The Dryland Husbandry Project (DHP) is an effort to bring together a variety of stakeholders in pastoral development, to identify and develop strategies for addressing the crisis of African drylands in the nineties. A network approach will be used to raise issues of mutual concern to researchers, practitioners and, above all, pastoralists, with particular emphasis on sustainable service provision and water management. For further details of the research project see the back page.
The Regional Office of DHP, OSSREA, has taken the initiative to launch a DHP Publications Series for the Dryland Husbandry Project with the view to exchange and share opinions and experiences on issues of dryland husbandry in the Horn of Africa Sub-region in general and in the DHP areas in particular. The DHP Publications Series is a forum where researchers in the Dryland Husbandry Project and others inform the research and academic community, the policy makers, interested individuals and institutions the results of their action-oriented and participatory research. It is also a forum where para-vet training experiences, trials research results, ethno-veterinary practices, workshop findings and the relevance and use of indigenous knowledge in the project areas are presented and discussed.
This is the second issue of the Dryland Husbandry Project (DHP) Publications Series. The first issue (DHP Publications Series No. 1, November 1996) was on Dryland Husbandry in the Sudan. This issue contains the proceedings of the papers presented at the first National Workshop on Dryland Husbandry in Kenya. The workshop was held in the DHP-Kenya area, in the premises of the Institute of Dryland Research, Development and Utilization (IDRDU) at Kibwezi, University of Nairobi in April 1996. These papers, we believe, could provide the reader information on the status of knowledge on dryland husbandry in Kenya. This publication could also serve to encourage people with interest to do more with people in the pastoral and agro-pastoral areas in Kenya. OSSREA is convinced that in order to understand and to be on top of the problems in the dryland areas in Kenya, more attention and collaborative work both by researchers and policy makers together with the people at the grassroots is timely and vitally important.
Tegegne Teka, Editor
