The African Union apparently launched a Pan-African Pastoral Policy Initiative at a conference at Isiolo in northern Kenya last week. There’s a little bit about the event on the website of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ Pastoralist Communication Initiative (one of the organizers), but not much. An article summarizing some of the results was released a few days ago by the UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks and got picked up by various agencies. But that’s all I’ve been able to find. Which is a pity, because listen to what the IRIN article says:
The key issues that emerged from the discussions included: governance; land; education; markets and financial services; conflicts; and poverty risk and vulnerability. Another point was the ‘biological dimension’ – feed resources and animal genetic resources.
There’s nothing about biodiversity in the African Union pamphlet introducing the policy initiative, but it sounds as though that may have been rectified during the meeting itself.
The IRIN article is very good, full of pithy quotes and interesting information, like this:
A concept note prepared by the AU and OCHA-PCI on the continental policy framework quotes UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2005 figures, which indicate that the continent has 235 million cattle, 472 million goats, 21 million pigs and 1.3 billion poultry, all valued at US$65 billion.
I did look for this concept note but sadly couldn’t find it online.