ETHNO-ECONOMY OF CONFLICTS AMONG PASTORALISTS OF KENYA

Ethnicity is a powerful recipe for economic competition among pastoralist groups and with their neighbours. Ethnicity is often capitalized in the struggle for power which is directly related to control of scarce resources. Pastoralists attach a lot of value to their livestock which entirely depend on the land for survival. In the colonial era, pastoralists were pushed to marginal areas to create room for white settlers; this has led to the cry for the correction of historical injustices in the post-colonial Kenya. Wildlife conservation has become a controversial venture in pastoral areas, because revenue collected seldom reaches the communities who happen to live side by side with the wild animals partly because of pastoral elites. This has led to resistance to conservation measures instituted by the government and thus causing conflicts between pastoral groups and the government. Pastoralists often tend to think, the government attaches more value to the wild animals compared to them. Pastoral lifestyles often require large tracts of land to prosper, with the diminishing land size and increased population pastoral livelihoods are threatened and therefore leads to more conflicts related to land use. This paper therefore elaborates on the correlation between ethnicity, land and wildlife resources with ethnic conflicts in Transmara District of Narok County, Kenya.