Shepherd's Eye In The Sky

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the Apartment Bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:49Hello, my name is Joshua. I live here in northern Tanzania, in Eastern Africa. And this is my home. So as you can see, we have some Corsian sheep. We have also some cattle here. In Tanzania and across swathes of the African continent, from the Sahel to the Rift Valley and Horn of Africa, there's a hugely diverse community of people whose cultural identity, history and way of life is intertwined with the movement of cattle. Joshua Liza is one of them. My whole life has been with cattle. I was born in a small hut within the village, a small hut made of cow dungs. I was fed milk, blood, meads, and from my upbringing, all I know was cattle.

1:47Joshua is a Maasai pastoralist or nomadic herder, and just like the generations before him, dealing with tough conditions is all part of his rhythm of life. This is the dry season. So we usually have our animal moving from one area to another given the seasons. From August to January, usually our cattle are here in the highlands and from February we move them down to the lowlands during the rainy season. As you can see, our animals today are a little bit skinny because of the dry season. They have not much to eat. For Joshua in Tanzania and the millions of pastoralists across the dry lands of Africa, their cattle are their lives.

2:35To us, cattle is everything. We depend on them to feed our kids, to take our kids to school, to take our person to the hostels. So to us, cattle is everything. It is our economy, it is our backbone of our survival. Joshua's daily life is rooted in ancient traditions of animal husbandry that provide food, income and identity in some of the harshest settings in the world. And he's part of a huge network of unsung producers who are putting food on the plates of millions of Africans every day. And though they're up against climate change, conflict and marginalisation, they're looking to the future.

3:24This is their story. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service, and this is Shepherd's Eye in the Sky. I'm Bola Mosuru, and as a young girl living in Lagos, it was a familiar sight to see lorries laden with cattle, sometimes driving through the busy highways. We knew they were being transported from the northern states of Nigeria down south, but I wondered at the lives of the pastoralists travelling in makeshift rigs alongside the livestock. Decades later, I've reported as a journalist on the trials and tribulations that pastoralists face, not just in my own country, but across the continent.

4:07Over the next hour, we'll hear about the life of these nomadic communities and the challenges they face. We'll meet some of the herders who are blending their traditional, sustainable farming practices with 21st century digital technology to keep their communities and their cattle safe, fed and on the move. They used to travel long distance to scout the grazing land, but now they use mobile phone communication. There's so much resilience in the fact that they're able to still keep their heritage and way of life and culture and customs. while adapting and adopting modernity. It's because of the satellites that is acting as a third eye for the pastoralists to see what they can see beyond the normal eyes.

4:55The serpent's eye on the sky. And in this UN International Year of the Rangelands and Pastoralists, I'll speak with the herders turned researchers who are using their expertise to help ensure that governments and NGO interventions actually work. When we think of cattle farmers, one might think of huge ranches stretching over hundreds of acres covered in lush pasture with feeding stations, barns and surrounded by miles of fencing But pastoralists are living and working in Africa's rangelands, also aptly known as the dry lands where the physical and agricultural landscape is very different Dr Tahira Mohamed was raised in a pastoralist family She's now a researcher in food security at the Jamil Observatory in Nairobi in Kenya, and much of her work focuses on pastoralists.

5:49I asked her to explain the setting for these communities. Pastoralists are the people who make use of the rangelands. The rangelands can be in the dry land of Horn of Africa, the Sahel, or even the mountainous region of Europe, or even any other part of the world, like even Australia. And what characterises the pastoralist way of life? So pastoralists are those people who keep livestock for livelihood and these people rely on the land to produce for their animals so the animals for the nomadic pastoralists move around to make use of the variable resources, different shrubs and plants to survive and these people survive on these animals for their food security for their livelihoods and the upkeep of their families The image of nomadic herders driving their animals across the dry lands of Nigeria, the Sahel, Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia is easily romanticised.

