Facilitating Futures
How Communities and Markets Are Reshaping the Livestock System
Across the drylands of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, pastoral communities are quietly reshaping how they manage land, move herds, and engage in markets. The Regional Livestock Program (RLP), a 12-year initiative funded by SDC and AFD, and implemented by Mercy Corps, in partnership with IGAD, Helvetas, and WHH, continues to serve as systems facilitators, connecting actors, strengthening institutions, and helping local solutions take hold. The first half of 2025 shows a landscape beginning to shift under its own momentum.
Healing the Land, Securing the Future
In Afmadow, Moyale, Wajir, and Tog Wajaale, communities restored 3,345 hectares of rangeland, cleared invasive species, and revived water points now serving 36,170 people. With climate pressure rising, 70,016 pastoralists used Early Warning information to guide herd movement. Peace dialogues, bringing together 906 elders, women, and youth helped communities negotiate access to shared grazing and avoid conflict. These actions reveal a growing confidence: pastoralists are planning ahead, governing their land, and choosing cooperation over confrontation. These signs of shifts indicate that ecological systems are stabilizing, governance structures are strengthening, and climate risks are being absorbed at the community and institutional level, a core step toward long-term resilience.
Markets Growing from Within
Across livestock corridors, local enterprises and women entrepreneurs are driving market change. Private veterinary products reached 69,065 producers, signaling expanding trust in unsubsidized services. Women deepened their market presence, 44% of SRLATA members are now women, generating $154K from bull and shoat fattening and $42,360 from milk marketing. Stories like Nimo Suleiman’s solar-powered agrovet shop or Mohamed Ugas’s mobile agent network show a broader shift: businesses are investing their own capital and serving communities more reliably than ever. Rising private-sector investment, increased use of quality animal health products, and women’s expanding market participation point to a livestock economy becoming more diversified, more equitable, and less dependent on external support. These behaviors signal markets that can sustain themselves through local entrepreneurship, stronger business practices, and gender-responsive growth, key to achieving a resilient regional livestock system.
Governance that Supports Mobility and Trade
Governments and customary leaders are strengthening the systems that keep herds and trade moving. Somali and Kenyan officials revived cross-border coordination mechanisms, while SRLATA advocacy contributed to removing redundant livestock taxes. Regional camel vaccination campaigns reached 48,826 animals, and community dialogues helped resolve long-standing disputes over grazing lands. These shifts point to a region increasingly aligned around shared resource management and predictable mobility.
The revival of cross-border mechanisms, removal of redundant taxes, and synchronized vaccination campaigns show institutions working together to reduce friction, lower costs, and protect herd health across borders. These gains reflect governance systems that are starting to become more adaptive, cooperative, and predictable, laying the foundation for a stable mobility and trade environment across the Horn.
Systems Beginning to show sustainability signs
Across the Horn of Africa, the positive starts of community-led committees, functioning bylaws, private actors scaling without subsidies, and increasing use of climate and market data demonstrate the emergence of sustainable systems. These early behaviors show that RLP’s facilitative approach is enabling communities, markets, and institutions to operate with greater autonomy, precisely the long-term transformation the program aims to achieve.
