What’s new? A protracted drought in the Horn of Africa is exacerbating land use conflict in the north of Kenya’s Rift Valley region. Longstanding tensions between herders and landowners have led to increasingly organised and violent attacks, heightening intercommunal tensions. Cattle theft and banditry are also on the rise
Why does it matter? The increase in violence shows how climate shocks such as droughts can magnify local tensions or conflict, particularly harming those who earn an income through agriculture. Droughts and floods also accelerate environmental degradation, which in turn intensifies disputes over land and water.
What should be done? Nairobi should step up aid delivery. It should also de-escalate the violence through community-led peace initiatives. In the long term, the Kenyan government and donors should invest in drought adaptation measures. They should also make use of existing early warning systems to help communities better anticipate and absorb climate shocks.
I.Overview
A record-breaking drought in the Horn of Africa has fuelled violence in the north of Kenya’s Rift Valley. Herders must now travel longer distances in search of pasture and water, which can pit them against other herders and owners of large farms and conservancies. The conflict is longstanding, rooted in grievances over land, political disputes and semi-nomads’ impoverishment by years of state neglect, but today drought, along with cattle overstocking and the proliferation of illicit firearms, has sharpened it. Fighting involving pastoralists, landowners, criminals and security forces has killed more than 200 people since May 2021. Kenyan leaders and outside partners should step up emergency aid to drought-stricken regions and encourage sustainable grazing and migration agreements between landowners and herders. They should keep pushing for community-led peace talks. Kenyan authorities should act against perpetrators of attacks but not herders armed only to protect livestock. With donors’ support, they should help pastoralist families cope with increasingly frequent climate shocks and reduce incentives for violence.
At the root of the multifaceted conflict lies competition among semi-nomadic herders, who are mostly men, and between these pastoralists and landowners over land and water. Overstocking, which occurs when herds are too large for the available pasture, recurrent droughts and floods, and deforestation that leaves grassland exposed to heavy rains have degraded grazing areas. Pastoralists, mostly in the west-central counties of Baringo and Laikipia, have long complained that the most abundant water sources are located on private land – from wildlife conservancies to farms or cattle ranches. Another of their grievances is the chronic lack of public investment in education, health care and infrastructure in the semi-arid and arid regions where they reside. Finally, cattle theft has evolved into an organised enterprise, with rustlers staging many more and more violent raids than just a few years ago.
Between 2020 and 2022, Kenyan herders lost at least 2.5 million head of cattle.
The unprecedented drought affecting the Horn of Africa has made things worse. Between 2020 and 2022, Kenyan herders lost at least 2.5 million head of cattle, decimating incomes and pushing some to let livestock graze on land belonging to commercial farms and conservancies. Gradual impoverishment has made young pastoralists particularly vulnerable to recruitment by crime rings, especially in Baringo county. Local politicians, meanwhile, exploit tensions around land to rally voters. The effectiveness of traditional dispute resolution mechanisms has dwindled, and existing grazing agreements are inadequate to mitigate the drought’s harmful effects, let alone stop the ensuing conflict. Despite a robust police and army response to local flare-ups, clashes involving herders, landowners and armed criminals continue to claim lives.
With help from external donors, Kenyan national and county authorities should take steps to reduce the drought’s impact and ease tensions. These measures should also address grievances related to land access, overgrazing and the insecurity caused by heavily armed criminal gangs. Meanwhile, the state and its partners need to work to mitigate the consequences of future droughts.
To curb the violence right away:
- Kenya’s government, with support from donors, should deliver more humanitarian aid through cash transfers to pastoralists in counties afflicted by drought.
- The Kenya Defence Forces and police should go after only the gunmen responsible for attacks, rather than also targeting herders who carry arms only to guard their livestock, so as not to enflame the situation further. The government should also equip police adequately to confront the heavily armed perpetrators.
- The authorities should continue to encourage inclusive, locally led initiatives to de-escalate tensions among communities and with the police. For instance, county governments could financially compensate cattle rustling victims to break the cycle of revenge. This step could help authorities win pastoralists’ trust.
- The Kenyan police should investigate and the judiciary prosecute those financing gunmen responsible for deadly cattle raids. Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations should assist units on the ground tracking weapons dealers, as well as the source and destination of illicit small arms and ammunition.
- Authorities should facilitate the negotiation of migratory corridors with landowners, if necessary providing beefed-up security in the vicinity.
In the medium to long term:
- National and local governments, aided by donors, through grants and perhaps debt swap schemes, should invest in climate adaptation measures such as water storage, irrigation systems and cultivation of drought-resistant grass.
