He has a few spots in mind but needs to gather more information before embarking on the weeks-long journey.
In the Sahel, climate change has translated into more frequent, longer drought spells that threaten the resilience capacity of nomadic livestock pastoralists like Adoum.
Freshwater points are scarce during the dry season and many animals are at risk of dying before reaching the next oasis.
When droughts occur, herders can cover several hundred to thousands of kilometres before finding an adequate water spot with enough water and vegetation to meet the needs of the many herds gathering there.
He is also a founding member of the African Network of Pastoralists, Bilital Maroobé.
Thanks to mobile phones, this information is literally at their fingertips.
Adoum is one of 21,000 pastoralists who use the Garbal mobile phone service to find where the best conditions are to move their herd.
The Sustainable Technology Adaptation for Mali’s Pastoralistsproject isn’t your typical public-private partnership.
The Netherlands, via Hoefsloot Spatial Solutions, provides the satellite imagery, Orange Mali operates the call centre and TASSAGHT, with its team of local pastoralists, collects and sends up-to-date information to complement the data coming from space.
“The first phase of the project closed in December 2018, but given its success, we are now looking to expand the service to other regions in Mali and beyond, and add services of relevance to pastoralists such as animal health counselling and digital financial products.” “Water scarcity is one of the most pressing challenges we are facing today, and ensuring access to abundant, safe, clean water sources is a great challenge, particularly in arid and semi-arid environments,” says Lis Mullin Bernhardt, freshwater expert at UN Environment.

Malnutrition rates are among the highest in the country.
Long dry spells and occasional droughts have always been part of the rhythm of pastoralism here, but Turkana, like much of east Africa, is currently nine months into one of severest droughts in living memory.
In February, when 23 of the country’s 47 counties were affected, and after the number of food insecure people had more than doubled, from 1.3 million to 2.7 million, the Kenyan government declared a national drought emergency.
This is largely a result of higher food prices and a reduction in milk and food supplies.
Livestock also represents a considerable store of wealth: Many herders with few other possessions aside from a wooden stool, a knife, and some cooking utensils own 100 or more goats and sheep, each worth around $60.
When it rains, the grass grows and the goats graze.
As a 2014 paper on pastoralism and climate change adaptation in northern Kenya explains, pastoralists are especially exposed to climate change because in east Africa it manifests itself in “increasing temperatures and higher rainfall variability… with both escalating the likelihood of more frequent and extended droughts.” According to a 2007 study by the International Panel on Climate Change, Kenya is warming at a rate roughly 1.5 times the global average.
The paper’s authors add that Kenyan pastoralists are particularly “sensitive” because their livestock “depends on the availability of water and pasture which is negatively affected by climate change”.

Here in Carro-Yaambo, 20 miles west of Somaliland’s capital, desert gives way to more arable land, and communities both farm and keep livestock.
The drought has killed 80 percent of the livestock that nomadic rural communities depend on in Somaliland alone, and forced 739,000 to move in search of water and food throughout Somalia.
Pastoralists “have no other means of making a living.
UNICEF has projected that 1.4 million Somali children are or will become malnourished this year – a 50 percent increase since the start of 2017.
“I have never, ever heard of a drought that claims the lives of the livestock and the lives of the people,” says Ibrahim, whose herd of 100 goats and sheep was decimated to six.
“I’ve seen parents scooping up water for their kids and drinking it themselves.” ‘Water is life’ West of Hargeisa, however, aid agencies have seen success with water programs.
Today, in places like Carro-Yaambo, there has been more resilience, and less displacement of people.
“I don’t think anyone can live here anymore.
I don’t think there is a future for nomadism.” “If we want to keep camels, and sheep and goats, then we must change the way we raise them,” he says.
“Whenever people lose their livestock, they start farming.” That process, too, is helped by aid agencies.

Because Turkana is a pastoral region, residents will be seeking a governor who can ensure their perennial pasture and water scarcity is addressed.
Mr Ethuro said Jubilee was campaigning for peace, development, poverty eradication and ensuring residents have food and water.
Top on Mr Munyes’s agenda is to devolve funds further to sub-counties so that residents prioritise their needs.
“Most residents of Turkana are pastoralists and, therefore, that will be a key sector to invest in — to ensure access to water for our livestock and have peace with our neighbours to make pastoralism a worthy venture,” he said.
Mr Nanok will have to ensure ODM wins more seats.
Among his top achievements is improvement of the health sector and early childhood development and opening up the region through investment in road construction.
He dismissed the governor’s claim on bursaries, saying many students had dropped out, forcing leaders to donate to keep them in school.
“Turkana South and Turkana East Sub-Counties, where oil was discovered, will have their share meant for communities around oil sites,” said Mr Munyes, adding that he expected the county government to be allocated 20 per cent of the proceeds of oil.
He pledged to ensure that the Petroleum (Exploration Development and Production) Bill, 2016, which is before the Senate, will guarantee a 20 per cent revenue allocation to the county.
Mr Lomenen, who echoed Mr Munyes, said: “We have told the national government that no oil will be transported from Turkana when the road is not completed and Lokichar connected to the national grid”.

AfDB working with partners to accelerate implementation of drought resilience programme.
Ahead of World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, the African Development Bank (AfDB) announced that it would work with partners to accelerate the implementation of the Drought Resilience Sustainable Livelihood Support Programme (DRSLP) in the Horn of Africa.
This year’s theme examines the important link between land degradation and migration.
Among others, environmental degradation, food insecurity and poverty are causes of migration and development challenges.
The African Development Bank has several programmes in place in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, and has provided emergency support to countries facing drought.
More coordinated support and assistance is urgently needed.
In Ethiopia and Somalia, the delegation witnessed first-hand the dire situation facing millions of displaced people in the region.
As a result of prolonged drought and conflict, a large proportion of the population in the affected countries is in need of food assistance, as families face limited access to food and income, together with low cereal and seed stocks, and low milk and meat production.
Also, the Horn of Africa region – comprising Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, and Uganda – is one of the most climate-hazard prone and food insecure regions of the world.
“The recent drought and famine facing some countries (South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda) deserve swift action, as 20 million face food insecurity and severe malnutrition.

