Effects of livestock herd migration on child schooling in Marsabit District, Kenya

Abstract

To throw light on the challenge of providing education to pastoral households in the context of social and economic change, this study investigates the effects of herd migration on child schooling in Northern Kenya. Specifically, the analysis uses both household panel data and community-level focus-group data to identify the barriers to schooling, which include an insufficient number of schools, nomadism and communal conflicts. The results also reveal that herd migration has a significantly negative effect on school attendance – about a 26% probability of failure to attend among the children of livestock migrating households. The child’s age and mother’s literacy have a positive impact on child school attendance, but with girls more likely to attend than boys, probably because of higher opportunity costs. That is, attending school takes boys away from activities like herding, which have greater economic value than the nonmonetisable household duties performed by girls.

Keywords:

• Education
• children
• pastoralists
• drought
• livestock

Notes

1. Pastoralism refers to the practice of herding livestock – mainly cattle, sheep, goats, and camels – as the primary economic activity.

2. These districts include Turkana, Samburu, Marsabit, Isiolo, Moyale, Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Ijara and Tana River.

3. The 16 sublocations are Dirib Gombo, Sagante, Dakabaricha, Kargi, Kurkum, Elgathe, Kalacha, Bubisa, Turbi, Ngurunit, Illaut, South Horr, Lontolio, Loyangalani, Logologo and Karare.

4. TLUs enable standardized quantification of different livestock types. Under resource-driven grazing conditions, the average feed intake among species is quite similar, about 1.25 times the maintenance requirements (1 for maintenance and 0.25 for production; i.e., growth, reproduction, milk). Metabolic weight is therefore considered the best unit for aggregating animals from different species, whether for the total amount of feed consumed, manure produced or product produced. The standard used for one tropical livestock unit is one cow with a body weight of 250 kg (Heady 1975) so that 1 TLU = 1 head of cattle, 0.7 of a camel or 10 sheep or goats.

5. Because school attendance refers to enrollment in the formal schooling system, children enrolled in religious schools are treated as not enrolled.

6. Estimation using a fixed effects probit model is not possible because of the incidental parameters problem, which makes it difficult to remove unobserved heterogeneity by time and thus demeans the data. Such estimation requires a large data-set and sufficient variance for both dependent and independent variables (Wooldridge 2012).

7. ‘Satellite camps’ are grazing areas to which pastoralists move their livestock for a given period.