One of the most important sets of policies which have had an impact on the adaptive strategies, and therefore livelihoods of the study areas have been land tenure policies. These have tended to shift power from the traditional system; to the state whose decisions for land use have sometimes been in conflict with the livelihood requirements of the pastoralists, e.g. in Ethiopia where state plantations and reserves were placed on land formally used for grazing; in Tshunelani where the apartheid system of government restricted seriously people's access to productive land.

All policies which influence the traditional system of governance are particularly significant for sustainable livelihoods because the adaptive strategies which pertain to eco-system health seem to be vested more on the traditional, rather than the statutory system of rule. Thus, the system of local government in Zimbabwe which allowed the local chiefs and headmen to levy fines in their process of adjudication served to strengthen their ability to enforce those elements of social cohesion which are still under traditional rule.

The nomadic pastoral system has in particular been viewed as a backward system and policies to "modernize" countries have tended to discourage these strategies for livelihood. At the same time, the settled agricultural production patterns promoted by "modern agriculture" are associated with soil salination in conditions of low precipitation (Ethiopia), and increases food insecurity because they tend to promote monocultural cultivation and a dependence on cash and markets. The promotion of corn cultivation in Zimbabwe, as in many other parts of Africa, has especially been blamed for increased food insecurity in arid and semi-arid lands because of its poor tolerance to drought.

In many areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, agricultural policies have been criticized for pushing maize, at the expense of traditional crops, such as sorghum and millet which are more drought resistant than corn. The promotion of maize at the expense of other crops constituted a threat to food security, and thus a threat to secure livelihoods. Over time, people's tastes change such that maize becomes the preferred staple, despite the fact that it is so prone to failure in drought years. In Makaha, it was noted that maize was allocated 80% of the land cropped to cereals. This is significant because as the traditional crops are grown less and less, knowledge about their cultivation is passed on less and less to future generations. Eventually, the possibility for learning from traditional practices and crop species may be lost, and the added security to livelihoods which these crop varieties represent will also be lost.

Research and agricultural extension policies have also been found to be biased against the crops grown traditionally, discouraging such adaptive strategies as multi-variety cropping of starch staples, and even inter-cropping.

Policies which are designed to increase the productivity and off-take of livestock for sale in the domestic and external markets, such as the ones attempted in Ethiopia in the mid-eighties (a hint of structural adjustment), may seem at first to be supportive of the adaptive strategies which place a lot of emphasis on the well-being of livestock. However, there is an important detail which needed to also be addressed: how to handle the sale of livestock over which an entire community has some say. The mere promotion of sales by individuals would be likely to result in conflict, as well as the disruption of some of the other aspects of the community's survival, including the community's responsibility to those who are faced with destitution.

Clearly, policy-makers need to become more receptive to ideas which originate from the local communities themselves. It is likely that effective interfaces between the "modern" livestock marketing needs of the national economy and the "traditional" communal system of decision-making will only be found by listening to what the Boran and Afar, and other similar communities suggest are the best ways for them to participate without their livelihoods being threatened. Indeed, the same holds true for other possible policy interventions.

Policies in support of livestock production include the provision of veterinary extension services, and the control of herd movement across district boundaries to prevent the spread of disease. These are supportive of people's adaptive strategies.

At the macro-economic level, Zimbabwe, like many other developing countries, has been implementing stabilization and structural adjustment programs. The resultant government reductions on social expenditures and the civil service wage bill may perhaps have more of an impact on urban rather than rural dwellers. However, the inhabitants of rural Zimbabwe such as those of Mudzi and Gwanda, have been affected to the extent that they use government health and education facilities. Other impacts may come indirectly as a result of reduced remittances from urban relatives, as the latter's own real incomes decline. Urban remittances are a common part of the ensemble of adaptive strategies for rural Africans. Often, a rural family will invest in the education of one or more members of the family (including extended family), who will in the future provided added security to the survival system of the family. On the other hand, however, the removal of centralized agricultural marketing in Zimbabwe have resulted in increased cash incomes to rural farmers off-setting the dependence on urban remittances.