Helping nigerien pastoralists weather environmental challenges

Map of Niger showing the position of the town of Gaya in southwestern Niger, at the crux of Niger's border frontier with Benin and Nigeria.
PASTORALISTS in the Tillabery and Niamey Districts of Niger have faced at least one prolonged drought every decade over the past 40 years. In severe drought years, they can lose up to 90 percent of their animals.

ADF is working with Eleveurs Sans Frontière-Dangol to provide them with affordable access to animal feeds and veterinary services that will protect their animals from environmental challenges, increase family food security, and provide small-scale herders with the ability to sell surplus milk and meat.

Project Location Funding Level Funding Period
ESF Livstock Support Project Tillabery and Niamey Districts, Niger $143,000 FY 2005-2009


A young Nigerien girl prepares a donkey to carry two pots of food to a local cattle post, a temporary camp where young men tend grazing cattle.

A young Nigerien girl prepares a donkey to carry two pots of food to a local cattle post, a temporary camp where young men tend grazing cattle.

by Sonja Perakis, ADF
Knowledge, Learning &
Dissemination Intern

Niger has suffered the effects of at least one prolonged drought every decade for the past 40 years, and the country’s pastoralist communities – who raise cattle, goats, and camels along the semi-arid, northernmost boundary of west Africa’s savannah belt – are especially vulnerable to environmental shocks.

During drought cycles, small-scale pastoralists can lose up to 90 percent of their animals, and the combined effects of last year’s red locust swarms and this year’s poor rains have reduced available grazing fodder by more than a third. As a result, thousands of herding families face severe malnourishment as animals die and supplies of animal milk decrease. The efforts of pastoralists to drive their herds south in search of water and edible grasses is also threatening to bring them into violent conflict with farming communities

Animal rearing has long been a central feature of northern Niger’s economy. Milk production provides essential food to thousands of low-income families, and livestock sales account for 35 percent of Niger’s agricultural domestic product and 51 percent of Niger’s food export earnings. ADF is thus working with 1,216 members of Eleveurs Sans Frontière-Dangol (ESF), who graze herds in the Tillabery and Niamey districts of western Niger, to develop a pilot program whose to assist herding families in protecting their animals against drought and the opportunistic diseases that attack livestock during stress periods.

Women residents of a pastoralist community in Tillaberry District attend an ESF information and training session.

Women residents of a pastoralist community in Tillaberry District attend an ESF information and training session.

The Foundation’s grant will support activities for 14 herders groups in Tillabery District and five herders groups in Niamey District. ADF’s goal is to produce a model for affordable and sustainable livestock raising that can be extended to herding communities across Niger and to local communities in other Sahelian nations.

ADF is providing ESF with $143,000 in financing to help the 19 herders groups deliver low-cost animal feed and veterinary services to their members. ESF will use a portion of its monies to bulk purchase protein-rich cereals, peanut cake, vitamins, salts and molasses and rent local milling facilities that will produce two feed varieties – one targeted to increase milk production and the other designed to enhance livestock fattening.

ESF will also construct a large warehouse made with local building materials at its headquarters. The warehouse will have a feed storage capacity of 280 tons. Local herders will contribute to the project by donating their own labor and collected materials to construct 19 smaller feed-storage facilities in member villages. A flat-bed truck purchased with ADF funds will coordinate the distribution of feed from the central storehouse to local storehouses.

A young girl from a pastoralist community in Tillaberry District, a semi-arid region northwest of Niamey on the frontier of the Sahara Desert.

A young girl from a pastoralist community in Tillaberry District, a semi-arid region northwest of Niamey on the frontier of the Sahara Desert.

ESF members will purchase the protein-enriched feed through a revolving credit fund capitalized by the ADF grant, and the association will support the training and placement of 19 veterinary assistants in each participating herding community. The veterinary assistants will be equipped with livestock pharmaceuticals bulk purchased by ESF, and they will dispense the medicines at a markup of 20 percent above cost. The markup will support the salaries of the veterinary assistants and the replacement of medicine stocks, but the cost of medicines purchased by pastorolists will still be well below their average market cost in Niger.

The goal of the project is to provide herders in the Tillabery and Niamey districts with affordable access to resources that will allow them to increase milk production and increase their incomes through the sale of surplus animals to domestic and international buyers. It is expected that the project will help ESF:

Significantly enhance the food security and incomes of its members;

Increase the association’s income from animal feed sales over five years from zero to US $231,000; and

Achieve sufficient revenues by the second year of the project to ensure the long-term sustainability of ESF’s feed sales and veterinary services.

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