6:46But we're talking about farming on a vast scale. Tahira put it in context. Africa's dry land, for example, covers 60 % of the continent and it is home to around 525 million people. And the majority of them are pastoralists and also some are agropastoralists. And in Africa alone, it supports 268 million people across 36 African countries. These rural areas are remote, challenging places, but they're also directly linked to Africa's biggest, most modern and rapidly expanding cities. If you spend any time on the outskirts of Nigerian cities, such as Lagos or the capital Abuja, places that I know well, you'll see hundreds of cattle trucks pouring into the city.

7:3510 ,000 cows a day are slaughtered in Lagos and 6 ,000 in Abuja. The majority of these have been raised by pastoralists and they are a key part of the food economy. Let's visit a roadside cafe in Lagos to sample a popular Nigerian side dish, boma. Our lunch date is with Sali Sadunana, a distinguished activist and researcher who's dedicated his life to championing pastoralism. Afternoon. We're here in Lagos. It's the economic capital of Nigeria. It's a very large city with a population of more than 20 million. And we have come to a street restaurant. We sell ponmo. It's actually the skin of a cow.

8:23But it's called ponmo and it's a delicacy in the southwest. How much? This one. This one, that's the last price. Yes, last price. So my name is Sally Sadunana, and I'm a pastoralist leader for an organization called FUDECO, which is a pastoralist grassroots NGO in Nigeria. So I was born into a pastoralist background. I found that our people were facing a lot of challenges when I was growing up. So while in secondary school, I started setting up campaigns, fighting for the rights of pastoralists. and that's how I go into this work and started working with many researchers in the field.

9:13Salih is a Cameroonian based in the UK. He's also Fulani, an ethnic group known for their deep connection with pastoralism. Salih's quamaw costs 500 naira. That's about 34 US cents, or about 25 British pence. This is just one of the many affordable, accessible foods that makes use of the whole cow. So how do these cheap, sustainable meat products sold at roadside cafes figure in economic terms? Here's Tahira Mohammed again to explain the value that pastoralists bring to the table. It contributes 40 % to the GDP of all of these African countries, and in some countries it is even more. On the contrary, the investment, especially agricultural investment in livestock sector, is between 5 to 10%.

10:03This means that pastoralism is contributing largely to GDP, but because of the limited investment in pastoral infrastructure, in the market infrastructure and access to market and also access to finance, it is undermined. And this is basically structural neglect and also limited investment, as opposed to other highland areas which receive 30-40 % of investment and agricultural input. It's really important to keep these figures in the front of your mind when thinking about the contribution pastoralists make. We're talking about more than 250 million people across Africa. They're working in the dry lands, which cover about 60 % of the continent, to produce meat and dairy that accounts for as much as 40 % of GDP, depending on the country.

10:55Their contribution is vast. Yet pastoralists, as is often the case with nomadic or traveller communities across the globe, receive a fraction of available support from government and NGOs, despite having the same needs for infrastructure, healthcare, water and education as everyone else. We'll explore why in a moment. But first let's hear about the challenges in more detail. Most of them are man-made. Here's Joshua again. It is not easy to be a livestock keeper. You are always indirectly involved on several risks or challenges. As much as we have a good history with cattle, we also have bitter history with livestock, one being the droughts.

11:47As well as his work as a pastoralist, Joshua is also a natural resource economist. So he studies how things like government policy and market dynamics affect the agricultural sector. And now worryingly for Joshua and his family, who now run a communal homestead to help care for their animals, that bitter history is repeating itself. I caught up with him in December of last year to find out if the rains he depends on had arrived. We are now experiencing what might come to look like one of the droughts actually that we will remember. we moved some of the old animals but also even the younger one and skin one are brought back to our family houses just a few kilometers from the farm where now we are supplementing the feeding with hay and also other feed that we are buying from the shops.

12:44And we have started slaughtering some of the cattles but if the rain will not rain the next one month it might be one of those years that our economy will be shut as pastoralists. A worrying situation for Joshua in Tanzania, and it's a story being repeated across the drylands. Living with this risk of uncertainty is exacerbated when the natural environment is degraded. This is something that Tahira Mohamed studies. But for pastoralists, it is not just risk, it is uncertainty, the overall lack of knowledge about the future. they are always in action mode. When it is rainy season they are planning for disease outbreak because with rainy season they are also accompanying disease but now also because of loss of biodiversity pastoralists have lost a lot of indigenous plants and there is no research or investment that promotes rehabilitation of indigenous tubers and plants and shrubs so that the animals will get the nutrient they need.

