Abstract: This paper examines some current issues in Borana, a pastoral society straddling the border between Ethiopia and Kenya. Pastoral societies in the African drylands these days seem to be in a state of perpetual crisis, having been transformed in the course of a few decades from haughty, independent-minded and self-sufficient tribesmen to poverty-stricken famine relief clients living on the ecological as well as political margins of society. The paper will attempt to account for some aspects of this transformation and point to some of the complexities in the situation of pastoralists, as represented by the Borana. Some of the issues raised here are more or less unique to the Borana, while others can be quite easily recognised also in other pastoral societies, in Ethiopia and elsewhere.
Many of these issues are reflected as central concerns in pastoral development policies. Development projects have become an important part of the context within which pastoralists live, for better or for worse. Although few pastoral development projects have achieved what they set out to achieve, they have none the less, often had important consequences for their pastoral `beneficiaries', creating new opportunities or imposing new problems.
Pastoral development projects in the African drylands were initially concerned with manipulating biological factors such as the availability of water and pasture, disease, the genetic composition of animal populations, reproductive and growth rates, with the aim of increasing pastoral production and integrating it into the national economy. By and large, these approaches were failures and did not achieve what they set out to do. Some development inputs were eagerly accepted by pastoralists as convenient and efficient solutions to concrete problems (in particular veterinary services, very often also water) while other development components, such as attempts to regulate stocking rates, migration routes or grazing patterns, or increase commercialisation and marketed off-take, were contemptuously rejected. Other inputs again have created as many problems as they solved. This has in particular been the case with water development.
Water is of course in short supply in most pastoral settings and water development projects were initially eagerly accepted by pastoralaists. But as experience has been gained and the management issues involved in water development projects have become apparent, many pastoralists have become wary of the problems associated with water development. In many cases water development has turned out to be destructive of the environment as well as of social relations and has contributed to increase the vulnerability of the pastoralists to events such as drought.
After the devastating droughts of the 1970's and the 1980's, which in unprecedented ways revealed how vulnerable pastoral societies in the African drylands had become, pastoral development strategies began to change. Pastoral societies had apparently lost their ability to handle droughts, or were at least facing much lower thresholds to famine and destitution. Pastoral societies which formerly were able to handle one or two failed seasons (with hardship, but successfully, in terms of carrying people and livestock through to the next good season) now face utter destitution if only one rainy season fails. The definition of the threshold to famine and destitution is a complex matter, not least in terms of the political considerations which go into it, but the net effect across the African drylands has been that an increasingly large number of people in a number of pastoral societies have come to rely on the regular supply of free famine relief food for their survival.
In the aftermath of these experiences, the outlook on pastoral development has changed, from one of mobilising pastoral resources as a contribution to the national economy, to a strategy aimed at restoring the capacity of pastoral societies to feed them. Rather than manipulating pastoral production variables, the emphasis of development projects has now changed to a concern with behavioural and social aspects. While in the first perspective on pastoral development pastoralists must be controlled, the pastoralists must now take charge of their own problems and become more self-reliant! Development projects have therefore become more concerned with issues such as fostering popular participation (which often takes on the aspect of resurrecting organisational capacities undermined or denied by administrative subjugation in earlier times). Local groups are to a large extent made responsible for their own welfare, including the delivery of public services which the government no longer can afford or is incapable of delivering, e.g. human and animal health services, education, water, roads etc.
The earlier approach to pastoral development usually entailed considerable public investments, with projects being implemented by one or more government agency with statutory responsibilities for the pastoralists. The new approaches are much less clearly focused, far less technical in nature and are often seen as being marginal to the range of responsibilities which governments want to assume in the pastoral areas. These are not usually the objects of government investment. Government agencies previously charged with responsibility for pastoral development are thus being scaled back. A notable change, which has taken place concurrently with the acceptance of new perspectives on pastoral development, is the replacement of government agencies by voluntary and non-government groups.
Borana is one of the many pastoral societies in the African drylands, which has followed this general trajectory in the last few decades. Borana moved from a situation of loose administration and little interference from central government, through a period with a large, classical pastoral development project (involving water development, demarcation of ranches and feed-lost, directed range management, veterinary services, marketing), concurrently with intensification of government control. In today's situation the Borana find them more or less on their own in facing the consequences of a failed development approach. Government development services have been retrenched and to a large extent been replaced by NGO's. But NGO's are neither willing, nor able to fill the gaps left by government.
In the Ethiopian context, Borana has been given much more attention than is usually the case for a pastoral society, whether in terms of development work, famine relief campaigns or research projects. More is probably known about Borana than about any other pastoral society in Ethiopia, but that has not helped to bring about a solution to some of the fundamental problems with which the Borana have to contend. Some of these problems with are clearly shared with other pastoral societies, while others are particular to the Borana and the situation in which the Borana find them.
This account of the contemporary situation in Borana will not attempt to summarise every thing, which is known about the Borana. It will, however, highlight some important features of the situation in Borana, as these will be significant for an appreciation of the issues discussed in this paper. A short introduction to the Borana will serve to demonstrate the complexities of the issues at hand and how they are linked to a number of other important questions, both within the Borana district and even further afield.
First, the Borana are one of the many Oromo groups found in Ethiopia. In Oromo myths of origin the Borana are accorded a particularly senior position,1 being thought of as the `angafa' or first-born of the Oromo nation. Well-known indicators of this particular status were the Oromo pilgrimages to Borana. Until quite recent times, Oromo pilgrims from all over Ethiopia would travel to Borana to attend the `muda' ceremony, at with the senior Borana `Kallu'1 receives gifts of cattle from the participants, in exchange for blessings. Another indicator is that in many of the other Oromo societies elsewhere in Ethiopia, the ritually most senior clans are designated as `Borana' clans.
Partly related to this position of seniority, but also due to their relative isolation in the borderlands of the Ethiopian nation-state, the Borana have also been regarded by other Oromo groups as the custodians of `original' Oromo culture. The Borana were among the last groups to be incorporated into the Ethiopian empire of Emperor Menelik II, towards the end of the last century and were thus able to maintain their customs and social institutions longer than most of the other Oromo groups. Furthermore, the Borana offered little resistance to Menelik's colonisation, and the administrative system which was set up (based on a form of indirect rule) allowed the Borana to a large extent to continue their own way of life. The notions that the culture of the Borana has remained unchanged, that it represents fundamental Oromo values and that it provides a glance at ancient Oromo social institutions and an `uncontaminated' culture have been ideologically important to all the Oromo in Ethiopia.1
The Borana very quickly succumbed to the firearms of Menelik's army. Particularly in the initial phase of the Ethiopian colonisation of Borana, the taxation levels were high (with feudal retainers trying to extract as much as possible out of the Borana) but the pastoral production system of the Borana was productive enough to meet this additional burden. The state appointed local balabbat's who were responsible for tax collection and keeping the peace. In the Borana case these were appointed from the family of the Kallu's. There were Ethiopian garrisons in Borana, but they played only a minor role in local affairs and were primarily directed at external perils, - initially the British in Kenya, later the threat of Somali irredentism. The system of indirect rule remained in place at the lowest level of administration up to the advent of the Ethiopian revolution and the implementation of the Land Reform Proclamation in 1975.
