How one woman is inspiring a new future for Africa's nomadic herders

National Geographic

a day ago

Awa Sow, a community leader in Senegal's Ferlo reserve, is finding new ways to involve Fulani women in local herding groups and government. Photographs by Robin Hammond
Long before European powers carved up West Africa and independent African states inherited their contemporary borders, a great nomadic tradition began—one that continues and evolves today. Around November, as the rainy season ends and the southern fringes of the Sahara desert begin to dry and brown again, hundreds of thousands of Fulani herders gather to drive millions of cattle, goats, and sheep toward cooler subtropical savannas.
This annual movement has made the Fulani one of the largest nomadic groups on Earth, but it has also helped exclude them from politics: Despite their large numbers, the transient herders are less likely to be counted by states. An added obstacle to representation is the fact that many of the region's governments are more invested in farming than herding. That diminished political sway makes it hard to press for herders' interests in controlling the land, routes, and resources that they depend on. While there are large populations of Fulani people in places like Mali and Nigeria, many of these herders are living in constant jeopardy.
(Discover more about Fulani herders and how they're reshaping their traditions.) Fulani herders raise cattle, goats, and sheep, which they move across vast distances to find the grasslands and water necessary to sustain their livestock. In Chad, near the city of Dourbali, a family moves livestock while carrying supplies including dried calabashes used to store fresh milk.
In northern Senegal, on the vast Ferlo reserve, a different model of political participation has taken shape for the Fulani—and a galvanizing community leader is offering herders a fresh way to think about how problems might be solved. Her name is Awa Sow, an organizer whose decades of work have earned her respect and also rare authority.
'Awa is a woman warrior with unique authority in this region,' says Aliou Samba Ba, the leader of an influential herders association on the reserve. 'Anyone who wants to organize a successful activity in her area—whether political, development, cultural, or religious—has to pass by her.' And Sow foresees a very different future for the Fulani on the Ferlo reserve.
Here, Fulani herders have political representation. As a result, in recent years the government has invested in rural development and boosting livestock production and trade. This has helped these Fulani avoid the conflict experienced in other areas. But rainfall levels are dropping, killing off native grasses and putting more pressure on water resources. Now, instead of whole families joining the seasonal migration, it is mostly the men who depart on donkey carts loaded with goods and supplies for ever longer trips, leaving women and children behind in arid villages. Sow's efforts, undertaken through the litany of programs and initiatives she leads, aim to engage those women—and perhaps create the kind of political system that could be a useful model for communities far beyond Ferlo. Usmaan Soh, 27, lives in Senegal with his wives (from left), Naana and Kura, and their children, Hadraan Usman and Haawa Kura.
Sow, 63, lives in Barkedji, a rural community of roughly 25,000 people located in the northern part of the reserve. She holds no official governmental role, in part because her influence has grown far beyond that. The problems facing seminomadic Fulani across the region are complex, so her solutions attack them from different directions. Croatia's oldest coastal town
One way has been rethinking how Fulani women can participate in politics to help them exert more control over their precious resources. When men leave the Ferlo reserve, for instance, it often diminishes the power of women. As warming temperatures have forced herders to go farther south to keep their livestock watered and fed, men are now gone even longer, coming back to the villages only a few months each year.
Over time, that disappearance led Sow to challenge conventional assumptions about who should be leading discussions. 'Why should the women of Barkedji do so much work at home,' she says, 'and then have no input when decisions get made?'
The eldest of nine, Sow grew up in a herding household in Barkedji, where she developed a deep appreciation for the beauty of her community's traditions. To care for her siblings, she learned to work together with other girls who collected wood for fires or carried water from nearby wells. At age 18, she married a man who taught her to view that collective power in another way. He was the chief of staff to the president of Senegal's main legislative body, the National Assembly, and encouraged her to travel to different compounds, where she pounded millet with women while persuading them to attend political assemblies and vote. 'If you don't participate in a meeting, you won't be informed,' she remembers telling them. 'If the information doesn't come to you, you must go find it.'
There wasn't an established school within the commune when Sow was growing up, and she remained illiterate until her early 30s. After being elected to a rural governing council, she learned to read and write, and then focused more on local land law.
The Ferlo, a 4,700-square-mile swath of protected land and buffer areas, exists as a protected zone today because it was developed for livestock breeding during the country's French occupation, when the government invested in wells and forbade commercial farming in hopes of encouraging more livestock production. Since Senegal's independence in 1960, seminomadic herders have continued to use resources along a string of human-made oases lining their migration routes. Now 300,000 herders are scattered across villages there.
(How these women are facing the end of their way of life: herding.)
Sow eventually directed the creation of local committees that work with the Senegalese government to manage regional water rights and shared herding corridors. Along the way, she encouraged more women to be appointed to top positions within those agencies. 'If the grasses are damaged, the women suffer just as much as the men,' she says, 'so they have a responsibility to manage these resources together.' Sow, shown at center in light blue, leads a discussion with female farmers at her home. They belong to an organization she founded called National Directorate of Women in Livestock, which offers loans to help the women run their own businesses. Members gain leadership experience that may translate into future opportunities.