- With donor assistance, Kenya’s National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) could encourage landowners to set aside fenced land for pasture by financing new water points and repairing existing ones.
- National authorities should also step up investment in health, education and infrastructure in areas populated by semi-nomadic herders, to make these vulnerable communities more resilient to climate shocks.
- The government should also publish, in local languages, the early warning rainfall data it receives from the NDMA and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) on climate and conflict risks. Both systems offer real-time information that can help predict which areas will need urgent investment to cope with extreme climate events. But for early warning to be effective, national and county governments that receive the information need to act upon it as well as communicate efficiently with people at risk of harm.
II.Underlying Tensions
Competition over land and livestock in the Rift Valley, and more particularly in Laikipia and Baringo counties, stretches back centuries. Semi-nomadic pastoralist peoples like the Maasai, Pokot, Samburu, Turkana, Tugen and Il Chamus have long quarrelled over access to grazing areas and engaged in small-scale cattle theft among themselves.1
Shrinking resources are driving competition among herder communities.
Today, however, extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, as well as government and private owners’ use of land and water, are reducing the availability of grassland in the region. Shrinking resources are driving competition among herder communities, as well as feeding herders’ frustrations with wealthy landowners who hold large, well-watered farms and conservancies in the central highlands and parts of the Rift Valley. People, especially young men, in the area are increasingly tempted to resort to violence to gain the upper hand in that contest or to join crime rings as an alternative source of income. As frustrations accumulate, fighting can break out among herders, between herders and landowners, between herders and security forces or between security forces and cattle thieves known generically to local authorities as “bandits”.2
The latest cycle of violence erupted in May 2021 at the border between Laikipia and Baringo counties, when herders invaded the Laikipia Nature Conservancy, Kenya’s largest private conservancy. Since then, at least 239 people, the majority of them also men, have been killed in a swathe of the northern Rift Valley including the counties of Laikipia, Baringo, Elgeyo Marakwet, Turkana, Samburu and West Pokot.3 The police and army have deployed to curb the fighting, but to little avail, except for a brief lull around the August 2022 elections, when security was particularly tight.
“Years of poor governance and economic hardship have left semi-nomadic communities mistrustful of a state they perceive as having neglected them and ill prepared to face growing climate-related insecurity.”
What’s new? A protracted drought in the Horn of Africa is exacerbating land use conflict in the north of Kenya’s Rift Valley region. Longstanding tensions between herders and landowners have led to increasingly organised and violent attacks, heightening intercommunal tensions. Cattle theft and banditry are also on the rise.
Why does it matter? The increase in violence shows how climate shocks such as droughts can magnify local tensions or conflict, particularly harming those who earn an income through agriculture. Droughts and floods also accelerate environmental degradation, which in turn intensifies disputes over land and water.
What should be done? Nairobi should step up aid delivery. It should also de-escalate the violence through community-led peace initiatives. In the long term, the Kenyan government and donors should invest in drought adaptation measures. They should also make use of existing early warning systems to help communities better anticipate and absorb climate shocks.
I.Overview
A record-breaking drought in the Horn of Africa has fuelled violence in the north of Kenya’s Rift Valley. Herders must now travel longer distances in search of pasture and water, which can pit them against other herders and owners of large farms and conservancies. The conflict is longstanding, rooted in grievances over land, political disputes and semi-nomads’ impoverishment by years of state neglect, but today drought, along with cattle overstocking and the proliferation of illicit firearms, has sharpened it. Fighting involving pastoralists, landowners, criminals and security forces has killed more than 200 people since May 2021. Kenyan leaders and outside partners should step up emergency aid to drought-stricken regions and encourage sustainable grazing and migration agreements between landowners and herders. They should keep pushing for community-led peace talks. Kenyan authorities should act against perpetrators of attacks but not herders armed only to protect livestock. With donors’ support, they should help pastoralist families cope with increasingly frequent climate shocks and reduce incentives for violence.
At the root of the multifaceted conflict lies competition among semi-nomadic herders, who are mostly men, and between these pastoralists and landowners over land and water. Overstocking, which occurs when herds are too large for the available pasture, recurrent droughts and floods, and deforestation that leaves grassland exposed to heavy rains have degraded grazing areas. Pastoralists, mostly in the west-central counties of Baringo and Laikipia, have long complained that the most abundant water sources are located on private land – from wildlife conservancies to farms or cattle ranches. Another of their grievances is the chronic lack of public investment in education, health care and infrastructure in the semi-arid and arid regions where they reside. Finally, cattle theft has evolved into an organised enterprise, with rustlers staging many more and more violent raids than just a few years ago.
