Transhumance, or the seasonal migration of livestock by pastoralist herders is a major livelihood strategy across the Sahel and West Africa where it sustains the income, food security and socio-economic network of millions of people, especially in rural areas. The movement of pastoralists and their livestock is driven by the seasonally fluctuating availability of water and grazing lands across the different ecosystems and climates of West Africa. In search of these resources, pastoralists move their herds to more optimal locations, both within and across country boundaries. Across the Sahel and West Africa, livestock migrations used to take place in rather predictable ways, along well-established, dedicated routes (transhumance corridors) and based on traditional agreements and mutually beneficial exchanges between mobile pastoralists and the sedentary communities along their routes. However, regional dynamics such as climate change, the continued marginalisation of pastoralism and of pastoralists (often of the Fulani ethnicity) to the benefit of agriculture, and the fast-expanding insecurity brought on by jihadist armed groups are increasingly affecting pastoralist practises and the nature of transhumance.
For one, mounting insecurity has pushed pastoralists to go on a more solitary, shorter and more unpredictable transhumance, in which they often avoid established corridors or longer stays for fear of attacks by armed groups or violent confrontations with local communities. The latter often result from unresolved tensions over damage or competition over the access to land-based resources that are essential for both pastoralists and farmers. Moreover, with their national security increasingly at risk, West-African governments have imposed further restrictions on pastoralist mobility. This is particularly the case in coastal countries such as Ivory Coast, Togo and Benin which are traditionally host to large numbers of migrating Sahelian pastoralists and their herds. Since 2019, these countries have been progressively affected by the spill-over of jihadist violence from the Sahel into their territories. Jihadist armed groups thereby seem particularly effective in recruiting in rural, marginalised contexts such as (Fulani) pastoralist communities, where they manage to offer an attractive alternative for handling economic and political grievances left unaddressed by the State. To halt the spread of jihadist armed groups (and their feared prevalence amongst transhumant pastoralists) and curb escalating social conflict caused by the rise in increasingly violent conflicts between mobile pastoralists and sedentary farmers, several coastal countries have put measures in place to limit the passage of (foreign) transhumant herders in their territories.
Benin has been rolling out some of the most restrictive measures in the region, banning all cross-border transhumance and significantly reducing most internal livestock mobility since 2019. These measures are part of the government’s bigger ambition to fully reform its livestock sector and transition to a more modern, settled (i.e. sedentary) livestock system. The Beninese sedentarisation project is both an economic project and one of conflict management, targeting livestock mobility as driver of farmer-herder conflict and its role in societal fragmentation, political violence and potential extremist spillover. A different management of agro-pastoral resources is thereby seen as essential to successfully reduce recurrent local conflicts, restore social cohesion in communities, and ultimately rebuild peace and security.
While Benin’s livestock sedentarisation project presents a novel peacebuilding tool for the country, it also signifies a radical shift away from regional traditions and common customary practices that have socio-cultural value and can contribute meaningfully to building regional peace and stability. This briefing offers a reflection on the potential of Benin’s sedentarisation policy to curb conflict and insecurity, by assessing its impact on (agro-)pastoralists and farmers living in northern Benin’s Borgou department.
Benin’s livestock sedentarisation policy
Since 2019, several political-administrative decisions have been adopted in Benin to shift practices in the livestock sector to a more modern, sedentary system that should improve livestock productivity and economic gains, and reduce local conflict caused by livestock mobility. National transhumance has thereby been strictly regulated and mostly prohibited, in favour of establishing dedicated pastoral areas where agro-pastoralists can have access to water, pasture and land for fodder production, subsistence and small-scale farming and housing. Besides pastoral infrastructure (animal passageways, vaccination centres, water sources, grazing areas, etc.), pastoral areas will also make social infrastructure (schools, hospitals, markets, etc.) more available and accessible to pastoralist communities.
To achieve this, the Government plans to secure 933 km2 of land as pastoral areas, or roughly 10 km2 in every district (“commune”). The locations of these areas are identified locally in a participatory way involving both government and community actors. As part of the project, pastoralists will be granted land tenure certificates to secure their rights to this land. To ensure smooth local implementation, promote social cohesion and resolve any emerging conflict, local multistakeholder consultation committees accompany the sedentarisation process.
Lived experiences of (agro-)pastoralists and farmers in Borgou
In 2024 and 2025, IPIS spoke to pastoralists, representatives of agro-pastoralist organisations, farmers and representatives of agricultural organisations from the districts of Tchaourou, Parakou and N’Dali in Benin’s Borgou department about their experiences with the impacts of the sedentarisation project so far.
Both herders and farmers we interviewed agreed that the restrictions on livestock mobility notably reduced farmer-herder conflicts in their area. These conflicts typically stem from unresolved damage to crops and fields, as transhumant pastoralists move with their herds through areas that are increasingly taken up by agriculture. With significantly fewer foreign transhumant pastoralists seen to traverse the region, and local herds moving across much shorter distances (“petite transhumance”) and in a well-known context, farmer-herder conflicts are found easier to avoid, de-escalate and resolve, according to respondents. This was much appreciated by both farmers and pastoralists. When issues arise, amicable solutions are generally sought before the newly created multistakeholder committees are involved to resolve the matter. Several pastoralist interviewees found these committees to be biased, issuing significant fines to pastoralists without sufficient investigation. Farmers, on the other hand, were mostly pleased with the way the committees handle grievances and conflicts. Notably, most herders and farmers we spoke to agreed that the positive aspects of having fewer conflicts due to livestock mobility outweighed some of the clear downsides they associated with the sedentarisation policy.
