North Eastern Kenya has been silently handed a grand document with an even grander title, “A Road Map for the Transformative Development of North Eastern Kenya,” by the North Eastern Parliamentary Group, February 2025.
It is polished. It is detailed. It speaks loudly about roads, livestock, water, trade, and energy. It repeats the language of marginalisation and promise. But it is also a document of silence. Wildlife does not exist in this roadmap. Not as a sector. Not as an economy. Not as a strategy. Not even as an afterthought.
For a region that holds one of the most significant remaining wildlife landscapes in Africa, this is not just an omission. It is negligence. According to the 2021 and 2025 Kenya’s wildlife censuses, Garissa stands as the fourth largest wildlife holding county in Kenya, with Wajir ranked seventh and Mandera following close behind.
These are not small, fragmented spaces. These are vast, contiguous ecosystems that still carry life at scale. Somali giraffes move across them. Elephants pass through. Grevy’s zebra survives here. Gerenuk & Hirolas are names rooted in our own Somali language, still walk these lands. Oryx, lesser kudu, and species found almost nowhere else continue to exist within what is often dismissed as empty land.
This is the Somali biome. It is real. It is valuable. It is ours. And yet, our leaders have chosen not to see it. Tourism and wildlife contribute close to ten percent of the national economy when you consider the full value chain. In Narok, Laikipia, Kajiado, and Taita Taveta, wildlife fund counties. It builds roads. It supports schools & hospitals. It creates employment.
In North Eastern Kenya, the contribution is effectively zero. Not because the resource is absent. Because leadership is absent. The authors of this roadmap, MPs from the region, had the opportunity to correct decades of neglect. Instead, they have reproduced it in policy form.
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They speak about livestock correctly. They speak about water and drought, also correctly. But they refuse to connect the obvious truth that pastoralism and wildlife are not competitors. They are partners. They have coexisted for centuries within Somali culture and pastoral systems. Our people did not destroy wildlife. They lived alongside it.
That balance is now collapsing. Poaching is rising. Habitats are shrinking. Wildlife numbers are falling. And the same leaders who should be responding have produced a roadmap that does not even acknowledge they have wildlife. It is difficult to interpret this as anything other than failure.
The governors are not exempt. With one clear exception, the Governor of Garissa, who has shown willingness to prioritise wildlife and engage with conservation actors, the rest have treated this sector with indifference. At best, it is ignored. At worst, it is seen as irrelevant.
Our leadership remains trapped in a narrow view of development that excludes one of the few sectors that can bring immediate external revenue into the region. North Eastern Wildlife Conservancies Association (NECA) and community conservancies across Garissa, Wajir, and Mandera have already demonstrated what is possible.
With limited support, communities are protecting wildlife, stabilising ecosystems, and creating the foundations for a conservation economy. They are doing the work that policy has failed to do.
They should not be working alone. North Eastern counties do not lack resources. They lack recognition of those resources. This roadmap should be revised. Wildlife must be elevated to a core economic pillar.
-The writer is Chief Executive Officer, North Eastern Wildlife Conservancies Association (NECA)