In spite of their incorporation into the Ethiopian state, the Borana were able to maintain social institutions which in other Oromo societies had succumbed to the joint onslaught of the Ethiopian state and proselytising religious institutions such as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Islam and Protestant missions. This was probably due as much to the remoteness and relative isolation of Borana (the first all-weather road into Borana was constructed in the 1970's) as the benign neglect, which characterised the Ethiopian administration of these outlying areas. The Borana have therefore been able to preserve more or less intact the centrepiece of all Oromo institutions known as the Gada, which in most other Oromo societies have been weakened, curtailed and changed to the point of disappearance.
The Borana Gada is a complex, elaborate and all-embracing social institution, which at first sight is concerned with the relations within and between the generations, but which, more fundamentally, is about how the Borana should live their lives. The Gada therefore has important ritual, political and judicial aspects attached to it. It consists of a series of individual celebrations as well as a cycle of large-scale public rites, both of which require considerable economic resources for their proper performance. Succeeding set of men are selected to represent their respective generations and carry public responsibilities over an 8-year period for the proper unfolding and celebration of the Gada. These Gada councils, headed by the Abba Gada, do not have direct political responsibilities, but participation in a Gada council is an indispensable platform for those who later build individual political careers and assume positions of leadership in Borana. The Borana have throughout been able to provide the resources needed to maintain the Gada and there is no doubt that the Gada has continued to be important to the Borana at both an individual and a societal level.
The importance to the Borana of the Gada in political terms, however, has probably been reduced in step with the increasing integration of the Borana into the Ethiopian State. In terms of contemporary development issues the survival of the Gada as a ritual and ideological system may be perceived as being secondary to the survival of a number of other Borana institutions with a far more pragmatic outlook, e.g. councils for the resolution of conflict and the maintenance of peace, institutions for the management of natural resources and institutions for mutual assistance and redistribution of wealth. It is important to keep in mind that the Gada subsumes all these other institutions in an integrated Borana worldview and infuses these more pragmatic institutions with, the authority and legitimacy, which they require to be effective. Hence, it is hardly likely, that these other institutions will survive without the Gada, nor that the Gada will retain its importance in their absence or in a situation where they are seriously weakened or made irrelevant.
The second important point to keep in mind is that Borana is a pastoral society. Livestock husbandry is the economic mainstay of the area and the welfare of the Borana is still primarily determined by events in the livestock economy. There are pockets of land within Borana where crop production is possible, but the Borana themselves have not developed an agricultural tradition. Agriculture was introduced to the Borana areas in the wake of the Ethiopian colonisation, when soldiers/settlers were given land grants in the area, often in conjunction with the small garrison towns established at that time. Many of the farmers in Borana today are the descendants of these settlers. Farming is also practised by the descendants of other immigrants from neighbouring groups, such as the Burji, many of whom originally came to Borana as agricultural serfs of the soldier/settlers, or the Konso, the main trading partners of the Borana. The Konso have traditionally been the principal source of the agricultural commodities needed by the Borana. A number of Kongo artisans such as blacksmiths and potters, also settled among the Borana.
Until quite recent times (most people would indicate the 1984/85 drought as the point when this started to change) the local economic specialisation into herders and farmers more or less followed ethnic lines, - with next to no Borana being involved in farming and only Borana and their clients being allowed access to the pastoral resources. Today, there are a number of Borana who have taken up agriculture. Agricultural expansion into the most favourable parts of the rangelands is a salient feature of the current situation, even though there is little precise information about its extent or rate of increase from year to year. An important aspect of this agricultural expansion, however, is that individuals can now gain can exclusive rights to land resources in Borana, through the expedient of declaring a patch of land as farmland and paying agricultural land tax for it. In contrast, the state does not recognise the collective rights of the Borana to the pastoral rangelands.
Even if economic activity in Borana is far more diversified than was the case only a short time ago, the economic mainstay of the area is still pastoralism and livestock production.
On the one hand this means that the Borana are exposed to the same sorts of problems and risks as other pastoral societies in Ethiopia, in terms of safeguarding access to resources, maintaining security, exposure to drought and diseases, as well as to the ecological processes involved in pastoral adaptation, most significantly the danger of over-exploitation of resources. On the other hand, Borana pastoralism has arrived at a number of adaptations to counter at least some of these problems. Some adaptations have been highly successful and have enabled the pastoral system of the Borana to survive droughts and famines for several hundred years, even if they have not always sheltered individuals and individual families from such calamities. Many features may be seen as having contributed to the historical sustainability of Borana pastoralism. Perhaps the most famous and spectacular feature of the Borana pastoral adaptation are the deep wells in Borana, and the concomitant complex social organisation which underlies construction, access, usage and maintenance of these impressive structures. The wells are at the same time a vital resource, without which dry-season access to the Borana ranges would be impossible, and an expression of the capacity of the Borana social organisation to undertake and operate large-scale, public endeavours over long periods of time.
This paper will concentrate primarily on the pastoralists, partly because they still represent the large majority of the population in Borana, partly because events in the pastoral sector predominantly determine major issue such as food security, and partly because the dynamic changes taking place in the pastoral sector in Borana and elsewhere are poorly understood and often quite simply overlooked.
The large majority of the people living in the Borana areas of Ethiopia are pastoralists, deriving their income and sustenance from rearing livestock. The pastoral economy is fundamental to the welfare of the population of Borana and problems in the pastoral economy quickly translate into crises for the population as a whole. Pastoralism is a way of life, which is well suited to the arid and semi-arid parts of Africa, and it is an adaptation, which, as far as we know, is very old. The simple fact that pastoralism still exists bears testimony to the fact that this adaptation has solved a number of problems related to making a living in the drylands. In fact, there are few alternatives to pastoralism in these settings. Although crop production is now taking place in Borana, the potential for agriculture on a regular basis is limited and restricted to only the most favourable parts of the area. Agriculture can definitely not sustain the number of people, which today obtain their livelihood from pastoralism.
