Taking charge of the future: pastoral institution building in Northern Kenya

This paper examines the Wajir Pastoral Development Project (WPDP) that addresses a wide range of issues affecting pastoral livelihoods, such as animal and human health care, water supply, conflict and drought management, education, restocking, and credit. It looks at the support of the project amongst social organisation and the policy change that have been put in a place such as Wajir, and ask how this process developed at community level. It examines the attempts made to influence district-level policy and practice and summarises the main lessons learnt.Lessons learnt include:an important indicator of quality is a self-critical approacha key area for constant questioning is the appropriate use of project resourcesthe primary determinant of project quality is the quality of project staff: their skills, judgement, and experience, and the personal values which guide their actions. As such, issues of recruitment, training, team management, and personal discipline become crucial to the success of the projectindividuals can bring about positive change, through their skills, patronage, and influence. Yet this needs ‘institutionalising’, i.e. embedding in structures which will outlive staff movements or civil service deployments, and which will guard against powerful individuals circumventing the system for negative endsdevelopment workers let young organisations work things out for themselves, asking critical questions where necessary to guide their thinking. Each association in Wajir determined the direction and pace of activities, even if in some cases this meant moving more slowly than the project team might have hoped‘participatory development’ does not mean leaving communities to do everything their own way, because this may mask inequities. External agencies can contribute useful knowledge about more effective ways of doing things. The skill lies in mixing local and external knowledge, to get the best possible solutions in each contextgender inequities should be addressed in ways which recognise that change has to come from within, and cannot be imposed from withoutchanging the social and political environment within which development choices are made and priorities are set is a dynamic and complex process. Apparent gains can quickly be lost with changes in key personnel, or with challenges from powerful individuals. A clear sense of vision and direction for pastoral development is crucial, but this cannot be pursued in isolation from national development. The broader policy framework must be ‘right’, managed in such a way that policy-makers are able to listen and learn from those living in poverty. Strong, representative institutions are the means through which pastoral communities can find common ground, and begin to influence those policy choices on their own terms