ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses diversification trends in pastoralist areas and their impacts on women, drawing on examples from Uganda, Somaliland and elsewhere in the region. There are very complex and contradictory factors driving sedentarization and diversification in pastoral areas. Economic diversification in pastoral communities entails significant changes in gender relations. In the long term, education is fundamental to women’s economic empowerment. Improved access to formal education and new technologies is a defining feature of economic transition in pastoral areas of the Horn and East Africa. The Internet, mobile phones and satellite television are making pastoral-area postings more attractive, or less unattractive, to teachers and health workers alike. A ‘harmonization’ agenda can help to establish a regional regulatory framework for livestock products and the cross-border movements of people and livestock, but pastoralists often occupy insecure border regions, where governments are especially eager to control activity.
