The Kenyan government’s misguided and costly investments in big infrastructure projects are compromising the nation’s socio-economic transformation. Meanwhile, elite-driven opportunism has suffocated intellectual debate that once characterised the flow of ideas in this part of the world. The time is ripe for a Big Conversation.
For five decades after Kenya's independence, northern Kenya's political elite blamed the region’s underdevelopment on the central government’s failure to allocate adequate resources. Yet eight years after devolution, the level of development does not match the resources that have been allocated to the region.
To trace the history of the transport of a single commodity like miraa into Marsabit is to watch a slow and organic change in the market, in social and economic dynamics, and in the culture of the people.
Mutual deep-seated xenophobic sentiments define the relationship between Northern pastoralists and Southern agriculturalists. In this final part of a three-part series, Dalle Abraham argues that it will take more than religious tolerance and developmental interventions to bridge the vast spiritual and psychological schism between North and South.
In this second part of a three-part series, DALLE ABRAHAM argues that the new mega infrastructure investments fueled by LAPSSET are a continuation of the perverse state policies on Northern Kenya adopted by post-colonial governments.
The Kenyan media has continuously pilloried the North through freeze-framing it as a region where nothing good can or does happen. In this first part of a three-part series, DALLE ABRAHAM examines the role the media continues to play in reinforcing lies and stereotypes about a much-maligned and misunderstood territory and its people.
Proponents of wildlife conservancies in Northern Kenya argue that they provide a win-win situation for both conservation and pastoralist communities. However, the current push to establish more conservancies in the region may backfire and lead to more conflict.
This is the journal of the journeys of a Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) team studying natural resource management in Marsabit District. Our mission - to assess environmental degradation, and how sedentarisation may be contributing to desertification around settlements and on the range.
I was hardly thirteen when I was hurriedly married off to a 50-year-old man. I do not remember feeling more betrayed in my life. Family members came from far and wide, so our home was abuzz with activity. All this while, my cousins, siblings and I were all in the dark on what the ceremony was about.
High and Low, or Down and Out? Writing in The East African back in 1997, John Githongo described a visit to Mathare Valley. The tour began with the stone structures bordering Juja Road housing and proceeded to pass through successive strata of wood, iron sheet, and finally composite scrap and plastic houses. The number of […]