Evolution of violent incidents in northern Benin (top) and in Borgou department (bottom) (January 2020 – February 2026).
Many of those downsides seem linked to how the sedentarisation project is being implemented rather than to the policy itself. While many pastoralists see the benefits of a more sedentary system, interviewees lamented that much of the infrastructure underpinning the viability of livestock sedentarisation was not there yet. In January 2025, this included essential elements such as secure access to water points, grazing areas and marked animal passageways (“couloirs”). While the latter would facilitate less conflictual herd movement, the former are key for sustaining a healthy herd and, hence, pastoralists’ livelihoods. As access to water and forage was generally experienced as problematic, all pastoralists we interviewed still practised some form of transhumance. They stressed that this was out of necessity – to meet resource needs that could currently not be fulfilled by a sedentary model – rather than to hold on to transhumance as a customary cultural practise. However, even with some herd mobility, pastoralists we spoke to had difficulties accessing sufficient resources. As a consequence, most saw the health and size of their herds – and hence, their economic wellbeing – reduce since the new pastoral code and its sedentarisation ambition came into force. For many pastoralists in our study, this is the most concrete impact of the reforms so far. With traditional pastoralist practices already largely restricted while insufficient progress seems to be made in implementing the alternatives, many indicated feeling stuck in a project that needs more support to move forward and be beneficial to them.
At the root of many pastoralists’ challenges – and, ultimately, of the livestock sedentarisation project itself – lays the issue of secure access to land. Livestock sedentarisation requires sufficient available land to support this production model and its more intensive use of land. Moreover, it requires secure land rights for agro-pastoralists. However, for decades, the area of land taken up by agriculture in Benin has been steadily rising and has more than doubled since the 1990s. Farmers we interviewed indicated the need for even more agricultural land, in line with a growing population and to help address the growing challenges of soil depletion and climate change that are affecting crop yields and, hence, their economic stability. As a result, farmers seem more protective of their land (thereby, e.g., blocking off pastoral corridors and access to water points) and more active in (re-)claiming land they consider theirs, often to the detriment of pastoralists. While the land tenure system that is still in place in many of Benin’s rural areas is overall still largely informal and undocumented, its customary character enables discrimination against (Fulani) pastoralists. As their lineage is considered foreign, their rights to land are therefore often contested, despite them having settled in many areas of northern Benin for decades. The widespread lack of land documents amongst agro-pastoralists, and the ensuing land tenure insecurity, is one of the key obstacles their community is currently facing, according to interviewees. In this regard, the sedentarisation project has not made a notable impact yet. Consequently, the land that is currently available, accessible and secured for pastoralist activities seems rather limited. This observation made several pastoralist interviewees wonder where land for sedentarisation will come from. As one interviewee shared:
“There is no more free land in Benin. Who will be made to give up land for us?”
Questions about how pastoral areas will be secured are pertinent. Issues with the acquisition of project land in Borgou have been documented in other research, as well as a lack of community support for the construction of pastoralist infrastructure. Notably, land disputes have become more frequent and conflicts related to land are generally on the rise,according to farmers and pastoralists we spoke to in 2025. They reported, amongst others, tensions over animal passageways, access to water points and land ownership.
Conflict management through sedentarisation?
So far, Benin’s sedentarisation policy – and its ban on most transhumance, specifically – seems promising in realising its ambition to reduce farmer-herder conflicts caused by livestock mobility. Our research suggests that this achievement indeed makes a positive impact on herder-farmer relations and underpins a lot of the community support for the project, including amongst agro-pastoralists. However, the slow implementation of many of its other components – and, not in the least, the perceived lack of support to secure pastoralist areas and infrastructure –, risks undermining this support. Moreover, it risks sustaining and exacerbating communal conflict over land, which is a critical and increasingly contested asset.
If not properly addressed, land conflicts risk further eroding communities’ social cohesion and again increase the potential for violence, co-optation by extremist groups and general insecurity. Hence, to be successful as a peacebuilding tool, the sedentarisation project will need to address land tenure insecurity and its inequality in Benin, not only as an administrative issue, but as an opportunity to negotiate and legitimize the rights of different stakeholders in a participatory, inclusive and conflict-sensitive way. There are several initiatives currently in place in northern Benin that focus on improving social cohesion between herders and farmers through, amongst others, dialogue, the consensual management of agro-pastoral resources and community-driven development. It seems essential that these can also optimally address the complex issues of land.
Lastly, the ban on foreign pastoralists (included in Benin’s sedentarisation policy) also has very real consequences for Sahelian pastoralists. It is, therefore, worth revisiting options for regional cooperation, to address the multiple drivers of the overall political, social, economic and security crises faced by pastoralists in the region, also from the perspective of regional conflict management and security.
FURTHER READING
This briefing was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The contents of the editorial is the sole responsibility of IPIS and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union.
