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HOSTS, STRANGERS AND THE TENURE POLITICS OF LIVESTOCK CORRIDORS IN MALI

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2014

Leif Brottem
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Abstract

In dryland West Africa, policy makers have come to acknowledge livestock mobility as a sound adaptation strategy for variable dryland climate regimes. In Mali, the national government is taking measures to support mobility in the form of grazing zones, conflict management mechanisms and, most notably, livestock passage corridors. These corridors are part of a long and contentious history of territorialization in agrarian West Africa. This paper demonstrates through a comparative case study that livestock corridors can accomplish the agro-ecological objective of improving herd mobility but they also have unforeseen political impacts that depend on socio-spatial relations between farmers and herders. By historicizing corridors and contextualizing them within the host–stranger relationship that is found throughout the region, this paper reveals the different meanings that boundary-making processes take on for autochthonous farmers and mobile herders. In an area where ethnic Fulani herders have settled independently from farming communities, the latter have rejected a proposed corridor. In contrast, farmers in areas where herders are seasonal guests have supported the same measure. These divergent outcomes do not depend simply on different levels of resource competition, but, instead, on the ways in which corridors and their boundaries become inscribed in perceived land claims and power relations between competing groups. These findings have broader implications concerning the interactive changes occurring between autochthonous rights and decentralized democratic institutions in sub-Saharan West Africa.

Résumé

Dans les régions semi-arides d'Afrique de l'Ouest, les décideurs en sont arrivés à reconnaître la mobilité du bétail comme une bonne stratégie d'adaptation aux régimes climatiques semi-arides variables. Au Mali, le gouvernement national prend actuellement des mesures pour soutenir la mobilité sous la forme de zones de pâturage, de mécanismes de gestion des conflits et, en particulier, de couloirs de passage pour le bétail. Ces couloirs font partie d'une longue et conflictuelle histoire de la territorialisation dans les zones agraires d'Afrique de l'Ouest. Cet article démontre à travers une étude de cas comparative que les couloirs à bétail peuvent accomplir l'objectif agroécologique d'améliorer la mobilité des troupeaux, mais qu'ils ont aussi des impacts politiques imprévus qui dépendent des relations socio-spatiales entre agriculteurs et pasteurs. En historicisant les couloirs et en les plaçant dans le contexte de la relation hôte-étranger que l'on trouve dans toute la région, cet article révèle les différents sens que prennent les processus de construction de frontières pour les agriculteurs autochtones et les pasteurs itinérants. Dans une région où des pasteurs peuls se sont implantés indépendamment des communautés agricoles, ces dernières ont rejeté une proposition de couloir. En revanche, les agriculteurs de zones où les pasteurs sont des invités saisonniers ont soutenu cette même mesure. Ces issues divergentes ne dépendent pas simplement des niveaux différents de concurrence pour les ressources, mais plutôt de la manière dont les couloirs et leurs frontières s'inscrivent dans les revendications foncières perçues et les relations de pouvoir entre les groupes en concurrence. Ces conclusions ont des implications plus larges concernant les changements interactifs qui surviennent entre les droits autochtones et les institutions démocratiques décentralisées en Afrique de l'Ouest sub-saharienne.

Type
Land and livestock
Information
Africa , Volume 84 , Issue 4 , November 2014 , pp. 638 - 657
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2014 

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