A brief on the need to secure land rights for the world’s pastoralists, who manage rangelands that cover a quarter of the world’s land surface but have few advocates.

Impossible to have imagined 50 years ago that Africa’s ruling political elites would have come to despise their own small-scale farmers and pastoralists and to look kindly on foreign-run large plantations. Impact of decades of structural adjustment programmes forgotten.

Pastoral and agro-pastoral areas in eastern Africa and elsewhere have long been regarded as peripheries in economic terms and in terms of social and cultural accomplishments.

Includes colonial rule and land frontiers, late colonialism and modernisation, post-colonial nation-building and state-led development, community participation and community-based solutions, harmonising and devolving land administration, women’s land rights, pastoral land rights, market-led land