There are, however, certain aspects of the pastoral adaptation, which are troublesome and costly. At the most general level, the drylands of Africa are, and have been, politically unstable, characterised by unrest and confrontation between competing groups. This has to a certain extent also been the case in Borana and is obviously a matter of concern to national governments with a jurisdiction over the area.
Furthermore, the drylands have also been characterised by frequent droughts, with high animal mortality rates, followed by famine, starvation and high death rates in the human population as well. Since the great Sahel drought of the early 1970s, these features have been given great prominence in pastoral development policy as well as in the general perception of conditions in the drylands. There can be no doubt, however, that these characteristics are closely related to the pastoral adaptation itself. There is far less agreement on the explanations of the causes behind these features.
To many, these features of pastoralism (livestock losses and famine arising from droughts) are symptoms of deep crises and the collapse of pastoralism as a sustainable adaptation. To others, these features are necessary and integral aspects of the pastoral adaptation itself. The latter view assumes that pastoralism is only a successful adaptation to a difficult, unpredictable and inclement environment under certain specific conditions, and that these characteristics, distressing as they may be, actually are necessary conditions for continued pastoral production in the drylands. It is proposed, for instance, that sustainable pastoralism in the African drylands is only possible under conditions of moderate to low population density. In this perspective it is possible to see the effects of drought and famine as an important aspect of pastoral adaptation (i.e. as a way of adjusting the population density), rather than as a symptom indicating that pastoralism no longer is possible.
Explanations of the first kind (assuming that pastoralism as a way of living is becoming impossible) have for a long time dominated the thinking about development in the African drylands. Explanations of confrontation and competition, poverty, famine and disaster have been tied to assumed deficiencies in the way pastoralists manage and utilise the natural resources. In this outlook, on the one hand, the pastoral systems fail to provide the populations which they contain with sufficient food and income, and on the other hand, they entail misuse and destruction of the natural resource base which pastoralists depend on by encouraging people to keep too many animals on the pastures. A very common assumption in development planning has therefore been that pastoral adaptation in the African drylands cause starvation and destroy the resources on which the future of pastoralists depend. Any solution to the development problems of the drylands thus came to rely on bringing these destructive aspects of pastoralism under control. A solution to the problem of overgrazing has in particular been seen as a major precondition to any development works in the drylands.
Compared to other pastoral areas in East Africa with similar natural conditions (primarily in terms of soils and rainfall) the Borana rangelands have usually been assessed to be exceptionally good. Given that the Borana have occupied these areas for at least four hundred years, the implication is that the Borana pastoral production system contains (or at least has contained up to quite recently) a mechanism to solve the "problem of growth" which is implied in all pastoral societies.
This problem is the result of the tendency to growth which is a characteristic of all biological populations; hence, a cattle herd normally grow, unless something specifically stops the growth, e.g. the removal of reproductive animals through disease, sale or consumption. In a pastoral situation, it is obvious that a large livestock population can become a problem, unless there are similar increases in the availability of the other factors of production as well, which are primarily land (or pasture), water and labour.
Although a considerable research effort has been expended on the Borana, it is not clear exactly how the `problem of growth' is solved in Borana. What seems to be clear, however, is that this problem is becoming more acute, perhaps indicating that previous regulation mechanisms are no longer effective. I have earlier argued (Helland, 1982) that the limited number of permanent wells in Borana, with the capacity to water only a limited number of animals in the normal three-day cycle in the dry season, have kept animal numbers at levels which were well below the limits set by the amount of fodder available at most times. Since the wells were the only reliable source of water in the dry season, animals in excess of the watering capacity of the wells would weaken and be the first to die or would have to be eliminated! In other words, animals would perish from thirst rather than from lack of feed. Hence, as long as the capacity of the wells was lower than the capacity of the ranges, herd growth would be restricted and only cause limited damage around the wells. Occasionally, however, drought years (or rather, a succession of failed rainy seasons) would reduce the availability of fodder as well, in which case there would be events of mass cattle mortality. But in most years the fodder reserves (standing hay, brows etc.) would be kept at a level well above the limits imposed by watering capacity.
It seems likely, therefore that the ceiling on the number of animals set by the traditionally restricted availability of stock water was maintained by the inability of the Borana to significantly increase the supply of water in the dry season. This could have been caused by difficulties in mobilising the necessary resources (in terms of manpower and supplies) to dig new wells or re-excavate collapsed ones. Although it is known that collapsed wells have occasionally been re-excavated, even this was a major undertaking, requiring considerable resources over long periods of time, and hence one may assume that this was a comparatively rare event. For practical purposes the number of wells available to the Borana was probably more or less constant.
Furthermore, a ceiling on the number of animals, which could be watered, would clearly imply a limit on the number of people, who could be maintained in a pastoral adaptation. It is not clear, however, how such a ceiling affected individual households, but it is unlikely that the effects were evenly distributed. Some households would most likely be better off and manage better than others, e.g. controlling a more robust mix of animals (according to species, sex and age), holding greater reserves and buffers, having a more favourable ratio of producers to consumers in the household or choosing more favourable husbandry strategies (in terms of distributing animals in social networks as well as grazing circuits). Some households could simply be more lucky than others.
The resources needed to participate in the politics of the well council and in the operation and maintenance of the wells in short to gain access to water played an important role. Households with sufficient resources to successfully compete and gain secure access to water did well, while households without these resources failed. Those households, which fell below the threshold of active participation, would enter a downward spiral of poverty, clientship and destitution, eventually being forced out of pastoralism as independent units. There is not enough information available, however, to demonstrate empirically a regulatory mechanism in Borana pastoralism which depends on population density, i.e. which becomes effective when the population density reaches a certain level. It is important to note that the critical threshold is not defined by animals in relation to pasture, but by animals in relation to water. It is also important to note that the regulatory mechanism involved here does not operate through direct biotic feedback but is a mechanism mediated by the social organisation in which is embedded the management of the critical water resources.
An argument supporting the notion of density-dependent controls of Borana pastoralism does no deny that there were additional regulatory factors, which did not depend on density. Animal and human disease epidemics have restrained growth rates and have no doubt occasionally reduced the populations significantly. Insecurity and raiding from neighbouring groups have also taken their toll, but it is not known if the Borana overall have lost or gained livestock through the mutual raiding which is a feature of the region. Furthermore the Borana rangelands are susceptible to drought, even if regular rainfall patterns are quite generous compared to most other pastoral areas.