Between 2020 and 2022, Kenyan herders lost at least 2.5 million head of cattle.
The unprecedented drought affecting the Horn of Africa has made things worse. Between 2020 and 2022, Kenyan herders lost at least 2.5 million head of cattle, decimating incomes and pushing some to let livestock graze on land belonging to commercial farms and conservancies. Gradual impoverishment has made young pastoralists particularly vulnerable to recruitment by crime rings, especially in Baringo county. Local politicians, meanwhile, exploit tensions around land to rally voters. The effectiveness of traditional dispute resolution mechanisms has dwindled, and existing grazing agreements are inadequate to mitigate the drought’s harmful effects, let alone stop the ensuing conflict. Despite a robust police and army response to local flare-ups, clashes involving herders, landowners and armed criminals continue to claim lives.
With help from external donors, Kenyan national and county authorities should take steps to reduce the drought’s impact and ease tensions. These measures should also address grievances related to land access, overgrazing and the insecurity caused by heavily armed criminal gangs. Meanwhile, the state and its partners need to work to mitigate the consequences of future droughts.
To curb the violence right away:
- Kenya’s government, with support from donors, should deliver more humanitarian aid through cash transfers to pastoralists in counties afflicted by drought.
- The Kenya Defence Forces and police should go after only the gunmen responsible for attacks, rather than also targeting herders who carry arms only to guard their livestock, so as not to enflame the situation further. The government should also equip police adequately to confront the heavily armed perpetrators.
- The authorities should continue to encourage inclusive, locally led initiatives to de-escalate tensions among communities and with the police. For instance, county governments could financially compensate cattle rustling victims to break the cycle of revenge. This step could help authorities win pastoralists’ trust.
- The Kenyan police should investigate and the judiciary prosecute those financing gunmen responsible for deadly cattle raids. Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations should assist units on the ground tracking weapons dealers, as well as the source and destination of illicit small arms and ammunition.
- Authorities should facilitate the negotiation of migratory corridors with landowners, if necessary providing beefed-up security in the vicinity.
In the medium to long term:
- National and local governments, aided by donors, through grants and perhaps debt swap schemes, should invest in climate adaptation measures such as water storage, irrigation systems and cultivation of drought-resistant grass.
- With donor assistance, Kenya’s National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) could encourage landowners to set aside fenced land for pasture by financing new water points and repairing existing ones.
- National authorities should also step up investment in health, education and infrastructure in areas populated by semi-nomadic herders, to make these vulnerable communities more resilient to climate shocks.
- The government should also publish, in local languages, the early warning rainfall data it receives from the NDMA and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) on climate and conflict risks. Both systems offer real-time information that can help predict which areas will need urgent investment to cope with extreme climate events. But for early warning to be effective, national and county governments that receive the information need to act upon it as well as communicate efficiently with people at risk of harm.
II.Underlying Tensions
Competition over land and livestock in the Rift Valley, and more particularly in Laikipia and Baringo counties, stretches back centuries. Semi-nomadic pastoralist peoples like the Maasai, Pokot, Samburu, Turkana, Tugen and Il Chamus have long quarrelled over access to grazing areas and engaged in small-scale cattle theft among themselves.1
Shrinking resources are driving competition among herder communities.
Today, however, extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, as well as government and private owners’ use of land and water, are reducing the availability of grassland in the region. Shrinking resources are driving competition among herder communities, as well as feeding herders’ frustrations with wealthy landowners who hold large, well-watered farms and conservancies in the central highlands and parts of the Rift Valley. People, especially young men, in the area are increasingly tempted to resort to violence to gain the upper hand in that contest or to join crime rings as an alternative source of income. As frustrations accumulate, fighting can break out among herders, between herders and landowners, between herders and security forces or between security forces and cattle thieves known generically to local authorities as “bandits”.2
The latest cycle of violence erupted in May 2021 at the border between Laikipia and Baringo counties, when herders invaded the Laikipia Nature Conservancy, Kenya’s largest private conservancy. Since then, at least 239 people, the majority of them also men, have been killed in a swathe of the northern Rift Valley including the counties of Laikipia, Baringo, Elgeyo Marakwet, Turkana, Samburu and West Pokot.3 The police and army have deployed to curb the fighting, but to little avail, except for a brief lull around the August 2022 elections, when security was particularly tight.
Source: Crisis group
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