Building Financial Resilience in Pastoral Communities in Africa

The livestock sector generates a large portion of national economies in African drylands and is the principal source of livelihood for pastoralists living there. Pastoralism is the main livelihood for an estimated 268 million people and represents 10 to 44 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of African countries (FAO 2018). However, pastoralists are often among the poorest—for example, 41 percent of pastoralists across the Horn of Africa are estimated to live in extreme poverty, which is well above the national averages of the region.