ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how the actors including institutions and the state in the livestock industry in Africa interact with each other and the ecosystem, and how these interactions have created and maintained inequalities among actors in the meat industry. Understanding the African political setting in which the political ecology of meat is a necessary prerequisite to the understanding of this subject matter. Using a political ecology lens to look at multiple perspectives of livestock and meat production and trade in Eastern Africa, this review has demonstrated that the position of a state in authoritarian-democracy continuum can help inform the type of markets, institutions, property rights and structures that govern them. This Domestic meat consumption study has demonstrated that in Kenya, and possibly other eastern African countries, characterized by competitive authoritarianism, the livestock and meat markets have been ignored by the state, which provides minimal budgetary and infrastructure support, and which promotes predatory meat businesses such as the private beef ranches.
