Kenya's Geographic and Political Rift

28 January 2008 BBC

Good article about the historical Whys of the tribal conflicts

A Nairobi-based academic said The Rift Valley is also the center of a political and ethnic divide in Kenya. So it is no coincidence, historians and academics say that Rift Valley towns like Nakuru and Naivasha have exploded in the wake of Kenya's disputed elections. They say that while the dispute over the elections is clearly political the root cause of some of the violence is hunger for fertile land. And that land hunger is expressed, in poor communities, through ethnicity or tribe. The Rift Valley was dominated, before the advent of large scale commercial farming by ethnic Masaai herders and Kalenjin people.

Historic Resentment

"The Masaai were displaced in late 19th Century by British settlers. The cooler and more fertile parts of the Rift Valley were part of what became known as the "White Highlands" of Kenya. "When independence came," "the departing white farmers were replaced not by Masaai, but to a large extent by politically well-connected Kikuyus." This displacement and historic resentment is part of the root of today's violence.

The Kikuyu are the largest and most economically-dominant ethnic group in Kenya. They organized most successfully against the British in the Mau Mau rebellion and later through elections so they won the first fruits of independence. They have been at the heart of the violence in Rift Valley towns like Naivasha and Nakuru - as both perpetrators and victims.

But the Nairobi-based academic said it was far from being a simple matter of ethnicity. "Focussing on the Kikuyu is easy," he said "but it's really about deep, long-running income inequalities in Kenya" - and a rapidly growing population which sees land ownership as a means of survival. Rich and politically well-connected members of the Masaai community, had benefited from land ownership in the Rift Valley as well as Kikuyus.