13:46And it requires a lot of skill, experience and energy. It is a labour-intensive work. It requires special skills, special weather. It requires also special movement. You just don't move the animals. You have to ensure that the humidity of the grass or that environment is comfortable for the animal. The water is not saline for the animal. Added into this mix is the danger of conflict and movement restrictions. Sometimes you are restricted by insecurity because you are in conflict with community so you cannot move to a prime area because of fear of losing your livestock. Sometimes you are also affected by the large infrastructure development.

14:26All this makes it difficult for them to make the livelihood out of the dry land that they have been occupying for centuries. So as Tahir has explained, pastoralists are faced with a range of threats. The constant search for grazing, a volatile and ever-changing climate, herds vulnerable to disease and economic instability. Historically they faced marginalisation living on the fringes of society due to their nomadic lifestyle and excluded from receiving essential services. Yet today across parts of Africa pastoralists face ostracisation due to political and societal developments. Today in Nigeria the term herder is used negatively Rather than recognising them for putting meat on the table, herders have become synonymous with a wider malaise of banditry affecting many parts of the country.

15:21You see, Nigeria is in the grip of major insecurity. This is not just the Bukaram insurgency which started in 2009 in the northeast, but now includes kidnapping, sectarian violence, deadly attacks on communities and cattle rustling. The increase in jihadism, which has swept through parts of West Africa over the past decade, saw Islamic militants exploit old ethnic and religious tensions between herders and other communities. And the Fulani population, which does include militias, is blamed for the upsurge in extremist attacks and outbreaks of violence between Christians and Muslims. Sali Sadonana described how herders are now perceived in the media and beyond.

16:07The public image of the herder is that the herder is a terrorist and is a kidnapper and is very uncivilized. But they don't think about the livestock products, the dairy products, the meat that they eat in their houses that are produced by these herders. So if you go to cattle market or to the butchery in Lagos, you'll find that over 90 % of the cattle will be coming from pastoralists. So people like the products, people like the livestock food chain, but they don't like the people who are producing it and they never ask. These issues are happening in communities across Africa, but they're a serious problem in Nigeria, which is where Aminu Nyako has established a huge off-grid dairy business.

16:55As a Fulani, Aminu is a face of modern pastoralism in Nigeria, but he knows all about the roots of these tensions and violence. Good morning, my name is Aminu Moutala-Inyako. I'm the managing director and chief elected officer of Sebori International Farms. Sebori Farms is a dairy company located in Mayabala, southern Adamaa state in northern Nigeria. With a background in economics as well as his experience with cattle, Aminu has a unique perspective on why some of the marginalisation of pastoralists happens. I think a lot of what happens in Africa is due to a lack of cooperation and a lack of deliberateness in policymaking.

17:38The reason I say this is that we take our blessings for granted. We've always had vast rangeland in Africa. We previously had no such thing as climate change. So grass was readily available in sight at every point in time. But over the last 40, 50 years, you start seeing that housing policy, agro policy, water policy around the River Burnway and River Niger, there's pressure on that because of growing population climate change. And people are chasing economic interests. And that's when you start to hear of clashes that are happening. if you recognize the pattern you hardly hear of clashes in the rainy season because the rains are everywhere water is abundant so everybody can kind of go into their little comet and exist without much pressure most of the time you hear of clashes is in the dry season and that enmity then grows year on year and avalanches into something bigger where you now hear of the big community clashes that happen that then make the news.

18:48From an economist's mindset, I see this as market failure. I see different communities trying to earn a living, but because property rights are not defined, which typically should be defined by governments, then you see people trying to carve their own share within the larger portion. And that market failure is what leads to disagreements. And rather than look at it as an economic issue, government typically looks at it as a social issue. And that social issue is what then leads to the caricature and the recurring themes of ban-de-chi and extremism and things of that nature. It is not that the pastoral communities are inherently evil or inherently criminal.

