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Audio slideshow: Sudan's love of cows
Cattle are central to the lives of many communities in both Sudan and South Sudan, where they are used as a store of wealth and to pay bride prices. However, they are so prized that they are also a source of conflict, with rival groups launching cattle raids with deadly results.
For South Sudan's Dinka people, cows take precedence over almost everything else. In the dry season, they have traditionally shared grazing lands with the Misseriya and the Rizzigat - Arab tribes from the north, who cross into the south with vast herds. But during the long years of war between north and south this migration was accompanied by violence, killing and rape.
BBC World Service's Africa editor Martin Plaut visited Northern Bahr al-Ghazal state in South Sudan and met community activist William Kolong Pioth and Joseph Akot Dut, who was trying to buy a bullock at the cattle market in the state capital, Aweil.
Continue reading the main storyAfrican Perspective: Sudan's cows - from the BBC World Service - will be available as a podcast from 0900GMT on Saturday 26 February.
Photography and audio by Martin Plaut. Slideshow production by Paul Kerley. Publication date 25 February 2011.
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