Model suggests drought widens wealth gap among southern African herders
A team of researchers built a computer simulation of herders' buy and sell decisions in seven southern African countries, including South Africa. They report that worse droughts would cut the livestock the land can support and widen inequality.
In an explainer written by the study's authors, one of them says wealthier owners can buy extra feed. With each drought, they would then own a larger share of the animals. The team says better weather forecasts, paired with help to act on them, largely remove this effect. Mobile slaughtering trucks, now used in South Africa, are one example. This is a simulation, so the results depend on its assumptions, and the explainer does not name a journal or say if the study is peer-reviewed.