Pastoralism is practiced across every inhabited continent, but it concentrates most heavily in Africa and Eurasia, where it has deep historical roots. Pastureland is the single most extensive form of land cover on Earth, making up roughly 22 to 26% of the planet’s ice-free surface. An estimated 180 million people worldwide depend on pastoralism for their livelihoods, raising nearly one billion camels, cattle, sheep, and goats and producing about 10% of the world’s meat.
East and Southern Africa
Africa is home to some of the world’s most widely recognized pastoralist cultures. In East Africa, countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan support large herding populations that move cattle, goats, sheep, and camels across semi-arid rangelands. The Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania are perhaps the most well-known example, but the Samburu, Turkana, and Somali pastoralists also rely on seasonal grazing cycles shaped by rainfall. These herds are not just for subsistence. Sudan, Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia are major exporters of livestock to Gulf countries, making pastoralism a significant source of foreign exchange.
Cross-border movement is a defining feature of East African herding. Pastoralists regularly drive animals between Kenya and Tanzania, and between Kenya and Uganda, following water and forage across national boundaries. Farther south, pastoralism continues in parts of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, though on a smaller scale.
West and Central Africa
The Sahel, the semi-arid belt stretching across the southern edge of the Sahara, is one of the world’s most active pastoral zones. Roughly 13% of the population in West and Central Africa is nomadic or semi-nomadic. The Fulani (also called Peuls) are the largest pastoral group in the region, spread across Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Cameroon, and beyond. The Tuareg, who call themselves the Kel Tamasheq, have traditionally herded camels and goats across the central Sahara, moving through Mali, Niger, Algeria, and Libya. The Maures operate in Mauritania and surrounding areas. These groups often practice transhumance, shifting herds north during the rainy season and south during the dry months.
The Sahara and Middle East
Deep within the Sahara, pastoralism persists in one of the harshest environments on Earth. Groups like the Regeibat in the northwestern Sahara and the Chaamba in northern Algeria herd camels across vast stretches of sand and rock, relying on scattered oases and seasonal wells. Bedouin pastoralists have historically ranged across the Arabian Peninsula, the Sinai, and the deserts of Jordan, Iraq, and Syria, herding camels, sheep, and goats. While urbanization has pulled many Bedouin into settled life, pastoral traditions continue in rural and desert areas across the region.
Central Asia and Mongolia
The Central Asian steppes have supported nomadic herding for thousands of years. Mongolia remains one of the few countries where nomadic pastoralism is still a mainstream way of life. Herders there tend the “five snouts”: horses, cattle (including yaks), sheep, goats, and camels, moving between seasonal pastures across the grasslands. In the Mongolian Altai mountains, Kazakh herders practice a particularly mobile form of nomadism, moving their herds frequently across large altitude differences between valley floors and high mountain pastures.
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan all have pastoralist traditions rooted in the same steppe ecology, though Soviet-era collectivization disrupted many of these patterns. In Kyrgyzstan, seasonal herding of horses, sheep, and yaks continues in the Tien Shan mountains, while in Kazakhstan, herders are reclaiming nomadic practices on the open steppe.
The Tibetan Plateau and Himalayas
Some of the highest-altitude pastoralism on the planet takes place on the Tibetan Plateau, where herders raise yaks at elevations between 3,000 and 5,400 meters above sea level. The yak is uniquely adapted to thin air and freezing temperatures, providing milk, meat, fiber, and transport. This form of herding stretches across a wide geographic band: from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China eastward through Sichuan, and westward through the Pamir mountains into Tajikistan and Afghanistan. The southern zone includes the Himalayan regions of Nepal, Bhutan, northern India, and Baltistan in Pakistan. Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia also have yak-herding populations.
Northern Europe and Siberia
Reindeer herding is the dominant form of pastoralism in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. The Sámi people of northern Finland, Sweden, and Norway have herded reindeer for centuries, with small-scale practices dating back to the Late Iron Age and a major expansion from the 15th century onward. Herds follow seasonal migration routes between coastal areas in summer and inland forests in winter.
Farther east, reindeer pastoralism spans the enormous taiga and tundra zones of Siberia. The Nenets of northwestern Russia herd reindeer across the Yamal Peninsula, one of the longest remaining pastoral migration routes in the world. Other reindeer-herding peoples are found scattered across Siberia all the way to Mongolia in the south, where the Tsaatan (Dukha) herd small numbers of reindeer in the northern forests.
The Andes
South America is the one region outside Eurasia and Africa where pastoralism developed independently, based on the domestication of llamas and alpacas thousands of years ago. Today, pastoralists in the high-altitude grasslands of southern Peru and western Bolivia herd these camelids along with sheep across nearly 10 million hectares of puna and altiplano rangelands, at elevations between roughly 3,000 and 4,800 meters. Both pure pastoralists, who depend entirely on their herds, and agro-pastoralists, who also farm small plots, operate in these regions. This is a notable exception to the global pattern: pastoralism never developed in North America or Australia, making the Andean tradition unique in the Western Hemisphere.
Europe’s Surviving Transhumance Routes
Pastoralism in Europe looks different from its counterparts in Africa or Central Asia, but it has not disappeared. Transhumance, the seasonal movement of livestock between lowland winter pastures and high mountain grazing areas, is still practiced across the continent. In 2022, ten European countries jointly submitted transhumance to UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage: Albania, Andorra, Austria, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania, and Spain. That built on an earlier 2019 recognition focused on transhumance routes in the Mediterranean and Alps.
In Switzerland, alpine farmers drive cattle, sheep, and goats to high-altitude pastures between May and October, taking advantage of lush mountain forage during the warm months. Spain’s cañadas, historic droving routes, still see flocks of sheep moved between summer highland and winter lowland pastures. In the Balkans, transhumant shepherds in Albania, Romania, and Greece maintain some of the oldest pastoral traditions in Europe, though the number of active herders has declined sharply over the past century.