Earth-brown cattle trudge in single file beneath storeyed buildings that dwarf them along the main road in Kitengela, Kajiado County.

“You really have to be on the lookout to see a zebra or wildebeest on the road from here to Kitengela,” says Moses Lenchasho, siting across the main road from livestock yard in Bisil. He is the former chairman of the Lorng’oswa group ranch before it was dissolved and subdivided among its members.

Rangeland is shrinking as group ranches divide up the land and sell it off.

Only four out of the 56 group ranches in Kajiado County, covering nearly 1.5 million hectares, had not been subdivided and titles issued by June 5, 2021.

Wrangles among members, some of which have escalated to the High Court, had also stalled land subdivision and titling for another seven group ranches in the county — Torosei, Entarara, Rombo, Emart ole Narau, Olgulului, Oldonyokie and Olkirmatian.

The seven, together with the Shompole, Olkeri, Kuku A and Kuku B in Loitoktok, which have not been dissolved, account for 600,000 hectares – or over a third of all group ranches’ land in the county, according to a list prepared by the county land adjudication officer, JK Lessan.

Land remains a putative issue, as evidenced by the number of court cases filed at the Environment and Land Court in Kajiado. Between 2016 and 2020, some 525 land-related cases were filed at the registry, according to the State of Judiciary and Administration of Justice Report for 2020/21.

Most of the land cases are complex and take time to resolve – some of the disputes have subsisted for as long as 13 years. One of the most watched cases relates to the 1928 concession of 234,000 acres (100,000 hectares) to Magadi Soda (now Tata Chemicals), which was renewed in 2004. The land is still at the centre of a dispute over a Sh17.4 billion demand for land rates since 2017 by the Kajiado County Government. The High Court directed in May 2019 that the matter be referred to the Ministry of Mining for arbitration and mediation.

Courts are quickly coming to the realisation that their orders alone might not be sufficient to deliver justice. On October 19, 2021, Chief Justice Martha Koome launched a model alternative justice system in Kajiado. Justice Joel Ngugi, who chaired the task force on Alternative Justice Systems, said the Kajiado model was developed at the invitation of the county government in an attempt to resolve numerous land disputes that were hampering development. Nine sections, one for each of the Maasai clans and an extra one for the cosmopolitan Ngong area, have recruited elder panels to hear disputes.

Ongoing battles to reclaim pastoralist rangelands are not unlike attempting to fetch water in a reed basket. They occur against the backdrop of ongoing trends to subdivide current holdings and subsequently sell them off.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Kitengela, Kajiado County, where the sub-division and privatisation of land has paved the way for increasing the built-up area and reduced the rangeland.

On the rim of the hilly border with Tanzania, elders in Torosei fear that their identity, culture and way of life is at risk because of the pressure to subdivide their land. The political leadership are not trusted to resolve the disputes over what to do with the group ranches: “Politicians have an interest in the group ranches’ being subdivided because they want to buy out the poorer members of,” says Daniel, a youth community leader.

Even before the advent of big money, climate changes had already forced the Maasai, who have lived in Kajiado and practised pastoralism over generations, to change their livelihood strategies. Within a generation, between 1977 and 2016, cattle numbers in Kajiado decreased by 42 per cent as goats and sheep numbers rose increased by 40 per cent. Small stocks require less feed, survive droughts better, and sell faster.

Pastoralists in the urban areas have been diversifying their livestock as well as their feeds. Many are keeping more than one breed of livestock, each for a different purpose — milk, fattening for sale and those considered resistant to harsh weather. Herd sizes are reducing, but the urban environment provides a easy market livestock and their products.

Urban dynamics have changed the customary practice of using communal resources to graze livestock during harsh weather conditions. Now, pastoralists negotiate access to grazing areas in industrial estates, public grounds and idle private land in residential areas to sustain their herds.

Urbanisation has not been all doom and gloom for pastoralism, according to Sylvia Rotich, one of the researchers working on the Rights and Resilience (RARE) project to investigate how climate change adaptation strategies are interacting with land needs, land conflicts and new land law reforms. Rotich, a doctoral degree candidate at the University of Nairobi, interviewed people in 72 households out of the total 232 in Olkramatian, Oldonyo-Orok and Kitengela group ranches on how they are coping with herding in their changed circumstances.

The project has brought together researchers from the University of Copenhagen, the Institute for Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Nairobi, the University of Roskilde, the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Despite the many challenges pastoralists in urban areas face, they strive to overcome climate change and urbanisation pressures. They are taking up jobs in various sectors and exploiting the urban populations as a market for their livestock and livestock products.

Urban pastoralists now use markets to gain pasture for their livestock, where some exchange their livestock for grazing areas. Livestock prices are better than before, and pastoralists now save time spent on accessing potable water, schooling, and employment.

