A regional body recently released programmes incorporating marginalised pastoral communities into the mainstream economies.

The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) says that since the pastoral regions are the key to cross-border trade and regional integration, it would be foolhardy to exclude them. 

At a meeting at a Nairobi hotel, Igad top officials led by the Deputy-Executive Secretary, Mohamed Ware released the results of the study of the pastoral region’s 2021 resilience agenda.

The Igad Drought Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (IDDRSI) released a programme to improve the region’s arid and semi-arid areas lands (ASAL) through simultaneous inter-country interventions. 

They include programmes in three clusters; Karamoja, Mandera and Moyale, to build resilience for food and nutrition security, cross-border market systems, and resilient dryland markets.

These projects ease the economic and social problems of the communities in the region’s 70 percent arid and semi-arid lands. The Turkana, the Somalis and the Pokot in Kenya, the Toposa in South Sudan, and the Karamoja in Uganda are often perceived as belligerents.

The ASALs are often associated with floods, drought and conflicts in the borders of Kenya, South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda and Ethiopia. Yet the pastoralists in these regions hold the key to cross-border trade and regional integration despite being marginalised. 

The pastoral communities occupying almost 80 percent of the land mass in many member states are the driving force behind regional integration.


Development plans in any of the countries in the eastern region often do not factor in the contribution of the pastoral areas despite occupying the biggest land mass, livestock and wildlife population.

In Kenya for instance, the pastoralists who domicile the arid and semi-arid areas commonly known as ASAL occupy over 80 percent of the landmass.
They comprise nearly 39 percent of the Kenyan population, and are home to about 90 percent of wildlife and pastoral wealth, embodying over 75 percent of the county’s livestock.

“I was born and raised in a border area (between Somalia and Ethiopia), and have seen the challenges and opportunities in cross-border living from an early age. I have lived through and witnessed security, humanitarian, political and economic challenges,” said the Igad Deputy Executive Secretary, Mohamed Ware.

He said that border communities must be resilient because they have no choice other than to trade with each other. He called upon regional governments not to view the cattle rustling and other cross-border skirmishes negatively,  but  as a call for policies to harness these potential areas

“The strong arm of the law, periodic incursions of heavily armed security forces are sometimes the only meaningful interaction with government authorities, and they often leave misunderstanding, resentment and hostility behind,” said Mr Ware.

The Igad partner states and professionals discussed how to streamline cross-border resilience programmes for the Karamoja, Mandera and Moyale clusters covering five countries; Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, South Sudan and Somalia. 

These include the transformation of the livestock sector; animal feed security; health for humans, and animals, climate change, conflict and pastoral mobility.

Border communities, in large part, are pastoralists and Agro pastoralists, who depend on unreliable and erratic rainfall. They are often victims of the extreme climate impact, endure cycles of drought and floods, in the same year, and sometimes several times. 

Often neglected and marginalised by distant capitals and upcountry elites, they are viewed with suspicion and condescension. They hardly interact with government officials, but in rare cases, the officials come in helicopters or in a heavily armed convoy, leaving them intimidated.

This forces them to live by their wits, their resourcefulness, their solidarity and their understanding of their environment. With limited infrastructure in border areas, humanitarian and relief efforts are often too little and too late.

 The border communities are often caught in the margins of two or more countries, with policing and security services not adequate, borderlands often are hideouts of criminal elements, and communities in these areas are victims of banditry, livestock rustling, arms trafficking, racketeering and other forms of criminality. 

The Pokot and Turkana in Kenya have been in constant conflict with Toposa in South Sudan and Karamoja in Uganda over water and pasture, yet these communities are on the frontline of regional integration.

Peter Lokeris, the Ugandan Minister for Karamoja Affairs said that it is important that regional governments find a way of bringing these communities together because they share resources, culture and language bit only divided by “imaginary” borders. 

He said that the solution is to initiate income-generating programmes in these areas.  “In Karamoja, we are building two cement factories which are critically placed along the borders that can attract even communities from Kenya. We are also doing roads, water projects and working with Kenya and cross-border security,” said Mr Lokeris, himself a descendant of Karamoja.

Kello Harsama, the Kenyan Principal Secretary at the Ministry of East African Community, the ASAL and Regional Development, said that Kenya has embarked on collaborative efforts with Uganda based on the MOU signed in Moroto in 2019. 

The objective of the MOU is to accord communities on both sides of the border opportunities for better cooperation, cross coordination and peaceful co-existence and bridge isolation gaps to improve livelihoods and socio-economic conditions for sustainable peace and development.

“Due to the fragility of the ASALs, communities have been conflicting over natural resources and in particular water and pasture. This scenario has been exacerbated by the effects of climate change. Kenya is in the process of reviewing the MOU with Ethiopia and initiating fresh MOU between Kenya and Somalia and South Sudan,” he said. 

The Igad meeting resolved that resilience programmes and investments in these areas should be based on the understanding that communities are homogenous, share common resources, livelihoods, cultures and interact freely, irrespective of international boundaries.

This is due to economic opportunities created by cross-border markets and trade and bilateral and multilateral agreements among regional states.

With the growing population in borderlands, Igad Member States are gradually addressing the root causes of marginalisation and extreme poverty through various programmes.

These include; improved infrastructure due to regional integration and state intervention, trans-Africa transport facility, access to mobile telephones, revitalised local institutions, decentralisation, and democratisation processes.

Mr Ware said that states at the local and national levels need political goodwill, cooperation, and partnership to secure their borders for the essential mandate of economic and political integration
He said that border communities with their close social and economic ties across countries, are vital for cross-border trade, movement of people and money, and are the cornerstone for economic cooperation across member state borders. 

“Economic and political integration, if it is to be sustainable, must involve border communities, take their challenges and concerns into consideration, and make them the principal stakeholders in that enterprise,” said Mr Ware.