Drylands cover about 40% of the world’s surface and are at the forefront of environmental change. They are increasingly becoming places of growing insecurity, outmigration and impoverishment, and have a long history of being politically marginalised and poor education service provision. This seminar addresses some of the many conceptual and practical questions associated with education and drylands development, focusing on communities who depend on the dominant dryland livelihood: mobile pastoralists.

The record of the Education For All movement on including mobile pastoralists has been disappointing. The seminar begins by setting out three key aspects of pastoralist livelihoods that highlight the often ill-suited nature of ‘conventional’ education services for them: 1. mobility, which leads to interrupted learning if the service is not flexible; 2. labour organisation, which inflexible schooling routines cannot accommodate; 3. the importance of situated livelihood learning and why it and schooling may not be compatible, even though both are relevant. These themes are illustrated with case studies from three very different contexts: Tanzania (a post-colonial perspective); India (‘terms of inclusion’) and Ethiopia (policy strategies for pastoralist education).

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