‘I have opened the land for you’: pastoralist politics and election-related violence in Kenya’s arid north

The shadow of election violence has hung over Kenyan politics since 2008, when post-election violence erupted across the country. These events paved the way for major national reforms, including the devolution of central government, designed to counteract tendencies of ethnic patronage and violence. Kenya’s subsequent election cycles have not seen the same explosion of nationwide violence, and therefore little has been written about election violence in Kenya in the post-devolution years. However, this article draws attention to the arid, pastoralist-dominated north, where there have in fact been significant episodes of violence that are election-related. Drawing on ethnographic research, it explores the case of Samburu, Isiolo and Laikipia counties during the 2017 and 2022 election cycles, when mass movements of armed pastoralists and herds forced their way, often violently, into targeted areas of land, resulting in widespread clashes, killings and displacement. The article investigates the endogenous elites and machinations within nomadic Samburu communities involved in and affected by this violence, using a ‘public authority lens’. It argues that ongoing governance changes in this region have created opportunities for political elites to mobilise territorial violence for strategic, political ends in advance of elections, including through a previously undocumented practice of “vote shipping”.