ABSTRACT
The drylands of central Sudan have been the home to various forms of mobile pastoralism for centuries. This chapter develops a detailed picture of how land grabbing affects the livelihoods of pastoralists through a case study of herders in Gedaref State, a former rangeland area that was transformed over a long period into a region of large commercial farms. The fragmentation of rangelands has had severe repercussions for customary patterns of movement and coping, making the impacts of drought and scarcity even greater for herders. Official policy resulting in the alienation of lands and resources integral to the productivity and sustainability of mobile pastoralism in the central Sudan rangelands has led to displacement and, increasingly, violent conflict. The failure of the pastoralists to defend their land tenure rights is a factor of their political marginalization and the hijacking of their representative institutions by livestock traders.