There is not doubt that drought has been (and still is) a prominent factor in Borana pastoralism. Drought does not depend directly on density, of course, and in former times failed rains would primarily affect Borana pastoralism through shortfall in fodder. This is probably still the main linkage, but with the considerable expansion of water resources through the digging of surface run-off ponds which has taken place, poor rainfall will also affect Borana pastoralsim through a shortfall in water. The impact of drought can therefore be considerable. In 1984-85, for instance, drought contributed to depressing animal population growth, primarily by driving the calf mortality rate as high as 90% and reducing calving rates in the year following a drought (Cossins & Upton, 1988b: 123). The death due to drought of 45% of all mature cows over an 18-month period has been recorded (Coppock, 1993:52; Donaldson 1986:38). The impact of drought on the animal population would therefore have been profound. The human population would face starvation, particularly before markets and imported grain became easily accessible, following the infrastructure developments after 1974.
Today, although Borana is still a predominantly pastoral society, it seems that very few people are able to subsist directly from the products of their herds. People have increasingly come to rely on favourable market exchange rates between pastoral products and cheap grain to maintain food security. This means that in addition to the traditional risks which Borana pastoralism always has had to face, such as the climate, disease and the security situation, an increasingly large part of the population is becoming exposed to the effects of a volatile market. Market prices and exchange rates react to events far outside Borana, and additionally, within Borana prices react to both climatic and security conditions. In a drought situation the exchange rate typically becomes unfavourable to the pastoralist, to the extent that the effects of drought on food security are exacerbated rather than alleviated by a strategy of market integration.
Another aspect of this strategy of market integration is that even in normal times, by comparison with better off people poor people have to sell proportionately more of their herd products to obtain the food they need, and even more so in a drought situation. This accelerates processes of economic differentiation within Borana, since it allows the rich to re-invest more of their herd production into herd growth. The ongoing market integration thus makes the rich richer and the poor poorer!
The Borana still produce a significant surplus from their livestock holdings, which are still substantial, although livestock wealth seems to have become more unevenly distributed in the population over the past few decades. Borana pastoralism also seems to have become more vulnerable to drought in this same period. In the past, the Borana pastoral system could easily handle one failed season, but this no longer seems to be the case. Most explanations of this reduced capacity to handle drought relate the current problems of Borana pastoralism to increased densities of people and animals.
Development inputs have contributed to increase both the human and the animal population. Precise figures are not available for either population, but the best possible estimates indicate that the human population is now growing at a rate of approximately 3% per annum, which is probably much faster than before. The causes of this probable increase are not well understood, but may be related to food security and health services. Both factors may in turn be related to the improvements in infrastructure and communications, which have occurred over the past two decades. Improved food security is directly linked to the provision of famine relief, food-for-work projects and other ways of subsidising local production, which points to increased integration within the Ethiopian nation-state (through which famine relief and other development inputs have to a large extent been mediated) as a major factor to be considered. Improved communications have no doubt influenced trade patterns, and food security has been improved by the exchange rates between grain and such as products, which generally have been favourable to the Borana pastoralists.
Improved food security must therefore be seen in relation to the closer integration of Borana with the Ethiopian State. Famine relief is now a permanent feature of Borana, something that the Borana can count on in the event of a major crisis. Similarly, major health threats, such as epidemics, whether human or animal, are also likely to be met by official countermeasures. Famine relief is a major theme in the operations of the NGOs in the areas, and the utilisation of food aid in productive ways, through so-called EGS - Employment Generating Schemes (formerly known as FFW - Food For Work), is a major preoccupation also of the local administration. Large-scale famine relief operations have been organised in Borana in 1973-75, 1984-85 and 1991-92, and several minor crises in between have been met by distributions of free food. Food distributions in one form or other have taken place in Borana every year since 1973. Considering that no free food was ever distributed before this time, this must have had a significant impact. Although the precise effects of famine relief on the growth rates of the Borana population are not well documented, it is clear that the Borana population is no longer subject to mass starvation and death in the event of a drought.
Famine relief and favourable market exchange rates have also influenced the growth of the livestock herds. Since both factors contribute to improved food security, both reduce the need for sale or consumption of animals. As has been pointed in a number of contexts previously, due to the particular nature of pastoral production, all savings in terms of reduced consumption are automatically re-invested in herd growth. Only positive decisions to remove animals from the herd put a brake on `the problem of growth'. Again, there is no precise information on how improved food security has contributed to herd growth. There have been drought events in Borana in the last couple of decades, which have reduced the animal population severely. Even so, the general assessment is that the Borana rangelands are now used to capacity.
The rangelands of the Borana, on their part, are shrinking. Even if large areas in the west which previously were only accessible in the wet season have been opened up to perennial use through recent water development schemes, large areas to the east have been lost to the Somali. This process of Somali expansion into the lands of the Borana has a long history which now seems to culminate with the new administrative arrangements recently introduced, under which contested areas and contested sources have been put under the jurisdiction of the Somali Regional Government.
Although most of the areas, which have been lost, were only accessible to the Borana cattle herders in the wet season, the effect of denied access has been to concentrate herds in the remaining area. Here, the significant increase in the availability of water through a number of water development projects, has, for all practical purposes erased the distinction formerly maintained between wet-season and dry-season pastures. At present, high rates of utilisation of the available forage are maintained throughout the year.
Within the rangelands remaining under Borana control, productivity is therefore being reduced through a process of degradation particularly associated with bush encroachment, as well as through the expansion of agriculture into the best parts of the rnagelands. Estimates indicate that bush encroachment affects almost half the rangelands in Borana, but neither the extent of cultivation nor the rate of agricultural expansion is known.
Within the remaining rangelands, enclosures reactions to intensified resource competition and resource shrinkage has been to individualise and privatise resources which up to now have been held in common. Access to the natural resources of Borana was a birth-right of anyone born into Borana society, a central aspect of Boranuma, and the quality of being Borana. This is gradually changing and both pasture and water are affected.
The creation of private pasture closures (known as kalloo4) seems to be a recent phenomenon but one, which are rapidly gaining popularity as well as acceptance. Borana jurisprudence allows the setting aside of pasture reserves for calves in the vicinity of villages and these were generally respected by others. The difference today is that enclosures have become much larger (sometimes very much larger) and that they are frequently physically fenced. This may be an indication that the new enclosures are not accepted on a par with the calf reserves of former times and that they are not protected by traditional jurisprudence. But if a pasture enclosure is combined with an agricultural field, e.g. organised as paddocks within the same perimeter fence, secure individual tenure can be safeguarded under national Ethiopian law, by the simple expedient of paying agricultural land tax for the cultivated field.
