Pastoralism in Africa ― Past, Present, and Future

Running a herd of cattle is essential to survival in Africa. So is having enough space to run that herd, and enough water. However vast Africa may be, however, that space is running short. As newcomers to the delicate balance of food, water, biomass, and all the other factors of African pastoralism continue to ignore or carve away the realities of African pastoralism, the fewer people and animals can survive. This collection of sixteen articles from the Collaborative Research Center track the existence of pastoralism in Africa from a human point of view, including the expectations humans may have for the future of a system that may be going away, They start by examining the prehistory of pastoralism in Africa, including the story of herders in the eastern Sahara, archeological evidence, environmental clues from Chad and Sudan, an overview of pastoralism in northern and central Kenya, the situation in the west African savanna, and herding in southern Africa. They then cover the dynamics of contemporary pastoralism, including establishing a "cattle and gun" society, establishing commercial ranching on state land, enacting commercial livestock farms in the Outjo district, creating the political ecology of the east Pokot district, and establishing territories in north-western Namibia. They examine the violence that has come from these changes, including in eastern Chad, in the Horn of Africa, on an historical trade route between eastern Chad and Libya, and in southern Africa. The collection closes with a thoughtful essay on differences in territoriality, mobility, and poverty in dryland Africa. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Hans-Peter Wotzka is Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Cologne. His publications include Aridity, Change and Conflict in Africa (with Michael Bollig, Olaf Bubenzer and Ralf Vogelsang, Heinrich-Barth-Institut, 2007) and Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Archaeology of the Fourth Nile Cataract (Heinrich-Barth-Institut, 2012).