Living with compounding livelihood shocks: How agropastoralists in Nigeria's drylands are coping and adapting

This report is one in a series of SPARC publications that will present longitudinal findings from qualitative interviews with pastoral, agricultural and agropastoral participants in Nigeria, South Sudan and Somalia. It finds that the challenges agropastoralists in Nigeria’s drylands face are varied. If unaddressed, compounding shocks, including but not limited to the Covid-19 crisis, threaten to undermine the long-term resilience of these agropastoral livelihoods.

In many cases, shocks affect people within the same community in dramatically different ways. The perception that aid interventions are singularly focused on curtailing the spread of Covid-19, to the exclusion of other longstanding livelihood challenges, risks driving resentment and scepticism towards aid actors within targeted communities. In response to these compounding shocks, agropastoralists in Nigeria’s drylands are turning to an array of coping and adaptive strategies. However, only time will tell if these strategies are short-term coping mechanisms to weather unprecedented volatility, or a signifier of more permanent adaptation changes to rural livelihoods in Nigeria.