Every weekend, Kenyans gather around fires and tables for nyama choma—the sizzle of goat meat at roadside joints, the shared platters in clubs, the deals struck over a leg of lamb. Few consider where the meat originated.
Most livestock comes from Kenya’s drylands, raised by herders whose children study under trees and whose savings disappear during droughts. These regions have been overlooked for generations. The country consumes the product but has never supported the people who produce it.
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The numbers behind the neglect
The drylands cover over 80% of Kenya’s territory and house 16 million people. They hold 70% of the national livestock herd and 90% of its wildlife. Pastoral livestock accounts for 5-6% of GDP—more than tea, coffee, and horticulture combined. Yet the current budget allocates only 2.3 billion shillings to the DRIVE program for these economies, while tea and coffee, contributing roughly 2% of GDP, received over 6.5 billion shillings in cherry funds, debt waivers, and factory upgrades.
The disparity stems from decades of policy that ignored pastoralism. Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 directed investment to “high-potential” areas, reinforcing inequality that began under colonial rule. National accounts track products, not how they are produced. Pastoralism’s output, often consumed locally or traded informally across borders, remains invisible in data that shape Treasury decisions. Tea and coffee, meanwhile, are licensed, weighed, auctioned, and taxed. Their visibility ensures fiscal attention.
The effects are clear. Credit facilities require collateral in economies where wealth is measured in livestock. Drought insurance reaches only a small portion of the 1.73 million pastoral households. Just seven of Kenya’s roughly 1,000 slaughterhouses meet international export standards, so meat exports remain below 20 billion shillings. The country exports raw hides at low prices and imports second-hand shoes. When investments fail to materialize, the lack of results is used to argue that pastoral areas “can’t absorb” funding—ignoring that the systems were never designed for these economies.
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A cycle of crisis and recovery
The cost of this neglect is measurable. The 2020-2023 drought killed over 2.6 million livestock and left 4.4 million Kenyans in acute food insecurity. A previous drought, from 2008 to 2011, drained 968.6 billion shillings from the economy. Each cycle follows the same pattern: emergency relief, costly recovery, and then a return to underinvestment. Building resilience before a drought would cost far less than responding afterward.
Insecurity worsens the problem. Cattle rustling and resource conflicts in northern counties consume large security budgets. Exclusion fuels recruitment into these cycles. Markets, roads, and livelihoods could reduce conflict more effectively than security operations—if they existed.
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Kenya has shown it can solve such challenges. Horticulture receives almost no direct subsidy but earns over 150 billion shillings in annual exports. Its success came from infrastructure: airfreight capacity, phytosanitary systems, and negotiated market access. Pastoral livestock, a sector more than twice horticulture’s size, has received none of these.
The real measure of Kenya’s commitment to equity isn’t found in campaign speeches or weekend gatherings. It lies in the budget for the herder who lit the fire.
