Loss of fertile land fuels a ‘looming crisis’ for Africa
Population growth, erosion, poaching applying pressure.
LAIKIPIA, KENYA — The two elders, wearing weather-beaten cowboy hats with the strings cinched under their chins, stood at the edge of an empty farm, covering their mouths in disbelief.
Their homes — neat wooden cabins — had been smashed open. All their cattle had been stolen. So had their chickens. House after house stood vacant, without another soul around. It was as if some huge force had barreled into the village and swept away all the life.
Sioyia Lesinko Lekisio, one of the elders, had no doubts who did this. Swarms of herders from another county had invaded, attacking any farm or cattle ranch in their path, big or small, stealing livestock, ransacking homes and shooting people with high-powered assault rifles.
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” he said. “They want our land.”
Kenya has a land problem. Africa itself has a land problem. The continent seems so vast — but in a way, that is an illusion.
Population growth, climate change, soil degradation, erosion, poaching, global food prices and even the benefits of affluence are exerting incredible pressure on African land. They are fueling conflicts across the continent, from Nigeria in the west to Kenya in the east — including here in Laikipia, a wildlife haven.
Large groups of people are on the move, desperate for usable land. Data from NASA satellites reveals an overwhelming degradation of agricultural land throughout Africa, with one recent study showing that more than 40 million Africans are trying to survive off land whose agricultural potential is declining.
At the same time, high birthrates and lengthening life spans mean that by the end of this century, there could be as many as 4 billion people on the continent, about 10 times the population 40 years ago.
It is a two-headed problem, scientists and activists say, and it could be one of the gravest challenges Africa faces: The quality of farmland in many areas is getting worse, and the number of people squeezed onto that land is rising fast.
“It’s a looming crisis,” said Odenda Lumumba, head of the Kenya Land Alliance, a group that works on land reform. “We are basically reaching the end of the road.”
New pressures
More than in any other region of the world, people in Africa live off the land. Seventy percent of Africa’s population makes a living through agriculture, higher than on any other continent, the World Bank says. But as the population rises, with more siblings competing for their share of the family farm, the slices are getting thinner.
A changing climate makes things even harder. Scientists say large stretches of Africa are drying up, and they predict more desertification, drought and hunger. This year, famine is pushing more than 10 million people in Somalia, Nigeria and South Sudan to the brink of starvation.
But much of Africa’s farmland is in danger for another, perhaps simpler, reason: overuse. Fast-growing populations mean that many African families can’t afford to let land sit fallow and replenish. They have to take every inch of their land and farm or graze it constantly, making it difficult to grow crops.
The fact that several of Africa’s biggest economies have grown impressively in the past 10 years may seem like an answer, but analysts say the newfound affluence may actually compound these pressures.
As people gain wealth, they consume more — more energy, more water and usually more meat, all of which intensify the pressures on the environment. In the past 15 years, the number of cows in Kenya has shot up by more than 60 percent to around 20 million, driving a scramble for grazing lands.
Farmland is also rapidly vanishing into housing tracts and shopping centers to serve Africa’s growing and more affluent population.
And then there’s the battle to protect Africa’s wildlife. Wildlife habitats are being threatened across the continent, in great part because of new farms and new fences, and activists say something drastic needs to be done to protect endangered species.
Laikipia County, a few hours’ drive north of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, is a microcosm of many of these complicated issues. On this one rugged plateau, poor herders, rich landowners, large- and small-scale farmers, commercial cattle ranchers, tour operators, passionate wildlife activists, elephants, lions, hyenas, cows, goats and zebras are all competing for the same space.
People have always fought over territory, and Laikipia is no exception. But many residents say this past year has been the bloodiest ever. At least 80 people have been killed, and in mid-July, a large group of herders killed a halfdozen police officers and stole their weapons.
“These ideas of land-abundant Africa are increasingly outdated,” said Thomas Jayne, a leading agricultural economist based at Michigan State University. “Land disputes are going to become more and more common, and more and more severe.”
“Laikipia,” said Jayne, who conducts research across the continent, “is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Cracking down
This past year, waves of young pastoralists from neighboring counties, moving in groups armed with AK-47 assault rifles, have invaded dozens of farms and ranches, bringing tens of thousands of skinny, ragged cows from drought-stricken areas.
The Kenyan government has deployed hundreds of police officers and soldiers, declaring parts of Laikipia “dangerous and disturbed,” which is like a local state of emergency that gives officers more power to crack down on invaders.
But Laikipia’s farmers say they’ve never seen such timid men in uniform. So they sometimes confront the herders themselves.
Tristan Voorspuy, a former British military officer, lived on a ranch that was invaded in March. The security forces were doing little to help him, so he rode on horseback to the young trespassers in hopes of asking them to leave.
The men shot him in the face. They killed his horse.
The next month, Kuki Gallmann, the Italian-born author of the best-selling book “I Dreamed of Africa” and one of Kenya’s celebrities, was rumbling across the Laikipia Nature Conservancy, one of Kenya’s biggest pieces of privately owned land. Gallmann, 74, has set aside the expanse for protecting wildlife like elephants, leopards, lions and buffaloes, as well as rare species of trees and plant.
As she drove, with a contingent of armed wildlife rangers behind her, shots rang out. Several bullets flew threw Gallmann’s car door and tore into her stomach. She remains at her Nairobi home, convalescing, with severe internal injuries. She said many of the recent invaders came with no livestock, and she called them a militia.
Black-white issue?
On social media and in popular gathering spots, when some Kenyans talk about the crisis, one word keeps coming up: “mzungu,” which means “foreigner” or, more commonly, “white man.”
Some Kenyans see Laikipia’s land problems as a blackwhite issue because most of the biggest ranches and wildlife conservancies are owned by a handful of families of European descent. Kenyans have complained about the size of the white-owned farms, saying many were stolen or unfairly acquired from Africans during colonial times. Some people in Kenya, black and white, are now making comparisons to Zimbabwe, where the government seized land from wealthy whites.
Some white families wonder about staying.
“For the first time ever, you get that vibe that you’re a mzungu — what are you doing here?” said Anne Powys, on another Laikipia ranch. “It’s a bit grandiose to think we can continue to live like this when thousands of people out there don’t have any land.”
“We’re white people in a black country,” she said. “If we’re not welcome, what’s the point?”
Trespassing pastoralists in Laikipia, who were brazenly grazing their herds on others’ land, said they weren’t necessarily targeting whites. Instead, they said they simply needed grass to keep their herds alive.
“We know taking another man’s land is like taking his wife,” said Parashuno Lekadero, a herder who stood on a farm in Laikipia that he had recently invaded.
There were no police officers for miles, and he spoke confidently and openly, knowing he had little chance of getting in trouble.
“There’s a drought,” he said. “We have many animals. We need the land.”