Get reliable rangeland science

In the drylands of Africa, low and variable rainfall and the increasing incidence of extreme weather events, leave poor communities, dependent on pastoral and agropastoral livelihood systems, highly vulnerable. Building resilience must consider the immediate 'tactical' approaches for managing climate risk (e.g. de-risking measures such as the index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) bundled with credit, inputs, climate information services) and 'strategic ' approaches, where communities work together to reimagine sustainable land-use and resilient livelihoods (e.g. participatory rangeland management (PRM) supported through bylaws). Enhanced mobile network penetration also offers unprecedented opportunities for the dissemination of information to pastoralists and farmers through digital channels. Further, digital technologies enable new methods of acquiring and sharing data, ground truthing, and obtaining user feedback especially in data sparse environments (e.g. KAZNET, a citizen science innovation that crowdsources information on rangeland s animals, markets, food security, conflict). Data collected through such innovations can contribute to the monitoring of shocks, improving product design, informing policies and institutional decision making. This paper gives examples of several tactical and strategic approaches to building resilience in pastoral and crop-livestock systems in Africa.