An asssesment of the Tanzania livestock policy of 2006 and its impact on the livelihoods of pastoral communities in Tanzania

Livestock industry is one of the largest economic activities in Tanzania, yet the majority of livestock keepers live in extreme poverty. Poverty among pastoral community is a widespread problem in Tanzania despite the existence of several livestock-related policies and development programmes. For instance, in a bid to address this situation, the government of Tanzania introduced various initiatives, including the adoption of the 2006 Livestock Policy, in order to improve the livestock sector and the well-being of livestock keepers. This study therefore assessed the impact of livestock policy implementation on the well-being of people whose livelihoods depend solely on livestock production. The study also examined factors affecting the implementation of the NLP for the past ten years. This study used both secondary and primary data, collected by using several data collection methods such as focus group discussions (FDG), questionnaires, and interviews. The selected groups for consultation and interviews during the study included; policy implementers from the Ministry responsible for livestock industry in Tanzania, Regional and District livestock officers in Shinyanga and Arusha, civil societies working within pastoral communities in Tanzania, leaders of Tanzania Pastoralists Association, and Members of Parliament elected from areas with high livestock population. The findings of this study indicate that despite the fact that the government developed several programmes, laws and strategies to implement the NLP, the livestock sector has been performing poorly for the past ten years of the policy implementation. Consequently, the contribution of the livestock sector to the wellbeing of livestock keepers and National Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been declining since 2005, despite all these policy-related efforts. For instance, the livestock sector contribution to GDP has been declining for the past ten years from 18% to 7.4% in 2015. Furthermore, the findings of this study found that despite the fact that Tanzania is the third country with largest number of livestock in Africa; livestock production contributes little to the income of small livestock keepers. Implementation of NLP has been hampered by many factors such as lack of resources for policy implementation; poor participation of pastoralists during the development of policy implementation strategies; and poor policy coordination during implementation. Other factors are failure to take into account all three pillars of pastoralism (people, livestock and resources) during policy formulation and its implementation strategies; and failure to use theories and approaches that are proper during policymaking and implementations. The NLP favors modern ranching and commercialization of the livestock sector despite existing evidence that they have failed. Poor knowledge of traditional pastoralism, coupled with negative perception towards traditional pastoralism among policy makers and implementers have largely diluted the impact of NLP on traditional livestock keepers, failing to positively affect their lives.