Pastoral production in colonial Kenya: lessons from the past?

Abstract: This article examines the troubled course of attempts to modernize and control pastoral production in Kenya over the last hundred years. It begins with an overview of changes in pastoralism to provide context and then gives more detailed consideration to the failure of colonial attempts to manage livestock resources. Finally, it discusses recent developments in relation to the past. It argues that study of pastoralism's past offers valuable lessons and provides insights into its present and possible future. Resume: Cet article examine les difficultes rencontrees au cours des tentatives de modernisation et de controle de la production pastorale au Kenya au cours des cent dernieres annees. Il commence par une vue d'ensemble sur les transformations progressives des pratiques pastorales pour fournir un contexte historique, et se penche ensuite sur des considerations plus detaillees concernant les echecs des tentatives coloniales de gestion des ressources en betail. Pour finir, cet article evalue les developpements recents en comparaison avec les pratiques du passe. Il soutient que l'etude de l'histoire du pastoralisme offre des lecons utiles ainsi qu'un apercu de son evolution presente et de son potentiel futur. In a critical study of the livestock industry in Kenya and Tanzania, Philip Raikes (1981) argued that the development policies of the independent states were still following parameters set in the colonial period, encountering the same problems and repeating many of the same errors, but at a much higher cost. His conclusions were not surprising. Both infrastructure and policies had been inherited from the late colonial state and were the outcome of repeated but unsuccessful attempts since the 1920s to modernize and "improve" the pastoral economy and to increase its productivity. Taking the long view of pastoralism is essential. Unless we take account of pastoralism 's past, we will not be able to understand its present or chart its future. Only in historical perspective can we see how pastoralism has changed and adapted to its environment, despite its alleged "conservatism." Particularly, to assume that the colonial experience is more or less irrelevant to modern development planning is a dangerous mistake, for it was during the colonial period that the assumed dichotomy between "traditional" pastoralism and a "modern" livestock sector, which has underpinned much development thinking until recently, emerged. Moreover, colonialism created, in its archival record, an inventory of ideas, interventions, and outcomes that repays study by those who seek to move in new directions. This article suggests that there are lessons to be learned from past experience. It begins with an overview of changes in pastoralism in the last two hundred years to provide context and then gives more detailed consideration to the failure of colonial attempts to manage livestock resources. Finally, it discusses postcolonial developments in relation to the past. Pastoral ism's Past From perhaps the eighteenth century onward, pastoralists were at the center of a complex regional system based on complementarities between different ecological niches and types of subsistence production. Communities were linked by exchange relations based on mutual dependence and advantage. Pastoralists needed access to agricultural produce to make up for shortfalls in the milk supply of their herds; cultivators invested their surplus in livestock that acted as a durable and reproducible store of wealth and as the means to household growth and accumulation. Hunter-gatherers added forest products to the exchange networks. Types of production were rarely exclusive and households shifted between them. Some cultivators maintained close links to the forest; some stock-owners grew crops seasonally where they could. Pastoralists themselves kept a variety of animals - cattle, sheep, and goats, and in the more arid north, camels - with different grazing preferences, resilience to disease and drought, and reproductive rates in order to maximize resource exploitation (Waller & Sobania 1994). …