Pastoral Community Development Project

Pastoral Community Development Project

The project's goal is to improve prospects for sustainable livelihoods among herders living in arid and semi-arid lowlands. It is designed to empower communities and enable the decentralized regional administration to better manage local development through community-based development planning linked to a community investment fund.

The project also supports a participatory disaster-management programme to reduce rural poor people's vulnerability to drought and other natural disasters. Underlying these efforts are policy reform and investments in health, education and veterinary services, as well as applied research into dryland agriculture and natural resource management. The project works to identify and develop alternative livelihoods to improve the integration of herders' communities within the national economy.

In its initial five-year phase, the project focuses primarily on the needs and priorities of rural households living in one third of the pastoral and agropastoral villages in the four regions. About 20 per cent of these households are headed by women. In this phase, the aims of the project are to contribute to the growth and stability of household incomes, improve access to social and public services, improve social relations and institutions and help reduce vulnerability to disaster.

Source: IFAD