Some examples of our work

Owning the Futures: Using Scenarios in Pastoral Development

SOS Sahel UK is working with pastoralist institutions in Kenya and Mali to determine whether scenario analysis might be a useful tool to help pastoralists manage the growing complexity and unpredictability of their environment and communicate to policy-makers a vision of the future they want to see. The scale of the threats facing pastoral communities, and the largely untapped potential they offer their countries’ economies, suggest the need for more effective ways in which pastoralists can participate in national planning processes on their own terms.

Download a summary of this project.

 

Livestock Mobility in West and East Africa

In partnership with the International Institute for Environment and Development, SOS Sahel UK has started a long-term programme to help secure livestock mobility in dryland areas of West and East Africa. Mobility is crucial for livelihoods, trade, and coping with climate change. In the first year we will identify who is working on this issue and what the key lessons of good practice might be. We will also discuss with pastoralists how they wish to preserve and develop mobility as a key feature of their livelihood system. At the end of the first year we hope to have built consensus among a small group of strategically placed organisations and individuals about how best to take this work forward in the long term.

English summary
French summary
 

Pastoralists and the Millennium Development Goals

We have now passed the mid-point towards 2015, the target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Pastoralists are just one of the groups that are being left behind by current mainstream poverty reduction efforts. SOS Sahel UK believes that the MDGs will not be met in sub-Saharan Africa without poverty reduction strategies that are better tailored to the situation of hard-to-reach populations.
 

Global Water Initiative

More than one billion people in the world lack access to improved water sources; more than 2.6 billion lack adequate sanitation. SOS Sahel UK is part of a multi-agency partnership recently launched with funding from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation to address the challenge of long-term access to clean water and sanitation and the promotion and sustainable management of ecosystem services and watersheds. The Global Water Initiative will focus on the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable communities in 13 countries of Central America, West Africa and East Africa.

Global Water Initiative, www.globalwaterinitiative.org
 

Desert Voices returns to the Sahel
In 1991, SOS Sahel UK and Panos London published ‘At the Desert's edge’ - a book exploring the culture, history and environment of eight countries in Africa's Sahel region through the memories and recollections of its people.  In the intervening years the voices and experiences of those living in dryland areas have been largely absent from debates, as has media coverage of the issues affecting them.

Last year Panos and SOS Sahel UK returned to two of the areas covered by At the Desert’s Edge, central Sudan and southern Ethiopia, to see how life has changed for those living there.  The startling personal accounts collected highlight the wide-ranging consequences of desertification, from migration for work and conflict over resources, to changes in traditions and women’s roles.

For more information, please visit www.panos.org.uk/desertvoices.