19:35It is that they are trying to preserve a way of earning income. As Aminu explained to me, in Adamawa state alone, there are over 2 million cows. So economically, the stakes are high. And the roots of much of this conflict is down to different modes of farming which are incompatible. Here's Sali again to explain. So there's what is called in Nigeria the farmer-header conflicts, which are disagreements between people herding cattle and crop farmers. So the conflicts come when cattle destroy crops and sometimes when farmers want to take land, that is grazing land, that have been set aside for grazing.

20:19It's a conflict over resources. Imagine you've used swathes of communal grazing for decades. Then one day it's been used to grow crops, which your cattle have just flattened and eaten. Conflict is inevitable and people have died. But the issue runs even deeper and is sometimes believed to be exploited by political elites and even community leaders. ...were killed and several wounded when armed bandits opened fire on them in the remote community. Northern Nigeria continues to see violence... But a lot of the time in Nigeria, these conflicts are no longer farmer-header conflicts. They are political and tribal and economic conflicts.

21:03So people are fighting over identity. But when they bring in outsiders, such as armed militias, they begin to do damage to the entire society of that area. And it becomes a conflict area with guns, with drugs, with other things coming in. Even the people that start the conflict can no longer control the conflict. And it's not good for society. It's not good for Nigeria. It's not good for the farmers. It's not good for the herders. Some of these tensions have been heightened by government-level programmes, which have deprioritised the pastoralists. Here's Tahira Mohammed again. Traditionally, especially back in the 1970s, pastoralism was considered to be not viable economic activities.

21:52And so states tried to force pastoralists into, like, you know, villages, trying to make them to be settled like farmers. But on the contrary, this sedentarisation undermines their movement. That means when they settle in one place, they overuse the grass in that particular area, they overuse the water resources in that area, and the land cannot regenerate. That means they are making the land to lose its biodiversity value, but also making resources very much insufficient for their animals. It's not an overstatement to say these issues of access to land are enmeshed with biodiversity. The movement of cattle was always a natural way of maintaining soil health.

22:33The animals spread manure, turn the earth, spread seed and move on before the pasture is exhausted. But this sedentary farming puts the land under much more pressure. Add in more frequent droughts, the risk of travel caused by insurgency and the result is more static farming and the strain on the land is worsened. It's a vicious cycle. But pastoralists are resourceful people and they're now harnessing the technology of places like Kenya's Silicon Savannah in order to access a solution that's orbiting the skies above Africa. The technological innovations is keeping pastoralists safe and securing the future for their livestock.

23:28I'm Bola Mosuro. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service and this is Shepherd's Eye in the Sky.

23:42If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service, and this is Shepherd's Eye in the Sky.

24:25So we've heard about the pastoralists who are fighting climate change and social exclusion to maintain their role as the most reliable food producers in the African continent. With generations of knowledge of animal husbandry, these pastoralists play a crucial role in the future of Africa's food security. But climate change, conflict and patchy support has left them marginalised and more often increasingly at odds with farming communities reliant on land ownership and globalisation. over the next 30 minutes we'll hear how pastoralists are using technology mobile communication solar power smart applications and open source real-time satellite data in order to maintain resilient and sustainable livelihoods in the dry lands we'll also be hearing what approaches are being suggested in the NGO and aid sector to help build bridges between international development practice and ancient wisdom.

25:40But first, let's consider the potential of a powerful tool most of us carry around every day. The mobile phone. Just like the rest of the world, people in the dry lands of Africa are embracing digital life. and mobile technology is having a huge impact on pastoralist lives. However, creative approach is needed in light of the challenge around resources and infrastructure on the continent. Here's an expert who knows all about this quickly developing landscape. I'm Mark Kaigua, the founder and CEO at Nendo, a research and creative agency based out of Nairobi in Kenya, which some people call Silicon Savannah.

