Policy Brief
Organised pastoral stops: a structural response to agropastoral conflicts in the coastal Sahel?
The coastal Sahel northern Togo, northern Benin, northern Ghana, border areas of Burkina Faso has experienced an intensification of conflicts between farmers and transhumant herders over the past two decades. These conflicts are not the product of long-standing cultural hostility. They result from the convergence of three simultaneous dynamics: the advance of desertification reducing available grazing areas and pushing herds southward, the narrowing of transhumance corridors under the pressure of expanding agricultural frontiers, and the collapse of traditional inter-community regulation mechanisms that historically managed these tensions. The result is growing precarity on both sides. Farmers see their crops destroyed, their land contested, their output reduced. Nomadic and transhumant herders lose access to pastoral resources with no alternatives available. This dual precarity translates into local food insecurity and rising staple food prices for the most vulnerable households.