Benefits and challenges of pastoralism system in Ethiopia

Pastoralism is an important livelihood system practice in most of the dryland areas of the globe. It is a source of income and way of livelihood for hundreds of millions of world population. This research aimed at explaining the benefits of pastoral system, identifying the main challenges the sector faced based on secondary data obtained from different official records such as FAO, CSA (Central Statistical Authority of Ethiopia) and published research article and government reports. Besides this, this research also tried to indicate the possible way outs. Economically it contributes about 10%-40% of national GDP of countries and over 1.3 billion people benefited from the livestock value chain. Ethiopia has the largest livestock population in Africa (first in Africa, and 5th in the world) and 20 % of the national export and 90% of live animal export of the Ethiopian trade, and 80% of annual milk supply to the Ethiopian community resulted directly from the pastoralists. Yet the sectorial contribution has many bottlenecks and the most important one is lack of appropriate policy due to the misconception that the system is economically not feasible and environmentally unfriendly. In addition to this, unexpected, but short period drought and weak market chain, limited access to feed, equipment and information, market chain, animal health (veterinary) are contributing factors to the low contribution of the livestock sector. Ethiopia, with its huge livestock population and the increasing demand of global meat and milk demand, should give attention towards the sectorial development including provision of infrastructure such as milk and milk processing industries, leather and leather processing industries, and focus on Diversification of economic activities in the pastoral areas. Besides, the government of Ethiopia should give an emphasis on developing policies and strategies to increase productivity of livestock and maintain the development of the sector. Furthermore, the government should devise mechanisms to control the illegal inter-boarder live animal export and way of measuring unaccounted (nonmarketable) values of livestock pastoral contributions.