CHAMPIONING A MANDERA FREE OF SECURITY THREATS.

"We have endured and survived the greatest challenges of our time and managed to perform
fairly well under extreme conditions. The World Bank report put Mandera in the top 14 counties
despite difficult circumstances. We know we can do better if we are free of internal security
challenges and terror threats."- Governor Capt. Ali Roba.

If there are counties whose people have demonstrated resilience, Mandera is among those at the very top. The county has endured security threats from occasional clan rivalries and terror attacks
by Al-Shabab militants. Still, it has stayed on course with its development agenda.

Working in collaboration with National Cohesion and Integration Commission, Mandera County Government has championed stakeholder meetings and conflict impact assessments
in its resolve to strike lasting peace in the area. The peace meetings have not only entailed
integrated participation of the council of elders, youth and women, but have also embraced cross-border linkages with neighbouring Ethiopia and Somalia.

“We have endured and survived the greatest challenges of our time and managed to perform fairly well under extreme conditions. The World Bank report put Mandera in the top 14 counties despite difficult circumstances. We know we can do better if we are free of security challenges,” Mandera County Governor Ali Roba says. He continues: “There are moments in the lives of nations and its people when it is incumbent upon those in leadership with clarity of vision to survey the problem with all its complexities and vain memories in a bold drive toward new horizons. Such moments are now for us in Mandera.”

Mandera Senator Billow Kerrow confirms that leaders in Mandera back the peace building efforts, saying: "As leaders, we are committed to the process. Insha Allah, the people of this region will ultimately reconcile and live in peace.”

The County leadership has been on a campaign mode to make Mandera an island of peace after a history of clan clashes that previously turned villages into killing fields. The dream has been to have officials of Mandera County Government stand together to strengthen security amid challenges including the terror thereat from across the border with particularly Somalia.Governor Roba
says: “We have fulfilled our promise to deal with the tribal clashes and the insecurity in our county firmly. I am happy to report that the security situation is at its best despite isolated incidents of terror attacks.” The situation is stabilising around the county, and today, there is a more secure Mandera
town.

“This County Government cannot fail to work because of insecurity caused by a few selfish individuals,” declares Governor Roba. “We will take all measures to make sure the dream of developing Mandera County and making it an attractive investment destination is not hindered by insecurity.” The Governor continues: “As a County, we have scaled new heights in the area of security. We inherited a burning county, but we have managed to neutralise many acts of violence with the support of our leaders from the county."

“Our clans now co-exist peacefully. In this regard, I would like to extend my sincere appreciation
to the National Government for the support they have provided us and the local security team in Mandera for rising to the occasion to secure our County. I also thank our leaders, both elected and local leadership, as well as the COE, who were very instrumental to the achievement of this result.

The chairperson of the Mandera County Public Service Mr Abdi-Nur Hussein, says the County has hired 200 enforcement officers, who were offered paramilitary training at the National Youth Service.
The minister in-charge of conflict resolution, cohesion and integration, Mr Ahmed Sheikh, says a genuine quest for peaceful ways to dealing with conflict amongst rival clans has gone a long way in also allowing for effective security management.

“Before the County Government came into being, Mandera got its fair share of violence from across the border. Foreign fighters infiltrated the clan militia. Their agenda was not to support one clan against the other but to use the violence as a shadow for a bigger mission of disrupting county/national security. We had to come up with a county security strategy to address
short and long-term issues,” says Mr Sheikh.

The minister says mediation, especially through elders and key opinion leaders, has seen the resettlement of 80 per cent of IDPs, 48 reconciliation meetings, 35 dialogue meetings and 25 Rapid response initiatives.

The county Government has also revived Traditional Justice System (TJS) in the form of Council of Elders (COEs). The COEs are now present in all the six sub-counties. They handle day-to-day intra and inter clan disputes.

To support the work of the COEs, the Garreh and Degodia clans elected committee members
composed of 15 elders to spearhead the implementation of the peace accord.

REASONS TO INVEST IN MANDERA COUNTY

1 Strategic location: Unique geographical position at the heart of the crossroad
connecting Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the east and the Middle East.

2 Market potential: A vast domestic market with a population of 1.2 million people
and quick access to the rest of Kenya and neigbouring markets.