26:26And Nendo did some research work. And so we were tasked with looking into a number of knowledge gaps that were there around social media use and internet and mobile phone use within the dry land regions in four different African countries and examining what opportunities for resilience markets and livelihoods there was, even amidst conflict or certain land issues among these communities. Our main findings were that pastoralists really are using and participating in social media and finding great ways to get access to information on weather or food and fodder or water or livestock prices. this meeting of mobile phones community and innovation goes right to the heart of what pastoralists need a tool to help them stay agile in touch and safe while being cognizant of the limitations on the ground while those of us living in big cities may rely on apps to hail taxis order food delivery or even search for love for pastoralists it's all about finding better grazing and avoiding conflict hotspots.

27:48So one was made. It's called AfriScout. Here's Joshua Liza to tell us more. AfriScout is a digital tool that incorporates indigenous knowledge with technology to simplify their pastoralist lifestyle. It is kind of guiding cattle where to graze. It is mostly like the Google map for cattle, I can say. As we've heard, that search for pasture is the herder's life. So how did the dream of a real-time map application to locate ideal spots for water and cattle grazing become a reality? Joshua gave us the lowdown. Afri-Scout story can be traced back to when the co-founder visited Ethiopia. They met the pastoralists who were moving with the animals.

28:42They were wondering, where are they taking? And they stopped and asked them if they know at least where they are going Surprisingly, they told them we are searching for pasture and water The question came into mind was, are you sure where you are going? There is And the answer came like, no, we are only counting on our luck So, pastoralists were moving without being sure that they will be having pasture or not And this is the story across Africa We move without knowing where we are going because we are looking to get pasture, the best resource for our cattle. AfriScout makes use of open source real-time satellite data, exactly the same technology that guides us through traffic.

29:27But in this case, it's to find water and grazing. And it's all available on a rugged smartphone, specifically designed for use in challenging settings. We'll hear more about that in a moment, but here's Joshua again. So when they went back, they started now producing every 10 maps of the land cover to see where there is a greenish pasture to distribute to the pastoral community. And it has happened in Kenya, it has happened in Ethiopia, it has happened in Tanzania. Now, we have a big problem with that. It was unreliable because of the remoteness of the area. We take around four days or five days to distribute to all villages.

30:08For the people who haven't got the maps, sometimes they're delayed. By the time they receive the maps, it will be useless. So that is where now we moved to digitalizing the maps. They started a satellite-assisted program to assist them to have information on where they can get quality pasture and water while saving time. Mind you, we can spend up to a week looking for pasture. We came up with the idea that we should have an application, a mobile application, that only provides information where to get pasture, where to get water, how long from one location to another. The result is that the search for water and pasture has been reduced from 7 to 14 days of gruelling scouting to 10 minutes on the phone.

31:01But there's been another benefit. But also the important feature of their application was to allow the pastoral to share information among themselves on alert, the outbreak of the disease, the conflict on their territories, and so forth. And funny thing enough is we saw it being used in some places, how WhatsApp is used, the tool for pastoral to communicate even on non-pastoral issues. We have received some of the testimonies, including people who have cows who are stolen and then were retrieved from another area just because it was settled through the application. So that is how the AfriScout actually works.

31:38So it only allows pastoralists to see the land cover, the greenish part of it, the water resources within the mapped area. So AfriScout, or the shepherd's eye in the sky, has transformed some aspects of pastoralism. But it would be a mistake to imagine these herder communities browse social media sites like Instagram on the latest expensive smartphone. It's just not practical given the remoteness of the dry lands. Plus these sensitive smart devices aren't rugged enough for the demands of looking after livestock. Mark Kaigua joins us again to tell us about the alternatives. Pastoralists across Africa, because of their nomadic nature, moving with their herds of livestock from place to place, have a unique relationship with their phones.

32:33They will either have at the bottom of the pyramid a basic phone. It can call, it can text, it's got a battery that will last a month. If they don't have one of those, they will have what's known as a feature phone. And a feature phone will typically be able to have some very, very simple, mainly text-based internet access. It'll be slow. It might not be as reliable, but it will prioritize battery life as well. And if they don't have that, they get into one of the most interesting areas, which is entry-level smartphones. Some will really prioritize battery life. And so there are some that will have a very bright flashlight or torch.