A Review on Cross-Border Livestock Trade Across Dry Land Borders of Ethiopia: The Trends and Implications

This review paper is aimed at, reviewing trade routes and border marketing centers, trends and implications of cross-border livestock trade (CBLT) along borderlands of Ethiopia. Traded across different corridors of borderland, Ethiopia’s CBLT were traditionally, destined to middle east countries, were the Eastern trade corridor with Somalia involves massive border crossing livestock trade and stand first in terms of traded volume and values. Nonetheless, a significant proportion of CBLT along Sudan, Kenya and Djibouti corridors were also carried out across northwestern, southern and northeastern parts of the country respectively. Livestock sector in Ethiopia, supporting more than 65% of the population and contributes more than 12–15% of total export earnings of the country. However, in recent year, the evidences show that, the trends of official livestock export were declining while, informal export is exponentially increasing. The role of CBLT, on the livelihoods of herders and economy of the country were loomed in the forms of its short- or long-term impacts. In short term, it improves the livelihoods of herders and/or traders through; assisting food security in supplying foods item to the food deficit areas, raising incomes to herders/traders through selling their animals at border crossing/international markets and creates employment opportunity for traders, trekkers or brokers. Whereas, in long term impacts, CBLT have significantly, damaged the economy of our country in several ways. Consequently, Ethiopia have been losing its multi-millions (ETB) of taxes revenue from trade and the devised irrelevant policies and strategies due to the missed livestock trade data (informal) from national statistics led to undermining of sector’s economic contributions. In conclusion, any intervention(s) to the CBLT in Ethiopia virtually, requires valuation of its long- and short-term implications to the livelihoods of herders and economies of the country.