Here i am to rave, rant, Promote and provide knowledge management skills and expertise to improve productivity and efficiency on development matters that affect the marginalized nomadic pastoralists.
Nomads are a marginalized group in the modern World. They are not well understood, and most of their requirements not a priority, if our Kenyan context is anything to go by. But the famous winds of change are now sweeping across the Nomadic plains.
In many pastoralist areas, the irreversible process of privatization has already begun. Driven by population pressure in the humid highland areas, agricultural communities have already taken large areas of the sub-humid plains that were originally grazed by pastoralist communities, pushing the pastoralists to the drier regions.
Commercial developers are also taking advantage of the low land prices in ASAL areas to buy up huge properties for industrial and other developments.
These new settlers have been enabled to do this by the subdivision of the previously communally owned land which has created individual or group ownership of land with the option to sell.
The most serious threats to the welfare of Pastoralists and Nomads include recurrent drought, famine and diseases, lack of processing and marketing facilities for livestock and animal products.
Ineffective and unequal bargaining power, due mainly to the dominant role of middle men and large scale traders and coupled with the lack of exploitation of alternative income-generating activities.
The area of grazing land available to most Pastoralists groups has reduced greatly in the last 100 years, while the population size has increased during the same period.
Analysis of the carrying capacity of Pastoralist areas shows that, most, if not all of them can no longer support the populations that are living there.
Ways of dealing with this problem include among others, changes in the ways of life ‘Pastoralism’ and adapting to the emerging options.....more to follow
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