Pastoralists in NEP turn to crop farming
The Standard, Kenya - June 23, 2008

All his life, Mr Hassan Abdille, 52, has crisscrossed the vast Mandera East constituency and neighboring Somalia and Ethiopia in search of water and pasture for the family's livestock.

In neighbouring Mandera Central, Mr Aliow Hassan has been trooping to a teeming food distribution centre in Rhamu Division for relief handouts since he lost 120 head of cattle, 57 camels and 132 goats and sheep to drought in 1984.

Early this year, Hassan and Aliow ran into each other on the shores of River Daua where the two constituencies border. "Why don't we use this river to feed our families and transform our squalid lives?" Hassan recalls Aliow suggesting.

On that searing day in February the two embarked on an ambitious venture and became the latest herdsmen to abandon livestock rearing for farming. Read More.