Drought exacerbates conflict over land use in Kenya
Pastoralists move cattle onto private farms as grazing land becomes more scarce, raising the prospect of a repeat of the violence in 2017
Renewed invasions of private ranches by herders in Kenya’s northern Laikipia region a year after similar invasions led to deadly conflicts is a sign of cracks in the country’s land use system, experts said on Wednesday. A herder was shot dead when police tried to confiscate his cattle after they invaded one of the ranches last week, police and ranchers said. “That herder was killed as a matter of self-defence by the police,” Martin Evans, chair of the Laikipia Farmers Association, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. Dozens were killed and injured in Kenya’s drought-stricken Laikipia county in 2017 as armed herders searching for scarce grazing land drove tens of thousands of cattle onto private farms and ranches from poor-quality communal land. “Right now, it is very dry out there,” Evans said. “The November rains have failed and if it doesn’t rain between now and April the situation is going to get worse.” Francis Munyambu, the Rift Valley police commandant, said the shoot...
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