Baringo County
Rift Valley pastoralism faces climate squeeze—feedlots replace traditional mobility as cattle rustling intensifies. By 2026: commercialization works or pastoral crisis deepens.
Baringo exists because the Rift Valley exists—specifically, the semi-arid lowlands flanking Lake Baringo and Lake Bogoria where pastoralism remains viable despite increasingly hostile climate. The Tugen, Pokot, Ilchamus, and Endorois peoples developed livestock systems adapted to these margins: goats, sheep, cattle, camels, and the beekeeping that produces some of Kenya's finest honey.
For generations, the pastoral economy functioned through mobility—moving herds to follow seasonal pastures across vast rangelands. But climate change, land fragmentation, and conflict have compressed this system. Cattle rustling, once a culturally mediated practice, has evolved into violent banditry fueled by small arms proliferation. The lowlands experience cycles of drought, displacement, and recovery that grow more severe with each iteration.
2025 finds Baringo adapting through intensification. The government's ASAL (Arid and Semi-Arid Lands) feedlot program established facilities at Chemogoch, aiming to commercialize livestock that previously wandered vast distances. Fodder production emerges as a new enterprise—pastoral households growing grass for sale as rangeland quality declines. The county hosts Kenya Livestock Commercialization Project interventions running through March 2027.
The county exhibits classic pastoral transition dynamics: traditional mobility giving way to sedentarization, extensive systems intensifying, communal resources fragmenting into individual holdings. By 2026, Baringo tests whether feedlots and fodder can replace traditional pastoral strategies—or whether the economics of commercial livestock prove as unreliable as the rains.