3 Abundant resources: Mandera County is endowed with cosmic natural resources
such as gypsum, oil, natural gas, soda ash and limestone.

4 Bureaucracy: A responsive administration committed to improving infrastructure
and eliminating bureaucratic processes, regulations and trade barriers.

5 Political stability: Enhanced security involving the national police and police
reserve coupled with unity among leaders has created peace and stability.

Agricultural land along River Daua

6 Land: Plenty of productive agricultural land in a vast area which can be developed
for industrial and infrastructural projects like airports and industries.

7 Labour: Plenty of skilled and unskilled human resource in addition to professionals
and experts in various disciplines and services.

8 Water: The River Daua which stretches for 160 kilometres has great opportunities
for irrigation, hydropower and setting up of bottling plants, man made lakes and dams.

9 Livestock: Traditionally the main economic activity in the region, the livestock sector
is being developed for export of meat, cheese, milk and leather products.

10.Green energy: Immense potential for hydro power generation, wind, solar and
biofuels to meet the growing demand for energy to empower the region.

SHUN RIVALRIES FOR UNITY, MP's APPEAL.

Marsabit County legislators want the government to focus on the development priorities of previously marginalized communities. Led by Senator Abubakar Hargura, they claim that nearly all health; education and other social institutions were built by the missionaries. “Were it not for the missionaries who came to the aid of our county, today we would have nothing to celebrate about

our social-cultural and economic adversity,” the Senator asserts. For instance, the missionaries built schools for the Gabra, who largely inhabit the Chalbi Desert and eased the community’s access to basic education.

The leaders thanked the missionaries for their humble and selfless generosity, which has helped entrench the county’s status as the ‘Cradle of Mankind’. Hailing the humanitarian gesture from the missionaries as a true reflection of exemplary service, the leaders say that to entrench devolution, the government must intensify the distribution of resources to marginalised communities. Senator Hargura says successive governments largely neglected the communities despite their immense economic potential. “These are the historical injustices that we want to redress now within the confines of the law,” he adds.

With the right social, political, economic and health policies in place and good stewardship, there is nothing that could obscure the region’s path to economic prosperity. The legislators say they are glad that the county executive led by Governor Ukur Yattani has lined up 20 Bills aimed at addressing the inequalities. The Bills touch on nearly all segments of the county’s economic potential and seek to unlock them through maximum exploitation using the relevant technological expertise. The legislators enumerated areas they

are keen to harness and develop, including the livestock sector, tourism, infrastructure, wind and solar energy and the import and export market. These sectors, if efficiently developed, would spur the region’s growth, Hargura explains.

The county leadership will therefore have to work very closely with all bilateral and development partners, including the national government to make these goals a reality. Adopting the formula used by the Commission on Revenue Allocation to distribute resources, the legislators have unanimously endorsed it to avoid skewed distribution without favoring any particular community. By agreeing to abide by this principle, the legislators believe that fair allocations will reduce the hostilities that occur between clans as they fight over resources and equal representation in the county administration.

North Horr MP Chachu Ganya and Laisamis MP Joseph Lekuton have re-affirmed their commitment to ethnic diffusion to ensure the region’s cohesiveness. Other MPs from the area include Roba Duba (Moyale) and Dido Ali Rasso (Saku), who despite their political diversities have been making concerted efforts to push for unity. Hargura advises leaders from the region that for them to develop, they must seek peace first before they seek elective representation to improve the people’s livelihoods. The leaders have vowed to ensure that the fundamental principles of human rights and the region’s cultural diversities are recognised and that the sovereignty of the people is respected. Ganya and Lekuton say unity is vital as the vehicle of cultural transmission, irrespective of ethnic, clan or political alignments.

Marsabit is home to 14 different ethnic communities who speak different languages. Virtually all the leaders here were

elected on a Cord ticket against the background of the politics of systemic marginalization. This is the essence of leadership squabbles that has pitted some of the leaders in the clash-prone Moyale region, where the residents led by the local MPs are advocating for justice and equity to thrive in the county governance. Cord commands a strong following because of its perceived push for development projects and a sustained bid to harness the under-developed natural resources. The national government is also trying to pay keen attention to the region’s development under the new constitutional dispensation.