The other crucial resource is water. Significant efforts and money are expended locally to secure additional water supplies. The construction of private water tanks in the rangelands (to collect surface run-off, and more recently, to be refilled by water tankers) has introduced a new dimension to Borana pastoralism. This technology, which has been introduced and promoted in Borana by development agencies, involves quite substantial investments by local standards. Initially tanks were constructed on behalf of groups, but these days it is quite common to find individuals investing their own money in private tanks. Private water tanks in turn engender arrangements for security of tenure, so that they are often found in combination with agricultural fields/pasture enclosures. Furthermore, private investors obviously seek to recover some of the costs, and the sale of water from private tanks in the rangelands has started to occur. Up to now, the outright sale of water has been anathema to the Borana sense of propriety, so this commercialisation of water represents a major change.
Private pasture enclosures, private water tanks and the expansion of agriculture all seem to contribute to greater sedentarisation of the Borana population, at least in some parts of the area. The effects of this process of sedentarisation on resource use, resource tenure, economic differentiation and general welfare are still at an emergent stage.
A major unresolved question is how droughts would have affected the animal and human populations of the area if population densities had been lower. Although prices and reliable figures are not available, most observers, including the Borana themselves, agree that the human population has increased significantly over the last three decades, and that the animal population has followed suit. Several development efforts seem to contribute to maintaining a high animal population in Borana. Vaccination campaigns have reduced mortality from disease. Water has become much more widely available, making available pasture resources, which previously were only accessible in the wet season. Famine relief has allowed livestock owners to reduce sale or consumption of animals. Comparatively favourable food grain prices have also allowed people to sell less animal products to obtain the same amount of food.
One possible effect of the high animal population is that the composition of the vegetation is changing in the direction of an increasing density of unpalatable species, resulting in bush encroachment. Bush encroachment is today recognised as an important problem in Borana pastoralism. The exact relationship between land use and bush encroachment is not entirely clear, however. In the Borana context it is known that bush encroachment primarily affects areas which today are heavily used after they have become accessible through water development schemes within the last three decades. It is also known, however, that the traditional practice of range burning every 3-4 years, and which seemingly has been effective in controlling the density of bush in many African savannah environments, was banned by the authorities at about the same time as the affected areas came under heavy use. But even if the precise causes of bush encroachment may be debated, it is positively known that bush encroachment is reducing the forage value of large areas (may be up to 50%) of rangeland in Borana. It is also known that bush encroachment is a difficult problem to deal with, with no easy and cheap technological solutions readily available.
It is generally assumed, and there is nothing in the Borana environment to indicate the contrary, that sustainable pastoralism in the drylands depends on moderate to low population densities. Development interventions (including famine relief), which by design or by implication maintain a growing population in the drylands will achieve the opposite of sustainable development. It is crucial to realise that many pastoral societies, particularly in the drylands have been able to sustain themselves through history because parts of the population are pushed out of pastoralism. This is an integral and crucially important feature of the pastoral system and is not a defect, which must be corrected in a development project!
A development strategy which aims at retaining people in pastoralism, or at assisting them to return to patoralism, will therefore be self-defeating. Non-pastoral opportunities are a major precondition for pastoral development in terms of increasing human welfare in pastoral societies. There will always be a limit to the size of the population, which can be accommodated in pastoralism, and opportunities must be created outside pastoralism for what in these terms must be seen as an excess population.
It is obviously not an accident that Borana pastoralism has done so well. It has been a highly productive adaptation, as evidenced inter alia by the substantial surplus which was regularly made available to maintain the Gada, and an adaptation which has sustained itself over a considerable length of time. According to Gada chronology the Borana have been occupying the central parts of their present-day territory for at least some four centuries. For a substantial part of this period the Borana controlled a much larger territory, to the south and east of their present location, imposing their presence on a number of subjugated peoples. This history of success, which here will only be very briefly sketched out, must be related to social institutions and how these have governed Borana relations with their neighbours, as well as how social institutions have ordered internal relations in Borana.
The Borana were the regional hegemonic power for perhaps two centuries, from the middle of the 17th century onwards. Several groups in present-day Northern Kenya still maintain a ritual relationship of allegiance and homage to the two seniors Borana Kallu's. Since the middle of the last century, however, when the Somali crossed the Juba River on their way south, the Borana have been continuously pushed back towards the west. The last, but possible not the final event in this process of expansion, was the inclusion in the newly formed Somali Region in Ethiopia, rather than in the Oromo Region, of territories which have been bitterly contested by the Borana and the Somali since World War II.
In the middle of the last century the Borana apparently introduced some changes in their military organisation. A system of age-grade classes which cut across the generation-based Gada classes came into being, opening up for the creation of age regiments. Why this change was introduced is not known; e.g. it is not clear if this was a reaction to the Somali expansion, or a feature introduced for other reasons (e.g. to correct demographic imbalances created by a the dynamics of the Gada). Whatever the case may be, it seems evident that the Borana military organisation since the middle of the last century, which even today is cumbersome and slow to activate, was no match against the segmentary lineage structure of the expanding Somali.
Close on the heels of the Somali advances followed the occupation of the Borana lands by Ethiopian forces. It is now approximately a century since Borana was colonised by Menlik's armies and incorporated into the Ethiopian State. The conquest of Borana was not primarily a mater of capturing the resources of Borana, or meeting the Somali expansion although this became an issue at a later sage) It was rather a political move in the colonial scramble for Africa, by which Menelik blocked the further northward expansion of the British in East Africa.
The first administrative system, which was set up in Borana by the Ethiopian State, had a number of garrison towns as a basis. Outside these small towns, a variation of the Ethiopian system of indirect rule was set up, in which Borana balabbat's were appointed to act as intermediaries between the Ethiopian state and the Borana. The balabbat was responsible for maintaining the peace and for the collection of taxes and had a number of local representatives, or assistants, known as qoro's, distributed throughout the Borana lands for this purpose. A notable feature of the balabbat system in Borana was that there were two balabbat's within each territorial unit in Borana, while other areas only had one. This was due to the fact that the first balabbat's appointed were from the families of the two senior Kallu's in Borana, each representing their own moiety. In fact, these offices became semi-hereditary during imperial times in Ethiopia, as the two balabbat's in Borana belonged to the lineage of the Kallu up to the Ethiopian Revolution.
