CIAO DATE: 04/2014
April 2014
The southward seasonal migration of pastoralists with their cattle is a source of friction that has long been ignored in Central Africa. In the last few years, conflicts between pastoralists and local communities have intensified because of a combination of factors: worsening security; climate change, which drives herdsmen further south; the multiplication of migration roads, especially transnational routes; the expansion of cultivated areas and an increase in cattle herds, which have deepened the competition for natural resources. Though security challenges related to pastoralism are not equally serious in the three countries examined in this report (Chad, Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo), governments should take them seriously and promote a regulation of transhumance that includes all relevant actors. Pastoralism generates wealth and economic interdependence between farmers and cattle herders in some African countries, but it also causes tension and conflicts. Most of these result from competition for vital resources such as water or pasturelands. In Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR) and north-east Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the conflicts appear to be especially complex, mainly because pastoral ecosystems go beyond national borders and transhumance creates new settlement fronts. Transnational livestock migrations, particularly by Chadian herdsmen to CAR, have led to clashes between pastoralists and the local population. Even before the start of the CAR crisis in late 2012, violence had taken an alarming turn: after Chadian pastoralists looted their villages, several thousands CAR inhabitants fled their home and sought refuge in internally displaced camps in the country’s north. Weak bilateral cooperation between Chad and CAR on transhumance has contributed to an increase in violence, a change in cattle migration roads, and the emergence of new groups of pastoralists and livestock farmers with different motives and more weapons.
Resource link: Afrique centrale : les défis sécuritaires du pastoralisme [PDF] - 612K