Migratory Drift Revisited: Pastoralist movements to littoral West African countries in an era of insecurity and change

Abstract (English)

Pastoralist livestock production in western Africa has become a topic of growing interest amongst policymakers in light of spreading insecurity across the region. Political marginalization of pastoralist peoples, notably members of the Fulani ethno-linguistic group, is seen to be a factor in the rise of armed insurgent groups and climate change is seen as an additional root cause of conflict and security risk multiplier. National governments in littoral countries, including Bénin, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Togo are responding to these dynamics with domestic livestock programs that focus on sedentarization, to the detriment of regional pastoralism that has relied on transboundary migration for the past several decades.

Transboundary pastoralist migration from the Sahel to these countries nonetheless remains significant as part of a long history of responses to environmental change, political instability, and economic opportunities. These migration patterns require reliable access to natural resources and significant political investments by pastoralists to build relationships with hosts and local authorities. Although pastoralist herders have been present in the humid parts of littoral West Africa since the colonial period, the current political climate poses unprecedented challenges to migratory drift as an social-ecological adaptation strategy. Despite the attention that regional pastoralism is receiving, there is inadequate understanding of current patterns of migratory drift in the context.

This paper builds on prior research by going beyond narratives of pastoral marginalization to provide a more complex picture of how pastoralist households and individuals secure access to resources and belonging within local communities. This paper addresses this knowledge gap through an overview of pastoralist livelihood strategies in destinations with special attention to gaps between their economic contributions and their political belonging in different communities. More specifically, it provides an update on Bassett and Turner’s (2007) migratory drift thesis for a region that has undergone profound changes over the past two decades.