Some land grants were made to soldier/settlers in the most favourable areas of Borana, but the scope for agriculture was even then limited. Since the land grants were for land that was not previously cultivated, the Borana pastoralists were able to avoid agricultural serfdom. The Borana were not indentured and avoided the exploitative share-cropping contracts which were a common feature in similar situations elsewhere in Ethiopia at the time. Agricultural labour therefore had to be imported from neighbouring areas, in particular from Burji. The Borana were taxed, however, according to a feudal model, whereby they were obliged to deliver livestock and livestock products (in particular butter) and forest products such as honey, to the feudal retainers to which each individual Borana family was attached, in addition to providing corvée labour for a determined number of days per years. Many Borana found the taxation levels onerous and escaped across the border to Kenya, but in retrospect it seems that the total tax burden was not exploitative, at least not to the extent of threatening the overall productivity of Borana pastoralism.
This feudal system of administration remained more or less intact, as a layer imposed on top of the Borana political system, up to the time of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia. The Italians maintained a military administration, which interacted only to a moderate extent with the Borana. According to Borana informants, the main problem with the Italian occupation was various kinds of harassment (and sometimes atrocities) committed by the Somali `banda'.5 In general, it seems the Borana got on well with the Italians and were not particularly eager to be `liberated' by the British6.
Although the Gada system is often represented as a democratic political system, it is more fruitful to think about it rather in terms of an ideological superstructure on top of a political system. The Gada and the political system proper are closely related but for analytical purposes it is useful to keep them distinct.
The political system in Borana is made up of a number of assemblies - kora - which are usually convened on the basis of lineages and clans or subdivisions of these - kora gosaa. Sometimes assemblies are convened on the basis of territory - kora deedaa or on the basis of the user group in a well - kora eelaa. The most important assemblies are probably those called on the basis of lineage, as decisions reached here can bind lineage members as none of the other assemblies can. In practical terms, clan decisions are even more binding, and can be more easily enforced, than decisions reached in the famous gumi Gayo, the pan-Borana assembly which meets once every eight years in the presence of the incumbent as well as all living, retired abba Gada, to promulgate the laws of the Borana7. The clans in Borana are not localised and clan members may be dispersed over the whole territory. Within each clan, however, there are several convenors that hold the power of convocation over clan members living within a roughly defined geographical area. Anybody with business he wishes to bring before the clan, including conflicts with members of other clans, must seek out the local convenor (known as abba qaee - father/owner of the meeting place) of his clan and ask for a meeting to be called.
The relationship of this structure of assemblies to the Gada is interesting. As mentioned above, within each generation in Borana, a group of men are selected to be in charge of the proper unfolding and celebration of the Gada. These men are not selected for their personal qualities8, but as representatives of propitious lineages. When these lineage representatives, known as hayu's, are preparing to `take office' they appoint a number of advisers or assistants known as jallabu9, who are known for their personal qualities. Some of these jallaba later become convenors, while the hayu's after they have discharged their Gada obligations, build personal careers as legal experts and influential men who are familiar with all aspects of aada-seera Borana' - the customs and the laws of Borana.
The hayu's travel widely in Borana, to where-ever there are clan members living, to attend assemblies, listen to discussions and offer opinions and advice. Because they travel so much they are collectively known the licho - or horsewhips, of Borana, and the horsewhip is the symbol of their authority. The licho are expected to participate actively in all public affairs, to counsel, arbitrate and help settle disputes. The authority of an old, well-established hayu extends throughout his own clan, but is also effective within the general area in which he happens to reside. It is important to notice that this influence does not derive directly from the Gada but depends on the time-consuming and gradual process of gaining a personal reputation.
A hayu will very rarely and very reluctantly, and only after many assurances that all parties will accept his decision as final, decide on a case or a matter in the manner of a judge. But an experienced hayu will try, at several junctures in the course of an assembly meeting, to formulate a consensus on how the assembly sees the matter at hand in relation to the laws and customs of the Borana.
The ideology of boraantitti10 demands that all conflicts between Borana should be solved peacefully and the maintenance of internal peace is a strongly expressed ideal in Borana public life. Public assemblies, reaching decisions by consensus, are well suited to resolve conflicts between individuals or groups of individuals. In Borana, the public assemblies are also able to make collective management decisions, most significantly with respect to water. Water is a scarce resource and thus a major controlling factor as far as the fortunes of the Borana herds are concerned. Meetings to discuss water distribution and watering schedules in the wells and operational issues such as labour requirements and contributions to well maintenance are called regularly. The well council meetings depend on the same procedures and the same sense of legitimacy as a meeting called to discuss any other specific issue. The well council in effect distributes resources which, are of crucial importance to individual pastoralists. Furthermore, the operation and maintenance of the wells depend entirely on the orderly decision-making process in the well councils and the acceptance by all responsible Borana of these decisions as legitimate expressions of Borana jurisprudence.
The Borana political system thus rests on the firm foundation of the aada-seera Borana, with a strong ideological commitment to the orderly resolution of conflict, to the maintenance of internal peace and with a heavy emphasis on pan-Borana solidarity. Furthermore, the political system bolsters the capability of Borana society to undertake large-scale projects, whether these are of a practical nature (such as the re-excavation of a collapsed well or the collection and redistribution of animals with a clan) or of ritual significance, such as the celebration of a ritual in the Gada cycle.
Strangely enough, this political system has not been engaged in the relations of the Borana to the Ethiopian State. The two balabbat's used the influential position of the Kallu lineages to reinforce both their own positions within Borana society and in the exercise of their duties as agents of the State. Their position was hardly political in a Borana perspective and it seems that the indirect rule of the balabbat's was possible only because the Ethiopian state had very limited ambitions in Borana, being content with a maintenance of the peace and the regular collection of taxes. Beyond this, the Borana were, during imperial times, to a very large extent left to manage their own affairs. Although there were considerable changes in the administrative structure of Ethiopia (from a feudal one before the Italian occupation to a bureaucratic one after the war), these changes did not percolate down to the lowest levels. The most noticeable change was that taxes had to be paid with money rather than in kind, and to many Borana this forced commercialisation and involvement with the market was apparently more onerous than the taxes themselves.
Ethiopia's first Five-Year Development Plan was published in 1959 but apart from some initiatives in disease control, the pastoral areas of Ethiopia were not put on the development agenda until the IBRD Livestock Sector Review in 1973. In Borana there had been a small-scale pilot project to develop range management methods, which could be replicated elsewhere in Ethiopia. This pilot scheme involved the digging of stock ponds, the demarcation of grazing paddocks, rotational grazing, controlled burning, and experiments with controlled stocking rates. It did not involve a great deal of land or affect the Borana directly. The first major development project involving Borana pastoralists did not start until 1975.