In addition to working on more active land management, Sow has focused on a counterintuitive way to safeguard traditional herding practices: creating more opportunity for those who stay behind. Many of the area's teenage girls and women in their early 20s are unemployed and not in school, so she launched a women's herding association that now comprises 1,500 local women and more than 5,000 across the region. The group has backed local initiatives to plant community gardens that can offer a reliable source of food and more shared income, and helped families in need gain access to health insurance. And it set up a $25,000 mutual aid fund for unexpected community needs.
All of this has led to a new kind of cycle. For instance, Barkedji's first female deputy mayor, Diouma Sow (no relation to Awa), initially joined the herder association, which gave her the political experience to seek a series of higher and more influential roles. 'We want our children to be educated,' Diouma Sow says. 'And we also want our women to be autonomous and active in the local economy.'
(Around the world, women are taking charge of their future.)
Today, one of Awa Sow's most critical efforts may seem contradictory to the tradition of seminomadic herding. She's invested in small-scale ranching, which may offer a more dependable stream of income as the challenges of migratory herding deepen. This past dry season, Sow hired a herder to lead 45 cows and 300 sheep on the annual migration. The practice is common among wealthier Fulani. However, as she's done in recent years, she also kept part of her herd—five cows and 140 sheep—behind in pastures year-round.
As she sees it, this separation doesn't undermine the ancient nomadic practice. It provides a new model for how the classic lifestyle can remain sustainable, hedging against any troubles that may befall the animals during their migration. 'Herders need to change their methods and strategies,' she says plainly.
The idea originated from a meeting in 2017, when she and other community leaders spoke with Senegal's minister of livestock, who publicly raised concerns that drier rainy seasons were making conditions more difficult for herders. Native grasses that livestock rely on were disappearing. The official suggested that one way forward might be to grow climate-resistant crops that could generate a stockpile of animal feed as a defense against longer dry seasons. Other herders stormed out, clearly offended at an idea that resembled traditional farming. But Sow was intrigued. Several years ago, she fenced off enough space on her land for some of her sheep and cows to stay put year-round and plotted a 100-square-foot nursery to grow heat-resistant, nutrient-rich grasses like maralfalfa, which, when dried, is a cheap and plentiful alternative to wild vegetation. Fulani herders visit a cattle market in Dahra, a community of 45,000 people in central Senegal. Markets like this, where the Fulani sell their livestock, represent a vital point of connection between Fulani communities and the regional economies.
The concept proved valuable in a different way during a recent rainy season, when a surprise cold snap dumped frigid rains and hail throughout the area. Sow ushered a flock of her sheep from the open fields back to her compound, where they could eat the grasses she'd grown and dried. Only one out of the 140 animals died. The other group was less fortunate because the sheep were in a more remote part of the reserve and had to shelter in place without food. Out of 300 animals, about 70 perished.
The experience hardened Sow's conviction that diverse ways of raising livestock remain herders' best shield against climate change. She has since helped design and finance a grant project to introduce young herders to small-scale ranching. Grantees now receive eight sheep to keep in an enclosed pen, along with animal feed, water dispensers, and access to veterinary care. They can sell the animals but must reinvest profits in more livestock for two years. One grantee, a 28-year-old single mother of two, recently sold eight sheep and used the profits to buy nine younger ones. She planned to repeat the process again in a few months and was setting aside part of her garden to grow forage crops.
Clearly, not every one of these strategies will work outside the Ferlo, where many Fulani still struggle for rights and resources. But over the past 15 years, Sow's work alongside the government has helped communities drill dozens of new wells, build better schools and health facilities, and secure bank loans for buying animals.
Last November, in the days before an important parliamentary election, one of the leading candidates visited with an entourage that included security guards, tom-tom drummers, and a couple of traditional praise singers called griots, who opened the discussion by offering an oral history about Sow herself. 'Families once wished for a boy first,' one proclaimed melodically. 'But Awa, firstborn, is a great source of pride. Awa changed everything. She showed us that one woman can do what a thousand men cannot.'
On election day, Awa glided into the courtyard at a nearby secondary school to cast her vote. 'Before, women didn't even come vote. It didn't interest them,' she says. 'But when you look at the lines today, things have changed.' More than half the people at the polls were women, which Awa considers her greatest accomplishment. A version of this story appears in the July 2025 issue of National Geographic magazine.
A policy expert on Africa's Sahel region, Hannah Rae Armstrong traveled from her home in Dakar to Senegal's Ferlo reserve to profile Awa Sow, who leads a transformative women's herding association. She also writes for Foreign Affairs, MIT Technology Review, and Le Monde.
An Explorer since 2019 and Barcelona-based photographer, Robin Hammond documented the traditions and challenges of nomadic Fulani people in communities across Chad, Niger, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, and elsewhere.
The nonprofit National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, funded Explorer Robin Hammond's work. Learn more about the Society's support of Explorers.