The rush for land and resources has featured prominently in recent studies of sub-Saharan Africa. Often happening alongside regional projects to upgrade and expand infrastructure, this urgency to unlock untapped economic potential has generated heated debate around the social and environmental impacts, as well as consequences for livelihoods, rights and benefit sharing. More than ever before, the gaze of global investment has been directed to the pastoral drylands of Africa. This matters because of the varied land and natural resource uses, social organisation and the histories and legacies of development that are unique to these areas. Given ecological uncertainty and the patchy distribution of resources, adaptability and flexibility have been the basis for sustaining lives and livelihoods in the drylands (Catley et al. 2013b; Mortimore and Adams 1999; Scoones 1994).

The organisation of dryland societies emphasises decentralised decision-making, meaning that many voices count in deciding on land and resource uses. Tenure systems privilege the rights of groups to gain access to resources, as well as passage to move herds between key resource areas. Opportunism, such as in cultivating a riverbank after a seasonal flood, expanding the size of herds in good years or migrating further afield in search of alternative work and sustenance, defines livelihood strategies for many (Oba 2013; Little and Leslie 1999; Behnke et al. 1993). All these facets of dryland livelihoods suggest that the impacts and influences of large-scale investments in land, resources and infrastructure unfold in ways that are specific to dryland settings.

The unprecedented increase of investments in these areas also matters because, until recently, state planners and investors overlooked drylands. The assumption was that drylands were ‘low potential’ areas – unsuitable for farming – and thus were relegated as sites for investment. The prevailing notion was that pastoral land uses were destructive and inherently unproductive. Pastoralism as a way of life was and continues in many ways to be seen as outdated, backward and ill-fitting in a contemporary nation-state. The presence of central state power and corporate capital was previously minimal in such areas, but when state plans and capital investments arrived, new negotiations over rights and access unfolded.