The SORDU project (Southern Rangelands Development Unit) was implemented with World Bank funding from 1975 onwards. It was a large-scale pastoral development project covering 95,000 square kilometres. Within this area a number of projects (demarcation of ranches, digging of surface stockponds, provision of veterinary services, marketing services) attempting to integrate Borana livestock production in a national, stratified livestock industry, in which Borana was allocated the role of providing feedstock for fattening and finishing in the highlands. Although SORDU provided considerable employment and contributed to the development of infrastructure, it did not succeed in what it set out to do, viz, to increase ranegland productivity, increase off-take and increase export earnings.
The Ethiopian government continued to fund SORDU after external funding had come to an end, and obtained World Bank funding for a pilot project to experiment with participatory approaches to delivering services in pastoral areas, through the creation of service co-operatives. This project, too, was unsuccessful in terms of its own objectives, failing to deliver services and failing to establish viable structures for popular participation.
Government involvement in pastoral development in Borana has not been a success, and the NGOs which have been working in the area since 1973 have been reluctant to involve themselves in pastoral development. The kind of pastoral development which dominated the outlook in the 1970s, of which SORDU is a prime example, involved intervention on a large scale and of a kind which is scarcely the strong point of NGOs.
The Ethiopian Revolution brought major changes to the relationship between the Borana and the Ethiopian State. The first, and perhaps most significant of these was the implementation of the Land Reform of 1975. Although it was primarily directed at the farming areas, it granted user rights over the pastoral resources to pastoral associations. These were to be created and were to be structurally similar to the peasant associations in the farming areas. Both types of associations contained new structures for local administration. In Borana, as elsewhere, the implementation of the land reform meant the end of the balabbat's.
The Land Reform Proclamation was implemented through the `Development through Co-operation' campaign of 1975/76 in which enthusiastic university and secondary school students set about to transform the old order and the oppressive administrative arrangements of the imperial era. A neatly hierarchical, territorially based structure of local administration based on newly created pastoralist associations (P.A.s) was introduced to replace the balabbat's and their representatives. The pastoralist associations consisted of the people who happened to be residing within the territorial units defined by the students. These, in turn, were based on vaguely defined Borana units of land with a permanent water source at its centre. However, the Borana political system was based on clans, not territorial units. As far as the Land Reform was concerned, this was not important because the pastoralist associations were given a leadership which was drawn from the `educated' class, typically secondary school leavers and drop-outs, rather than from the existing Borana political leadership, which was regarded as corrupt, backward and feudal.
The introduction of the pastoralist associations in Borana implied an unprecedented measure of state control. Particularly in the initial stages, the administrative structures of the P.A.s attempted to take over all functions from the existing Borana institutions, including management of the wells. At one stage, Borana pastoralists even had to obtain official permission to move across association boundaries! Capacity problems soon forced the P.A.s to abandon the most extreme regulations. Although famine relief was distributed through the P.A. structures, the control aspects dominated and the associations became efficient structures for extracting taxes, `voluntary' contributions and delivery quotas for commodities such as livestock or recruits to the army. The associations were also meant to be the basic structures for example, for resource management and service delivery as well as for all kinds of participatory development activities. Apart from being distribution outlets for scarce government-controlled commodities such as sugar the pastoralist associations achieved very little in terms of service delivery or other kinds of development.
An important event at a quite early stage in the formation of the pastoralists associations in Borana was the Somali war of 1977-78. The main battlefront of this war was of course in the Ogaden, but the century-old Somali pressure against the eastern border of Borana received a new impetus. The Somali, supported by troops from Somalia, made great advances, pushing the Borana westwards yet another 100 kilometres or so, in the first phase of the war. At a later stage the Ethiopian army, together with militia recruited in the pastoralist associations, reversed the Somali gains, in effect recovering the areas which the Borana were on the verge of losing.
One should also note that during the famine of 1984-85, large amounts of famine relief was distributed in Borana. Although most of this originated from NGO's, and was distributed by NGO's, the distribution had to rely on the association structure. In fact, a major propaganda effort at the time went into presenting the famine relief as government famine relief.
Thus, even if the P.A. structure in general failed to deliver the services and the development it promised, from the Borana point of view the fact of generous famine relief, and perhaps more importantly, effective protection from further Somali encroachment were mitigating factors of great importance. And, as the P.A. leadership found out, pastoral populations are difficult to control. There is no doubt that the Borana found the taxation levels oppressive and in particular the forcible recruitment of young men to the army very distressing, but the Borana were able to evade many of the restrictions and burdens which the P.A. attempted to impose on them.
A final factor which shaped the relationship between the Borana and the revolutionary Derg regime in Ethiopia was the administrative reforms introduced with the establishment of the Peoples Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in 1987. New administrative regions were created and the former administrative sub-divisions were restructured. Borana became a separate administrative region and the number of awradja sub-regions was increased from two to six. This reform created a number of new opportunities for educated Borana, and ethnic Borana assumed positions of leadership at all levels in the regions, including the top administrative post as well as the top party post. Although there was no explicit policy of favouring ethnic Borana in manning the new structures, there is no doubt that the regional administration was dominated by Borana, from top to bottom, Obviously a large number of these belonged to the Party.
In a strange way, the Derg regime had been good for the Borana, although this was hardly by design. The traditional enemy, the Somali, had been well defeated and contained, unprecedented amounts of famine relief were pouring into the area and there were plenty of salaried and more or less influential jobs for the sons of the land. At one stage SORDU, for example, employed over 3.000 people. The oppressive policies and practices of a totalitarian regime remained, of course, but their impact on a pastoral society such as Borana was considerably smaller than in the agricultural communities further north.
When the Derg regime fell, in 1991, there was again a period of military administration before the new administrative structures of the ethnically based regional states were introduced. The Borana Administrative Region was restructured into the Borana Administrative Zone, with parts of the territorial base of the former being transferred to the Somali Region, and parts of the Gudji population to the north of Borana being incorporated in the new structure.
The main change, however, has been at the lower levels. The former P.A.s were consolidated into larger units and the former awradja's were `demoted' to wereda's.11 The former dual structure of the party and the civil administration, which replicated each other at all levels, has been replaced by administrative committees at the various levels elected on a party ticket. Except in the technical line ministries, there are no professional bureaucrats in the administration.
A second major development, however, is that most of the Borana who staffed the administrative structures under the Derg regime, immediately became politically suspect. The chief administrator of the former Borana Administrative Region declared that he would fight the new regime, at the same time as Somali groups declared their loyalty to it. The uprising against the new regime never came to anything and the chief administrator was soon assassinated, but large parts of the Borana educated class became discredited for one reason or another. Since the Somali were quick to declare their loyalty to the Oromo party within the EPRDF,12 the Borana became associated with the opposition Oromo Liberation Front. The administrative committees at all levels are elected on a party ticket (OPDO has invariably won these elections since 1992) so few Borana take part in the administration of their own communities. The change of government has thus implied the downfall of the Borana educated elite, which was formed during the Derg years and which for several years, dominated the administration of Borana. The current government has meant the ascension of the ethnic minorities living within Borana, as well as Borana who, for various reasons, were marginalised by the former regime.
