Kajiado County
Maasai grazing lands became Nairobi's sprawl zone—group ranches subdivided from 56 to 10 since independence. By 2026: conservancy economics or subdivision wins.
Kajiado exists because the Maasai exist—and because Nairobi needed space to expand. This semi-arid savanna stretching south from the capital has been Maasai grazing land for centuries, organized around group ranches that managed communal access to seasonal pastures. The British formalized these boundaries while restricting Maasai movement; independence maintained the system while slowly eroding it through subdivision.
The transformation accelerated dramatically after 2000. Nairobi's southward sprawl consumed Athi River, Kitengela, and increasingly Ngong. Roads, railways, and power lines fragmented wildlife corridors. Electric fences went up. The 56 group ranches that once covered the county shrank to 10. Land subdivision replaced traditional pastoral risk-sharing with individual ownership—sometimes enriching title holders, often impoverishing those whose communal access disappeared.
Today Kajiado embodies Kenya's deepest tensions: wildlife tourism versus pastoral livelihoods, Nairobi expansion versus conservation, individual title versus communal land rights. Amboseli National Park generates tourism revenue, but corridors connecting it to the Maasai Mara are fragmenting. Private conservancies in Central Kajiado and Athi-Kapiti struggle to balance wildlife with livestock, often losing when funding flows to "headline-grabbing projects" elsewhere.
The 2025 Wildlife Conservation and Management Bill offers potential reform, but ground truth tells a different story: every year, more fences, more subdivisions, more corridors lost. By 2026, Kajiado's trajectory depends on whether private conservancy models can prove economically competitive with real estate subdivision—a race between ecosystem value and land speculation that the Maasai didn't start and cannot stop alone.