“Perhaps no other livelihood system has suffered more from biased language and narratives than pastoralism.” Peter D. Little
Disease area
Known as the Northern Frontier Districts (NFD) during the colonial era, North Eastern Province (NEP) from 1963-2013 and now the Frontier Counties Development Council (FCDC) region in the post-devolution period from 2013, it includes the Northern Rift in the northwest of Kenya, the NFD/NEP to the north and east and the southeastern Tana and Lamu counties, making up about two-thirds of the country.
This arid and semi-arid region is associated with mobile pastoralism – the nation's largest supplier of meats (beef, mutton, chevon), camel milk, animal hides and skins – contains significant numbers and varieties of wildlife in generally natural and open rangelands, is adjacent to the Indian Ocean and borders all countries around Kenya apart from Tanzania, signifying its strategic importance to the economy, security and diplomacy of the country.
Tracing sources of the malaise
The underdevelopment of the Frontier Counties can be understood through an epidemiological (study of the spread of disease) lens. John Snow’s map of the 1854 cholera outbreak in the Soho District of London – which hypothesised that germ-contaminated water was the source of the epidemic – is a good place to start.
By pin-pointing the incidence of sickness and deaths in the district and overlaying the dots around water sources in the general area of the outbreak, Dr Snow was able to observe a concentration of effects around a single water pump and when tested, the water from this source contained the cholera-causing contamination. This seminal visual communication study is regarded as the founding event of epidemiology.
Policy and political contamination
The tone and attitude towards the Frontier Counties was set by Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 (SP 10’65) during the first post-independence government of President Jomo Kenyatta (1963-1978), two key paragraphs of which are quoted below:
SP 10’65, p46, para133 (note the underlined):
One of our problems is to decide how much priority we should give in investing in less developed provinces. To make the economy as a whole grow as fast as possible, development money should be invested where it will yield the largest increase in net output. This approach will clearly favour the development of areas having abundant natural resources, good land and rainfall, transport and power facilities and people receptive to and active in development.
SP 10’65, p47, para136 (note the underlined):
Today some of the provinces and districts that have genuine economic potential remain underdeveloped simply because the people will not accept new ways and the necessary discipline of planned and co-ordinated development. In these areas a concerted and prolonged effort to overcome prejudices and suspicions is needed before development can take place.
Effects
Approved by cabinet and passed by parliament in 1965, political attitude followed government policy set out by SP 10'65 as Odhiambo (2014, 2013) has observed. The neglect of the region which festered within the implementing civil service and provincial administration endured even when political actors changed and new development plans were drawn. This may explain the persistence of the mind-set that Frontier Counties were a bad investment because the people were not receptive to nor active in "development" – a sentiment which stubbornly adhered to successive administrations for 40 years.
According to Hassan, Kanyinga and Nathan (2023):
This [thinking was] based partially on a lengthy record of failed development interventions among pastoralists (Dyer 2013; Fratkin 1997; Niamir-Fuller 1999). According to Simpson and Waweru (2021), the colonial administration found Samburu district [for example] less productive and not what they preferred - ‘government on the cheap’. The independent government pursued the same thinking as the colonial administration – viewing the land occupied by pastoralists as ‘devastated by overgrazing’ (Simpson and Waweru 2021). This then meant there were no substantial development projects, thus further marginalising Samburu and other communities in northern Kenya (Waweru 2012).
The marginalisation continued after independence (Markakis 1987), as the new government also did not invest in any substantial programmes for education, social amenities or development that would fit the mobile communities like pastoralists (Turton 1972). In some instances, lawmakers … simply failed to understand and recognise pastoralism as a mode of production that suit[ed] existing communities’ lifestyle and environment. The lack of support for pastoral practices and the exclusion of the region from development projects added to the marginalisation of northern Kenya (Markakis 2004).
Yet, pastoralist communities had their own customary practices and norms that governed their access of land and resources (Okoth-Ogendo 2002). While pastoralists relied on reciprocal arrangements of access and negotiated access among their communities and outside their kinship ties (Fratkin 2001), most of the government efforts and policies on land were in line with the land use of settled agricultural communities [i.e., in “high potential areas”]. What was lacking in many of these instances was a proper understanding of pastoralism as a mode of production suitable for the environment [i.e., “low potential areas”]. The effect is seen in the subsequent debates about the viability of pastoralism and suggestions on the need to transform the practice.
According to Niamir-Fuller (1999), governments and international development organisations have failed to consider and meet pastoral peoples’ needs and to accommodate their unique mode of production. In general, there is agreement that policies in Kenya have failed to fully secure pastoralists’ access to rangelands and mobility and to support their livestock and by that secure their livelihoods. The attitude towards pastoralists’ choice of livelihood and their mode of production also implies that most of the interventions developed for these communities are not in tandem with the pastoralist’s aspirations and key aspects of their livelihood, like mobility.
