IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wodepe/v14y2019ic7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Livestock-wealth inequalities and uptake of crop cultivation among the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania

Author

Listed:
  • Nkedianye, David K.
  • Ogutu, Joseph O.
  • Said, Mohammed Y.
  • Kifugo, Shem
  • de Leeuw, Jan
  • Van Gardingen, Paul
  • Reid, Robin S.

Abstract

We examine livestock-wealth inequality by gender and age of the household head among Maasai households located in areas of contrasting land tenure and land productivity in the Amboseli, Athi-Kaputiei and Maasai Mara regions of Kenya and Tarangire-Manyara Region of Tanzania. We also investigate whether livestock-poor households are more likely to diversify their livelihood options from pastoralism to include crop cultivation. Livestock wealth inequality was high in each of the four sites. Surprisingly, the Tarangire-Manyara site in Tanzania had the highest levels of inequality despite the fact that Tanzania had recently had a socialist political system while Kenya had been capitalistic since independence in 1963. The disparities in livestock assets between the rich and the poor households were lowest in the Maasai Mara site. Also, there was no direct relationship between low livestock wealth and the probability that a household would take up crop cultivation. However, areas under cultivation were the largest in Tarangire-Manyara and the lowest in Amboseli, possibly reflecting the influence of land tenure policy in Tarangire-Manyara and low rainfall in Amboseli. Most male headed households had more livestock wealth than female headed households. In Maasailand, high livestock-wealth inequalities and a growing restriction on livestock mobility, compounded with internal and external population pressures and land fragmentation, are likely to reduce pastoral resilience to droughts that are becoming more frequent and severe due to a warming global climate and widening climatic variability.

Suggested Citation

  • Nkedianye, David K. & Ogutu, Joseph O. & Said, Mohammed Y. & Kifugo, Shem & de Leeuw, Jan & Van Gardingen, Paul & Reid, Robin S., 2019. "Livestock-wealth inequalities and uptake of crop cultivation among the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 14(C), pages 1-1.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:wodepe:v:14:y:2019:i:c:7
    DOI: 10.1016/j.wdp.2019.02.017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292918300973
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.wdp.2019.02.017?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Qi Sun & Chao Fu & Yunli Bai & Ayub M. O. Oduor & Baodong Cheng, 2023. "Livelihood Diversification and Residents’ Welfare: Evidence from Maasai Mara National Reserve," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(5), pages 1-21, February.
    2. Albert Sanghoon Park, 2023. "Building resilience knowledge for sustainable development: Insights from development studies," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2023-33, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Bedelian, Claire & Ogutu, Joseph O. & Homewood, Katherine & Keane, Aidan, 2024. "Evaluating the determinants of participation in conservancy land leases and its impacts on household wealth in the Maasai Mara, Kenya: Equity and gender implications," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:wodepe:v:14:y:2019:i:c:7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/world-development-perspectives .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.