Report Number 1
Pastoral Economic Growth and Development Policy Assessment, Ethiopia

By Peter D. Little, Roy Behnke, John McPeak, and Getachew Gebru

Ethiopia has the largest number of domestic livestock in Africa and much of it originates in the country‘s pastoral zones. These areas contain approximately 30 percent of the national population or 9.3 million cattle, 52 percent or 12.4 million sheep, 45 percent or 8.1 million goats and close to 100 % or 1.8 million camels (Catley 2009:2). Since 1991 when the current government took power from the Derg regime, the country has pursued a number of program and policy initiatives in the country‘s pastoral areas, especially during the past 10 years. This paper reviews the evolution of these policies, but with special attention to the period since 2000 when government efforts toward pastoral areas and economies took on increased significance. It is mainly based on (1) available documents and literature; (2) interviews with government, non-government organization (NGO), and donor officials and key researchers and private sector actors during visits by the authors in August-September and November 2009; (3) the findings of 12 background notes or papers that were commissioned by the project; and (4) the authors‘ prior field and policy-relevant experiences in pastoral areas of Ethiopia and other African countries. This paper is meant to complement two other papers–one on pastoral policy options and another on future scenarios for the pastoral economy–that also were written as part of this study.