ABSTRACT
This chapter provides greater insights into the likely impacts of land deals on pastoralist production and livelihoods by focusing on the Tana Delta, a large wet rangeland ecosystem in eastern Kenya that is ground zero for many deals that are in the pipeline. The impacts of land deals on pastoralists are socially differentiated and need to be understood in the context of broader changes in the political economy of drylands and pastoralist responses to such change. While land expropriation by the state in Kenya’s drylands is a historical phenomenon, the scale of recent and proposed land deals is unprecedented. The deals involve a range of investors, both domestic and foreign, state and non-state, to acquire high-value pockets of land and resources in drylands for plantation agriculture, the establishment of settlement schemes, wildlife conservation and tourism, and mining.
