Establishment of Pastoral Banking Systems

The establishment of alternative investment opportunities for pastoralists, particularly those in middle or higher wealth strata, has been called a "keystone intervention" on the rangelands. Alternative investment opportunities would encourage the sale of unproductive male cattle and reduce pressure on the rangeland. Such a scheme would require a motivational component to interest pastoralists in banking, and careful design to ensure they had easy access to their money.

Such an approach deserves further research, including action-research. However, there are a number of criteria to be considered in project design which, at least at first sight, appear to present important obstacles:

- are there really significant surpluses of males in the pastoralist societies under consideration?
- will bank accounts in depreciating developing-country currencies represent a better real return than livestock, even if periodic drought losses are factored in?
- how will pastoralist banking interact with the use of livestock to build social networks and prestige?
- will traditional intra-community mechanisms of supporting the poor through livestock loans suffer?
- have other traditional forms of saving (jewellery, guns, carpets) been considered?
- how can the logistics of bringing pastoralists to banks or vice-versa be overcome?
- how can two-way attitudinal problems between pastoralists and bank staff be overcome?

With agro-pastoralists the issues may not be so much providing an alternative form of accumulation as allowing investment for crop-livestock integration. Click here for development of savings and credit institutions.

Key References

Coppock, D.C. 1994. The Borana Plateau of Southern Ethiopia: Synthesis of Pastoral Research, Development and Change 1980-91. Addis Ababa, ILRI.

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