have received some of the testimonies including people who have cows were stolen and then were retrieved from another area just because it was scheduled through the application. So that is how the Afriscout actually works. So it only allows parcels to see the land cover, the greenish part of it, water resources within the mapped area.
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B
So Afriscout or the Shepherd's eye in the sky has transformed some aspects of pastoralism. But it would be a mistake to imagine these herder communities browse social media sites like Instagram or on the latest expensive smartphone. It's just not practical given the remoteness of the drylands. Plus these sensitive smart devices aren't rugged enough for the demands of looking after livestock. Mark Kaigwa joins us again to tell us about the alternatives.
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Pastoralists across Africa, because of their nomadic nature, moving with their herds of livestock from place to place, have a unique relationship with their phones. They will either have at the bottom of the pyramid a basic phone. It can call, it can text, it's got a battery that'll last a month. If they don't have one of those, they will have what's known as a feature phone. And a feature phone will typically be able to have some very, very simple, mainly text based Internet access. It'll be slow, it might not be as reliable, but it will prioritize battery life as well. And if they don't have that, they get into one of the most interesting areas, which is entry level smartphones. Some will really prioritize battery life. And so there are some that will have a very bright flashlight or torch. They will have a 10,000 milliamp hour battery, meaning that they are very thick, very rugged and they can charge the full battery and still have a week or two's worth of battery life left. Some others will have a very loud set of speakers. And the reason for this is that if you are in some of these communities and areas, one of the main modes of transport is a motorbike or what we might call a boda boda here. And when the wind is blowing at you, you still want to hear your phone if you're playing some music. So they'll build actual versions that embellish the speakers and really have powerful speakers while still conserving battery life. So I'd say that something that definitely strikes me around the resilience of pastoralist communities is also their ability to get creative, even in the face of not having access to electricity. In some cases for some pastoralists, they will be actively meeting up with somebody where they'll pay, they'll actually pay for their phone or device to be charged. But I think there's so much resilience in the fact that they're able to still keep their heritage and way of life and culture and customs while adapting and adopting modernity.
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B
Real time digital solutions can transform pastoralists lives, but technology alone is not enough. The resilience of pastoralists is still tied to that blend of indigenous knowledge and modernization. There are also important social dynamics that mobile technology is changing. And to learn more, I met up with someone who understands this landscape through academic and on the ground fieldwork.
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So my name is Doris Agol. I am an independent research consultant and also a practitioner in development and environmental and humanitarian fields. I have spent a lot of time living with the pastoralist community. I love working with them, I live with them, I learn from them, I work with them and it's been such a delightful thing to do.
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B
Dr. Deweese Agol has done much of her research in the Turkana region of Kenya. Like Joshua, she sees pastoralists combining their cattle rearing with other micro industries such as honey making, beef baking, fishing or manufacturing lifestyle goods. Mobile technology particularly helps women in this area who are using these new forms of communication to diversify, to pool resources and maximise their economic power and those benefits trickle down to the younger generations they support. Doris has a wonderful example to share.
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I've seen women, you know, hanging their little mobile phones on their neck trying to negotiate deals on the phone. It's so amazing, so embracing more than cons and also mobile money because they cannot go to the banks.
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B
I was fascinated when you spoke about the women and I can just imagine their chains or their lanyards around their neck with their phone. When you're talking about the business, what kind of business are these women involved in? The pastoralist women?
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I
It's so fascinating. When I was doing some work with the Greentham Research Institute on climate change and environment and I was looking at women led enterprises and how they Were coping with climate change. And I had a fantastic time with some women in a little town called Dol Dol in Laikipia, some village, interior village. These women were livestock traders. Can you imagine? And while, you know, in the media, the mainstream media, you are hearing that all women are marginalized. They're the ones, they don't have collateral. It's their husbands who have the livestock. But it wasn't true. Were laughing at me because I went with this attitude, thinking, oh, you know, you are marginalized. How do you cope? And they had all their little mobile phone, they're saying, this is our life. They can talk to the men counterparts, the male traders, for example, from another market, who can, they can sweet talk and can help them to take their livestock somewhere else because they have responsibilities at home. And another woman told me, you know, I have more livestock than my. My husband. I don't trade, but all I do is I look after the livestock, but he is the one who goes to the market.
