Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine policies and programs regarding ‘development’ that are used to undermine pastoral land holding, and the resilience shown by pastoral communities in defending their land rights or responding to land loss. Examples will be drawn from Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, with reference to the Sudan and Somalia.

Paper long abstract:

Land reform has rarely benefitted the pastoral inhabitants of the East African rangelands, as promises of security of tenure have been rearticulated as reasons for appropriating the drylands for conservation and commercial agriculture. Notwithstanding the significant contribution of herding operations to national and export markets, pastoral land rights are threatened by neoliberal land grabs justified by self-serving arguments favoring commercial and conservationist interests. This paper will examine policies and programs regarding 'development' that are used to undermine pastoral land holding, and the resilience shown by pastoral communities in defending their land rights or responding to land loss. Examples will be drawn from Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, with reference to the Sudan and Somalia. Contrast will be made between cases where land appropriation has emanated from initiatives for neoliberal allocations to commercial interests by central governments (e.g. Ethiopia, Tanzania) claiming land sovereignty, or from the dynamics of land markets (as in Kenya) manipulated by similar commercial or conservation interests.