Hopefully, the ongoing peace and dialogue forums initiated by the counties newly launched integration and cohesion department and the national leaders’ efforts to unite the residents will bear fruit. Already, all the leaders have shown commitment to work together.

According to Marsabit County Women representative Nasra Ibren, the unexploited potential of women is gaining greater attention in Kenya under the devolved system of governance. The country’s new Constitution provides a clear framework for addressing gender equality that seeks to remedy the traditional exclusion of women and promote women’s full involvement in every aspect of growth and development. Ibren is encouraging women to take advantage of the law to unlock the culture of male chauvinism and to continue strongly appealing to the county government to uphold the 30 per cent threshold set by the law on the appointment of women to elective and public administration positions. Civic education programmes to enlighten women and mentorship programmes to motivate girl child education are ongoing.

WHY NAROK COUNTY IS WORLD BANK PREFERED INVESTMENT DESTINATION

Narok County could become one of the richest in the country if it prudently exploits its natural forest resources, experts say. Prof Richard Samson Odingo of the University of Nairobi’s Geography Department says Narok is endowed with the Mau Forest from where it can earn billions of shillings in carbon credits .Narok shares part of the Mau Complex, which is the largest indigenous forest in East Africa. The complex covers 273,300 hectares, forming the region’s single-most largest closed canopy forest.

“The potential is enormous because Narok could earn a lot of revenue from the forest in the form of carbon credits,” says Odingo, chairman of the panel overseeing Government activity on climate change – the National Climate Change Activities Coordination Committee (NCCACC).He adds: “The income could be huge, even amounting to tens of billions of shillings per year due to the size of the resource.” A carbon credit represents one ton of carbon dioxide equivalent either removed, avoided or sequestered. These are then exchanged in the carbon market.

The carbon market is divided into two - the voluntary markets and the regulatory (compliance) market. In the compliance market, carbon credits are generated by projects that operate under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) approved mechanisms such as Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). 

Credits generated under this mechanism are known as Certified Emissions Reduction (CERs). In the voluntary market (where Mau Forest could belong) carbon credits are generated by projects accredited to independent international standards such as the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS). These credits are known as Verified Emission Reductions (VERs).

Mau Forest

 

Carbon trade exchange supports the trading of both voluntary and compliance credits. The idea behind carbon trading is similar to the trading of securities or commodities in a marketplace. Carbon would be given a value, allowing people, companies or nations to trade in it. For instance, if a nation bought carbon, it would be buying the rights to burn it, and a nation selling carbon would be giving up its rights to burn it.

The value of the carbon would be based on the ability of the country, entity or individual owning the carbon to store or to prevent it from being released into the atmosphere. The better they are at storing it, the more they can charge for it.

A market would then be created to facilitate the buying and selling of the rights to emit greenhouse gases. Industrialized countries such as the United States and China, for which reducing emissions is a daunting task, could buy emission rights from the carbon market.

The huge earnings, Odingo explains, would be as a result of the fact that Mau Forest acts as a huge carbon sink. The forest’s closed tree-canopy removes tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis, thereby negating climate change. “Usually, the carbon credits are calculated per tree, but Mau Forest’s earnings would be based on the fact that the forest acts as a carbon sink, which  would  potentially  lead  to  significantly higher carbon credit earnings,” says Odingo, who for 20 years has been a bureau member for United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

 He, however, says the county must first conserve the resource and ensure it is sustainably managed before the money can start rolling in. “The county management must also learn, understand and conceptualise the idea of carbon credit before it can begin to earn big from its natural resources. Much as the literature about the carbon credit opportunities is out there, few people, especially at the county level, grasp the idea. There is need for civic education in the devolved systems not only on the  benefits  of  forests  but  the whole idea of climate change and environment conservation,” Odingo says. He adds: “Importantly, the counties must ensure the resource is exploited sustainably both to conserve the heritage and to keep the money flowing.”

As Kenya’s Nobel Laureate the late Prof Wangari Maathai put it: “In today’s world, conserving the environment is not all about self-preservation but also about earning money from countries that contribute significantly to climate change.”

Estimates show that by exploiting opportunities in the carbon market through planting trees and conserving forests, Kenya could earn Sh30 billion annually, while the continent could rake in some Sh200 billion.

