Kenya has been experiencing an increased impact of drought in 23 out of 47 counties since June 2022. Some of the localities have experienced a lack of rain for over three years, while few of them have had less than normal rainfall for over five years. The affected counties have a population of approximately 17 million people exposed to hunger. Nearly five million among these people are more vulnerable to the effects of drought, with severe lack of food and water, and lack of water and fodder for livestock. This has put pastoral communities in dire danger. Millions of livestock have died, and beginning in January 2023, there are reports of individual people dying of hunger.
Some light rain fell in some of the drought-stricken localities in the period November to December 2022, but this was not sufficient to sustain fodder and water for livestock. This has resulted in the depletion of fodder and water and increased migration by pastoral communities to areas they would traditionally not frequent. In some cases, the people have shifted to localities outside of their communal ownership, and this has created tension and rivalry over fodder and sources of water between herdsmen. In a few of the locations, the rivalry has resulted in armed conflict over the sharing of water and sources for livestock.
Existing peacebuilding efforts in a context of this nature need to be inclusive of the pastoralists whose lifestyles have been permanently affected and changed by long periods of drought. PASTRES* has documented evidence denoting that with depleted livestock, livelihoods never return to the same levels again, even when fodder and water are restored. It takes a given number of different types of livestock and a certain range of social support dimensions to create and maintain sustainable livelihoods. It could take from seven to 10 years to regain the number and types of livestock herds as there were in the pre-drought periods. It is reported that due to the weather variability experienced in the last 25 years in the arid and semi-arid parts of Kenya, livestock recovery has not been realized to sustainable levels (National Drought Management Authority-Kenya 2021). The same is true for pastoral communities in the greater East Africa and Horn region. Factors arising from this need to be continually part of peacebuilding interventions.
Droughts are caused by a range of interacting factors including human activity that has led to poor management of natural resources, such as the depletion of trees, and unmanaged water resources. Natural causes include, but are not exclusive to falling water tables, global warming, climate change, and weather variability. These and other factors combined have caused continued shifts in lifestyle among pastoral communities. For instance, these communities have been affected by modern education. When more and more children attend school, they do not gain adequate indigenous skills in the pastoral lifestyle. Their aspirations also change with modern education in a way that does not truly embrace pastoral lifestyles. As a result, labor needed for the unchanged traditional pastoral lifestyle has been reduced. This has affected the family setting, weakening indigenous coping mechanisms.
Pastoral communities have also been affected by the modern money economy. They need to weigh the purchasing of livestock against other needs, such as food, health services, and education. This has changed the context in which they live. In the past, pastoralists used to trade in kind using livestock. Now, there is a greater demand for cash that is required to meet their livelihood needs. With dwindling livestock herds, households get to the point where the primary need is to rebuild herds and not sell. This locks them out of livelihood needs that require cash.
PASTRES has written about the shifting pastoral lifestyles, including cross-border peacebuilders in Western Africa, Eastern, and Greater Horn of Africa and the impact of inter-communal conflict among pastoral communities. However, more publicized guides, tools, and analyses on peacebuilding have not truly captured the engagement of the African pastoral community members and their perspective, wisdom, and insights about local peacebuilding at their level. An example of this is shared in the link here: https://www.ecosystemforpeace.org/. Working with concepts, such as "community peace pillars" (Kȋsuke NDÍKÛ 2017) could provide avenues towards local peace. This concept introduces approaches that are people-to-people-based peacebuilding.
I do not pretend to know enough and to have access to many pastoral communities, but in the peace work that I have done in the East and Greater Horn of Africa region, there are many pastoral communities where the local peace players are not adequately included in peacebuilding efforts. One finds that the tools promoted by external peace organizations and experts are not informed adequately by the local context.
It is also to be observed that where local approaches, methods, and tools have been used, even with positive results, there has been a lack of documentation of the process on how outcomes were realized. On the other hand, where documentation is available, it is undermined by the demand for it to be scholarly and/or in line with other existing models. This weakness needs to be recognized and addressed by local, national, regional, and international peacebuilders.
Kisuke Ndiku is a researcher, peacebuilding practitioner, and an independent consultant in Kenya working in the Greater Horn and East Africa Region. He works with PRECISE, a regional agency, with advisory, consulting, coaching, mentoring, training, program design, development, and evaluation services. He has served on boards of organizations and as a Country Representative of donor agencies and has held portfolios as Director and Advisor to agencies. Kisuke is an alumnus of MPI's 2013 Annual Peacebuilding Training and 2021 Facilitation Skills Training of Trainers.
* PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins) is a research program that aims to learn from pastoralists about responding to uncertainty and resilience, with lessons for global challenges.
Lead picture credit: Brendan Cox / Oxfam (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Other photos Photo Source: Courtesy of The People Daily, Kenya