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So their mobile phones have given them a real sense of independence, but power, yes.
- [39:16]
I
Yeah, power. But also there was also something really interesting because you cannot lie to them. For example, a woman said that they already connected to some other markets, other women, other traders in another market. So imagine you giving maybe a couple of goats to your husband to go and sell for you, and then he comes back and tells you that, oh, it was 3,000 shillings, but she's already secretly using her phone, spoken to another woman in the market, and they know the market price. That was fascinating. I thought so. It's like kind of surveillance, you know.
- [39:50]
B
The independence, power and communication that digital mobile technology makes possible means that these women are able to share access to transport information and markets. Now, also, buying veterinary medication or knowing when to send animals to market for the best price is easy. We've heard about the importance of biodiversity in the rangeland. But while these technological tools are not going to solve all of the issues, their use is encouraging another aspect of this symbiotic relationship between cattle and the soil. Here's Joshua Liza again.
- [40:32]
E
So animals are guided by an application where the community can fill information, creating their calendar depending on the carrying capacity of that rangeland or at that small division of the rangeland, then the application will guide them. Now you can graze for three days, for four days, and then move to another zone. And by doing so, we are using cattle to do one important thing. Two, actually, by concentrating a number of animals in a small piece of land, manure concentrations will be higher. Manure is also one Way of the pollination, which carries a lot of seeds, but also the bare ground we see today. It is funny that the seed bank stores the seeds up to 20 years. So we don't need some time to reseed the rangeland, we need the tilling. And that's now where the cows come by to toppling using their tools. But when the rains comes now the seeds are coming up. And we have seen in 70 area that we are working in Ethiopia, we've seen it, even the biodiversity. Some of the wild animals are starting to come into the rangeland because of that.
- [41:48]
B
As Joshua explained, pastoralists are crucial to land conservation. Their cattle till and fertilise the soil, which helps with seed germination and the growth of crops. This in turn attracts the cattle back who continue to condition the soil. So it's a win win situation and helps to reverse land degradation. Meanwhile, there's another example of innovation taking place in Adamawa State in northern Nigeria, which is allowing pastoralists to unlock extra revenue from their cattle. Let's return to Amino Nyako to hear more.
- [42:32]
A
The farm was established by my father, Wafulani, by culture, which is a very pastoral tribe. All of us grew up having cattle. But my father at the time did something revolutionary. He built a ranch. So we have a large farm that all our cattles then settled. So I decided to open up a dairy company, but not just a dairy company for us. I decided to build a dairy company, one of its kind actually, because it's completely powered by renewable energy, solar and batteries.
- [43:06]
B
And using these innovative practices has allowed this dairy plant to buy supplies of milk from other cattle rearing families.
- [43:14]
A
We also built solar off grid collection centers all around our communities to also integrate all the other local community pastoral farmers. It has the capacity to process 150,000 liters of milk every day.
- [43:31]
B
This collective approach to dairy production has opened a whole new revenue stream for pastoralists who've traditionally avoided dairy production due to it being an energy intensive business. And in a nation where power is intermittent, renewable energy closes that gap and means the pastoralists can chill milk and sell to Amino's dairy.
- [43:54]
A
This component of the renewable energy is unique because one of the reasons that I realized that Africans, Nigerians, northern Nigeria don't do dairy products or beef properly is because of the energy deficiency in the country. You know, with milk, once you milk a cow, the milk has to go four degrees within the first two hours and have to maintain that temperature for it to remain viable for any kind of further processing. That was one of the reasons why we decided to build a 5 megawatt solar best solution for the factory. So our cold rooms, our processing, everything is actually off grid.
- [44:38]
B
The benefits are not just economic, but they have far reaching knock on effects.