The Sh30 billion is equivalent to the money the government is borrowing from external sources to preserve the Mau Forest. Although the county’s forest cover has largely been depleted from more than 10 per cent in the 1960s to about 1.7 per cent currently, preserving the remaining forest cover could amount to a green gold mine.

In 2009, Kenya was picked alongside 14 other  developing  countries  to  benefit  from an innovative programme to combat tropical deforestation and forest depletion, where the  country  signed  her  first  carbon  deal  to reduce emissions into the atmosphere.

The deal signed by the San Francisco-based Wildlife Works Carbon and Kenya Forest Service (KFS), compels the partners to protect the 80,000acre Rukinga Forest Reserve in south-eastern Kenya. The project is funded by sales of carbon credits in the voluntary carbon market. The development makes Kenya one of the 14 countries to receive funds in the first round of World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF).

Besides trading in carbon credits, the Mau can also be an ecological zone and a tourist attraction owing  to  its  diverse  flora  and fauna.

Typical tree species in Mau Forest include

Pouteria adofi-friedericii, Strombosia scgeffleri and Polyscias kikuyuensis, Olea capensis,Prunus Africana, Albizia gummifera and

Podocarpus latifolius.

Endemic bird species in the area include

Hartlaub’s Turaco (Tauraco hartlaubi), Hunter’s Cisticola and Jackson’s Francolin. However, in order to enjoy carbon benefits from the Mau Forest, Narok and adjacent counties must sort out the mess in Mau first.

Late last year, the Government announced that the rehabilitation of the Mau Forest would not be completed due to lack of funds. KFS Assistant Director David Chege says the Sh250 million set aside for the project will be finished this year, adding that more than 200 hectares of trees have been planted so far.

He is urging donors to donate funds to support the project. In 2008, a political row erupted over resettlement of people who had been allocated land in Mau Forest during the Kanu era, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. Some of the settlers were leaders and powerful figures in the Moi regime.

The Ndungu Report identified the  allocations as illegal and recommended their revocation. Some evictions were implemented between 2004 and 2006, without a resettlement scheme. In July 2008, then Prime Minister Raila Odinga issued an order for the evictions to be implemented by October that year in order to protect the forest from destruction. The order was opposed by a number of Rift Valley politicians. Some politicians proposed that if evictions were to be implemented, the national Government should allocate the settlers alternative land.

Help for the elderly and vulnerable

Marsabit County’s department of Culture, Tourism and Social Services in set aside funds to cater for ageing persons who need relief and are in distress.

According to the Executive member for Tourism Grace Galmo, the county government will give the identified elders a monthly stipend of at least Sh2,000 to supplement the efforts of the national government, which has been assisting them. Galmo says they will work closely with local leaders, elders and ward administrators to identify such old and needy persons.

Vulnerable citizens cushioned from harsh economic times.

 
The elderly will be aided through cash handouts, the provision of their basic needs such as primary health care, shelter and education. The  criteria  for  eligibility  and  to  identification of  the  beneficiaries  from  these  funds  will  be decided by a committee drawn from personnel from the department of Culture and Social Services, in consultation with village elders, local leaders and ward administrators.

The duration of help will also have to be decided, whether it will be one-off help, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, bi-annually or annually. The mode of help will be agreed upon to avoid public outcry over foul play and mischief, and to ensure that no vulnerable persons are left out.“Making the right and wise decisions means our department must meet its obligations by using the funds appropriately and for the rightful beneficiaries. This way we will uplift the living standards of our communities and build their faith and trust in their county government,” Galmo asserts.

IMAGES OF CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN KENYA'S COSMOPOLITAN COUNTY HOME TO14 ETHNIC COMMUNITIES

Marsabit County is positioning itself to reap big from its diverse cultural heritage and abundant historical and geographical attributes through investment in tourism .A melting pot of cultures bringing together 14 (a third of Kenya’s 42 ethnic communities) Home to 14 different ethnic communities  among them the Rendile, Borana, Gabra, Turkana, El Molo, Konso, Sakuye, Watta, Somali, Samburu, and the Dasanach.

Samburu morans

Burji Tribesmen

Waata dancers

El Molo dancers

Somali dancers

Rendille dancers

Samburu warriors in traditional regalia

Samburu dancers

Turkana dancers