Assessing the role of mobile phone communication in drought-related mobility patterns of Samburu pastoralists

Highlights

• We examine mobile phone use for managing livestock mobility during drought.

• We map changes in drought related mobility between 1999 and 2009.

• Mobile phone communication has not influenced the changing pattern of mobility.

• Conflict has constricted drought-related mobility options.

• Mobile phone communication has not mitigated the impact of conflict.

Abstract

For pastoral communities living in arid Northern Kenya, mobility is a primary means of managing livestock in response to climate variability and drought. Access to a diversity of drought refuge areas for livestock is important to Samburu pastoralists' herding strategies. The rapid diffusion of mobile phone technology over the last decade raises the question of whether this new means of communication has enabled pastoralists to navigate risks in new ways that alter the geography of drought-related mobility in pastoral societies. Despite rapid diffusion and widespread use over the last decade, we find that mobile phones communication up to now has not substantially influenced the changing pattern of drought-related livestock mobility. The complexity of forage assessments and lack of trust within wider social networks limited the use of mobile communication in navigating drought and other risks.

Introduction

For pastoral communities living in Northern Kenya, livestock mobility is an imperative of resource management in the context of climate variability and recurrent drought. Mobility patterns reflect strategies to access forage and water resources and to avoid conflict (McCarthy and Di Gregorio, 2003, Galvin, 2009, Fratkin, 1998). Movements in response to drought are often opportunistic and based on rapid assessments of forage conditions and potential security threats (Adriansen, 2005, McCabe, 2004). Such assessments rely on flows of information about social and environmental conditions over long distances among herds boys, scouts, and elder herd owners. The recent widespread adoption of mobile phone technology by pastoralists in Northern Kenya raises important questions about changes in the flows of information used to make decisions about livestock movements at the onset of drought and the implications of these changes for drought-related mobility patterns.

Recent research on mobile phone use by pastoralists demonstrates that issues of social trust may enable or limit the effective use of mobile phone communication to navigate social and environmental risks in accessing forage. Butt (2015) found that the status of forage and water resources was the most widely shared information among pastoralists using mobile phones in southern Kenya. In this study, 40% of pastoralists considered information shared by mobile phone to be generally inaccurate while 43% found that accuracy of information about the status of grazing areas shared by mobile phone varied greatly according to the source of information. Some reported deliberate use of deception to discourage other herders from bringing livestock to preferred grazing areas. In contrast, Rasmussen et al. (2015) reported a more positive assessment of mobile phone use to gather weather and forage status information among Fulbe pastoralists in Burkina Faso. This study found that two-thirds of pastoralists relied on such assessments from distant contacts delivered solely through mobile phone communication and that this was the preferred source of information to assess distant forage opportunities. Most of the remaining respondents relied on information from scouts who also provided their assessments of distant forage by mobile phone.

To date, the limited literature on mobile phone use by pastoralists has not assessed the potential for mobile phone communication to contribute to changes in mobility patterns. More rapid communication between scouts and elders might enable identification of additional viable grazing areas when time is limited (Lovell, 2011). Moreover, pastoral landscapes are increasingly fragmented by areas of private property and pastoralists increasingly interact with private property owners and non-pastoralists in their movements with livestock (Lesorogol, 2008, Lengoiboni et al., 2011). For example, in the context of the 2009 drought in northern Tanzania, drought related mobility required that pastoralists traverse protected areas, private and village land, and international boundaries, drawing on “remaining customary institutional frameworks while also negotiating with village government leaders, national park personnel, and private landowners in ways that required new forms of social relations, knowledge, and skills (Goldman and Riosmena, 2013: 591). While such interactions may not be entirely new, it is not yet understood whether increased access to mobile phone communication has so far enabled pastoralists to navigate these social interactions in a way that could contribute to even greater dynamism in patterns of drought-related mobility from one drought to the next.

We undertook an investigation to establish how the pattern of Samburu pastoralists' drought related livestock mobility changed over the decade during which mobile phones were widely adopted. Secondly, we examined the use of mobile phones in decision-making related to livestock movements at the onset of drought. We assessed whether the advent of mobile phone use has contributed to changes in the geography of drought refuge areas accessed by Samburu pastoralists, either as a result of changes in communication between scouts and elders or due to communication with wider social networks that would facilitate identification or access to grazing areas not used during the previous drought.