Economic and Political Reform in Africa: Anthropological Perspectives

6: “Counting the Poor”: The Politics of Pastoralist Poverty Assessments in Kenya

6 “counting the Poor” The Politics of Pastoralist Poverty Assessments in Kenya Ethiopia’s expensive and expansive PsnP activity is a product of a new approach to poverty alleviation that uses both safety net and pro-market interventions to protect the poor, as well as to promote smallholder commercial agriculture . The implementation of Poverty Reduction strategy Plans (PRsPs) in Ethiopia and other poor countries was an implicit admission that more had to be done to help the poor benefit from market-based economic growth (see discussion in introduction ). to include the poor in development programs as required by PRsPs, it was necessary to identify who the poor actually are. This new, more humanistic approach to economic reform required that poverty be measured, mapped, and monitored. in the words of maia Green, “poverty becomes not only a problem of the poor, but also their responsibility,” and hence governments and donor agencies sought ways to measure, audit, and ensure compliance by the poor (2006: 1118). in this chapter, i examine the issue of poverty among pastoralist populations in northern Kenya, a subpopulation that always registers high on national poverty radars. counter to common orthodoxy, the materials presented here suggest that pastoralist poverty has been grossly exaggerated, in part to justify programs for settling and transforming herders into sedentary (“modern”) citizens. a failure in poverty analyses to distinguish between settled ex-pastoralists, who ofen are desperately poor and hungry, and those who still actively practice pastoralism is at the core of the problem. mobile pastoralists have always presented a dilemma for the modern nation state—and, i might add, for many development agencies as well. Rationales for transforming them into settled agrarian subjects are eagerly sought. it will be shown how neoliberalism’s dual agenda of pro-poor economic growth and accountability facilitates a flawed understanding of poverty in pastoral areas that results in misdirected policies. Recall the discussion in the previous chapter of the ways in which misunderstandings about food aid dependency in Ethiopia justified drastic actions by the state, including the resettlement of the poor. in this chapter i also explore the power of labeling and how it can be used to disempower already politically marginalized groups, such as pastoralists , and intervene to force changes among them. 141 142 | Economic and Political Reform in Africa a comparative study of pastoral livelihoods in six different sites representing five different ethnic groups in northern Kenya, will show that most poverty in the region is associated with ex-pastoralists and other nonpastoralists rather than herders who still practice mobile pastoralism. By mislabeling pastoralists as desperately poor and blaming pastoralism for producing poverty and environmental problems, the Kenyan government is empowered to introduce radical alternatives , such as turning herders into farmers through sedentarization schemes, converting their lands into conservation or irrigation schemes, or selling off their lands to foreign investors. to borrow from James scott, these painful actions make herders “legible” to governments and enable them to pursue modern livelihoods (scott 1998). The association of mobile pastoralism with poverty also underlies state efforts to control and administer them, both strong challenges for many african states since at least the onset of colonialism. The “Poverty industry” an increased focus on measuring (auditing) poverty as part of policy reform programs is widespread throughout africa, not just in pastoralist areas of East africa . for instance, the World Bank and other development agencies recently have funded massive surveys, such as the living standards and measurement survey (lsms), to identify and quantify poverty in many african countries as part of ongoing structural adjustment Programs (saPs). as a result, a virtual industry of research centers, consultants, and publications devoted to identifying, measuring, and monitoring poverty in africa has emerged in Europe, the United states, and africa. Evidence of the current popularity of the african poverty theme to academics and others is the fact that a recent issue of the prestigious U.s. science journal Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences (PNAS) includes a special section on sustainability and global poverty that is solely devoted to african poverty research. The coeditors in their introduction claim that “understanding african exceptionalism and contributing to its reduction is one of the grand challenges of sustainability science” (Kates and dasgupta 2007: 16747). Editorial actions and statements like these imply that the scale and depth of poverty in the region is comparatively unusual and a challenge both to scholars and practitioners. for noble scientists wishing to study and try to alleviate global poverty, africa therefore provides an...