All the development agencies working in Borana, whether government agencies or NGO's are eager to support popular participation and promote institutions for popular participation. It is very surprising, therefore, that none of these have been able to relate to the Borana institutions which exist for this very purpose. The political system of the Borana is almost completely ignored. In some cases this is not doubt intended, as when the `Development through Co-operation' campaign set out to dismantle and replace `backward and oppressive' structures. Later, as the control aspect came to dominate the agenda, there was less need to involve local structures. But there seems to be a widespread reluctance also within the NGO's to hand over control or responsibility to traditional structures of authority and leadership, partly because these are seen as corrupt and inefficient, partly because they are illiterate, uneducated, in the sense of formal schooling, or preoccupied with other business.
The participation expected from the Borana as far as the outside agencies are concerned therefore seems to be limited to doing what the various agencies want them to do. The chances of external agencies involving themselves in projects which the Borana think of as important or worthwhile therefore become poor, as long as there are so few situations where views can be exchanged and where the likely consequences for the Borana can be discussed.
Borana communities have been capable of working out and solving practical and organisational tasks of considerable complexity in the past, and have had to live with the consequences of their choices. These days, however, the Borana leadership has become irrelevant, or has at best become a second-rate parallel structure with little influence over the major issues in their own society. Governmental and non-governmental development agencies seem to prefer to communicate with the Borana communities through their own development agents on the basis of their own agenda and their own technical insights, even if the issues at hand in the main are non-technical. This denial of influence and voice to the legitimate political system of the Borana has no doubt exacerbated the strong trend towards increasing dependency and clientship which has been created by agencies operating on behalf of the Borana communities.
Pastoral development is difficult, and the experience from Borana seems to be no exception. The main initiative in this respect has been the SORDU project, which was a classical, large-scale livestock development project with well-known inputs, with the various NGOs operating in Borana offering only minor interventions of relevance to the pastoralist. The opinion is unanimous that the SORDU approach to pastoral development has failed, but it has not been replaced by anything else. In the face of the difficulties experienced in the pastoral development projects, national governments in many African countries, including Ethiopia, have restricted their presence in the pastoral areas to the barest minimum, most typically annual vaccination campaigns.
The development initiative in the pastoral areas now seems to have shifted to the NGOs who are promoting the various non-technical approaches typically promoted by NGOs. The aims are now to change organisational and behavioural features of pastoral societies rather than productivity and production patterns in the rangelands. The presence of NGOs has grown out of famine relief operations, and the development strategies promoted are clearly preoccupied with improving local food security and providing better services, in terms of health and education in particular. Approaches have changed, from transplanting known technologies related to range management and livestock production, to one emphasising popular participation, local institution-building and local capacity-building in open-ended programmes primarily aimed at self-sufficiency and sustainability.
The most worrying aspect of the current situation in Borana is not that previous development initiatives have failed, that well-intentioned interventions like famine relief have produced unintended consequences like dependency on continued famine relief, that attempts to expand the resource base through water development have set in motion processes of ecological degradation, that the promotion of trade now creates a larger gap between the poor and the rich or that attempts to involve Borana institutions in the development process have failed. The most worrying aspect is that non-government and public agencies alike now seem to be on the verge of giving up and assigning areas like Borana to permanent destitution.
It is true that the problems of the pastoral societies seem intractable, but pastoralism still seems the only viable alternative for large groups of people in the arid and semi-arid parts of Africa. It is therefore necessary to maintain an organised effort to come to grips with the small and the large problems of pastoralism, to assist the Borana in putting the development issues outlined here back on the agenda and to continue to look for solutions and alternatives.
The issues are of different orders and the solutions require different approaches. There is a question mark about agencies doing things on behalf of the Borana. These are issues, which affect the future of the Borana, and only the Borana can do anything substantial about them. The Borana must be allowed to assume responsibility for the condition of their own society, even if they still need assistance to work their way through a number of very difficult problems. Many of the problems need large-scale solutions and large-scale co-ordination of efforts. In many cases it is necessary to involve institutions with authority over large areas and large numbers of people. It is necessary to strengthen effective institutions with the resources and skills necessary to face these problems. Although the Borana political system does not contain the technical skills required to do something about such problems as bush encroachment, it holds the equally important skills of organising and mobilising people, to discuss alternatives and reach viable and realistic decisions. Only a political system based on the legitimacy given to it by Borana culture can ensure the implementation of these decisions.
The only way to restore the political system of the Borana is to allow it to function and involve it in facing the future of Borana.
1 Ranking by (ritual) seniority is an important organising principle in Oromo societies.
2 Often translated `high priest', - the Kallu's are the ritual custodians of the two moieties, named Sabbo and Gona, into which the Borana are organised.
3 On closer examination, these notions are of course very difficult to uphold.
4 It is claimed locally that this term is imported, together with the actual practice, from the Gujji Oromo just north of Borana. The Borana used to declare lush patches near the village seera yabbiyee or calf reserves, but these were not fenced.
5 Native troops from the Italian colonies.
6 Mostly Nigerian and South African troops.
7 The most senior living abba Gada is known as abba seera father of the law.
8 The selection takes place many years before this group assumes responsibility for the Gada, when these men are still young boys.
9 In the literature the jallaba are often referred to as assistants, but they must be clearly distinguished from the makalla assistants which each lineage must provide to help the hayu with all kinds of practical and menial tasks.
10 The moral obligations arising from being Borana.
11 A wereda used to be a sub-division under the awradja
12 Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front - the coalition of forces, under the direction of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front, which toppled the Derg regime in 1991. EPRDF contains a number of ethnically based parties, one of which is the Oromo Peoples Democratic Organisation.
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Cossins, N. J. & M. Upton: `The Impact of Climatic Variation on the Borana Pastoral System' Agricultural Systems, Vol. 27 (1988) pp. 251 - 278.
Donaldson, T. J.: Pastoralism and Drought: A Case Study of the Borana of Southern Ethiopia. M. Phil. Thesis, University of Reading (Reading), 1986.
Helland, J.: `Social Organisation and Water Control Among the Borana' Development and Change, Vol. 13 (1982) pp. 239 - 258.
_____________(ed.): Development Issues and Challenges for the Future in Borana. A report prepared for Norwegian Church Aid - Ethiopia. Chr. Michelsens Institute (Bergen) 1997.