Eastern Africa is a relatively dry area, with a considerable pastoralist population, which is among the poorest segments of society. Pastoralism is a form of subsistence lifestyle, and while pastoralists produce a large proportion of the region’s livestock products, they are not covered well by statistical recording. Pastoralists are experts in keeping livestock in arid rangelands, but they often suffer from land alienation, environmental degradation, and conflict with other land use intentions. The semiarid rangelands in Eastern Africa are home to spectacular savanna wildlife populations, attracting substantial conservation and tourism revenues. Estimations indicate that pastoralism generates significant economic values in the national income due to livestock production and maintenance of tourism attractions. To assess this contribution, the concept of total economic valuation (TEV) is applied. The main aim of the paper is to analyze the contribution of pastoralism to the tourism-related GDP of Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, where considerable numbers of pastoralists live. Because of the lack of statistical data on pastoralism, the second objective is to construct a database of indicators that measure the extent of pastoralism for these countries for 2004, 2014, and 2018. The methodology includes the construction of the above database using secondary sources, and then to apply correlation and regression analysis on this database and the economic and tourism performance data series of the studied four countries. The results of the analysis showed that the extent of pastoralism is positively related to GDP and to value added by tourism and agriculture, and international tourism receipts are positively related to pastoralism’s contribution to GDP. The tourism competitiveness index (TTCI) was found to be negatively related to the size of the pastoralism sector. The policy implications of our findings are that pastoralist societies are increasingly important not only for their marketed economic output, but for their services provided to tourism and to the environment; therefore, instead of neglecting them, they should be more in the focus of development.

The paper compared the performance of firms in agriculture and in tourism in two countryside areas of Hungary, assessing 2613 firms for 16 years (2004–2019). The data are from tax reports of all firms of the analysed areas. Agriculture and countryside tourism depend on environmental factors, thus they are more seriously affected by adverse environmental events than other production or service industries. The research was aimed at identifying differences between the two industries, and reveal time patterns and size-related traits of performance. Labour force, sales revenues, total assets, labour productivity, and total factor productivity (TFP) were analysed with descriptive statistics and panel regression analysis. Results reveal that the performance of firms in these industries differ significantly regarding total assets, sales revenues, labour force, and labour productivity, but does not differ in TFP, and differences are associated either with average levels of indicator values or their temporal tendencies. Our results underline that firm performance considerably differs by firm size, smaller firms are generally more labour-efficient than larger ones, and labour efficiency is positively impacted by total asset level, but TFP is not. Agriculture was found to be not less efficient than tourism, contrary to general assumptions.