Special issue : collective rights to land and resources: an institutionalist perspective on pastoralism in africa
This article examines how development initiatives in northern Kenya, led by NGOs, international organisations, missionary groups and state actors, interact with Samburu pastoralist institutions and imaginaries. While external actors often promote sedentarisation and livestock commodification as paths to “modernisation”, Samburu responses are shaped by nuanced strategies of adaptation, resistance and discursive negotiation.
Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the Maralal and Nyiro areas of Samburu County, we explore how mobile pastoralists mobilise criticism, sarcasm and paradox to contest anti-nomadic narratives while selectively engaging with development programmes. We also examine how some local electoral candidates and politicians participate in the effacement of the zebu cow from public debate.
Finally, we highlight emerging hybrid forms of governance, such as the integration of bureaucratic roles in the age-class system. These dynamics reveal how the Samburu navigate pressures toward sedentarisation and institutional transformation while seeking to maintain control over land, livestock and the moral economy of mobility.
KEYWORDS: Mobility, dairy cows, pastoral institutions, anti-nomadic narratives, sarcasm, USAID, Samburu, Kenya.