Maasai manure helps Kenya’s drought-hit herders fight hunger.
“Prolonged drought is making it hard to find pasture and food,” he explained, estimating a third of his cattle have starved this year.
“Selling manure helps me buy food and pay hospital bills for my family.” Demand for manure collected from Kenya’s rangelands for use as fertilizer is on the rise.
Wanjiru has been farming her one-eighth of an acre using both manure collected from Maasai land and composted manure from her own cow penned on a corner of her land.
But finding enough good-quality fertilizer is becoming “a challenge”, she noted.
Much of this highland area has been planted with cash crops such as tea, crowding out staple crops, she said.
But for enterprising herders like Sankare, the manure trade offers a new source of income that is helping compensate for losses caused by drought.
That is enough to fertilize 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) of tea plantation in central Kenya, said James Njuguna, a farmers’ field assistant working in the area.
“When manure from Maasai land is applied on the tea farms, the production is higher than expected,” said Njuguna.
ICIPE’s Karanja sees big potential in the manure trade because more Kenyans are investing in agriculture.

A life-or-death search for water in drought-parched Somalia – in pictures.
Three years of waiting for rain that never arrived have hit centuries-old traditions of nomadic farming in Somalia, a country where seven in 10 people rely on animals or crops for their livelihoods.
Pastoralists have been forced to travel far from their homes in a constant, poorly rewarded, search for water.
In Somaliland, in the country’s north-west, once green pastures have been scorched to dust by the ongoing drought The need to find clean water becomes more acute by the day.
People dig and dig through dusty layers of dry earth in the hope of reaching a few inches of precious fluid below.
The country is close to famine, with 6.2 million people – more than half the population – in need of aid, and 1.4 million children acutely malnourished The Biyagadud dam stores run-off water, providing vital resources to about 15,000 families and their animals.
The project was initiated by the Somali government together with the United Nations Development Programme to improve resilience in a country highly vulnerable to climate change Ismail began his journey with 150 goats.
Only the small, hardy herd seen here remains; the remainder perished due to lack of water.
The Gu rains, which normally fall between April and June, are beginning to make an impact, albeit small, in parts of the country.
But the land is so parched that rainfall can cause its own problems, as indicated by reports of flash floods in the south-east

It is carrying nine families and what is left of their herds: some sheep, goats, and donkeys.
This is what pastoralists have done for centuries, following the movements of their animals and the changing seasons.
The region was hit by an 18-month drought caused by El Niño and higher temperatures linked to climate change.
There are increasing concerns that the situation will get much worse, as rainfall in March and early April was very low in places.
This left survivors without the means to feed themselves or make a living.
Soon, it is going to ‘sweep away’ people.
If they don’t get food, clean water, and medicines, they will die like their animals.” Right up to six months ago, his family used to have over 1000 animals: 400 sheep, plus goats and camels.
Then, they started moving in search of better pastures and more water for their animals.
“We have moved four times in the last four months.
If the rains don’t come, none of us will survive.” Oxfam is launching a humanitarian response to the drought in Somaliland where, together with our long-standing networks and partners, we can have the most impact as quickly as possible.

After three years of drought and failed harvests, Kenya is in the grip of a national crisis.
Kenya has allocated US$ 128 million towards the national drought response effort, expanded social safety nets, and is working with the international community to mitigate the impacts of the drought on the most vulnerable.
But the US$ 166 million appeal launched by the UN and partners in March 2017 has raised a mere 18 per cent of its funding target, US$ 10.3 million of which from the UN’s own Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).
Governments that respond to humanitarian needs must be rewarded with support, not penalised by an international community that looks the other way.
The number of people facing severe food insecurity – 2.6 million – has tripled in less than a year.
Children are suffering from acute malnutrition and preventable diseases like diarrhoea, measles and cholera.
The situation would have been far worse had the Kenyan Government, the Kenyan Red Cross, the private sector, and the humanitarian community not stepped in earlier this year – declaring a national drought disaster and tapping into early warning and emergency preparedness systems, public-private partnerships and social safety nets.
Tensions will rise and diseases will spread.
With US$ 20 million we could stem the spread of cholera and diarrhoea by providing access to clean water and sanitation.
Let’s put our sticks in a bundle to make Kenya’s drought response – and its communities – unbreakable.

Drought drives Kenyan pastoralists into Uganda.
Tens of thousands of pastoralists fled from Turkana in Kenya to Uganda last week to escape the drought.
It is the latest blow for the parched region for which politicians once made rash promises of rapid modernization.
As many as 10,000 Kenyan pastoralists have crossed the border from Turkana in Kenya to Uganda in search of pasture and water for their cattle.
Hunger and no rain The end of March was supposed to bring rains to Turkana, transforming barren plains into pasture.
"The image of Kenya as a middle income country doesn’t do justice to the reality on the ground," Werner Schultink, country head for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, told AFP.
"Those changes don’t happen in five years, but in 20, at least."
Oil and water That didn’t stop the promises.
In 2013, Kenya and the UN cultural body UNESCO announced the discovery of large reserves of groundwater beneath Turkana that promised irrigation and enough water for all.
Three million people are in need of emergency humanitarian assistance, and, while the response has been more effective than the last time, in 2011, still more needs to be done, aid workers say.