ABSTRACT
Field activities such as the rinderpest vaccination campaigns are often carried out in sweeping military fashion which pastoralists barely comprehend, and governmental extension systems require facilities and logistical support which are uneconomic to use and maintain. This chapter presents descriptions of veterinary anthropological research from two areas in the region: a pastoral area of central Niger which has been the site of the USAID-financed Niger Range and Livestock Project, and an agropastoral area of south-central Upper Volta in the White Volta basin. Very extensive mixed species herding is practiced under purely pastoral conditions in most of the region, but along the southern fringes there is millet farming and agropastoral herding. Exogenous determinants include herd management and environmental factors which are characteristic of specific production systems, and their identification under pastoral conditions has obvious implications in the development of any herd health program.
