Farmer–herder conflicts, pastoral marginalisation and corruption: a case study from the inland Niger delta of Mali

TLDR

In Mali’s inland Niger delta, pastoral leaders have lost power and wealth to farmers since independence, a trend intensified by 1970s–80s droughts, rice‑field expansion, and decentralisation‑induced power vacuums that have aggravated land disputes. The study seeks to explain the farmer–herder conflict in this region by examining the interests and motivations of farmers, herders, and local officials, the rent‑seeking practices of the administration, and by urging greater attention to corruption in political‑ecology analyses. The authors analyze the conflict by focusing on the actors’ interests and motivations and the rent‑seeking behavior of local officials. They find that national agricultural policies have marginalized pastoralism, converting pastures to rice fields, and that local officials’ rent‑seeking perpetuates land‑use conflicts that benefit officials while harming pastoralists and farmers.

Abstract

This study aims to explain a farmer–herder conflict in the inland Niger delta of Mali. We focus on the interests and motivations of the actors involved in the conflict and the rent seeking of the local administration in handling the conflict. Since independence, the customary pastoral leaders (the jowros ) have gradually lost power and wealth to the benefit of previously underprivileged farmers (the rimaybé ). We argue that this process is mainly the result of national policies and laws giving priority to agricultural development at the expense of pastoralism. The result has been large‐scale conversions of dry season pastures to rice fields. This pastoral marginalisation also results in increased land use conflicts between herders and farmers. In addition, rent seeking by local officials is perpetuating land use conflicts in the area. Hence, officials are benefiting from conflicts, while especially pastoralists, but also farmers, are losing out. The droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, leading to a more rapid encroachment of rice fields on pastures, as well as the power vacuum that emerged in the early days of the decentralisation process, further aggravated land disputes. Finally, we use this case study to call for an inclusion of issues of rent seeking and corruption more centrally in political ecology.