How Early Warnings Saved 2,000 Heads of Cattle in Borena During the 2025 Drought

When NDVI signals turned red across southern Borena in March 2025, our team had a difficult question: would farmers act on a warning that contradicted what their own eyes were telling them? The grass still looked green. Skies still promised rain.

Over the next three weeks Mobile Vet sent 400 pastoralist families a sequence of SMS and USSD nudges in Afaan Oromo. Each message paired the satellite signal with one concrete next step — split the herd, walk north to Gelbo, sell the weak animals at the Jillo market before prices fell.

By the end of the dry season, enrolled households had recorded zero mortality. Matched control communities lost about 30% of their herds. This is the story of how the alerts were generated, why elders chose to trust them, and what we learned about pairing satellite intelligence with traditional pasture knowledge.