- [44:43]
A
So within our program, what we decided to do is every single community has a solar powered collection center. We do not give them the burden of infrastructure. They are only responsible for the supply and testing of the milk at the collection center. And the moment we did that, we then realized that there has been almost zero crashes around our area, the incidence of banditry and has all diminished. Which then further crystallized my thought that really and truly this is an economic issue. The moment you're able to solve the market failure, these communities are actually then willing by themselves, with their own labor or dignity of their labor, to be able to invest further in the cattle, in their feed systems, in their children, in the infrastructure within the community.
- [45:33]
B
Such economic independence is crucial in reducing tension between communities. Pastoralists have for centuries faced marginalization, including lack of investment in the livestock sector, rangeland restoration, animal health and even community development. The NGO and aid landscape has also taken a dramatic turn in recent years, thanks to deep aid cuts emanating from the United States. But Joshua Liza described another way pastoralist communities and and now leveraging novel ways of funding.
- [46:09]
E
Without donor funding, most of these programs cannot be sustainable. So what we are doing because of the regeneration part of it and the biodiversity improvement and conservation that we are doing and restoration, we have helped the communities actually to sell the carbon credits to earn the money for their communities, to earn money, to continue investing on the ranger and other social services, but also to make the program sustainable for the next 20 years.
- [46:50]
B
This meeting of the ancient and the modern encapsulates the best of contemporary African living. Here's Theresa Gollaghen with another example of the changing approaches of NGOs after she witnessed a unique occurrence in Kenya's Turkana region.
- [47:08]
I
It's only recently that people like us are realizing that indigenous knowledge is not nostalgia, if you like. It is based on experiences and culture and social norms and the local economy. I've seen a fantastic example where I was in Turkana, in the very interior, and this old man was predicting the weather, whether it was going to rain. Is split open the intestines of a goat. Can you imagine? And he started reading them the size, there's the size code, the color code, the food that the goat had eaten. So he was a respected man and from that knowledge he could tell people that, look, there's going to be delays on rainfall and so you need to start moving.
- [47:59]
B
And that's because of what the goat had eaten and he was working.
- [48:04]
I
Yes. The contents of the intestine, there's some big intestines and smaller ones. And also the color, incredible, like greenish, also brown. It was mind blowing. And just going back to saying that indigenousness has always been associated with backwardness, but it is not so that combination of intuition and real time observation, you know, we are trying now, we are embracing it in the early warning system by people now going to do community work. And before they even start a early warming system, they want to talk to the elders. NGOs now are engaging more with the community. They're having these small meetings with the community and understanding the knowledge and what is already in there. But I think knowledge is also politicized if you know there's a lot of politics as whose knowledge counts and it's also tied with resources.
- [49:04]
B
Doris Agol reminding us that global history is littered with examples of the catastrophic damage done when indigenous knowledge is disregarded in the name of so called progress. For decades pastoralists have been overlooked and marginalized. They battle against discrimination, the ravages of climate change, societal changes, urbanisation. And increasingly they found themselves sometimes being used as political pawns or at other times being caught in the middle of violent conflict. Despite this, we've heard about the resilience, ingenuity and creativity of this community. The pastoralists have remained steadfast and in 2026 they're looking at further ways to adapt their lives. They harness innovation to maintain centuries old relationships with their ecosystem. They're also adopting novel sustainable practices to maintain their livelihoods. Forging or rebuilding bridges between fractured communities will be a tool order in some countries where rangelands and farmlands have become deadly battlegrounds. But this peaceful coexistence has to be championed. I'd like to leave the last word to Joshua Liza who shares his vision for the future of pastoralism.
- [50:35]
E
Pastoralists are never the enemies of our environment and our ecosystems. We are friends, we are the caretakers of these sacred systems. We are nature and nature is us. And we really want to see that the contribution that we are making, the credit be given to the pastoral communities, particularly the indigenous people and their rightful rights on their lands, but also the representation in political systems be given also a third eye that we really deserve. Also a table in decision making processes.
- [51:34]
B
I'm bola mosulo and thank you to my guests, Dr. Darissa gol, Dr. Tahira, muhammad sali, sadhu nana mark kaigwa, joshua liza and aminu nyako. The documentary shepherd's eye in the sky was produced by alexandra quinn and freya hellyer for loftus media.
- [52:07]
C
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