New forms of mobility are being adopted to reduce the vulnerability of the livestock. Herds are split so that a portion moves to new pastures as the remainder is fed on stored fodder. Sometimes, entire households move with the whole herd, or split it so that some livestock is retained at home or left with friends and relatives while the rest is taken to pasture far away.

Although there are few cases of communal pooling and the use of leased land to graze livestock, urbanisation and the privatisation of land tenure is creating a more individual, transactional economy that replaces the collective one of yore. Wealthy households that own large land sizes have fenced their grazing fields into paddocks for use in times of scarcity. Well to do families also build hay stores and water storage facilities for use during drought. Their social-networks among their kinsmen and friends enable them to access pasture during droughts. However, reduced rangelands are forcing the poorer pastoralists to use only free access areas or to illegally graze their herds.

“Grazing lands that were previously available are difficult to access because of the growth of the urban population and the development of available spaces. Many pastoralists are forced to reduce their herds,” Rotich says.

Furthermore, monetary compensation from modernisation plans has not only whetted appetites to seek greater individual control over land, but is also eroding traditional livelihood practices and undermining productive commons.

Large-scale land purchases and leases block movement between the usual pastoralists’ grazing territories and foreign territories, which are especially critical during times of drought.

Once the land is under individual title, some people elect to sell or lease their portions to non-community members for uses other than livestock keeping. When such acquisitions involve the installation of physical barriers such as fences, ditches or development infrastructure that exclude livestock rearing, mobility is greatly limited because pastoralists have to use longer, unfamiliar routes.

Besides the sale of land for urban settlement, large scale leasing of rangelands is closing off migration corridors traditionally used by pastoralists. Although such large-scale land acquisitions represent an opportunity to transform rangelands, there are fears that encroaching on pastoralist lands could further marginalise and dispossess communities already reeling from the effects of climate change.

“Acquisition of lands traditionally used by pastoralists for livestock production have resulted in a demand for the privatisation of land by pastoralists as they seek to assert ownership through formal structures perceived as more secure,” says Jackson Waiganjo, who is studying climate change adaptation among pastoralists under the Rights and Resilience (RARE) project.

Waiganjo is one of several researchers working on the project, which examines how adaptation strategies interact with land needs, land conflicts, and new land law reforms.

In Kipeto area of Ngong, Kajiado County, where the group ranch was dissolved in 1984 and the land subdivided into individual lots, American conglomerate General Electric has been forking out an average Sh700 million a year in fees for leasing land on which the Kipeto Wind Farm stands.

Although there was an option to compulsorily acquire the 7,000 hectares – the size of Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi – the Kipeto Energy Consortium, chose instead to lease the land from individual owners who each hold between 50 and 200 hectares. Kipeto Energy has leased more than 60 plots within the Kipeto area where the wind turbines will stand, and for the transmission line. According to the company’s website, Kipeto Energy has also built 83 houses for landowners within the turbine footprint area.

For each hectare, the energy company pays Sh100,000 each year as lease fees; and it will pay more to landowners on whose property each of the 60 turbines have been erected.

The Sh35 billion project, financed by Overseas Private Investment Corporation  (Sh25.2 billion and Actis and Craftskills Wind Energy International (Sh9.5 billion) has also built a 220 kV high-voltage line that transports electricity from the site to the Isinya substation in Kajiado.

Land owners expressed fears that the turbines would each occupy over 500 metres of actual physical space when erected, making that portion of their land inaccessible. However, Kipeto Energy clarified that while national noise regulations require a 500-metre buffer zone from each turbine, the community could graze their livestock and grow crops within the space but could not build houses or any other structures. Subsequently, Kipeto Energy has built ‘predator-proof’ bomas in selected areas to demonstrate how to protect livestock from wildlife.

Rural pastoralist adaptation to climate change has largely depended on access to vast tracts of land, strong social networks, and social institutions that regulate access to resources. Where rangeland is occupied by non-pastoralists, with attendant non-pastoralist activity, access for grazing is restricted. Some pastoralists may adapt to this situation by communally pooling their herds, but spaces for moving livestock are declining thus placing pastoralism at the crossroads.

Privatisation of land has also collapsed the sense of community around common goods such as rivers, where sand harvesting at places like the Turoka river in the Kenya Marble Quarry town is frenetic. Subdivision and titling of the Elangatwas group ranch in Mile 46 was completed in 2006, but it left a host of dispossessed individuals, especially widows whose land was seized and allocated to clans, and some lost through corruption.

The launch of the model alternative justice system in Kajiado signals a return to basics in the search for justice on the intractable issues of land in the area.

Alternative Justice System Best Bet to Settle Feuds over Land Privatisation