Pioneering ACF Programs in Pastoral Ethiopia

For most people, Ethiopia conjures images of the Rift Valley Mountains, centuries-oldagricultural techniques-and cyclic struggles with food insecurity.

What many people do not know is that more than 50% of Ethiopia is pastoral, reputedly with the largest livestock population in Africa. Pastoral cultures lead their herds to the same series of grazing lands year after year. The pastures areas they frequent remain the same, but the routes vary according to the availability of resources along the corridors.

ACF has been active in Ethiopia since 1985. Areas of intervention have included Eritrea (pre-1993), Tigray and North Shoa. In 1996, ACF turned its focus to Ethiopia's pastoral areas, the country's most resource-poor with little infrastructure-schools, health services, clean water, decent roads-that is often difficult for Ethiopians to reach. Conditions are harsh with maximum temperatures above 120º F. (45º C.) and rainfall as little as 10 inches a year (less than 200 millimeters). The pastoral areas are generally seen as "backward" and receive little to no governmental or external support.

Cyclical rain deficits and drought are the main threats to pastoralists' livelihoods. When these crises hit, pastoralists need years to recover. Though their territory is sparsely populated, with no more than 15% of Ethiopia's population, the pastoral areas provide an important source of income and food for the country.

ACF began its pastoral programs in the Somali region in 1996 with a combined health and water program. Building on its experience in the Somali Region, ACF began work in the Afar region in 1999. Currently ACF is focusing on integrated animal health and water resources programs in both regions.

The bulk of ACF's work in the pastoral areas has been on long-term projects, but ACF strives also to address emergencies with short-term interventions. ACF has brought innovative activities to address pastoral vulnerabilities. These have included new hand-dug well designs, drilling boreholes with a compact ACF-designed machine, and being the first organization to introduce comprehensive early-warning-system monitoring in the Somali region.

One of ACF's most innovative approaches in Ethiopia has been the training ofparavets - pastoralists chosen from the communities who learn to care for animals and promote health. The novelty of ACF's approach is that it aims to create long-term sustainability by requiring the paravets to charge nominal fees for service. Pastoralists must pay for any service provided by the paravets so that the animal-care providers can purchase more drugs to restock and establish livelihoods for themselves.

To assure the presumption of competence among the paravets, ACF first approaches key people in the community who together with ACF choose candidates for training. This gives the paravets local credibility. ACF has also pioneered the training of women as paravets, with separate trainings tailored especially for them. To date, we are unaware of any other agency that actively trains women as paravets in the Ethiopian pastoral areas. The addition of women paravets can increase the coverage of community based animal health services, especially during migration periods. As family members who often don't travel with the herds, women paravets can treat the animals in the homesteads—which are often of great importance to the household (e.g. pregnant, lactating animals). They may also increase demand of services from women, as well.

After paravets are selected, they receive training that's more sophisticated than the community's traditional animal-health maintenance procedures, and the paravets receive start-up kits containing drugs along with equipment for cleaning wounds, castrating, hoof-cleaning and so on. As the kits' contents are consumed, the paravets must buy more, financing their purchases with the fees they charge.

The pastoralists generally accept the paravets' expertise-but the fees are problematic. Every time Ethiopia experiences an emergency (typically a new drought), humanitarian organizations descend on the community distributing aid for free. Why, the pastoralists ask, should they pay at other times? During a drought in the Afar region in 2002, for example, free veterinary medicines flooded into the country and found their way into a black market that hurt the paravets' business. Clearly, organizations need to communicate in order to bridge development and emergency response more thoughtfully.

With good interaction between the Afar and Somali projects, ACF intends to increase its understanding of Ethiopian pastoralism and ACF's capacity to intervene both in emergencies to minimize the impact of the severe droughts as well as long-term by reducing the vulnerability of pastoralists to cyclical drought.