Globalization and Its Impact on the Maasai Pastoralists of Kenya

[SIZE=6]Globalization and Its Impact on the Maasai Pastoralists of Kenya[/SIZE]
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Koissaba Ole

Abstract.

Globalization both as a political and economic system has had its fair share of both positive and negative impacts on the lives and livelihoods of pastoralists communities in East Africa and especially the Maasai. The coming of the colonialists in the late 1800s and beginningof 1900s ushered in a new and devastating century long governance and economic system which was not in tandem with the indigenous systems that supported the mainstay of the pastoralists’
communities; which relied on keeping large herds of both small and large stock for localconsumption and indigenous economy system. Land alienation through forceful acquisition, treaties and legislations introduced privatization of land which was alien to the Maasai and occasioned massive dispossession of land and other natural resources and not creating an enabling environment for alternative livelihoods for the Maasai both in Kenya and Tanzania. The advent of Structural Adjustment Programs advanced by the World Bank further occasioned more alienation by privatization of institutions that would have otherwise helped the pastoralists in production, processing and marketing of livestock and livestock products. Free market and multinational environmental conventions have added to the list of global forces that are impacting the lives and livelihoods of the Maasai Pastoralist in East Africa.

This paper looks athow global forces have contributed both in redefining policies on economic productivity, resource (land) ownership; and the systemic dispossession and marginalization of the Maa speaking pastoralists.

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