i) The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a pioneer in establishing regulations for the exercise of cross-border transhumance, a somewhat controversial livestock production system in relation to its economic, social and environmental impacts, and the conflicts of access to natural resources that are sometimes associated with it. ii) Since 1998, ECOWAS has been experimenting with a set of legal and technical instruments to provide a framework for the exercise of this multi-functional credited activity, which makes it a powerful means of strengthening the resilience of populations in general, and pastoralist and herder households in particular, on the one hand, and promoting social and regional integration in West Africa, on the other.

Mobile livestock production systems have been facing a number of challenges over the past twenty years, including farmer-pastoralist conflicts and civil insecurity in West Africa and the Sahel. In recent decades, conflicts initially sparked by competition over natural resources have gradually evolved into struggles for control of land between socio-cultural groups, and politico-religious demands that have intensified the displacement of both animals and people. At the same time, we note that the media - print, radio and audiovisual - most often focus on pastoral issues, such as the management of land conflicts between farmers and herders, and access to transhumance corridors. Pastoralists and pastoral households are therefore most often described in terms of this general conception of pastoral farming as vulnerable to climatic, environmental, health and terrorist risks, and as inefficient in the context of agricultural modernisation policies. All in all, these observations lead us to conclude that pastoral livestock farming is a production system that is not only under-represented, but also little-known by the media in West Africa and the Sahel, who more often than not are content to relay current representations and official events about it.