Keeping the Sahel's Transhumance Corridors Open

Réseau Billital Maroobé (RBM) was created in 2003 by herder associations from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger and has since grown into a regional federation of roughly 80 pastoral producer organizations spanning nine West and Central African countries. RBM monitors pastoral conditions along the Sahel's major transhumance corridors, publishing regular regional bulletins on rainfall, pasture regeneration and cross-border herd movements that governments, aid agencies and herders themselves use to plan and de-conflict seasonal migrations. It engages directly with ECOWAS and the Liptako-Gourma Authority to keep pastoral mobility corridors recognized in national and regional land-use policy, work that is central to preventing the farmer-herder conflicts that have escalated across the Sahel as grazing land shrinks. RBM describes its network as representing roughly 750,000 direct pastoralist members and millions more beneficiaries across the region.