Meeting Name: Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
Meeting symbol/code: CGRFA/WG-PGR-8/16/Inf.9
Session: Sess. 8
Meeting Name: FAO Regional Conference for Africa (ARC)
Meeting symbol/code: ARC/16/INF/16
Session: Sess. 29
Prospects for Livestock-Based Livelihoods in Africa’s Drylands examines the challenges and opportunities facing the livestock sector and the people who depend on livestock in the dryland regions of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Dryland regions in Sub-Saharan Africa are home to one-half of the region’s population and three-quarters of its poor. Poor both in natural resources and in assets and income, the inhabitants of drylands are highly vulnerable to droughts and other shocks.
More than 200 million people living in dryland regions of Sub-Saharan Africa make their living from agriculture. Most are exposed to weather shocks, especially drought, that can decimate their incomes, destroy their assets, and plunge them into a poverty trap from which it is difficult to emerge.
This brief describes the broad array of impacts arising from a cash transfer programme that was piloted in the Tigray region of Ethiopia from 2011 to 2014. About 80 percent of Tigray’s population of 4.3 million live in rural areas and depend on rain-fed subsistence agriculture for their livelihoods.
This publication was commissioned under the auspices of the project “FAO technical support to the COMESA-EAC-SADC program on climate change adaptation and mitigation in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSRO/RAF/307/COM)”.