Little (2013) adds:
Perhaps no other livelihood system has suffered more from biased language and narratives than pastoralism. Some of the worst misperceptions equate pastoralism with poverty, violence, illegal trade, economic inefficiency, ineffective tenure systems, environmental degradation, hunger and food aid dependency, and/or ‘vacant’ wastelands. These discourses have important political, policy, and practical implications and, as this book has shown, can be invoked to justify particular actions by the state. These directives include the sedentarization of pastoralists in settlements, the allocation of pastoralist lands to investors and conservation groups, and/or the imposition of land titling programmes for both pastoralists and non-pastoralists. In the past, one might attribute these misinformed narratives, policies, and programmes to ignorance on the part of governments. However, the massive amounts of money, powerful interests, and personal benefits (‘rents’) currently associated with some of these actions, such as the leasing or sale of pastoral lands, point to more sinister motivations on the part of state officials. Hidden in these narratives also are political agendas that perceive mobile pastoralism as a security and political threat to the state and, therefore, in need of controlling or eliminating. In sum, the continued existence of powerful and harmful narratives about pastoralism requires persistent efforts to counter them, such as the recent work on economic contributions of pastoralism that Behnke and Muthami (2011) and Behnke and Kerven (this book) have pursued.
Accurate diagnosis
It appears evident that the neglect of Northern Kenya was in large part driven by its association with pastoralists and their production systems. When you consider the economic, ecological and cultural identity cases for pastoralism, you realise that the natural landscapes and resources of the region on the one hand and ethnic peoples and their traditional practices on the other are the very limited means to usefully exploit and manage arid and semi-arid lands.
Attempts at treatment (relevant policy, programme and project prescriptions)
President Daniel arap Moi (1978-2002):
District Focus for Rural Development; Department for Rural Planning; tarmacking of major roads outside the main urban areas; Turkwel Gorge Hydroelectric Power Station (in a Frontier County).
President Mwai Kibaki (2002-2013, perhaps the best attempt at redress):
Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation; Ministry of State for Northern Kenya and other Arid Areas; Constituency Development Fund (CDF); Kenya Vision 2030 including LAPSSET (Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia transport corridor); Isiolo-Moyale highway (LAPSSET); Isiolo International Airport (LAPSSET); Vision 2030 Development Strategy for Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands; presidency coincides with the new Constitution of Kenya 2010 which set up the landmark devolved system of governance.
President Uhuru Kenyatta (2013-2022):
Berth 1 at Lamu Port (LAPSSET); Big 4 Agenda (housing, food security, manufacturing, universal healthcare).
President William Ruto (2022-):
Bottom-up Economic Transformation Agenda (with a focus on agriculture, MSMEs, affordable housing and settlements, healthcare, digital superhighway, creative industries); State Department for the ASALs and Regional Development.
Policy doses over time
Current post-treatment conditions (pastoralism specific)
Localised FCDC therapies (adapted for pastoralism)
Condition A & C above – likely to remain pastoral producers and main users of rangeland BUT ONLY IF the distance dimension (see FCDC nd: p21-23 and 28-31) is addressed with infrastructure to support mobility, production and connectivity to local, domestic and export markets as well as education, health (including animal health), water & sanitation, housing, energy and communication services (the six foundations for development) which may remain concentrated in population centres before mobile / remote delivery and sales channels are better developed to serve nomadic populations, e.g., by operationalising the National Council on Nomadic Education in Kenya and the Livestock Marketing Board, outcomes of the post-2003 ASAL policy initiatives (see Elmi and Birch 2013).
Condition B & D above – likely to move to growing FCDC towns like Isiolo, Marsabit, Moyale and Garissa thus addressing the density dimension (see FCDC nd: p21-23 and 28-31); these pastoral segments could be ‘pulled’ into economically integrated and socially supported urban livelihoods BUT ONLY IF service delivery institutions to provide education, health, water & sanitation, housing, energy and communication services are developed and expanded in these towns to accommodate pastoral out-migration.
Case notes
Catley, A., Lind, J. and Scoones, I. (Eds). (2013) Pastoralism and development in Africa: Dynamic change at the margins. Abingdon: Routledge.
Elmi, M. and Birch, I. (2013) Creating Policy Space for Pastoralism in Kenya. Future Agricultures, Working Paper No. 068. Brighton: Future Agricultures Consortium
Frontier Counties Development Council. (nd) Socio-economic blueprint for the Frontier Counties Development Council: Towards a regional and territorial approach for local development. Nairobi: FCDC.
Hassan, R., Kanyinga, K. and Nathan, I. (2023). No Option but to Settle! The Community Land Act, Devolution and Pastoralism in Samburu County, Kenya. Nomadic Peoples 27: 292–314.
Lind, J., Okenwa, D. and Scoones, I. (Eds). (2020) Land, investment and politics: Reconfiguring Eastern Africa’s pastoral drylands. Suffolk: James Currey.
Little, P. (2013) Reflections on the Future of Pastoralism in the Horn of Africa. p243-249. In: Catley, A., Lind, J. and Scoones, I. (Eds). Pastoralism and development in Africa: Dynamic change at the margins. London: Routledge.
Odhiambo, M. (2014) The Unrelenting Persistence of Certain Narratives: An Analysis of Changing Policy Narratives about the ASALs in Kenya. International Institute for Environment and Development Country Report. London: IIED.
Odhiambo, M. (2013) Moving beyond the rhetoric: the challenge of reform in Kenya’s drylands. London: IIED
Republic of Kenya. (2012) Vision 2030 Development Strategy for Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands. Nairobi: Government Printer.
Republic of Kenya. (2010) Sessional paper No.8 of 2012 on National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands “Releasing our Full Potential.” Unpublished.
Republic of Kenya. (1965) Sessional No. 10 of 1965 – African Socialism and its Application to Planning. Nairobi: Government Printer.
The photograph at the top was taken by the author in Kakuma, Turkana County, in June 2014. If is of an open-air church built with soil and earth bricks - the structure with the cross is the altar and the grave-like rows are the pews.
