Role of Mobility Within the Risk Management Strategies of Pastoralists and Agro-Pastoralists, The

African livestock owners pursue their livelihoods in a dynamic and risky environment. The external dynamic processes that affect livestock keeping include population growth and migration, changes in exchange relations, intensification of crop cultivation, expansion of crop cultivation, and changes in property rights to croplands, natural pastures, watering points and transhumance routes. There are also a number of dynamic, and stochastic, processes that influence livestock keeping in the shorter-term, such as fluctuations in rainfall and market conditions. Together these long-term and short-term processes shape the production and investment strategies of individual livestock keepers and the institutional arrangements that define property arrangements among livestock keepers and their neighbours.

This paper considers the role of mobility within the overall strategies available to livestock owners and the property rights institutions that govern access to and control of land resources.