Land and Conflict in Kenya’s Rift Valley

Conflict in Kenya's Rift Valley has been common from the early colonial period to the present. Such conflict, while frequent across Kenya, has tended to be concentrated in the Rift Valley Province. In this region, more than other parts of the country, colonial land policies created a default mode of land relations that marginalized local African communities and their modes of production by restricting their access to the most important resource in these processes—land. While emphasizing exclusion, this colonial mode generated contradictions in the economic, political, and social spheres that in turn bred conflict and bloody encounters over land between the government and the local communities, as well as between communities. This process has persisted into the postcolonial times, sometimes aided by the independent government that has presided over a troubled land reform program since 1963. Following the decolonization of the former White Highlands in the 1960s, the agriculturally productive parts of Kenya's Rift Valley has remained a terrain for contesting land rights, ethnic identity, and accessibility to national politics. Land has occupied a central place in this area so much so that it has remained the most "politicized" region in Kenya, as attested to by cycles of political violence that have mired the province every election cycle since the late 1980s, and particularly following the bungled 2007 general elections.KeywordsRift ValleyEthnic CommunityEuropean SettlementNational PoliticsColonial GovernmentThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves

Archaeology · Colonialism · Development economics · Economics · Geography · Government (linguistics) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Rift valley · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · African history and culture studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Law

• Integrating evidence of land use and land cover change for land management policy formulation along the Kenya-Tanzania borderlands

  Open Access•C J Courtney Mustaphi, Claudia Capitani et al.•Anthropocene•2019

  Añadir item

• A local to global perspective on oil and wind exploitation, resource governance and conflict in Northern Kenya

  Open Access•Johannes Schilling, Janpeter Schilling et al.•Conflict Security and Development•2018

  Añadir item

• Origins of European settlement in Kenya

  Maurice Peter Keith Sorrenson•Origins of European settlement in…•1968

  Añadir item

• Kenya from Within

  Ross W McGregor•Kenya from Within•2012

  Añadir item

• Mungiki as youth movement

  Open Access•John Rasmussen•Young•2010

  Añadir item

• Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa

  Ralph A Austen, E A Brett•The American Historical Review•1974

  Añadir item

• The Maasai and the British 1895–1905 the Origins of an Alliance

  Open Access•Richard Waller•The Journal of African History•1976

  Añadir item

• Coping with the Contradictions

  Open Access•John Lonsdale, Bruce J Berman et al.•The Journal of African History•1979

  Añadir item

• Revisiting Our Indigenous Shrines Through Mungiki

  Grace Nyatugah Wamue•African Affairs•2001

  Añadir item

• Land and Class in Kenya

  Patricia Stamp, Christopher Leo•International Journal Canada s…•1985

  Añadir item

• The Kikuyu and Kamba of Kenya

  P H Gulliver, J Middleton et al.•Man•1966

  Añadir item