Africa’s drylands need the right kind of support – listening to the pastoralists who live there

By Claire Bedelian, Senior Researcher, SPARC Consortium, ODI Global
Guy Jobbins, Executive Director, SPARC Consortium, ODI Global

Africa’s drylands are often imagined as vast, empty spaces. Romantic wilderness on the one hand. Zones of hunger, conflict and poverty on the other. Media stories tend to emphasise crises and scarcity, portraying these regions as peripheral and fragile.

But this narrative obscures a more complex and hopeful reality. Across these landscapes, millions of pastoralists and dryland farmers are constantly adapting, innovating, and building livelihoods in some of the continent’s most variable environments.

Drylands are areas of low rainfall and high temperature that cover

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