Developing northern Kenya requires much more than just infrastructure
What you need to know:
- Cultural attachment to livestock is so great that many hold on to their animals until drought wipes them out. The result is the routine media images of dead, dying or emaciated animals.
- Any strategy to rope in the communities to the modern markets must not be forced. For too long, the Maasai were the epitome of conservativeness. Today, many of them are very active in the modern market economies.
Though Kenya’s arid north harbours immense wealth – oil, gas, livestock and massive water aquifers – the majority of households wallow in deep poverty. The human development index is the lowest in the country.
The arid areas are geographically in Kenya, but their social-economics belongs to neighbouring countries.
The Lomidat slaughter house at Lokichoggio in Turkana epitomises the development puzzle in many marginalised areas.
The critical conditions for a business start-up are present: machines, manpower, a market and even a cooperative society to source for animals. The political leaders support the project, and so there is no political mischief.
Yet, paradoxically, the local community will not sell animals to the abattoir, so the factory is crippled.
Analyses on under-development in the arid area fail to capture all the dimensions of the problem. The recipes given by economists are standard: improve infrastructure, which should include abattoirs, roads, refrigeration, and so on, and voila, poor communities will automatically be hinged onto modern markets.
But as the Lomidat project demonstrates, when formulating policies for improving livelihoods in marginalised areas, it is important to understand the connection between the local cultural practices, poverty and economic development, before constructing suitable intervention strategies.
The underlying question why pastoralists remain poor despite their immense wealth in livestock and other resources has not been properly discussed.
Yet the question is important because, even before the oil discovery, the counties of Turkana and Marsabit held 42 per cent of Kenya’s livestock wealth, worth billions of shillings.
Agriculture, not oil, should be the launch-pad for sustainable development in these areas. One just needs to visit the newly-created green fields in dry areas to appreciate what well thought-out resource management in agriculture using inexpensive technology can achieve.
INTRICATE CULTURAL BARRIERS
This becomes even more important because the great oil wealth lying underneath in the north – at least in legal stricture – belongs to all Kenyans. Concretely, the profits accrued from it will belong to the extracting companies and their local mandarins.
Any contest over that may lead to serious conflict, as has happened elsewhere in Africa, leaving the communities worse off than before.
The communities near the oil wells will receive spill-overs from oil companies or trickle-down benefits from the government.
Of course, the communities will never own the oil wells, which in any case will dry up after some time, leaving the people back to square one.
It makes more sense to help them actualise the wealth they really own and can control. And that is agriculture.
But we have to grapple with the intricate cultural barriers that impede the pastoralists’ participation in modern markets. Importantly, pastoralists hold livestock above all for their cultural value and food. The owners may sell one or two animals, but that is only for buying basic household items.
Cultural attachment to livestock is so great that many hold on to their animals until drought wipes them out. The result is the routine media images of dead, dying or emaciated animals.
Unless stakeholders look for ways of changing this attitude without abusing the cultural sensibilities of the people, marginalised areas will remain trapped in a time-warp.
To move with the rest of Kenya toward the realisation of Vision 2030, there are several ways to help pastoralists along.
First, we have to stop judging the communities by monetary parameters that dominate the modern economy. The centre-periphery divide between northern Kenya and Nairobi is deep and can’t be closed by laying down infrastructure alone. It requires a multi-faceted approach.
Second, any strategy to rope in the communities to the modern markets must not be forced. For too long, the Maasai were the epitome of conservativeness. Today, many of them are very active in the modern market economies.
The good thing with giving people time to adapt to other modes of existence is that they use their ‘local sense’ to infuse their positive cultural aspects into the new ways.
Dr Mbataru teaches Agribusiness at Kenyatta University ([email protected])
