Sahelian pastoralists are usually portrayed as people living under uncertainty: they lack contingent markets and use mobility and diversification/ multiple activity as adaptation strategies. Their complex relationships vis-à-vis this uncertain environment hide the transition from a traditional inward looking to an outward looking economy characterized by increasing recourse to remunerated labor. However, this growing monetization of their economy is not neutral and could generate new forms of uncertainty. A Principle-agent model helps to analyze the remunerated labor as an ambivalent strategy to structural uncertainties in the Senegalese Sahel. Then, the paper highlights the conditions of production of trust and reputation in employee-employer relationships developed by pastoralists to better face up to these uncertainties.