ABSTRACT
Pastoralist nomads in Africa,1 like their counterparts in other continents, have been known for their particular military skills. Their mobility, their constant need to protect their livestock and the relative ease with which they convert saddled animals into 'combat vehicles' have given them military advantage over sedentary people. Sometimes, they used these skills simply to raid, terrorize and tax other people (both sedentary and fellow nomad), but they did not establish a permanent rule over them. In other cases, they used that advantage to build or conquer states, and in so doing, reshaped political structures and boundaries, modified economic arrangements, juggled status groups and recreated collective identities. Their impact, over time, was quite different.
