Somalia, one of the world's poorest countries, has livestock as the mainstay of the economy, with an estimated 65% of the population engaged in the livestock sector. This paper presents a gendered study on the traditional livestock breeding practices of Somali pastoralists for camels, cattle, sheep and goats, with a focus on documenting livestock traits of importance, the criteria used to select male breeding animals and the criteria used to cull female breeding animals.

Discusses the importance of wealth differences among producers in traditional pastoral production systems, describing a rapid method, dependent on informants, for determining the wealth rank of producers within a given community in order to stratify a population of producers before sampling.

This paper examines a process - the spontaneous enclosure of the range by livestock owners - which may rise new problems but also permit new approaches to the development of the African livestock industry. Drawing on case material from Sudan and Somalia, the opening section of the paper discusses some of the spontaneous range enclosure.

Discusses the Kenya Rangeland Ecological Monitoring Unit (KREMU), mentioning its objectives, initial tasks related to identifying ecological units, testing survey methods, training of staff & designing appropriate computer programmes; describes the Unit's achievements, with emphasis on ecological surveys & censuses carried out within the framework of on-going ecological monitoring programmes; outlines problems encountered.

Ethiopia has high prevalence of clinical and subclinical mastitis in different livestock

species and production systems and these contribute substantially to poor

productivity in affected herds. Thus far, studies have focused on identification of

microbial pathogens and associated risk factors for mastitis. However, relatively little

is known about the knowledge and beliefs of livestock keepers regarding prevailing

livestock health problems in general and mastitis in particular. An accurate

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a new index-based livestock insurance (IBLI)

product designed to compensate for area average predicted livestock mortality loss in

northern Kenya, where previous work has established the presence of poverty traps. We

simulate household-specific wealth dynamics based on a model parameterized using rich

panel and experimental data from the region. The simulations allow us to investigate

patterns of willingness to pay for asset index insurance that is imperfectly correlated with

Examines the productivity of East African pastoral systems in terms of animal protein & energy production, milk offtake and livestock production parameters such as calving percentage, calf mortality and herd structure; compares the productivity of East African pastoral systems to those of commercial ranches and to pastoral systems in other parts of the world.

Describes the research approach adopted by an interdisciplinary ILCA team to study a pastoralist production system, summarizing the methodology & results of research on small ruminants' productivity in the Maasai pastoral system, and outlining dif. features of current smallstock research in Kenya; w. an analysis of flock productivity, mortality, animal nutrition & behaviour at the Elangata Wuas group ranch.

A number of studies have begun to show the large impact that pastoralism has on African savanna ecosystems. Here we look at the impact of abandoned settlements on the distribution of the large ungulates of Amboseli, Kenya.

Monthly dung counts show that all 9 species studied are attracted by settlements for up to a century after abandonment.